There are some people who have volunteered to go to Mars. Meanwhile, there are people I would like to volunteer for this adventure.
Mars One, an interplanetary travel nonprofit, will soon select the next round of wannabe astronauts from the nearly 700 current finalists. While making a short movie about the competition for The Guardian, we at Stateless Media had a chance to speak to a few people vying for one of the coveted seats on a Mars One Spaceship. I learned the following: they are all really smart, incredibly brave, and a little bit crazy.
Actually, they’re a lot of bit crazy. And that’s a good thing. Because it takes a certain kind of person to choose to live the rest of their lives stranded on a desert planet with no breathable air, no Netflix, no Snapchat, no Game of Thrones, no General Tso’s Chicken, and no long, romantic walks on the beach. Oh yeah, and no sex. Like I said, crazy.
There is a new Scrabble game in town.
This somber history of lynchings is a painful reminder of so much terrible persecution.
A block from the tourist-swarmed headquarters of the former Texas School Book Depository sits the old county courthouse, now a museum. In 1910, a group of men rushed into the courthouse, threw a rope around the neck of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old white girl, and threw the other end of the rope out a window. A mob outside yanked the man, Allen Brooks, to the ground and strung him up at a ceremonial arch a few blocks down Main Street.
South of the city, past the Trinity River bottoms, a black man named W. R. Taylor was hanged by a mob in 1889. Farther south still is the community of Streetman, where 25-year-old George Gay was hanged from a tree and shot hundreds of times in 1922.
And just beyond that is Kirvin, where three black men, two of them almost certainly innocent, were accused of killing a white woman and, under the gaze of hundreds of soda-drinking spectators, were castrated, stabbed, beaten, tied to a plow and set afire in the spring of 1922.
As I read this piece on how not having a car contributes to unemployment, I was reminded of how little I know of the world.
When I was younger, and pre-menopausal, I used to dream about sex. Images of nocturnal interludes with young, blond musicians used to wake me up with a smile on my face. But now, at 58, most of my dreams are about cars. Sitting behind the wheel of my very own car—the lure of freedom, the promise of adventure, the feeling of power—is the stuff that my middle-aged dreams are made of.
I haven’t owned a car since 2001. On September 5, a week before 9/11, my midnight blue Mazda Miata convertible was repossessed. I only had it for a year and it was a bad decision from the start. First of all, my $600 car payment was more than my rent. Why an auto dealer with any kind of morals or ethics would have approved me for a car loan is still beyond my comprehension.
Melissa Chadburn writes about the dangers of espousing resilience for low-income communities.
In my early teens, I hated my mother. I hated everything about her, but mostly I hated her admission of our poverty. I hated her shoes, the Pro-Wings from Payless Shoe Source, though worse was when she wore my hand-me-downs, my jelly shoes from the Pick ’n Save. She was a decade behind in the fashion, but we never threw anything away. Not even the plastic sectioned-off plates our frozen dinners came in.
I took this poverty to be evidence of our joint failure. My part in it was involuntary, but in a way hers was too, given the stigma of what I later came to understand as her mental illness, the state of health care and the state of our nation, which in the late 1980s — with HIV and crack cocaine and Reaganomics — was on its knees.
Today what I admire most about her is her resiliency. Her financial failing was, I realize, not the product of a lack of resiliency but, just perhaps, an abundance of it.
There is a deal making culture in China that excludes women, much like the deal making culture here in the United States.
Turning down an after-dinner invite to a brothel is always a social minefield. But the city’s Party Secretary, a 50-something man with baby-soft hands, had been gently fondling my thigh underneath the banquet table for the past 45 minutes, making me even more eager than usual to make my excuses and leave.
Perhaps the spa in the small-town Shandong hotel where I was dining with a cluster of businessmen and officials was an entirely legitimate establishment, and I was misreading the nature of the invitation. But the neon sign outside advertising the “Health Body Center” (康体中心) had replaced the upper strokes in the character 心 with flashing red hearts.
The fourth pick for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 is Ruby by Cynthia Bond. So thrilled for the author. Here are some of Oprah’s favorite passages from Ruby.
On street harassment in Mexico City.
Given all the talk lately about vaccinations, this interview with Eula Biss remains relevant.
Someone went to the Creation Museum so you don’t have to.
I loved this profile of Judith Regan.
In Judith Regan’s corner office on the eighth floor of an office building on Bleecker Street is a picture frame with a quote inside it that reads, “Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: The creative act.”
It comes from Kenneth Rexroth’s essay “Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation” and it is a philosophy Ms. Regan has held on to with unwavering conviction over the years, peering over at it again and again and repeating it to herself like a mantra, an indicator to get back up and just keep going.
This Saturday is Valentine’s Day. Here is the love story of the first gay couple married in Alabama.
If you would like to get your valentine some chocolate, here are some options.
What are you guys doing for Valentine’s Day, if you choose to celebrate the day?
This is also an excellent link roundup!
I will be spending thia Valentines waiting for my husband to return to the country on Sunday. We have never managed to spend a Valentines together in our entire relationship, actually, since he is almost always working or busy in February. Military life is not the best.
To date the only Valentines I’ve spent with people were with one boyfriend who got me a bouquet of pink and purple roses and lilies after I specifically told him that I hated pink, purple, roses, and lilies–and one with another boyfriend who was also working. My track record is not so good.
I’m hosting a wine and cheese party for some other single friends! We’re going to pretend we’re fancy, and then spend the entire next day nursing horrible wine hangovers.
My husband and I are staying in, making fancy steaks and drinking fancy wine, and probably playing board games. Going out is too much trouble.
We are doing almost the exact same thing (replace steak with braised short ribs). We made the plan a week or two ago out of sheer laziness (and my love of his short ribs), but now with the vast mountains of snow everywhere, it’s probably the only thing that is remotely practical.
Mmmmm, short ribs!!
That is what we usually do too! But this year my mom offered to babysit, and since having a baby we rarely get out, so we’re seizing the opportunity to go out for delicious burgers at our favorite bar.
People who go out to dinner on actual Valentine’s Day are insane. Far better to just stay home or celebrate on a different day, when there aren’t a million people in the restaurant getting their steaks overcooked.
(See also: Mothers’ Day).
Yup, staying in here. Making homemade crab ravioli and watching TV or movies.
Why would there be no tv on mars? is it so unworkable to load up a laptop with a miillion movies and tv series? and yeah CONTRACEPTION!
Or you know, vasectomies and tubal ligation? Because yeah, space sex is going to happen.
Like, what are we gonna do, extradite them?
Abstinence works! If it works as well on Mars as it does in high school then everything will be just fine!
