Valentine Soapbox

It's Valentine's weekend. Guaranteed, I assure you, to put a large percentage of the world's single people in a less than enthused state. Unless they live in Egypt, where they were and probably are busy dodging government cars:

Note: This video is a little horrific, so you've been warned.


Now, I have a pretty limited knowledge of world politics, which probably makes me one of the most ill-equipped to comment on the current Egypt situation, but since this is my blog, and it's my soapbox time, I'm going to throw in my uninformed 2 cents anyway.

So, I'm sure I'm not alone in this world when I ask whether it was really a good idea to now put the hands of the civilian government into military control. Mubarak no doubt still has plenty of links with the military - he wasn't going to be suppressing protestors and political rivals with his bare hands now was he?

I recall with great clarity a line spoken on the show Battlestar Galactica (of all places) which goes as follows:

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

It seems relevant. Maybe...

Anyway, as I was saying; Valentine's Day. Single people. Sad.

Unless, of course, they are in one of the many poor deprived countries around the world, which probably don't celebrate Valentine's day. Perhaps just having food for the night would be enough.

Puts things in perspective doesn't it...

Despite this, a quick search on google will reveal a wealth of Anti-Valentine's Day sites, most performing (or attempting to perform) crude Freudian based analysis, which is essentially babble, about the nature of love and how really, it's shit. Others try to argue from the point of commercialism and whatnot, and whilst Valentine's Day is rather over-commercialised, just like any other major holiday nowadays, I'm sure you won't find these people so vociferously opposing Christmas.

There's probably nothing worse than this sort of self-led deception, a pathetic attempt to rationalise and intellectualise away a fundamental tenet of human existence. All stemming from the fact that they couldn't hit someone up and got bitter about it. It's like the kid who didn't get picked for the football team subsequently going to deflate all the balls.

Here's a picture of some kittens to break up the rant:

Ready to carry on? Ok. Good.

At this point, I will hold my hands up and say I've been through the whole bitter lonely thing, more than once, and it's not a particularly pleasant experience. But you know, hope springs eternal, and so it must be because as a rather good quote on www.thinkexist.com says:

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.”

The only thing worse than the deceptionists are those who are so desperate to be included in this celebration of intimacy and love that they'll go and whore themselves out to anyone with a heartbeat and two legs. Some people are surprisingly self aware about this too, and it makes me a bit angry to be honest.

It's a perversion of the whole ethos of what the day is supposed to be about; I'm pretty sure that using a stranger (or even a "friend") for a quick pull or fuck, just so one can get a little boost to the self-esteem, is about as far removed from real love as you can get. But people are that selfish, aren't they?

Here are some different sorts of kittens:

Anyhow, to bring this rant to a close; I believe that even if a person doesn't have anything else, they should always have self respect, and if they put themselves on some desperate pull-streak just to get the ego-boost, well then they've taken that self respect and thrown it down the drain, along with my respect for them.

So, to all the happy Valentine's Day celebrating couples out there: have a good one.
To all the singletons: next year, next year!
To the Vortex Dynamics examples paper: You're getting drilled tonight.