Yes, or you can put them on your piano … no wait, that’s not how it goes.
Never had a real date, never been kissed by a guy, never been in a relationship.
Screw Valentine’s Day, anyways.
I need a good cry now.
[cue sappy violin]
Love is a lot more than just (sappy) sentiments and not-so-subtle hints of eroticism that make up Valentines Day. Love is made up of several different elements:
Agape: Selfless love, putting others first
Philos: Brotherly love felt for others sharing a comon history, heritage, origin
Pragma: Common-sense love based on what’s best and right
Eros: Sexual love
Mania: Single-minded fixation on something or someone
Storge: Friendship
Ludus: Superficial, non-commital love
Caritas: Caring about or for someone
Relationships are built around a combination of these elements, and change over time. I would propose using Valentine’s Day to celebrate all of your relationships (family, friends, neighbors), and look at the love you receive in turn. This may sound like spitting in the wind after a relationship has ended, but it helps put things in perspective as well.
Vlad/Igor
hugs Kythereia
Yeah, fuck it right in the ear!
Well,
This will be the first Valentine’s Day since Mrs. Zebra left me.
So it is going to suck pretty hard.
That’s why I’ve secretly replaced Cupid’s love arrows with the type of arrows they use to hunt deer. So let’s sit back, have a beer and watch the fun kids.
I know it is meant well…
but I hate it when people in good relationships tell me that they know how I feel because “[they’re] not doing anything for Valentine’s, either…” or “[they] don’t need a day to do something special for each other…”.
I am not jealous of people’s Valentines Day plans; I’m jealous of their relationships.
VD just puts into sharp, painful relief that I am not in a relationship now, nor am I likely to be ever. That for all the days leading up to it and all the days after it, I won’t be making plans with my SO, either, because I will not have one. That for the other 11 months of the year, I won’t be doing something special for my SO because I will not have one.
Like I said, I know it’s meant well - but it often comes across as very “Let them eat cake”
Ms.Cyros here…
I know I’m a bit warped, but I immediately thought VD = Venereal Disease.
My birthday is on Valentine’s Day and it sucks beans. Ever since I was 15, none of my friends would celebrate with me on my birthday because they had lovey-dovey things to do with the boyfriend du jour.
Married now (to Cyros, obviously) but V Day still sucks. It seems if you want anything (say acknowledgement) for a birthday or special occasion, it is necessary to repeatedly verbalize this and submit formal notification in writing of exactly what you would like. But not guarantees on this either.
I will be spending this V-Day / B-day alone hugging the toilet. The joys of morning sickness.
/Ms. Cyros
People pay attention to Valentine’s Day? Who knew?
Sing it, sister. (Although I have been kissed, it was by a fellow Doper).
The only good thing about Valentine’s Day is the day after-when the candy’s on sale.
:: hugs Kythereia and Zebra and Johnny L. A. and TVeblen and amarinth and Mauvaise and Siege and everyone else who needs it ::
I think that I’m going to be too deep in my art and my new screenwriting practice to pay any attention to V-Day this year.
Or I’ll be watching the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Or I’ll be at work, writing manuals with my newly-repaired Big Headphones on, with Icon of Coil cranked up just barely below ear-bleed level, so I can’t hear the shiny happy women over the cubicle wall in Marketing jabbering on and on about their Romantic Plans and the latest Wonderful Guy they’ve met.
Let the smug V-Day bastards who rub their so-called superiority in our faces, let them eat synthetic spongecake with greasy chemical-laden fake icing until their stomachs turn at the unreality of it all and they are suddenly rudely awakened.
Me? Bitter?
Valentine’s Day! Bah Humbug!
I have never spent a Valenswine's day where I had someone. I sympathize 100% with the OP.
Now, Talk Like a Pirate Day... THAT I can get behind!Just for the record, I was not criticizing Talk Like a Pirate Day. I just have never celebrated it. It looks like it might be a big deal this year, though. Cool.
Here’s a rant I wrote up a couple of years ago:
I feel it still applies to me. Let’s just say that things aren’t going THAT well with Person of Interest, for various reasons. Besides, I don’t believe him when he says he’ll send me stuff… he never did for Christmas, after all.
All hail the tradition of Memphis Blues Singles Night Out / BitterFest! 
(may as well hang out with your fellow single friends to eat meat, since you don’t have to spend tons of money on flowers / chocolate / candy / fancy restaurants)
P.S. I’m not saying I’m “technically single” or anything else… but hey, it may be the best of both worlds as my friend Dave said about our friend Phil last year. 
Hmmm, well…
I was born in Auburn WA., and lived there until 1970, but I’ve been in Alaska ever since. Pretty cheap flights just to WA though (fluttering eyelash smilie)…hehe
Maybe you’ll meet someone? (someone has probably beat me to this one though), I’m late in getting back to this thread.
Oh no…I’m all girl!
Ah, Valentine’s Day! Smug happy couples, garish balloons, smelly flowers, and tortured phone calls from roommate’s long-distance love. Not phone calls to me, understand. But phone calls which I will hear due to thin walls, unless I crank up some noisy device. Monday, too. Figures. I’m just going to eat a lot of candy and be bitchy all day.
I can’t wait.
Now, wait a minute, Sweetums! I happen to know you had a perfectly eligible Doper at your fingertips or, more accurately, swordpoint for about 2 years and never made a move on her. What was that you told me about seeing if novice fencers will take an opening when it’s made available to them?
See you Sunday,
CJ
I have NEVER liked valentine’s day, nor any other corporate card holiday, as a matter of fact. Not even as a kid when everyone in the class set up little paper bags decorated with hearts and we exchanged valentines on the day. It annoyed me that I either had to a) take the time hand make valentines for a day I had no idea about or b) spend my pocket money buying commercialized pieces of flimsy cardboard. That was elementary school, and in high school, the whole “Buy a rose for your sweetie! The money goes towards your student coucil!” or “Buy some expensive, but nasty tasting chocolate for that someone special! The money goes towards our volunteer club!” annoyed me. I don’t need a special occasion to support my student council or the volunteer club. It’s not because I’m bitter either, because the one year I had a boyfriend during valentine’s day, I told him to get me nothing. I didn’t want anything, and told him if he loved me then he’d show his love every day instead of that one day hallmark told him was special. He didn’t listen and got me something anyway. I broke up with him.
Okay, I guess this is as good a place to share my story on my last Valentine’s Day [mis]adventure.
So, I go out to a bar with a buddy of mine…no, wait a minute. :o I mean, I didn’t go out with him! We went out, yes, but we weren’t going out, okay? I’m not gay, I tell ya! I’m not!
Let me start all over again.
So, a coworker and neighbor calls me up. He wants to go out. To a bar. Where they sell alcoholic beverages, and I could use one right now.
He wants, in his own words, a “wingman”. I’m not particularly good at this sort of thing, appearances aside, but it’s February 14 and he wants some nookie. So there I am; I’m playing Goose to his fat-ass, balding, Jeep Liberty-driving, gin-and-tonic slugging, khaki pants-wearing, social graces-lacking, archetypical engineer version of Maverick.
I hate Top Gun, by the way.
So we’re in a bar–it was the Good Luck Bar off of Sunset Blvd–and he’s doing his best impression of Vince Vaughn in Swingers, and you know how the chicks dig that, particularly when you’re shorter and even creepier than Vaughn. A woman–quite attractive in the amply-endowed, jeans and minimum makeup SunSoCal-type of way–comes over by me and orders a drink. Now, like most of your better meat markets, this place has atmosphere; for the Good Luck, atmosphere translates into looking like an old set from a flashback scene in Kung Fu. You know, the hanging lanterns, Chinese-style woodwork, chimeras, calligraphy on the walls, that sort of thing. It’s dark, that reddish sort of dark that conceals up skin blemishes and wrinkles and emotional baggage, which, if you’re going to run a singles bar, is the sort of dark you really want to strive for. It has, in fact, the heavy type of dimness that makes banal conversation seem like Hepburn-Tracy inspired dialog. Comments like “Do you have a mirror in your pants?” are converted into a Shakespearean sonnet. Mike Tyson could come off as being “the black Cary Grant” in this place. Travis Bickle could get laid here. In short, if you have even the slightest amount of social graces, or even just a willingness to step up and throw yourself into the path of the oncoming baseball, you can get to home with a walk.
So what do I do? I stand there for a few seconds, winding my courage up like a jack-in-the-box, and then spring my most inspired wit upon her.
“Hey, nice…um…nice, uh, haircut.”
Nice haircut? A million years of human evolution, and oversized brain predominantly concerned with social communication, and the best I can come up with is a vague complement on her coiffure? Have I spent the last 32 years of my life consuming resources, absorbing education, defying gravity, and oppressing Third World sweatshop laborers to come up with this?
Needless to say, she is manifestly disappointed:
“Um, thanks.”
Time passes. They say time and space are one, and the more you travel in time the further you go in space. In this case, I seemed to be hitting the relativistic limits. Space expanded. Time slowed, each second a period long enough for a sea turtle to be born, struggle helplessly down the sandy beach only to discover it had been going the wrong direction and was in fact heading for an oil-filled pothole, be picked up by a gull but spit out because it didn’t like the taste, made way back down the beach and into the water, ride the ocean currents round and again as the moon waxes and wanes innumerable times, grow to a fullness rivaled only by John Goodman after an all-you-can-eat bender at the Sizzler, fertilize countless eggs, and end up rotting away in a tuna net.
I use the simile of a sea turtle because I was in fact as graceless and out-of-place as said creature in the middle of a desert. Nonetheless, I’m there, my buddy is still making his moves on anything that even looks vaguely feminine, and I still have half a glass of my club soda to finish. So, screwing up my courage like a stranded motorist changing a tire while parked on a soft shoulder, I say:
“So, um…do you, have you been here before?”
or something as equally sparkling with wit and charm.