Would there be power for a laptop? The last Mars article linked here suggested that this would be extreme subsistence-level living.
Ahhh is that the issue? I just assumed that there would be some sort of power but I have no idea what supp;ies theyll have.
We just need to wait until someone invents dilithium crystals, like on “Star Trek”. Then it’s 24/7 marathons of “The Golden Girls”.
There would need to be power of some kind, if only to keep your air and water pumps going and heating. And laptops don’t use much espcially with their batteries. Now the issue is if your laptop dies you can’t exactly run down to Best Buy to get a new one… and as far as I know Amazon doesn’t deliver to Mars (yet).
I bought my husband tickets to the gun show on Valentine’s Day (a for-reals gun show; I will not simply be walking around in a tank top flexing all day, but how awesome would THAT be??), because he enjoys that sort of thing. As for what I get out of it, I imagine that it will be some truly top-notch people-watching. And then I’m sure we’ll eat a meal at some point, but nothing fancy. We’re pretty low-key.
Have you been to a gun show before? Just asking because I thought I knew what I was getting into when I went to my first one a couple years ago and I really really didn’t.
The lynching article has been circulating around FB. It’s an excellent if difficult read. Not excellent – some of the responses to it, like the person I’m friends of a friend with who felt the need to point out that while it’s terrible to lynch innocent men, not ALL of the men were innocent.
Oh cool I guess it was fine then! *flips table* *all the tables*
Thank god though, she got the hiding she deserved.
In case you need it:
╯(°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
And then if you need to put the table back:
┬─┬ ノ(°_°)ノ
I WILL NEVER PUT IT BACK. NEVER.
I’ve used it a few times when I misunderstood what someone was saying. Otherwise, NOPE.
Oh yeah, I think in some cases you table flip prematurely and it’s the polite thing to do. Re-set it.
Reddit has (had?) a bot that would automatically respond to the table-flipping with putting it back. I think it was called “PLEASE_RESPECT_TABLES” or similar.
My husband’s now-deceased grandmother was a little girl in Sherman, TX, when a mob of white people burned down the town courthouse to get at the black man within who’d been accused of raping a white woman. (They then burned most of the black-owned businesses in town, because wow.) A few years back, my FIL asked the grandmother what she remembered about that time. She hunched in on herself defensively and said, “Do you know what he did to that girl?”
Well, no, grandma, BECAUSE A BUNCH OF WHITE PEOPLE BURNED DOWN THE COURTHOUSE AND MURDERED HIM TO PREVENT A FAIR TRIAL.
RIGHT, it’s an obstruction of the judicial system! It overthrows due process in favor of horrific violence! Which is especially clear in this case where they actually burned down the courthouse, yikes. This is so scary because it is so closely related to violence that still occurs now, and it’s like we as a people constantly need to be reminded that the punishment for suspected crimes–no matter how terrible the crime–is not, by law and by the conventions of a civic society, supposed to be instant, public execution.
Exactly! There’s a really good paragraph in the article Roxane linked to about how the accused were almost certain to be convicted, guilty or not, but lynching them instead sent a message of terror to the rest of the black community.
the accused were almost certain to be convicted, guilty or not, but lynching them instead sent a message of terror to the rest of the black community.
Exactly: lynching was an act of terrorism. It was designed not as punishment (because even the innocent accused would be “punished” by the courts), but as a tacit reminder of who was free to perform violence upon whom.
As a nation, we have a long history of tolerating that terrorism, and it’s not a wide gap between seeing lynch mobs go unpunished and seeing police go unpunished for the unjustified killings of black men and women — except, of course, the terrifying difference that the police have the backing of the government and the law and are getting paid for their service.
Exaaactly! I’m like we have no way of knowing if they were guilty or not! Even if someone said “I literally saw it with mine OWN EYES”, that’s not a 100% bill of guilt!
And even if they were guilty, does that mean you are down with taking criminals out back behind the court house immediately after the verdict and stringing them up right here and now, god pound it? For god’s sake! AAAAAH *vaults self into space*
Except for the part where the New York Times article never once mentions it was white people doing the lynching. http://www.vox.com/2015/2/10/8012149/lynching-rep…
The Creation Museum is just bonkers! I keep meaning to go on Christmas Eve (admission is free then, so I wouldn’t have to give any money to them). Maybe next year!
I am starting to think that place was built by someone who watched a whole lot of “Land of the Lost” and wished mightily that he too could live with dinosaurs.
Who doesn’t wish that??!
Like once a year I manage to drive down some interstate that has a billboard for it and I’m always like IT’S ONLY 9 HOURS AWAY, OH MY GOD, CHANGE OF PLANS. I am drawn to campy and terrible things like a moth to the flame.
If you can get in for very cheap or free (my husband and I were let in free when he showed his military ID), GO. That ish is bananas. And that blog post didn’t show my two favorite parts:
— The display showing Adam naming the animals. He has to be, y’know, nude, but heaven forbid they show his junk. Hence, there is a very strategically placed PENGUIN in front of his crotchal area. A Modesty Penguin. I *died*.
— The mini-dioramas of the Great Flood are pretty amusing too, chiefly the ones that show the unrighteous jerks who didn’t believe Noah, or whatever, getting drowned. See, it’s not enough that they be drowned — they’re depicted as trapped on rocky outcroppings with, like, tigers and bears. God is a mean MFer, you can’t just be drowned to repent, you have to get mauled first. Also, I guess those tigers and bears (which both lived in the Middle East at the time???) were sinners too, because they were getting just as drowned after they chowed down on the people-sinners.
Mind you, this was a few years ago, so I hope they still have this stuff on display. But if not, at least you can imagine the glory that was.
Dammit, I want my own Modesty Penguin now.
Modesty Penguin is my new band name.
Those both sounds fantastic! I will have to make it a prerogative to go next Christmas!
A+ use of the word ‘crotchal’, too.
I’m pretty surprised that Mars One is surfacing again! I thought, given the last (super really good excellent) article about it, that we’d established that it’s pretty much a weird almost-scam masquerading as a company?
On Valentine’s day my boyfriend is participating in a spy-themed contest organized by one of his best friends, against one other person. I’m supposed to play a Bond girl. I already pointed out to the friend that this did not strike me as hugely emancipated, but I’m still looking for a way to humorously disrupt the proceedings to make the point a bit more forcefully.
Dress up like a female Bond? Jane Bond?? OR as a little girl.
Yeah! What if “Bond girl” means James’ kickass daughter??
I have actually considered, years ago, writing a Bond story where a young woman is introduced and you think she’s a love interest … but then it’s his daughter. I mean, you KNOW that dude doesn’t always use condoms. Unless he’s infertile, there’s bound to be a few lil’ Bonds all over the world.
