Valentine’s day is upon us, a day that sees love-struck men spending their hard earned scratch on expensive dinners, exotic flowers, imported chocolates, mall store jewelry and countless other services, trinkets and gewgaws in an attempt to barter with their significant other for sexual favors in a process that sounds, on paper, a lot like prostitution. Fear not! There is a big difference between this festive holiday and solicitation, namely that even after laying down (*PUN!*) three weeks pay on dinner, a few dozen roses and a tennis bracelet from Zales, you still have no guarantee that you will get any, let alone good, sex. Prostitutes, on the other hand, are trained professionals who will undoubtedly fulfill any contractual obligations to the best of their abilities both quickly and efficiently and without outraged indignation at not getting a Pawsome Panda™ Build-a-Bear® afterward.
Church of Hell
The sand in the swimtrunks of life.
Valentine’s Day Extravaganza Part 1 – History
February 2nd, 2009
“Comment”
Valentine’s Day Extravaganza Part 2 – Celebrating
February 6th, 2009
In my previous post , I went over a few of the theories that attempt to describe exactly why we celebrate Valentine’s day as a romantic celebration:
- Is it to honor a criminal who was executed, messily, for capital crimes, i.e. marrying Christians?
- Is it to honor a man who, when faced with rejection, tried to cut out his own heart and mail it?
- Is it based on an ancient fertility rite which couples nudity, sacrifices, blood and lashings with raw meat?
- Is it because it was invented out of whole cloth by Classical Literature’s Geoffry Chaucer?
The world may never know the truth, at least until we invent an exciting, quantum-theory, nano-robotic, cold fusion based machine that allows us to view history through goggles that plug directly into our spines via a socket installed in the napes of our necks. Our best Hollywood screenwriters are on the case and we should see a badly written Michael Bay movie about this shortly, as soon as he can find an appropriate childhood hero of mine to completely wreck for the sake of a quick buck.
Today I want to talk about how to actually celebrate Valentine’s day with the minimum fuss and money without looking both too cheap or too lazy.
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Problem Report to Microsoft
February 25th, 2009
Since Microsoft’s Xbox problem reporting tool only allows 500 characters, I left a brief message and a link to this longer plea for help. I’m sure they won’t read it. Here’s the wonderful story:
I got an Xbox 360, loved it, became addicted and bought too many games. I have been eyeing a PS3 lately but since I got one of the newer, ‘fixed’ consoles, I was content and put my money into the 360 instead of getting another console. I was careful: I bought a fan the day I purchased the Xbox and always ran it. I had no problems at all. Everything was great… until one day, a week or so after saving up and excitedly plunking down a wad of cash on Guitar Hero World Tour with the drums, a copy of Rock Band 2 and a bucket full of (paid for) downloaded songs, I got the dreaded Red Rind of Death of the 3 light variety. I scrounged around for my receipt and found it. The date was exactly 364 days from the date I turned it on. This was bad enough, but remember that this was also the leap year that temporarily killed almost every Microsoft Zune on the planet. (more…)