“No, never been here before. How about you?”
“A couple of times. Nice decor.”
“Umm.”
Now, I’m not quite sure what “Umm”, sitting there on its lonesome like a crouching mountain lion ready to spring, is supposed to convey. Does it mean, “Umm, <please say something witty so I can laugh>,” or, “Umm, <you have one more chance to make a good impression and then I’m going to walk over to the other side of the bar>,”, or perhaps, “Umm, <please don’t make me hit you with my purse, you half-wit nancy-boy>.” Personally, I think it meant, “<D>Umm<y, if you don’t say something worthwhile in two seconds, I’m going to take my can of pepper spray, jam it down your throat, and release the entire contents into your respiratory system, just for the shear pleasure of watching you choke to death on your own fluids>.”
It’s time for some defense. In my admiration of the French and imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I erect a conversational Maginot line.
“Sorry. I’m not, not so g-g-g-g-ood with, um, people. Women, I mean.”
Oh great. Now I’m stuttering. Plus, there’s the implication that I bend the other way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; some of my best friends…er…well, I mean, people I know…well, not that I’ve been in a parade or anything, but…well, look; if homosexuals want to enjoy the same misery and feeling of ensnarement that straight folk do, then I say let 'em marry. Live and let live, that’s my motto. Straight, gay, bisexual, transgendered; it’s all the same to me, except, of course, where it affects my actually getting together with a woman who not clearly thinks that I’m not only a stuttering imbecile but also not capable of being remotely interested in her charms, to boot.
I am, in social terms, a moron. If only there were some way I could convert my SAT score and arcane knowledge of quantum mechanics and metal fatigue theory into an aphrodisiac, but no; an electron is an electron, and a proton is a proton, and never the twain shall meet, until they are smashed together by immense forces to make a neutron which hooks up with other neutrons and subsequently collapes into a black hole, which is exactly what I want to do at this very moment. I have, however, sufficient presence of mind and control of bodily fluids to not embarrass myself further, if it is even possible at this point.
A few extinction-length timespans later, she stops looking at me in expectation of further entertainment, and turns to the Billy Blanks-looking chap sitting on the other side of her. Once in a while, she looks back over at me, checking, perhaps, if I have turned from a toad into a charming and handsome prince, but clearly remains unconvinced as to my potential as a member of the human race, or perhaps, even a form of life that doesn’t use photosynthesis.
So I drown my sorrows in my club soda. Unfortunately, club soda is far from the ideal substance for drowning sorrows, and I end up with a monumental case of hiccups before my buddy, having exhausted the possibilities, unlikelihoods, and boundless improbabilities, has decided that it is in fact time to give up and…go to a strip bar.
Now, I understand that Pasadena, to which we have returned, was once home to many fine establishments of denuded jitterbugging. In fact, the late, great Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman wrote fondly in his autobiography of the embracing wonderfulness of a certain establishment of displayed flesh which he often patronized. I find it therefore disheartening to report that, like fedora hats, Tucker automobiles, and the Marx Brothers, this too has passed into the annals of history. The club we attended was more on the order of a Sam’s Club for horny losers; blaringly loud, obnoxiously crude, and cavernously nugatory. It was like watching Andie McDowell performing a strip-tease in an aircraft hanger to the sound of the B-52’s.
But we’re here, we’ve paid, we’ve purchased the requisite minimum in beverages, and be damned if we’re to end the evening on such a blunderous note. Well, that’s the opinion of our self-styled fighter pilot, anyway, and I’m too indigent of interest in anything but oblivion to care one way or the other. I am, though, low on cash, and rather concerned about the attitude of the performers when it comes to receiving a substandard tip. I’m not really conversant with the protocol of gentlemen’s clubs, but I suspect that the young ladies like to be rewarded for their efforts and become, like Yale co-eds but more animated and less avaricious, petulant and angry when denied their rightful earnings.
No problem, my friend tells me. I’ll pay for you.
Now, let me offer to you, dear reader, some advice that I was not, at this time, in possession of: when you go to a strip club, a fundraising dinner, or an Oral Roberts tent-raising, you are expected to pay your own way. Someone else “paying for you” is looked upon with great suspicion, as if you are trying to grift, to slip past, to avoid responsibility. The end result, the proceeding events of which I’ll spare your tender natures, is that I had a half-nude stripper instructing me, in heroic volume and with surprising resonance, that the reason I was all alone on Valentine’s Day was because I was a cheap bastard with no social graces or appealing characteristics.
Who am I to argue with a beautiful woman? Especially when she’s right.
And so ended my day, February 14, 2004. Truly, I am a character drawn straight from a Wodehouse story.
This year, I plan to curl up with volume of Poe stories and a bottle of Jamison.
And that is all I have to say on the subject of Valentine’s Day.
Stranger