Forever, really. Every year Valentine’s Day comes and goes, and every year I see ad blitzes for romantic comedies, overpriced teddy bears, and pajama deliveries.
Nobody actually likes the day. People in relationships hate the pressure it adds. Single people hate the reminders of being anywhere from an extra wheel to a second class citizen. Valentine’s is when you remember you are very much alone, that you were passed over for a promotion because you weren’t married and the other guy had a wife to pay for (true story for me and several friends), and that one chick decided instead of spending the day with you as planned she’d go spend the weekend with a guy she met the night before. Or that the woman you went on that fantastic date with will talk about how she doesn’t want a relationship with anyone.
It’s a crappy day for everyone who isn’t selling flowers. Although to be fair, more and more companies get in on the act. Even Sony is offering Valentine’s promotions on the Playstation Network, and NHL 10 has gotten Valentine’s related in-game ads. Really, I find the in-game ads most puzzling, the demographic least likely to celebrate Valentine’s gets the most intrusive ads.
But nobody ACTUALLY celebrates Valentine’s. People just get depressed on it over never living up to expectations. Even Christmas manages to come out as a better day for most people, even Thanksgiving which has two fights built in. There’s no real romance to the day, it’s “Hey, look what I’ve got and you don’t” at most. It’s a damn near objectivist holiday. A purer form of consumerism than Christmas has become, and how better to celebrate the martyrdoms of two Saints named Valentine? Buy some crap you nor your partner will like. A cheap paper sentiment, chalk flavored candy with illiterate scrawling, some bad chocolate, and according to the commercials, sit in adjacent tubs while your resurrected erection goes to waste after popping a pill.
I say to hell with it, it’s time to recognize this day as the blight of a social obligation it is, wherein you’re forced to spend exorbitant amounts of money on shit, or be reminded that nobody will ever love you.That if you buy less than the next guy (and let’s be fair, it’s usually men who have to buy all this), you don’t love your partner as much. But you can ask a Walgreens gift advisor for help fixing that! Buy more mylar balloons! Buy more bags of fattening candy that’s somehow worse than candy corn, but is purchased anyway because of the heart shapes! Enjoy the continued ad blitz wherein every break is composed of Vermont Teddy Bear, Cialis, Pajamagram, Cialis, Vermont Teddy Bear.
It’s my belief that we must immediately begin calling Valentine’s VD. Clearly it IS a disease, leading to poverty, depression, and self-injury, so the moniker is appropriate. Beyond that, given time, it should acquire RAS (redundant acronym syndrome) syndrome, as with PIN number and ATM machine.. Soon everyone will call it VD Day, and perhaps, given the unpleasant connotation forget about it entirely. Nobody’s going to buy a Vermont Teddy Bear or Pajamagram (which, by the way, are part of the same company) for VD Day.
I’m gonna get a little philosophical on this one. It won’t be pretty, and you’re encouraged to disregard this entry entirely.
Why are we betrayed by our subconscious? Why does the conscience completely wither in some, yet others are driven to self-destruction to save others?
It seems to happen backwards from what you’d think, in fact. People born into a functional, normal family tend to be content to live and let die, to cut their losses when things turn to bullshit. Those who should learn “I’m on my own, and so are they” thanks to drunken stepfathers and molesting grandmothers don’t, instead they often end up martyrs rather than sociopaths. Drawn to the very chaos they consciously seek to escape, recreating the childhoods they don’t want back, yet find a sort of familiar comfort in.
Expert psychologists have described the human psyche as “totally fucked up, dude.” We’re supposed to learn from bad experiences. If you get burned as a kid, you stay away from fire. If your dad is an alcoholic, you find a man just like him. What separates things we learn from from things we recreate?
What makes us decide just who to help, anyway? There’s a strange thing within the US especially with this regarding health care. On the left, you have people who are pro-choice and pro-universal healthcare. On the right, pro-life and anti-universal healthcare. On either side, once you’re born, your status is flipped. And both sides do tend to claim religious doctrine in their favor from the same book, though the right seems to be much more apt to claim said doctrine and ignore the parts within that are pretty clear on Jesus helping the poor and insisting his followers be among them.
Of course, in the interest of full disclosure I might be a little to the left of Castro, somewhere around the Huey Freeman political doctrine, so my opinion here is biased.
That said, it all ties into the great inconsistencies with who we feel for. The same people who will cheer someone on Oprah who overcame an addiction won’t spare a dollar for the man on the street currently fighting it. That same person who doesn’t tip at a restaurant will show up at an ex-girlfriend’s home at 3 AM because she had a fight with her boyfriend. Again. And her husband got involved in it too.
But recognition for having not had three illegitimate children and a crack problem? Doesn’t seem to be much. Come back after you hit the pipe a few times and forget to use a condom, says Oprah! Or at least fake it in a book before coming on the show.
We swear up and down to avoid becoming or dating our parents, then we do anyway. If you’re raised by a heroin addict who humps bears when he’s coming down after running to a bathhouse (uh, do I need to clarify I mean the ursine type, not the gay man type?), against all odds that’s who you’ll end up dating, swearing never to do it again, then thinking about how great that person was to you, when they were awful.
Everyone seems to have that little voice that leads them into trouble, into emotional trauma and repetition, and nobody wants to admit it. That little voice is certain it’s always right, does no wrong, and makes every decision in the span of seconds. It’s like we all have a teeny tiny George W. Bush in our minds, telling us that it’s totally cool to invade Iraq (Visit your ex) because even though we were attacked by people in Afghanistan (a history of molestation), Iraq is way more important than the economy or local issues (this metaphor is stretching horribly but let’s say “your self esteem”). Except for the gays. Those are more important than anything (The metaphor just snapped in the middle, like the broken condom it represents now and the morning after pill you wished you took, except the economy was broken so you thought it might fix it?).
I think I’ve just proven my George theory with that awful series of broken metaphors, and I apologize. I also invite you to replace George W. Bush with Sarah Palin as your inner voice’s gender prescribes.
I’m just going to chalk it all up to the greed of that little voice, that it’s convinced no matter how bad it’s gone before, it’ll totally be awesome this time. You’ll get laid and this time she’ll totally realize the mistake she made by not staying with you (and going to Iraq instead)! Who cares if she freaks out when a relationship gets stable (too much success in Afghanistan?), and goes and cheats on you (uh…here’s that Iraq metaphor again, shit).
And if your boyfriend gets drunk and beat you, it’s just because you didn’t fix dinner right (find WMDs). But you can SAVE HIM (Distract everyone with Iran).
Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the tortured (waterboarded metaphors). Ha, did it again! Just like your ex!
And on that note of bad relationships and metaphors, I think I’m starting to understand why Twilight is so popular.