So maybe, in the vein of the new Ghostbusters, we could have a movie where the main characters are all daughters of James Bond and they fight crime as a team while an aging James writes hilarious Dad-style emails from HQ.
This is everything I never knew I always wanted.
Yes, please let this be a thing that does happen. It can have all my money.
mine too
pleasepleasepleaseplease
I want this to happen so, so much. Who are we casting in it? Other than KStew, obvi.
Yes KStew, also… Kerry Washington and Tatiana Maslaney and Rinko Kikuchi? There are so many possibilities!!
Right? He’s been active as a spy for like 50 years and had love interests in every country; pretty much any woman born after 1960 could be his daughter. (I know it’s been officially made non-canon but I am still devoted to the “James Bond is just as much a cover identity as 007 is” fan theory, so I’d cast a daughter or two for each “incarnation” of Bond, across a wide age range.)
10/10 would watch
Since we’re having our dream movie, Judi Dench will still be ruling the world. Tartly.
I will throw money at this movie.
OH MY GOD
Jane Bond, in one author’s imagination, is his lesbian twin sister. “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy” and “The Girl with the Golden Bouffant” by Mabel Maney are real books, to my great delight. (Satire, of course.)
Is it to late to go as Emma Peel?
I don’t know if I can pull off a leather catsuit…but all black is an option.
I love Mrs. Peel!
It’s never too late.
Please let it involve a strap-on.
My husband and I are going out to dinner. He has a 12-hour shift on Sunday, so normally we wouldn’t, but the kids have a four day weekend and we need to get out of the house so that they may live.
The carless article hit home for me. I feel like the only places you can really be carfree are big cities like NYC or Chicago, and then the expense of living there cancels out the savings from not having a car. Seriously, how did we get to this point?
I’m making it work without a car by paying through the nose to live in a convenient part of DC. Sometimes I talk about moving to a cheaper city and my boyfriend, who has spent his whole life nestled in privileged urban areas, is ALWAYS like “do you think you need a car to live there?” Dude. There are like 5 cities in the whole country that have effective public transit. Sorry.
I read this: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/02/09/technology-… the other day and the first list in that graphic made me sad. Like, here are the cities where you can get by without a car, but then Miami, Minneapolis and Milwaukee are higher on the carless-households list. I’ve lived in the Twin Cities & Milwaukee without a car, and even with my kid-free, able-bodied, able-to-borrow-or-rent-cars life it wasn’t great.
I get why some folks like the term car-free, but it feels very icky applying that term outside the densest parts of the biggest cities. Or, really, to anyone but yourself if you like it.
Yeah, how many of those people are “car-free” because they can’t afford one and are forced to deal with a miserable commute? I hate the self-congratulatory tone you often get on this subject. If you don’t get out of your privileged bubble enough to realize that most people are driving not because they’re stupid and wasteful but because they have no other option, or if you are like a few of my friends and can’t understand why not everyone follows your able-bodied macho hippie example and bikes through the winters in the upper Midwest, you should not be pontificating.
Yeah same here. I live in Syracuse, NY and our public transportation system is a fucking JOKE. You absolutely need a car here. It’s ridiculous.
My college town, where I stayed for 2 years post-graduation (employed for one of those years) likes to brag that its transportation system is comprehensive and free. Free, yes, but the city is 20 square miles and it took me 2 buses and at least a 3/4-mile walk to get from my apartment well within city limits to my job well within city limits. Luckily I only had to do that for a couple weeks before I got a car as a sort of weird inheritance (long story) – I could not imagine having to do it every day for years on end, especially when the weather got more extreme.
and then the expense of living there cancels out the savings from not having a car
But conversely, wouldn’t the expense of having a car wipe out the savings from living somewhere with a lower cost of living?
Out of financial necessity, I lived without a car for a few years in mid-sized Rust Belt cities (e.g., Cleveland, Rochester), which have some public transportation but certainly not on the level of NYC or Chicago. Getting around was just about do-able, but it took a HUGE chunk of time out of my day (and a fair amount of begging for rides from friends).
I was single with no kids, and generally only working one job at the time– I don’t know how I could have managed if I’d had to deal with multiple jobs, daycare pickups and drop-offs, etc. I was also lucky to have grocery stores within walking distance, which isn’t the case in many places.
“Buy this car to go to work, go to work to pay for this car.”
Oof, the car thing.
I got a DUI in 2006–no driving for thirty days, six months of a suspended license. It was fine; I kept my car, and only lived a mile from my very-established job. No worries. Keep on keepin’ on. But the guy at my cattle-call arraignment, the guy who’d lost his license years before and was there for driving with a suspended license, he lived outside town. He drove while suspended for months so he could get to work and make child support payments, crossing his fingers daily that he wouldn’t get pulled over that day, and never quite making enough money to pay his traffic fines and license reinstatement fees. There aren’t public transportation options here, so every job posting says “Own transportation a must.” It’s a very, very scary thing.
Working in a small town really opened my eyes to the degree that people rely on cars. It’s very common in rural areas for people to drive 20, 30 miles on the highway to work a low-wage job. Jobs are scarce and a lot of people have unstable housing. As towns dry up, the resources that city-dwellers expect to have all within their neighborhood get scattered across counties– the grocery store might be a town over, and the school a town after that. And if your truck breaks down, you are seriously fucked.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m one of them now (my commute is 25 miles each way on state two-lane highways) and I’m making enough that it’s OK. A year before I got that DUI, my commute was 30 miles each way and I’d have lost my job, no question, for lack of transportation. Which brings up a whole OTHER set of issues on paying fines and fees and costs etc etc etc and getting lost in the system for years, and getting less and less employable every time another box gets ticked.
Not too long ago a family member lost his license for a DUI and on top of the legal issues and the lack of transportation, he went through about 6 weeks of bureaucratic nonsense just to round up the documentation he needed to get a nondriver ID so he could apply for jobs. Luckily he had supportive relatives driving him around to state offices to work things out. How the hell other people make it work, I don’t know.
I live along a highway mostly famous for being a place where female hitchhikers go missing and work 45 minutes down the highway two towns away. People bitch about seeing women hitchhiking still, but what else are they supposed to do? Many of the towns don’t have a grocery store, in one of the “hubs” the grocery store burned down and took almost a year to be rebuilt, there’s little to no public transit, it’s common for people to live in different communities than they work in, and a lot of people are unemployed or underemployed. Cars are a necessity and if you don’t have one, you have no choice but to hitch and take the risks. It’s a terrible situation.
