Monday, February 14, 2005

Juno What I’m Talking About

Happy Valentine’s Day! Aren’t you so very happy that it’s Valentine’s Day?

There were a lot of surprise engagements on the news this morning. You know, in honor of Valentine’s Day. All of the women said yes. But how do you say “no” on national television?

How do you say “no” when you’re not on national television? That would be a hard one. Even if you were only casually dating the person who proposed. It’s pretty much the deal breaker there.

We always get a little sad when a marriage proposal is turned down. It’s none of our business, but it’s embarrassing. I always feel bad for the guy (or girl) proposing. Because when they’re rejected, it as if the other person is actually saying, “oh, baby, you’re sweet and all, but you really have no concept of the reality of our relationship, do you? You poor charming, deluded idiot.”

Nobody wants to be a poor, charming deluded idiot. But sometimes, it’s unavoidable. So do what I do…nothing.

But there are a lot of guys out there who won’t take my advice. They’re gluttons for punishment, I guess. They call themselves “hopeless romantics.” I call them “look at me, see how sensitive and delightful I can appear to be-s.”

I shouldn’t be so cynical. I can’t help it. I’m a cynic. That’s what we do.

Call me crazy, but I find something a little…pathologically obsessive…about going to a corn field or something and spelling out “will you marry me” in letters big enough to be seen from space. Is that romantic? Do you find that romantic? If you do, why? Is it every woman’s childhood dream to have a corn crop decimated for some kind of egotistical thrill?

“A man (or woman, let’s not be sexist, guys are weirdoes too) who is willing to destroy 100,000 bushels of government subsidized crops for me must really want to be with me! Why else would he (she) go through all that work just to tell me how much he (she) loves me?!”

I’m a little more subtle than that, I guess. I don’t need the Great Wall of China. I figure that a woman really wants to be with me if they can somehow withstand all the annoying crap I do on a daily basis.

So far, Tanya’s been holding up very well. Kudos to her. You should go and congratulate her on her remarkable constitution. I know that I appreciate it every day. She’s my Valentine, even if I’m too practical and lazy to travel to Iowa to get my point across.

Killing corn is a day of hard work, but annoying crap is forever.


Fun Fact: “Saint Valentine’s Day” was started as the Roman celebration to honor Juno, queen of Mount Olympus, wife of Jupiter and the goddess of marriage. The Romans used to have a sort of “love-raffle” to commemorate every Feb. 14th. Like an ancient key party for the youngsters in town.

Then Emperor Claudius II came along and stopped marriage and fraternizing in order to make sure that potential soldiers would rather go to war than stay home and canoodle.

Lucky for the institution of marriage, good old Valentine kept the love alive by marrying young couples anyway, in spite of Claudius’s decree. For his trouble, and for a little poetic justice on Claudius’s part, on February 14th, Valentine was clubbed to death and beheaded. You would have thought he was marrying gays with than kind of treatment.

But now we have Valentines’ day. Romantic!

I would like to know two things though, if Juno was the goddess of marriage how come she couldn’t stop her husband from humping everything that moved? And whatever happened to the Valentine’s Day key parties?

No comments: