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Death to Hallmark

I almost broke a rib laughing myself to sleep last night.
As usual, I spent a good deal of time out and about, trying to do whatever came to mind at the time. This weekend, I was seeing red everywhere.
Not that red, the color red. Red for love. Red for Valentine's Day. Red for spending a lot of money in the hopes of getting laid.
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Life is pain and
The joke's on you.
No, I'm not bitter because I will be alone. I'm bitter because the idea of being in love shouldn't be reduced to a single day of commemoration, a single week or month of effort braving the malls and jewelry stores. To be in love is to feel in the uttermost depths of your soul that you want to enjoy the company of one special person any day, any time. In short, allotting one day out of the day to focus on that fact ends up defeating the very point.
Now, in all fairness, I doubt that everyone who happens to feel like he's in love restricts the expression of this noble (yet maddening) sentiment to one day per annum. Some do, but more do not, in my experience.
Nonetheless, for whatever reason, the accursed day has borne witness to more exasperation and evil in the arena of love in my life than seems normal. Even the good ones had their share of grief lying underneath. Only once have I had a completely enjoyable Valentine's Day, no doubt because there was some minor criminal element to it (breaking and entering into a dorm room in college to set up dinner, flowers, and classical music). That was fun, and I got to commit crime (well, not really, as a roommate gave me a key, but still it was fun).
And, of course, there's the ubiquitous greeting card.
Whoever came up with the idea of merchandising greeting cards a la Hallmark was a genius. Hopefully that person is burning in Hell as well. Every holiday, almost every day, has its greeting card. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, the parent days, Bosses' Day, Secretaries' Day, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, New Year's Day, Boxing Day, Yom Kippur....it's insidious. For those of us who like to send cards to people (like me) and who actually do it (unlike me), the cost in cards and postage can be ruinous.
Of course with the wonderful Internet, one can find any number of free e-greeting cards that cost much less, but taking the time to set one up is a chore in and of itself. Some of them even have an interactive element (an amusing one I received had me shooting arrows at Cupid, which was a nice change of pace, although I didn't recognize the fat winged bastard). Most of them are corny, but they serve the same purpose as greeting cards. What is that purpose?
I'm not going to answer that question, since anyone who reads this will have the mental capacity to come up with an insightful answer.
Still, the stock phrases used on these cards tend to unfavorably frame any message I mind want to send. Luckily, there are blank greeting cards, which I prefer. I particularly like sending atypical cards for various holidays (like a military-themed Christmas card to honor the Crusades, something no one ever seems to catch on to, perhaps thinking that I am merely insane, a worthwhile thought). In fact, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of two or three hundred Christmas cards that I keep on hand in case I feel like sending them, either at Christmas, or any other time. Maybe today. Who knows.
Music has been on my mind recently. As I sit and type at the old and not yet dead iMac (damn those G5 iMacs look awesome; they look like picture frames, but one of them alone could probably create life), I'm listening to the glorious Ninth by Ludwig van, second movement, the one with all of the chaotic musical stuff going on and inspiring one to acts of violence, or at least acts of any kind. In fact, I was playing the Moonlight Sonata by the same composer during one Valentine's Day, but it was deemed too depressing. I thought it fit the mood perfectly; love's labor lost indeed. Both of us knew it was over and we were just pulling on stray threads, looking for the fatal one that would unravel the entire doomed enterprise. I think I baked some stuffed salmon and potatoes. At least dinner was nice. I think we ended up eschewing music altogether, but maybe I put something more hopeful on, like the spring movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I don't remember.
I like most music, although I'm not too generally fond of slow R & B or country, with few exceptions. As long as it sounds good, whatever that means, I can dig almost anything. Most of the time I'm partial to the more active stuff, gangsta rap, rock, metal, industrial, but by no means is that always the case. This isn't always true of all people, most of whom are given to one or another subset. It was particularly funny to listen to a mother tell her young son that he couldn't listen to her Eminem cd, since it was 'too bad' for his virgin ears. He was about 10, and she 40. Not giggling in the aisle sort of funny, but amusing.
Then you have the certain desperate people out there who will just be looking to hook up with anything on Valentine's Day. That can be amusing, too. I wonder how many people will get their feelings hurt tomorrow? Won't be me.
Then there's the issue of do it yourself car repair. I like doing that sort of thing, although I have very little direct experience. It comes easily enough, maybe from years of playing with Transformers and taking stuff apart, putting it back together, seeing a screw or two left over, like with that PS2 I have sitting on my living room floor, underneath another PS2. I found out at one point that it would cost about $100 to restore the machine to working condition. In the end it was better to buy another PS2.
What the smack is that?