It is so scary, you’re absolutely right.
I was car-less for more of my adult life than most people in my area. My parents are lifestyle bike commuters (which is an exceptionally brave but privileged choice) and I didn’t have a vehicle to learn on in my teens. I finally got a license and a car of my own last year at the age of 24, and it has opened so many doors for me. I was finally able to get jobs that weren’t within 5km of my home, and many places that would never have considered me if I’d admitted to using public transportation were eager to hire me. Unfortunately, I can’t afford insurance on my vehicle anymore, so I’m living dangerously driving to work every day. I’m a careful driver, but I’m scared every day that I will get caught and be fined thousands of dollars, and have my vehicle repossessed.
I understand the people who think that I’m making a stupid choice, to continue driving with that risk hanging over my head, but honestly, what else can I do? There are no buses that go anywhere near my house or my workplace. I only have 30 minutes between the time my son’s daycare opens and the time I need to get to work, and it’s a 25 minute drive. There is no other way for me to get to my job on time other than driving myself.
Thanks for sharing your story. I seriously don’t get why our whole society is created around cars. The cost of buying a car in the first place (which I don’t know how people who can’t get credit or pay cash do it), the cost of insurance, the cost of repairs, the cost of parking, the cost of drivers ed plus getting a license plus renewing it plus whatever tickets and fines you might get, the medical costs if you get in an accident, the cost of all that stress. I know buses and bicycles don’t give you quite the same freedom — it’s certainly a pain in the ass to bike home with a week’s worth of groceries in the rain or snow, for one thing. But it just seems like there has to be a way to meet in the middle, and “move to New York City” shouldn’t be the only answer. It’s cool that your parents are lifestyle cyclists, but it doesn’t sound like you have time to bike from your son’s daycare to your job if it’s already a 25 minute drive. It’s tough out there.
Trying to catch a bus in my county is an absolute joke. They’ve been trying for years to figure out a workable system, and it just doesn’t really fit the reality of life out here (that is, not everyone works banker’s hours and very very few people can afford the time spent–up to two hours each way on top of your work schedule). Even cycling isn’t a real solution–we’re in a major snow belt six months of the year. It isn’t a freedom or convenience issue, not at all. It’s the only way to make it.
I’m going to be spending Valentines on St Charles Street in New Orleans, watching the Mardi Gras parades with two of my best friends!
I will also be in NOLA with my best friend! Yay for Krewe of Endymion!!!
Since Valentine’s in a Saturday this year I’ll make breakfast where everything is heart-shaped, we’ll probably go grocery shopping, watch netflix, and bone. Then he’ll cook dinner, I’ll make dessert, and we’ll drink good beer from fancy glasses. So… basiccally a normal Saturday except with heart-shaped breakfast food and beer from glasses instead of bottles.
People actually think the Mars colonists will never have any kind of sex with each other? lol okay.
There is literally nothing else to do on the planet!
If I was in their spot I would seriously have sex with ANYONE. It’d be about boredom, not desire.
Yeeeeah, that strikes me as one of the more obvious signs that Mars One is a hoax*.
If they were actually planning to send a population of people to Mars for life without adequate birth control measure and without means to support infants, they’d surely require the final team to be sterilized, right? The fact that they don’t mention this suggests, even more than the impracticality of the whole enterprise, that no one at Mars One thinks this project is ever going to (forgive me) get off the ground.
*It’s a hoax, right? A scam? Or, if you prefer, a large-scale fantasy into which people have entered to buy for themselves the luxury of daydreaming about the illusory pay-off? Like buying a lottery ticket but with no drawing? They’re specifically looking for people who are not skeptical; the “astronaut” qualification page is full of tidbits like “You understand the purpose of actions may not be clear in the moment, but there is good reason—you trust those who guide you.” The desired attribute of curiosity is defined as “You ask questions to understand, not to simply get answers,” which sounds to me like you ain’t gonna get answers a lot of the time. And those quotes are not even from the Very Important Astronaut qualifying category of Trust.
What I’m saying: those characteristics they’re looking for — resiliency, adaptability, curiosity (but only of a limited kind), ability to trust, creativity/resourcefulness — those are very fine characteristics to have, but they are also sound very nice while actually encouraging the potential pool of applicants to self-select, winnowing out people who don’t self-identify as trusting and yielding.
As for Valentine’s Day, MrChouffe and I are working at the winery and then probably going home for a pizza. 🙂
As VDay approaches I aim to eat chocolate and croissants, perhaps in the same pastry!
I call this an excellent goal!
This is the best Valentine’s day plan I’ve seen yet!
Valentines plans: counting down the hours until post-valentines chocolate sales. It’s so much better and cooler and more fulfilling than being in a relationship.
My secret to Valentine’s Day is dive bars and pool halls, both of which tend to be free of jacked-up specials and forced swooniness. This year I’m breaking with tradition, because Doomtree’s in town and nothing says romance like crisp rhymes about string theory and social justice.
This is awesome.
I once spent a Valentine’s Day at a high-end strip club with a now-ex, which was… interesting people watching, but also really really good food.
This is my first Valentine’s Day being single in almost a decade and I think I am going to spend it with friends working on some cosplay stuff and watching Sailor Moon and Magical Boy Anime.
There is so much good/thought-provoking/etc. stuff in this link roundup today, I can’t even choose what to comment on specifically!!
I just moused over your avatar by accident and read your description and now I have to ask: is there a youtube video of this activity?
Not OP but it’s a reference to this episode of QI (YouTube link).
My life is enriched now.
Thank you! I can’t load Youtube at work so I wasn’t able to link it.
Sadly no, it’s a QI reference 🙁 Which, however, if you haven’t seen that episode (series 2, episode 5 – “Bears” IIRC?), you should!
We’re going to visit his parents and see Sturgill Simpson, because nothing says ‘I love you’ like in-laws-to-be and outlaw country music.
Well at least Sturgill Simpson is good?
My Valentine’s Day plan is to seduce Dorian in Dragon Age Inquisition. My fella works for the restaurant industry so won’t be together. However, this gives me an excuse to eat my own damn chocolate and play video games, so.
Dragon Age is absolutely a dating sim and I will hear nothing to the contrary.
I both love and hate how huge the open world is in this one. Because it means lots of wonderful things to explore on my first play-through, but it’s really delaying starting up a pile of alts to romance all the important characters. (Sera, Iron Bull, Dorian and Cassandra, obviously.)
Also, I’m all kinds of sad that Krem isn’t romanceable.
I really really hope they make Krem a (romanceable) companion in the now inevitable Dragon Age 4. I mean, a (redacted spoilery choice) doesn’t even matter! Anders came back in Dragon Age 2!
