The Seemingly Brainless on Valentine's Day

"So what are you planning on doing for Valentine's Day?" I ask as I enter the house after work.


"She has to work all night that night so I'm off the hook." my roommate replies.


I go to the fridge as more a matter of habit than anything. I become hyper aware of the void in my stomach as I have only eaten a couple of bags of chips between work and school. It's ten at night and I've got to get something to eat. The void in the fridge matches the void in my stomach as is prone to happen all too often. Sometimes the motivation to go grocery shopping just isn't there on Saturday after I've completed a long week of work and school. I grab my half eaten pint of Ben and Jerry's and put it in the microwave for five seconds just to let it soften a little. It's not the most filling thing, but Cherry Garcia hitting the confines of my empty stomach has never felt so good. I glance around at the canary walls and plop down into the blue recliner to finish my ice cream.



"If she does get out of work early, she'll probably just come over and we'll end up making out," he adds.


If not for this statement, I would have thought he was doomed to suffer an excruciatingly awesome breakup come February the 14th. It is this statement that reminds me of the depth their relationship has displayed on the public scene. And what a public scene it has been. Public displays of affection, or PDA are one thing. The time I saw my boss holding hands and kissing her husband on the cheek at Some Burros was PDA. What I get to come home to on an almost nightly basis is beyond PDA.

It's three days later now and the big day for most men has come. I'm always hesitant to continue or make an attempt at establishing a relationship throughout the holidays because the expectations are too high. Of all the holiday expectations, Valentine's Day is the worst. Men are expected to invest an inordinate amount of time, effort, thought and money in spoiling a woman. Most of the time the hopes for the fruits of their efforts lies in getting lucky that night and that's no guarantee. What's worse is that these poor suckers aren't even in full control in ensuring that things go according to plan. Valentine's Day can be ruined by bad service at a restaurant, inclement weather, other guys trying to make things happen for themselves, or a bad case of the farts and/or sharts.

I read stories of mishaps containing all of the mentioned circumstances in the Boston Globe online. Work is slow on Valentine's Day so I sit at my desk and read online newspapers from other major market cities. Journalistic writing on the West coast just doesn't have the same quality as does East coast writing. Readers weigh in using the online form and describe their worst and best Valentine's Day experience.

I have one earbud unobtrusively hidden in my ear so that co-workers and managers don't notice and I listen to random albums on my iPod. I don't take it as a matter of coincidence that Flogging Molly somehow gets back to back albums played in the queue. The words of Dave King's subdued voice on "The Worst Day Since Yesterday" aptly describes the plight of some of the men calling me about their cell phone bills as their significant others nag in the background. "Well I know I miss more than hit, with a face that was launched to sink, and I seldom feel the bright relief. It's been the worst day since yesterday. If there's one thing I have said is that the dreams I once had now lay in bed. As the four winds blow my wits through the door, it's been the worst day since yesterday. " As much as this represents some sentiment on the most special day, Flogging Molly, in screaming angst, delivers again describing the situation of many others who feel slighted by unrequited love. "Then the ball dropped while everything fell by the way. As your tear drops were falling I forgot to say that I have always loved you."

Drivers pack the freeway and it's ten o'clock at night on a Thursday. Traffic is usually nowhere near this awful. As I pass other cars driving 60 mph where the limit is 65 and the standard is 75, I glance into their windows pelted with rain and confirm my suspicion. It seems that all these slow drivers are guys with a female passenger riding shotgun. These are the same guys who feel it necessary to battle via drag race to beat me to the merge on the onramp. Only tonight there is no over exaggerated show of testosterone. That needs to be saved for later. Logic would dictate that these dudes would be racing home in the hopes that end results are achieved according to plan. Apparently some have taken the more patient approach and are driving very carefully and slowly. They are on the home stretch and driving too fast might derail their plans for the remaining two hours of Valentine's Day.

As I arrive home, the roommate's girlfriend's car is parked in the street. On the counter is a gift bag containing a few items I don't care to notice and a frisbee. The card on the outside reads, "From Amber." The two of them are nowhere to be found but my roommate's truck is out front so I know they haven't gone anywhere. They must be in his room. I sit down at the computer to do my homework only to be bothered by an occasional bump against the wall coming from the other room. The lights are off as I type and listen to random tracks on iTunes. I turn the volume up so that everybody in the house can hear.

Despite my obvious hint at what is left to everybody as only guessing at impropriety going on in the other room (my roommates and I are all Mormons and believe in celibacy before marriage), the love birds seem to be unabashed as they walk out at quarter to midnight. The girlfriend has a curfew and it takes 15 minutes for her to get home.

Earlier that day I had an exchange with my other roommate's girlfriend, Mary. I like Mary. She's probably the nicest person who comes over on a regular basis. She came early in the morning to decorate Sean's room with candy and those awesome sugar cookies she makes with a hint of cream cheese in the frosting. Before she left, I mentioned the awkwardness of PDA and pointed out that quite a bit of it goes on during Valentine's Day. Although I tried to refrain from mentioning anybody in particular, and I was pretty sure she understood who specifically I meant, I decided not to leave any room for doubt and mentioned specifics. She laughed somewhat taken aback that I would come right out and say it and followed with, "I hope we're not like that. Are we like that?"

Of course Sean and Mary aren't like that. Otherwise, they would be the subject of this story. So I am left to wonder at the contrasting couples as I drift along through life alone knowing that this lonely status has the potential to change. And I evaluate how I would like my own potential relationships to be in the future. Sean and Mary have a strong basis of friendship that is the foundation, and this in sharp contrast to the other relationship which I can observe is mostly physical.

