{"id":31,"date":"2008-02-14T10:04:51","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T15:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=31"},"modified":"2018-10-31T14:18:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T18:18:24","slug":"valentine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=31","title":{"rendered":"Valentine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve only ever received one valentine card. <\/span>It was from a girl named Claire in 1996. <\/span>I think. <\/span>The 90\u2019s have (thankfully) kind of blurred together. <\/span>I had harbored my typical brand of unspoken obsession for Claire and, I suppose, she must have felt a mutual sort of attraction. <\/span>Enough to earn me my one and only card.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s particularly disheartening considering that I have been in relationships with women for several Valentine\u2019s Days and, always, the day passed without being acknowledged. <\/span>I guess, even when I\u2019m sleeping with them, I just don\u2019t get along with women. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So today will be my typical Valentine\u2019s Day \u2013 work the entire day away at my retarded day job, go home and watch movies and eat a light dinner, dream about getting a card from Claire out of the blue, then sort of pass out in the easy chair hugging an inflatable dinosaur to my chest. <\/span><\/p>\n

From there, my night will go on like every night: <\/span>Woken by the shuddering, angry fridge. <\/span>Woken by someone hitting the dumpster with their SUV while backing out of their parking space at 70 miles per hour. <\/span>Woken up by the piece of shit 27 year old <\/st1>Toyota<\/st1> that\u2019s always parked under my window and has a super-sensitive alarm system. <\/span>It always goes off at 5am. <\/span>One morning, I crawled to the window and saw that there were about seven car alarms going off in the parking lot, which is very much a sign of alien visitation.<\/p>\n

This morning, at around 5:15am, I made myself a little promise. <\/span>I\u2019m going to start buying guns in preparation for the coming alien invasion, and so I can stalk through the parking lot every night shooting out tires. <\/span>I also yearn to kick my neighbor\u2019s doors down and shoot them while they sleep, but we\u2019ll not talk about that because then people will think there\u2019s something wrong with me. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m straying from Valentine\u2019s Day thoughts. <\/span>Today is supposed to be all Hallmarkey. <\/span>Every single blog I\u2019ve subscribed to is all Valentine\u2019s this and that so, when I fired up Google reader this morning, I was assaulted by flowers and well-wishing. <\/span>Even from the dark and dreary blogs, and the cynics, and the wicked and depraved. <\/span>It\u2019s actually quite disgusting and neurotic. <\/span>I approve of Halloween, and I love New Years Eve, but every other holiday just seems like a dreadful waste of time. <\/span>This isn\u2019t even a holiday. <\/span>It\u2019s some hokey tradition like Mother\u2019s Day. <\/span>Except it is a bit longer in the tooth, I suppose. <\/span>And, of course, it straddles a pagan festival. <\/span>Which makes today even more of a waste \u2013 it\u2019s a pseudo-religious holiday scheduled to take advantage of that pagan festival. <\/span>Great! <\/span>Can we get a day off work? <\/span>Because that\u2019s the only thing I respect. <\/span>God usually ranks a paid holiday but, no, not this time. <\/span>Instead we get President\u2019s Day off. <\/span>And that really is made up! <\/span>The date that falls between the birthdays of two presidents is a big ass holiday? <\/span>That\u2019s like having a holiday for Almost Christmas. <\/span>Nearly Thanksgiving! <\/span><\/p>\n

The Valentine\u2019s Day fervor is especially grating when you work a customer service job. <\/span>Every day of the work week, I answer phones and talk to the most dysfunctional people on the planet. <\/span>By nature of the job, I\u2019m only talking to them if they have a problem. <\/span>But our customers seem to be especially insane. <\/span>They\u2019re all pampered grad students and degreed professionals. <\/span>Half of them are savants and the other half are sociopaths. <\/span>At my old phone job, I talked to students travelling the world. <\/span>They were idiots, and they sort of knew it. <\/span>Here I talk to people with PhD\u2019s, primarily, and they\u2019re idiots and indignant about it. <\/span>Not to mention racist and sexist. <\/span>At least once a day, I get brutally cussed out. <\/span>Those calls tend to open up like that. <\/span>I answer, and they reply that I\u2019m a fucking moron and they doubt if I can help them. <\/span>One customer called my co-worker a nigger bitch, then called back, got me, and said, \u201cDon\u2019t transfer me to any niggers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg. <\/span>Those are the nice ones. <\/span>Two or three times a year, I have to terminate calls because they get so abusive. <\/span>I\u2019ve collected emails and nasty phone calls and letters in the forums, but have recently locked them away in a spot where you need a high postcount because my co-workers are all a bunch of cunts who like to snuffle around in my business and report to my supervisors.<\/p>\n

So here are these assholes I have to talk to all day and, today, each and every one is going to open up with: \u201cHappy Valentine\u2019s Day!\u201d <\/span>That\u2019s the yearly tradition. <\/span>A whole day dealing with folks who are like the wide-eyed, cheerful residents of <\/st1>Punxsutawney<\/st1> in Groundhog Day<\/em>. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Why wish a stranger happy Valentine\u2019s Day? <\/span>Are they my valentine? <\/span>Am I theirs? <\/span>I don\u2019t know who the fuck they are and I hope they die. <\/span>That\u2019s basic tribalism, by the way, so don\u2019t get on my case about it. <\/span>I\u2019m merely embracing my anthropological roots. <\/span>I don\u2019t know you, and the only possible reason you could be in my life is because you\u2019re going to steal my stuff or try to harm me. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s like when people wish me a happy Mother\u2019s Day. <\/span>Am I someone\u2019s mom? <\/span>Who does that? <\/span>Is it just the excuse to be falsely cheerful? <\/span>Or, if not falsely, then to exercise your psychosis by wishing strangers happiness and secretly getting sexually aroused because you\u2019re so retarded and shallow it makes my teeth hurt? <\/span>In that case, every day is a holiday. <\/span>Tomorrow is Saint Siegfried of <\/st1>Sweden<\/st1>\u2019s feast day. <\/span>Happy St. Siegfried\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n

Me, I\u2019m holding out for the 29th<\/sup>. <\/span>The Baha\u2019i have some goofball holiday that they only celebrate on leap days. <\/span>I have no idea what the holiday is, or what you\u2019re supposed to do, and I don\u2019t really care. <\/span>But I will spend the 29th<\/sup> telling everyone Happy Ayyam-i-Ha! <\/span>Oh my god! <\/span>Did you get me a card? <\/span>You fucking assholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve only ever received one valentine card. It was from a girl named Claire in 1996. I think. The 90\u2019s have (thankfully) kind of blurred together. I had harbored my typical brand of unspoken obsession for Claire and, I suppose, …<\/p>\n

Valentine<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1220,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/1220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}