They’ve had so many carryover companions! Oghren, Anders, and Varric. Although Anders is the only one that was romanceable in either appearance, so we’ll see. Now that they’ve started to figure out how to write more interesting women, though, I’d really love to see some carry-over with them. Don’t know who it would be in this game, though, given that they’re all running off to take up rulership positions.
I was talking with a friend about how “meh” the collective romanceable dude options are in Inquisition, especially for a female player character. Iron Bull is awesome, but doesn’t really redeem the rest of them for being super-dull. We agreed that Krem could have helped, at least a bit. Krem, Iron Bull and Dorian could make up for the rest of the lot, with their Very Important Honor and Ethics and Blandness and Mildly Interesting Facial Hair.
Spoilers: his butt literally sparkles.
Welp, moving a male to romance Dorian up to the top of my list of next play throughs.
Normally on Valentine’s Day I put in way too much effort. I make an elaborate, fancy dinner. I bake salted caramel brownies or layer cakes. I go all out and spend hours in the kitchen (including prep the day before) and end up exhausted by the time dinner is on the table. This year, however, we’re going to some local hot springs, staying in a funky motel, and plan on drinking bubbly and soaking in the springs. The closest I will come to cooking is opening a bottle of wine and I cannot wait.
Yup. An excuse to use fancy one-off ingredients, dramatically pretty little cakes, red dye and heart stencils and adorable glassware, whole-heartedly over-the-top preparations have always been met with “oh, I’m not really very hungry” and not so much as a halfarsed card in my experience, so your plan to actually relax and enjoy a bit of luxury instead of crafting it sounds like heaven.
I once made meatballs that had to be started the night before, homemade sauce that I simmered for hours, and individual heart-shaped dark chocolate brownies. He was asleep ten minutes after dinner because he was so full which I guess was a compliment. No card, either. That was the breaking point that made me look for alternatives this year. I have a feeling that it will be worth every penny to not have to wash chocolate and spaghetti sauce out of my hair while he naps on the couch.
Wow! Did you enjoy the meal, at least?
It was delicious and I would put it in the top five meals I have ever cooked and I still dream about those meatballs. I love cooking and tackling elaborate meals brings me joy. I think I just need to reserve such meals for days when there are no expectations of romance and falling asleep on the couch is expected, like New Year’s Eve.
Life lesson! Man, it took me a loooooong time to learn that one.
I thought you were looking for alternative men/women. Also a legitimate choice I suspect.
My mom’s tradition is to buy fancy (but not trashy) underwear as gifts for her children every Valentine’s Day. I don’t understand it either.
My mom does this too. It’s usually just like, cotton undies with some hearts on them. MOMS.
I am now picturing underwear with little conversation hearts on it I WANT THOSE
Utter Mom. She even got my husband (at the time boyfriend) white boxers with red hearts on them. He was not sure how to react.
What a great mom.
My mom also tends to send me random cloth items for Valentine’s Day. I have previously gotten cute underwear, pink socks, and a tea towel with hearts on it. It’s confusing but kind of adorable.
NO BUT THAT’S AWESOME
I made study plans with my friend for Saturday without realizing it was Valentine’s day! I am only interested in post-Valentine’s day candy sales and my boyfriend is pretty much a robot (WHAT IS LOVE) so we are not Valentine’s people. So I will be spending the day working, and the evening studying pediatric nursing and eating pizza with an awesome lady friend.
We have children, so no chance of a romantic holiday for Mr. R and myself alone (we never go out to restaurants on V-Day; too crowded), but we’ll have a good dinner and some champagne left over from New Year’s (not opened) and I’ll get some heart candy and funny cards for the boys. Maybe a movie.
The lynching stuff is so difficult to read, and it’s the subject of some interesting (depressing) debate about whether it should be included in 9-12 textbooks at all, with a lot of southern states wanting to nix it altogether because it doesn’t fit into a narrative of American exceptionalism. Even my pre-this-culture-war education just glossed it over as “lynchings” in maybe a paragraph. Someone circulated a photo on FB–not in the linked article–of a black man having been burned alive with this crowd of smiling! white people around his still-smoking corpse, and it was so horrifying and upsetting. Whether high school students need to see that is part of the debate, but I know it would have made me go home and rethink my life at that age.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Does it seem to you that there are A LOT of white people who see images and hear stories like those recounted in the lynching article, and then claim post-racist America exists because hey, lynchings aren’t a thing anymore and the Klan is a joke? Like, racism doesn’t have to be virulent, violent hate. It can be, and is, insidious and quiet and far less blatant, but we’re trained into equating segregation and lynching and slavery with racism as a one-to-one equivalent, and that is very troubling. So–do we show these things to teens and say, oh look there’s a racism? It seems irresponsible to stop there, but it does stop there in a lot of cases and it blinds people to the current expressions and effects of racism.
It’s a good question, and I don’t have a ready answer. I think an awful lot of people like to see those lynching stories, yes, and be like, “That’s all in the past; people would never do that now,” because they have a progressive view of history and assume that everything now must be better than anything then. They don’t connect them to violence now, even mob violence, and that stuff hasn’t gone away. I think if I were teaching it, I might not point it out as a racism, but as a mindset that hasn’t gone away, but turned into other things, and been enshrined in some people’s memories because we do want to think of ourselves as great in some way. We can’t underestimate people’s desire to be part of that larger narrative, and if in their family or their community, “we do this to Others” is the narrative, it can be very difficult to break away from that, even if they don’t now do that specific thing to Others. You can see a lot of this in the current story about “Christians” disrupting the Texas Muslim Capitol Day events with declarations of patriotism and Christianity and invitations for Muslims to leave our allegedly free country and go home with our esteemed President, who is also an Other in their mindset. Even without the physical violence, which is not unheard-of anyhow, the same concepts are at work. You never want history education to be like, “This is how it was then.” In some way, it’s nearly always “This is us now.”
Seems so very like Ferguson/Trayvon Martin/Tamir Rice/fill in the blank though. Walk around with your hands at your sides because if you look “dangerous” we’ll shoot you!
I managed to grow up (great schools in the Northeast) with only a tiny inkling that lynching was more than an occasional thing, and had somehow not until embarrassingly late realized it was used systematically to keep black people in line and terrified to look at a white person the wrong way. How’s that for a crappy education? Everyone should know that.
I’m really conflicted about the role of graphic images. I have major phobias about blood/violence and I can get really dizzy when I see or read about something extra gruesome. I remember keeping my head on my desk through a documentary about Emmett Till in high school because I had read how the images of his corpse were so shocking. I’ve also done some panicked scrolling on facebook as that article has gone around this week.