This post originally began just before Valentine's Day and it is now early March. Two weekends ago, several days after the big day, I asked my roommate where his girlfriend was. He replied that she was on a date with another guy then followed up with his disdain at this fact stating that he wished they were "exclusive". My thoughts are, if you have to ask or question the fact, you probably aren't and if you bring a girl home three or more nights out of the week and end up making out and that's not exclusive, what is?

Personal Space

So anybody reading this knows already that I'm a pretty passive aggressive person, and this note/blogging thing seems to be a good outlet for people like me to lay out gripes with just about anything. Today, I would like to discuss personal space; more specifically, mine. I understand the need to invade this space at some times. Giving somebody a congratulatory hug, spooning, talking to a hot girl at a party where the music is really loud, and tackling an opponent in football are all situations where it is appropriate to invade the personal space of another. Standing behind me in line at the grocery store is not.

This subject needs to be addressed because as I stood in line to check out at the grocery store recently, I was nearly assaulted by the woman standing behind me. If it wasn't 110 degrees outside, I would have sworn she was trying to huddle up with me to stave off hypothermia. Now if she had just inadvertently stood uncomfortably close by accident and didn't notice, I wouldn't have minded so much. But every time I inched away from her, she made up for the difference as if she half expected a passerby to notice the six inches of space between her body and mine and mistake it for an opening in the line. I even made the attempt to stand away from the check out station a few feet while making a face that obvioulsly said "I am uncomfortable and you are the reason why." I was careful to keep my foot in front of her so that she wouldn't mistake my body language screaming "Yo back the truck up beeyotch" for my leaving the line with my items still on the conveyor belt. Even when I reached the card reader to swipe my debit card, there she was, so close I could smell the sour cream and onion chips she had for lunch.

Now maybe I'm being too harsh. Perhaps she was raised by a pack of wolves and just never learned that whole aspect of American culture. Maybe she is seriously affected with a case of autophobia (look it up). Or perhaps she has lost her sight in one eye suffers from a complete lack of depth perception. So for those of you to whom these conditions may apply, here is a good rule of thumb when standing in line i.e. the security line at the airport, waiting to checkout, entrance to a sporting event or concert etc.: put your hand out and touch the person standing in front of you, measure the distance from your wrist to your shoulder, and that is the closest acceptable distance to stand behind someone. It may be awkward explaining why you "accidentally" brushed up against this stranger, but it will be a heck of a lot less awkward for them. Who knows, maybe this stranger turns out to be a long lost friend? Then it would be acceptable to stand close, but only if the music over the speaker at Albertson's is blaring the muzak so loud that you can't hear your own conversation.

On Blogs in General

In the age of the information super highway, everybody with a pulse is empowered to reach a limitless audience. That said, there are a few problems with blogs in general. There are actually probably more than a few, but for this first posts purpose, I'll include three problems that prevent blogs from attaining their purpose, that is to convince and educate others on a given position, which problems are as follows: blogs are relatively inaccessible to the majority of the internet community, those who seek out a blog by a specific person are relatively few and probably have the same ideology as the writer, and those who reach the blog are less likely to care about what is said given the circumstance that the blogger is your average person and not specifically schooled on finite rhetoric.

First of all, if you are reading this, there's a good chance that I sent you some sort of invitation to read my blog. Anybody who has not received an invitation from me specifically is either wasting time at work or has an unnatural fascination with reading about strangers. In this way, I am reaching next to nobody outside my sphere of influence. Now perhaps if one of those people in my sphere of influence is decided on something I have written, then I suppose that the Venn diagram effect is a possibility. By this statement I mean that if three people are convinced by what I write and are successful in convincing others within their sphere of influence, then they tell three friends, then they tell three friends, and so on etc, then my blog will be a success. However, as I will later point out, this circumstance is highly unlikely and borders on the verge of altogether impossible. Therefore, what I write here remains largely unknown to the world because most of the world has no idea who I am or where to find out what I think about things.

My second point is that most of the people with whom I associate are very much like me. For example, I am a white male age 25 and I've never lived outside of the Western U.S. I am a college student but I don't party because I am a very devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The people with whom I surround myself maintain similar moral standards. They have very similar ideas on most social issues because of the generally accepted Judeao Christian ethic standard that has been firmly established in America. Finally, of all the people I know, there are at most 20 who would be interested in what I write on a regular basis. Of those 20, eight of them are family members. The rest are close friends and have ideologies that are more aligned with mine on a nearly microscopic scale. Because this is the case, does what I write really change any thought process? The answer is a clear no.

Finally there is the subject of apathy. Unless my audience is extremely moved upon by a call to action, they will step away from their computers and say, "that's nice," but give no more thought to what they have read. I would need to posess the combined rhetorical skills of Oprah and Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to get people to buy in to what I say. On that note, does Oprah really have any rhetorical skills anymore? I don't think so. I think her show is a success because she gives away free stuff like cars. Anyway, my point is that without said skills, I would be completely ineffective in convincing others to take action.

So what does all this mean? What is my point? Why have you, the reader, continued to read what I'm saying? The answer to all of these questions is "I'm not sure." But the one thing that I can promise is that this is the last blog I post that is serious in nature. From here on out, everything I write will be observational and hopefully enjoyable to read. I hope you come back and visit often for a laugh or two.

Regards