Valentine’s Day Commentary
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Candlelight,
soft music, that sick-to-your-stomach, first
real-date feeling. Ah, yes. Romance.You’ve
planned the perfect night. Gone over every
situation. You know what to say, how to act, even how
to cook the chicken. And then, as you pour the last
glass of wine it hits you! What do I do with the empty
bottle? And just when you decide to give up dating forever, your
date asks you,
“Where’s the recycling bin?”
You think to yourself, this could be love.
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.Spohsored'by 7/of X)'Environmental Issues Committee
romantic
evening calls
for a perfect
bottle of wine.
Avoid Valentine's loneliness
by scheduling fun for one
If you're like me, your typical Valen
tine's Day consists of sitting alone in
your room, crying and rocking back
and forth, struggling to watch your
taped documentaries on the Son of
Sam through the blur of your tears,
only to fall asleep next to an empty
bottle of Southern Comfort and a
threadbare body pillow.
Even though Cupid didn't strike
again this year, however, there's no
reason to rip down random Valen
tine's decorations, laugh whenever
generally happy couples fall into a tiff
or test the tinsulary strength of your
wrist flesh against razor blades like
some twisted product trial for the
Consumer Reports From Hell.
Instead, channel your despair into
something positive, something that
will curb your solitude for at least one
day this year:
1. Get something pierced. Any
thing. Not only will you have an ex
cuse to show your newly pierced body
parts to acquaintances and strangers,
perhaps attracting the piercing
fetishist of your dreams, it'll give you
something to tug on when your emo
tional pain just isn't real enough
(think of it as the safe alternative to
self-mutilation). Plus, infections bring
sympathy — always a plus.
2. Attend the benefit V-Day per
formance of "The Vagina Mono
Sean Hanson
Sooo lonely
logues" at 7:30 p.m. in the Agate Au
ditorium. For the student price of $7,
you can watch a parade of characters
discuss the ways in which life has sold
them and their vaginas short. Uplift
ing, eh? At least spending the night in
a dark room full of strangers is better
than being alone.
3. Find a bed buddy. That's not to ad
vocate irrational acts of desperation,
but surely you must have an equally
lonely friend willing to spoon with you,
bemoan your lack of significant others
and fall asleep to old Smiths records.
Sorry, hookers don't count and it's un
ethical to ply your "lonely friend" with
alcohol and roofies. After all, what
good is there in feeling loved for one
sweet night if you spend the next week
in a holding cell?
4. Make a list of five people you'd
like to date and ask them out, prefer
ably with a bouquet of roses and a
Valentine's Day card professing your
undying love in amateurish, middle
school verse ("Roses are red/ Violets
are blue/ If you reject me today/1 just
might kill you").
5. Send candy to a stranger. Just to
cheer him or her up, pretend you're
the secret admirer of someone you'd
never even date in the first place - oh,
who are you kidding? You'd date any
one around this time of year.
6. Go outside and sit beneath the
stars with a great novel and a clip-on
book light. And as you count the con
stellations, realize there's an equal
number of lonely people here on
Earth. They sit alone on barstools and
on bus seats, they hunch down in the
theater and they're walking down the
streets. And remember, if you're alone,
you're not alone.
Contact the copy editor
at seanhanson@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.
'Romantic day7 needs new set
of rules to avoid materialism
I hate Valentine's Day. It's not
something I'm particularly proud
of, but over time I've come to real
ize something: St. Valentine's Day is
an utterly worthless holiday, point
less, irritating and totally commer
cialized. Other than the opportuni
ty to watch "Be My Valentine,
Charlie Brown" and eat those
chalky little hearts, I find no re
deeming qualities.
If such proclamations make you
cringe (and those of you out there
watching Meg Ryan flicks are proba
bly already doing so), consider this:
How can a day that is marked on our
cultural calendar as a "romantic
day' be even remotely romantic?
Love shouldn't be about balloons
Steven Neuman
Breakfast epiphanies
and stuffed animals. Quite frankly, if
the only way you can show affection is
by buying your sweetheart a pound of
candy, I think that's pretty sad.
1 have had dates and even rela
tionships that fell on the jour
d'amour, but to me the prospect of
asking some completely obscure
crush for a date (on a day when your
romantic intent cannot be misun
derstood) seems downright hokey.
Isn't it more romantic to take your
girlfriend/boyfriend out for a can
dlelit dinner on any old Saturday or
cover their bed in rose petals on
some regular day when they don't
Turn to NEUMAN, page 11B
Emotions need not be defined,
let love remain unconditional
So I have volunteered to write this
column for Valentine's Day, but as I sit
down to start I find myself in a state of
indifference I mean, what's there to say
that hasn't been said already? We have
an online poll about the holiday this
week, and one way you can answer is "I
don't celebrate Valentine's Day." That
option probably best reflects my
thoughts, although I might add to that
a state of total confusion.
Come Feb. 14, love is the word on
the streets, yet it doesn't seem all that
lovely to me.
"You're just lonely," some might say.
No, really — it's not that My issues are
with the blatant contradictions in this
day, which supposedly represents love
Of course it carries the usual consumer
frenzy that surrounds every calendar
holiday. Colored chalk hearts, hydro
genated candy, and the colors FD&C
Red 3 and 40, Yellow 5 and 6, and Blue
1 are common expressions of this love;
gifts of unhealthy doses of refined sugar
to your closest loved one abound. Fur
thermore, we spend exorbitant sums of
cash and consume excessively in order
to make an impression on those we
adore This description may be extreme
but such an aesthetic does exist.
Of course in our society, loveis inter
twined with sex. I mean, saying you
love someone often means you're
having, or want to have, a sexual rela
tionship with them. The words fre
quently don't come out until long after
the act has happened, so "I love you"
only signifies "I'm having sex with
Aaron Shakra
Notebooks of DJ Serpentine
you." But this is a claim-based ap
proached to love Love and sex are not
one and the same but they sure as heck
get mixed up that way.
Unfortunately, I am not equipped
with the knowledge to make a success
fill critique of monogamy, so I won't
even try. I don't really have a problem
with it anyway. I'm sure there are plenty
of healthy, monogamous relationships
that do exist. It's only the obligation
based aspects of monogamy that bother
me When we date someone for exam
ple need Wg feStfrJtflire^duf <iid ffv'es
to accommodate one person? This habit
is often taken to extremes, and we start
ignoring our family and dose friends all
for the sake of this one person.
The myth of true love also propagates.
For example, throughout your life you
might find yourself having a string of re
lationships, but then one day, you'll
come across "the one" and perhaps get
married to represent the commitment.
Again, the hierarchical aspects of this
concept bother me. So when you find
your true love, what does that mean
about everyone else? Maybe it's more ac
curately the one true sexual love. Then
again, many folks don't even have sex
until after the/re married.
What confuses me is how someone
can daim to "love" another person and
yet still condone, or do violence, to an
other. How can we hold our girlfriend's
and boyfriend's hands in joy, but then
berate a stranger based on the lone fart
that he or she is unknown as we pass
each other on the streets? This is a small
example More extreme is when we lit
erally beat up each other over "love" or
a simple misunderstanding. Why
must it work this way? Why must a hi
erarchy of love exist? Why must we di
vide the concept? Don't we know
divided love can't work?
■’* Frankly, I think ft'*s4his attkude-'of
Turn to SHAKRA, page 11B