But at the same time, I know that shock can be an effective teacher. When the Syrian conflict was first getting into the news I accidentally clicked on some really horrific images of government brutality, and it’s made me think about a distant conflict in a way I wouldn’t have if I just read a few paragraphs in the NYT.
I agree with you, on both counts. One of the first I remember was attending an assembly in high school, twenty-mumblety years ago, where a young Japanese man spoke to us–accompanied by pictures–about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even though I could see then what it was in itself, it provided a framework that let me consider a later history prof’s assertion that the US was only the second-worst actor in WWII because of the German concentration camps. I’m a Greatest Generation grandchild, and was always raised with the idea that the US won a very good war there, and that we hadn’t done anything really bad in it. But those really upsetting photos forced me to see what we–scientists and a government of which I was always proud–had done to millions of people, and could do again. As a teacher, I’ve cultivated a nuanced idea of history and tried hard to think critically about nationalism (my country is/was always right) as opposed to patriotism (my country has laudable ideals that I will try to fulfill). It really irks me that there is a viable debate about whether we should gloss over anything in our history that might make people feel bad about their country. It doesn’t have to be done with graphic images, but they are often quite educational.
We’ll be going to see Josh Radin for Valentine’s Day, after a swanky dinner at an over-priced steak house where we’ll be the youngest people in the joint. It is a cheap ego-boost, but it works.
My husband and I are going to an independent pro wrestling show in Austin! The company has a good reputation for not being awful and four of the nine matches are women’s, which is basically unheard of for any wrestling show, so I’m excited.
Wow, that article about Chinese deal-making culture. I was cringing pretty much the whole time I was reading it. (ETA: because of the content, not the writing.)
If the weather permits in sunny, warm New England, on V-Night I will be doing some Balkan dancing in Newton Corner. Dancing in a big circle, holding hands, fancy footwork most of which I can’t keep up with. Can’t miss. 🙂
http://www.forsyths.addr.com/zdravets/
I want to be a Mars colonist so much it hurts. If I went in the first wave I wouldn’t survive the first ten minutes, but if there’s a successful mission and then a second wave during my lifetime, I’ll drop everything and go. I am completely serious about this.
Idk, only the first wave would get their names in the history books, and that’s a motivating factor. Colonising further afield, now, in a heartbeat.
Maybe! But personally, I’d rather my paragraph in the history books be about something other than dying immediately upon arrival, so second wave or later it is.
True, that would put a hell of a downer on glory.
“Many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be put through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of all”. – Zapp Brannigan
there’d still be a pretty open field for achievement firsts. Really, any societal contribution you can think of, you could very quite possibly manage to be the first one to do it on Mars in a small community. Even a wave or two in. Not even societal contributions, just firsts.
First misandrist on Mars!
First Accidental Farting During A Tense Moment
V Day for Mr. Wren and I is actually a thing this year (it is normally Stay-In-Watch-Movies-And-Drink-Day), so we are heading to Broadway to see the delectable Alan Cumming in Cabaret with some of our good friends. SUPER EXCITED YOU GUYS EEEEEEEE
Oh goodness! I have seen Cabaret twice (which is two more times than I ever expected), and had an absolute blast both times–I hope you enjoy yourself!
Dang it, I wanted to go to Cabaret on V-Day, but I procrastinated and all the Hiptix sold out. And one major disadvantage to having worked on Broadway is it makes you never want to pay full price for a show ever again, so I will be waiting. Enjoy Alan Cumming! (And Emma Stone, whom I’m curious about.)
Emma Stone killed it. Really made you see the fragility and desperation of Sally in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Oh my God you will have such a good time! (I saw it a month-ish ago. At one point Alan Cumming climbed up on a side balcony that put him only like FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ME, like THEORETICALLY WITHIN ARM’S REACH, and I thought I might die. I’m still not over it.) (I mean also obviously the entire show was excellent, Alan Cumming was not the only attraction. But he was one hell of an attraction.)
LIFE GOAL ACHIEVED RIGHT THERE. aaaaaahhhhh I am going to bask in how close you were to someone so awesome.
Just saw Cabaret last month for our 10-year anniversary! It is amazing! I mean I knew it would be but it was even better than I expected. Also, my friend is the stage manager so we got a backstage tour, and randomly met John Krasinski back there.
I mentioned this in the Open Thread last week, but yay for sharing Valentine’s plans! My girlfriend and I are going to continue the tradition we started on our first Valentine’s Day together: delicious takeout food, lots of wine, and an un-Valentinesy movie off of Netflix (this year it’s King Arthur). I can’t wait.
Yay! My husband and I continue our long-standing Valentine’s tradition: homemade pizza and horror movies. I think I’ll make a flourless chocolate cake, too, or maybe just brownies. On second thought, why would I ever make anything other than brownies?
This year, though, we have the luxury of actually celebrating on Valentine’s Day. Between his work schedule and deadlines, we usually have to off-set the tradition by a day or more, but this Saturday, it’s just us, scary movies, the pizza stone, and a pile of blankets to snuggle in.
Brownies are always the best choice…and now I want to see if I can convince my girlfriend to make the smitten kitchen cocoa brownies for Valentine’s dessert.
ETA: apparently these brownies were meant to be a valentine’s surprise this weekend, which I have now spoiled in my excitement
Certainty brownies are just as nice as surprise brownies.
I’m going to Tucson Gem and Mineral Show with my parents! I might have to buy myself a valentine’s gift again this year (last year was a lovely pink star sapphire which I just got a ring setting for). I’m also excited because we’re going to Paradise Bakery for dinner afterwards and I don’t have to make anything for myself because I am lazy.
Oh my gosh, can you take pictures and share in the open thread? That sounds like my kind of place!
I shall! I’m going Saturday though so the pics wouldn’t be posted until late that evening or Sunday and so will get lost on page 8 of the comments in the open thread, but I will post them!
(This is still the same lady bane btw, I’m just on my phone and it wont let me sign into intensedebate)
I’ve been following the Tuscon Gem and Mineral event tag on instagram, everything is so beautiful. Have fun! (Post pics of whatever you get?)
That is an awesome plan, and I’m kind of jealous of you (geolous??)
I’m afraid I can’t see the word “minerals” without mentally adding “Jesus Christ, Marie!” in Dean Norris’s voice.
My fiance is absolutely no fun at all when it comes to holidays, and has basically forbidden me to get him anything for Valentine’s Day, or for his birthday next month. I am planning to get up early on Saturday and go stealth bake him a cheesecake over at my parents’ house though. That doesn’t count as “getting” him anything, I say!
