The time has come to cherish your lover, according to every store, mall, mail flyer, and roadside flower stand within sight. For months, hearts and candy and frighteningly adorable greeting cards have been thrust at us as constant and expensive reminders that if we love someone we'd better be ready to pay for it. Is this what love is? Valentine's Day is perceived as commercially enforced love, a day of gut-wrenching panic because it's already Feb. 13 and the only things left are the elegant boxes of chocolate you'd have to sell a kidney to afford or the $2.99 bags of pink M&Ms at Walgreens, and you know that if you choose incorrectly you'll be spending the next week replacing your slashed tires and keeping an eye out for incoming airborne dishware.
[ February 09, 2005, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Very funny, timely, interesting, and inspiring. What more could one ask for in an online column?
I keep waiting for you to get discovered by some big syndicating company so we can all read you in our local papers and tell our friends we knew you when.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Oh, and I especially like how the title sets the reader up to expect the theme of the article to be the exact opposite of what you actually have to say.
I thought I was going to be reading "poor lonely me on V-day", then I read "Poor lonely you on V-day when your sig-other get her (his) 'click to order' sentiment"
posted
Wow, I love Wednesdays...they start off with Chris's column and finish off with "Lost," how could it get any better? Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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You start lost, you end lost. At least its consistent...
Column extas: this column began life as a list of suggestions for inexpensive but fun V-Day ideas. Conversations with coworkers, many of whom looked at me like I was insane, helped me alter the tone to something more realistic.
Here's some of what I had planned originally:
Have an intimate dinner at a fast food restaurant. Dress elegantly. Pay a kid to wear a vest and park your car (ideally where it can be found again). Hire another kid to seat you and take orders. Many of the fast food restaurants have play areas these days, plenty of room for dancing. You might even take some time to print up menus - just translate everything into French. Hint: "Livre quart avec du fromage, de grandes fritures et un Coke" sounds way more romantic than "Gimme a #4 and Super-size it."
Take her to a playground at night and push her on the swing. Sneak him out to where you used to skinny-dip years ago and see if you get caught this time. Go play miniature golf and take your driver. Stick a canoe in the bathtub and go on a fearsome Amazon adventure.
If your loved one is the greedy sort, buy something really expensive and hide it in the house somewhere. With luck he or she will clean up the whole place before it's located ("Gee, it might be under those dirty dishes!").
Go out and do something you've never done. Go ice-skating for the first time. Take dance lessons. Go roller-blading. G'head, you'll heal! When you practice your new first-aid skills on each other you'll be amazed how quickly you bond together, especially with that new topical skin spray.
Spend the entire day avoiding the spoken word. Communicate with gestures, meaningful looks, and pointing a lot. Writing notes is cheating. You may find yourself giggling a lot, and that's fine. It can also lead to some really enlightening sex, or possibly some form of expensive counseling.
Turn your bedroom into the perfect love nest. Stick centerfolds up on the walls, use strobe lights, install a handy gumball machine. Resheet the bed with bubble wrap. Fill the closet with popcorn. Get a couple of huge helium balloons to keep by the headboard; some timely inhalations can help create some rather disturbing chipmunk love.
Turn the lights off in the house and keep them off for the duration of the evening. No candles, no lamps, no matches, no TV. Take the bulb out of the refrigerator. Put tape over the numbers on the microwave. You may not want to combine this with the silent day mentioned above; you might have a wildly romantic dinner without noticing your lover isn't home yet.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Turn your bedroom into the perfect love nest. Stick centerfolds up on the walls, use strobe lights, install a handy gumball machine. Resheet the bed with bubble wrap. Fill the closet with popcorn. Get a couple of huge helium balloons to keep by the headboard; some timely inhalations can help create some rather disturbing chipmunk love.
Chris - you have a very disturbing view of the "perfect love nest"..........
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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One desk, with shelving set on top, filled with assorted costume jewelry, scarves, books, and stuffed animals; one set of wooden shelving (painted purple) holding Teres' clothes; one clothes rack for both of us to hang stuff on; a small refrigerator which doubles as Teres' nightstand and which contains small water bottles and snacks; a poster from "Benny & Joon"; a large waterbed with a huge shelving/mirror/cabinet thing on the back, which contains books, personal effects, a tupperware container with emergency night snacks and Tylenol, Sudafed, etc; my nightstand which has more books; a "Princess Bride" poster; a small yard sculpture of a winged child reading from a book (seemed more appropriate for our room than our yard); more purple shelving holding my clothes; a larger bookshelf that holds my comics and nonfiction (with more stuffed animals on top); a TV and DVD/VCR player and rack of Johnny Depp DVDs; two small bookshelves for Teres' books; and an 11' wide, 8' high bookshelf that covers the far wall and holds my fiction and my massive Simpsons figures collection. The waterbed doesn't have the usual sheet/sheet/cover combo, but a series of layered comforters since, instead of replacing worn comforters we just buy another and toss it on top. The bed also contains a pillow for each, a body pillow for Teresa, and at least one dog.
Bubble wrap just seems to fit right in...
[ February 09, 2005, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Somehow I just knew that the bubblewrap idea was linked to the slushie machine.... I was going to ask if Chris was inspired by the ADHD strip.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I was gonna make a dress out of bubblewrap for halloween and when people asked what I was dressed up as say "I'm fragile," but I was worried about people wanting to pop my costume. It would have had to be no hugs and no sitting down.
I think I am still gonna do that next year, though. I really like the idea.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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And the best part is that we get to read the stuff that didn't make the cut. First I read the article, then the thread, ever hoping and praying that Chris will leave us some little nugget of humour.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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