“Oscar Wilde once said of her, ‘I would rather have discovered Mrs. Langtry than to have discovered America.'”
I would like to be described that way by Oscar Wilde. Wow. What a bizarre and interesting piece that was. Is there any explanation?
Agreed! Although I clicked because I was hoping there was something about the show Gossip Girl*, I was really intrigued and there was basically no context at all!
*xoxoGG
We are not Valentine’s Day people (we are disgustingly cute all the time, we don’t need a holiday to encourage us). Friday night we are going to have dinner with my metamour, Saturday we will probably walk to the library and then come home and play games and cook (I am thinking we might make Smitten Kitchen’s mustard & cognac beef stew, because it is delicious), Sunday we have theatre tickets, and Monday is a day off! Also, since it is the weekend, there will be plenty of laundry and dishes and tidying.
I’ve never cared much for Valentine’s Day as a “thing”, probably due to the influence of my Communist grandparents who looked down on most holidays as corporate cash-grabs. (“It’s just a greeting card holiday to get you to buy things you don’t need! Now, sit down and have some matzoh ball soup…”)
I particularly disliked Valentine’s Day when I was single, but now that I’ve been seeing someone for the last few years, I’ve decided to be consistent and give him a lifetime pass on it. (Besides, he’s lovely all the rest of the year!)
I’m going to 1) watch that OITNB episode “You Also Have a Pizza,” 2) treat myself to my favorite pizza and a glass of wine at my favorite pizza place, and 3) go out with some other single lesbians, only one of which I know at all well. We’ll see what happens!
My fiancee is out of town for work and so I will be spending Valentine’s day eating the things he does not like to eat. I can’t decide whether to make garlic-butter shrimp or chicken soup.
That was the best part of having my husband travel for work! He hates seafood, so it was a non-stop fish party for me. Enjoy what you chose!
Work has been sucking all my energy for the past month, so I’m having a special Treat Yo Self Valentine’s. Haven’t worked out all the details, but it’ll probably involve a hot bath, Brazilian cheese bread, and a Futurama marathon featuring the best of Zapp Brannigan.
On a velour bedspread, with a bottle of champaggin,* I assume?
*given Zapp’s discerning tastes, I imagine any sparkling beverage would do perfectly well
Yes! In my extremely short-cut robe and girdle. Come on, Leela. It’s real velour.
Stop exploding, you cowards!
One of my friends is in the top 700 for Mars!
She definitely meets the requirement for weirdness.
I am probably going to go drink and then see Jupiter Ascending. If not that I might get fancy and see Two Days One Night*.
*Cotillard is so reliably amazing and I hear it’s brilliant.
My kick-ass brother-in-law and his girlfriend are visiting us this weekend, so we got a Groupon for fondue and wine, which we will use before going to a probably mediocre-and-weird burlesque version of Midsummer Night’s Dream (I know too many people in the burlesque world and I end up having to go to their shows). Valentine’s Day is the only day I’m allowed to drink this month, by personal decree, so I’m looking forward to the wine! I also got my wife a dorky letterpress card that says “This V-Day there’s no place I’d rather be than on the couch with you” and I’ll probably write something about video games inside.
My plan for Valentine’s Day is to remember, “Oh shit! It’s Valentine’s Day! I better think of something quick!” And then to grow increasingly frustrated with how all the flowers are sold out.
Make brownies. BAM HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. If you want to be suuuuuper-romantic, buy heart-shaped quins to put on ’em.
pro-tip: giant balloons, but not the kind that sing. heart shaped or not by recipient preference
One of my oldest friends and her husband are coming out to visit this Valentine’s weekend! I am excited. I am also 38 weeks pregnant, so I figure that I will probably go into labor while they’re here, for maximum zaniness. I think I scared her by joking about that, however, because now she is trying to offer to get a hotel.
I am going to deliberately avoid all my partners and snuggle up with my cat for Valentines Day. We will play Mass Effect and eat ice cream.
WHO WILL YOU ROMANCE IN MASS EFFECT
I mean, uh, that’s interesting and cool and I’m definitely not still overly invested in my relationship with Specialist Samantha Traynor.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2015/02/11/link-roundup-269/…
We’re staying in and attempting to recreate that Scandinavian hygge thing, with lots of tea lights and smorgasboard and probably fancy chocolate pudding. On Sunday, because Saturday is all kid-encumbered.
I’m going to poop in a bag and mail it to Sam Brownback. And not just for Valentines. It would also work for Christmas, Arbor Day, President’s Day, and Wednesdays.
…Holy shit, I didn’t know until you prompted me to google. UGH, Republican governors.
Man, that article on the concept of resilience is going to be rattling around my head for a long time. I work in a field that talks about the concept a lot, but only in a way that’s sort of sideways from what the author discusses. The ability to be resilient is so tied to the place you start from that it’s very hard to discuss without talking about privilege, and unfortunately, I’m not sure a lot of the folks in my field are ready for that talk.
I want to say “we must work in the same field!” but I feel like resilience is the new hotness all over the place now. And this might be the first critique I’ve read that is personal rather than academic & theory-ful. (I think this: https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/tom-sl… made the same point, but oh dang my brain, despite being quite educated on this subject, hurt from trying to parse it)
I mentioned this in the Open Thread last week, but yay for sharing Valentine’s plans! My girlfriend and I are going to continue the tradition we started on our first Valentine’s Day together: delicious takeout food, lots of wine, and an un-Valentinesy movie off of Netflix (this year it’s King Arthur). I can’t wait.
In a coincidence only relevant to this post, I once broke up with a guy on Valentine’s day after he called me after a night doing business in a brothel in Macau. He was 22, outrageously naive, and from an exorbitantly wealth family, in China to ostensibly do some sort of networking on his father’s behalf. That was an interesting Valentine’s Day.
I have an old Vday tradition of drinking beer and watching B movies with my friends, which is great because it makes it a broadly social, low pressure time but also a fun celebration of companionship. This year we’ll be celebrating the release of Monster Hunter 4 by decorating the house in a super mature hearts-and-kittens theme, eating lots of chocolates and a nacho buffet, and also I’ll probably put a Quality Movie like America 3000 on while we hunt dinosaurs. I am lucky to have a husband and good friends who can get into my idea of a holiday celebration.
There is nothing I don’t love about your plans for this year’s V-Day.
Ok, I” say it: I’M EXCITED ABOUT VALENTINES BECAUSE I’LL BE WATCHING 50 SHADES OF GREY WITH MY BEST FRIEND. It’s going to be GLORIOUS.
Ok, I” say it: I’M EXCITED ABOUT VALENTINES BECAUSE I’LL BE WATCHING 50 SHADES OF GREY WITH MY BEST FRIEND. It’s going to be GLORIOUS.
I am spending Valentine’s Day visiting my newly single sister and my nieces. It is going to be a barrel of laughs, I’m sure.
But the reason I never do anything romantic for Valentine’s is that TODAY is my anniversary. So we get our sappy gushing and fancy meal out of the way a few days early and skip the crowds. It’s perfect.
My boyfriend’s birthday is the 1st of February and our anniversary is the 28th, so celebrating Valentine’s Day as well seems unnecessary. Getting to skip the crowds is great.
Valentine’s plans:
On the 13th, the new Monster Hunter game for 3DS comes out. My spouse and I are going to get a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy’s and play that game all day! We’ve even invited a friend over for some three-way action.
YOU GUYS my bestie is flying out for us to see Fleetwood Mac together and then we are refusing to leave the house on Valentine’s Day it is THE BEST YEAR
Mr. Spoon got us tickets to go whale watching for a good chunk of the morning. The whale watching boat heads out near a cute little beach town juuust this side of touristy, so we’ll probably get a cool lunch/brunch out there afterward and maybe wander some art galleries and weird little tourist shops.
I love salty sea smells and giant mammals and this is a fantastic gift from an awesome guy and I am very excited 🙂
Instead of our normal Valentine’s Day tradition of cooking something decadent, we will be attending an extremely ill-advised wedding. Hooray.
My husband and I haven’t gone all out for Valentine’s Day in about eight years. We’ll most likely stay in on Saturday, but we’re going on a date tonight (for the first time in weeks!) to eat chimichangas and see Whiplash. I am just as excited as I should be (which is to say extremely).
On Valentine’s afternoon, we are taking a “romantic tour” of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint. It’s going to be a shitshow!!!
LITERALLY
On our first Valentine’s day together my BF took me to a theater showing of Harold & Maude (my favorite movie). So now we watch it on DVD together every Valentine’s day. It’s a good, cheap tradition and it makes me very happy.
For V-Day, the Burgomaster and I are going to see Jupiter Ascending. Again.
Best Valentine’s plan!
Well, best Every Day of the Year plan, really.
YAAS. Putting that on my weekend to-do list. (go see it for the first time) (maybe putting go it see for the second time on next weekend’s list?)
My boyfriend and I both forgot it was Valentine’s Day this week until this morning so we have nothing planned. It’s also his normal Game Night, so he might spend it with his friends playing Dungeons and Dragons. I’m pretty much ok with that.
My girlfriends (it’s a complicated poly thing) don’t want to do anything so I’m going by myself to the the largest local bdsm group’s munch. I’m excited because I’ll be elgible to attend the play party this month so It’s going to be happy Valentine’s Day to me…
If I can find all the ingredients, I’m planning to make dinner for my wife. I’ve never made this before and I don’t eat this particular dish, so basically it will be her enjoying a fancy-ish Korean meal while I eat a hot pocket, because love.
For Valentine’s Day, which is also my birthday (UGH) I’ll probably just be hanging out with friends. My roommates and I are hosting an exchange student from Japan, and she arrives the day before Valentine’s, so either she will be too jet-lagged to want to do anything or she’ll want to go do stuff, in which case we’ll go do whatever stuff she wants-maybe walk around the downtown, or go see the lake, idk.
I’m not a Valentine’s Day person, but I will be celebrating a variety of holidays with my friends: on Thursday, a lecture on the St Valentine’s Day Massacre; Friday the 13th at the Museum of Science & Industry; and on Saturday, Gandalfmas with a Lord of the Rings marathon.
How did I not know that Scrabble was invented by Alfred Mosher Butts? That is perfect, let’s all anagram this forever now.
Feral Horse’s Butt, MD.
Unfortunately named town or medical drama I would TOTALLY WATCH?
I am a recovering Cool Girl (nah, let’s not do anything for Valentines/anniversary, it’s cool, nah, I don’t need to be treated special, I know you love me, you don’t have to get flowers or something dumb like that, it’s cool)
So now I am 34 years old and I haven’t been single since I was god damned 17 and do you know I have never received flowers? From anybody? THAT’S COOL NO WORRIES
So now I am wondering how to live my new dream.
Also wondering how to spend Valentine’s Day. Just usual Saturday shit I guess. COOL.
I have been with my partner 11 years and not once have we ever celebrated an anniversary or Valentines. We also share the same birthday so we tend to cancel each other out and end up not doing a lot.
When we started dating, he told me that ‘if I ever give you chocolates or flowers, it’s cause I fucked someone and it wasn’t you.’
17 year old me lapped that shit up. OH YES I AM NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS, IT’S SO COOL YOU’RE DISRESPECTING ME LIKE THAT. (I brought it up several years ago and he apologised and planted me rose bushes in the garden instead.)
28 year old me is like ‘you know, flowers and feeling special is actually pretty lovely. I could handle getting those as a surprise. I should have set higher expectations at the beginning.’
I feel like this may also be our last Valentines, albiet for unrelated reasons, so maybe one day I will get my wish.
I recommend “Husband (or insert title of your choice here), I would like you to buy me flowers for Valentines day.” (actually, this year I went with “even though my parents are in town and we’re deferring fancy foods until later, I still want flowers for Valentines day”) My husband isn’t any good at mind reading, but he does pretty okay with explicit requests.
Late, I know, but I just found out about it this afternoon — for Valentine’s Day I am going to go drive two hours and attend a class about how to count worm eggs in sheep poo! With a microscope and special slides and everything. Then I am also going to learn how to assess how many worms any given sheep/goat has by how anemic it is as judged by how pink or white the inside of its eyelids are.
What better holiday than Valentine’s Day for learning about worm eggs in sheep poo, though, really?
You’re just trying to make us jealous.
I’m going to watch Picnic at Hanging Rock. Because it takes place on Valentine’s day. Yeah, I know, lame! But it’s a tradition with me, and I’m much looking forward to it. Who can resist some serious Victorian sexual repression on a Saturday night? *big grin*
*Great* film. It stayed with me for a long time after I watched it.
Woah, the Creation Museum! I was talking about that with my parents just the other day. Loved that photo-trip.
But OMG I did Not realise quite how political the whole thing is: abortion, minorities (those “Modern World” pictures?), women’s “homemaker” role. Wow. Who’da thought that all those things were remotely linked to velociraptors in the Bible?
(V day: Eating a lot of chargrilled meat at our fave restaurant, at 3.30pm in the afternoon as we booked late. I for one am glad- afternoon feasting is my FAVE and then we get to “chill” later. hehehe)