h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

More wretched than any Tuesday, the day when we celebrate the vast existential void in which we find ourselves engulfed, and engage in puerile rituals to try somehow to reach across it; a futile exercise. I hope someone finds Cupid and impales the pudgy little homonculous on one of his own spits. When we stop fantasizing about love maybe we'll start to feel it.

I too am in search of Cupid, for much the same reason as yourself. If I find him I'll let you know ....

So that makes two of us who have seen through love and achieved the state of Enligtenment (ie, disenchantment) on the subject. There is no such thing. No such thing as love, I mean. As for Valentine's Day, the best thing to do is simply to ignore it - we have enough to worry about as it is, without wasting our time with nonsense like that.

Hope this finds you in good shape.

Regards, Lear.

tis just a distraction from all those more important matters (eg bringing down capitalism, liberating people etc), and at the same time the card man's and the florists et al make heaps out of us chumps as we senselessly follow some socialized need to "be completed" - we can be complete alone, tis all arse i reckon


span

Yes, I myself am vaguely involved in the process of bringing down global capitalism. I do this mainly by trying to avoid the aptly called rat-race, whilst at the same time researching my own little corner of the Humanities-based postgrad world - the intention being to make some sense out of this messed-up chaotic world of pointless perpetual innovation, without really participating in it myself. Slim chances, but I'll give it a fair shot... In moments of weakness I fantasise about running away and looking for a nice quiet Zen monastery somewhere. But could you really call that a weakness?... Also, I don't use underarm deodorants or hair gel...

Needless to say, I'm not a great one for Valentines cards either...

Lear, the Random Nonsense Generator

i avoid the rat-race by refusing to be career oriented - career schmareer - i will do what i love, not what will necessarily earn me lots (unlike the rest of the private schoolers at law school)

I've just been looking at your homepage. Where on earth did you get that Random Surrealism Generator? Come, my poltroon, do illuminate... Seriously, I haven't laughed so much in ages...

I have no idea what the word 'poltroon' means, by the way. Apologies if I've just written something offensive. But actually I blame that machine for leading me astray...

I'm not much of a career person myself, either. But thus far I haven't found any outlets for making a reasonable living out of doing what I really love. I don't really like working for a living. I prefer sitting on the tops of tall hillsides meditating and seeking illumination. Any openings in this line over your way?...

How did we end up on this forum anyway?...

become a janitor... plenty of time to meditate. Im at work right now in fact...

I thought of becoming a janitor once... Then the mood passed...

That was about 10 years ago...

It doesn't seem to have passed back this way...

got the random surrealism generator from ravenblack, from memory - doubleclick on the generator and i'm pretty sure it will take you there - i stole it from someone else, so go for it

as for avoiding the career thing - not sure how i've managed so far, i just refuse to be sucked in to the whole, suck-up-to-get-big-job-after-law-school thing - not sure how long it will last, but i'm determined not to sellout

i have vague recollections of a poltroon from a sci-fi book, but i can't remember why, tis bugging me now, oh dear

My take on the whole thing, if you don't mind

VALENTINES DAY or "LOVE - HOW TO MEASURE IT IN CURRENCY TERMS"

Hello,

What I would like to detail here is my own limited experience of that most mysterious of events - Valentines Day. Please excuse the masculine frame of reference, but it is all I have to work with.

It all starts in late March/early February, when the retailers start trying to bang us over the head with yet another marketing ploy - Valentines Day. The Beatles, for all you romantic innocents out there, were only partially right; whilst you CANT BUY ME LOVE as they said, it is certainly expected, year in and year out, for you to pay for sustaining it.

In fact, Love, that emotion believed the most ethereal of all, actually has the most tangible physical existence when considered in the context of this day. Toys, cards, flowers, underwear, chocolates; you name it, some sucker will buy it and give it as an example of his, or her, undying love.

The usual happens when youre walking with your partner down the local High Street. Those tell-tale paper hearts and 30% ON (youll notice its not off) priced teddy bears have suddenly appeared in the shop windows, and every spare piece of every visible shelf has products covering the entire spectrum of colour from dark red through to fluorescent pink. At the extreme (or dependant on how long youve been going out together), the woman gets all gushy, whilst the man groans inwardly and starts trying to think of how little he can buy without seeming insensitive. As fine lines go, this one gives razor edges a run for their money. Love may be blind, but to compensate it has feelings sensitive enough to break a heart in two if the card is missing that one extra kiss, or the wrong appellation is used on the outside envelope i.e. an emotional Darling Snuffle-Bunny far outweighs an impersonal To Whom It May Concern.

Here are some of the unwritten rules to remember, the ones most of us have realised through bitter experience, but seldom admit to:

1. Cards.
Cheap, tacky, and lets face it, downright filthy cards can be bought for under a pound for those in the free-and-easy dating stage, with no fear of recrimination from your loved one. Those who have progressed to the official stages however i.e. where the dating has transformed from being fun into a relationship, must purchase a card which has one or more of the following attributes - size, padding and/or soppy verses.
Of course, these cards also retail at the same price as your average family car.

2. Flowers (esp. Roses).
The purchase of roses normally follows this rule...

An ADDITIONAL rose per year whilst COST=ACCEPTABLE,
Switch to single ROMANTIC rose when COST=EXPENSIVE.

As you can see, at the latter stages of Valentines Day syndrome, the gentleman switches from trying to earn enough money to buy that ever increasing bouquet of roses, and starts attempting to circumvent some of the rules - the single romantic rose is a common ploy employed in an attempt to avoid the ever spiralling cost (why do you think being in debt in banking terms is referred to as going into the Red?)

3. Lingerie.
One of the few items the gentlemen dont mind paying for, and probably the item the lady of his affection fears most, as she is painfully aware that the mans mind is operating to some bizarre plan with no concept of the limitations of the female human form i.e. it is impossible for a woman of any size to fit into a pair of leopard-skin imitation frilly panties that appear to have been designed to Barbie doll specifications.

4. The Meal.
Eating out is fine, however it does have its drawbacks in terms of cost i.e. your partner will not whisper sweet nothings into your ear whilst youre stuffing your face with a hamburger and a person in a silly hat is shouting at you DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?!!. After a few extravagant meals, romance once more rears its ugly head and says HEY, wouldnt it be romantic to cook a meal for my beloved at home this year?, and it doesnt stop there. Soon youre buying starters and napkins and candles and EVEN MORE flowers to sit in that stupid vase your deranged Aunt bought you from a car boot sale last year that youd hidden in the hope that some mad Ugly Vase Fairy would come along one night whilst you were sleeping and replace it with ten pence and a note saying = Geez, who bought you this piece of....

Anyway, I digress....


EATING AT HOME or HOW ROMANCE CAN SCREW UP A PERFECTLY GOOD MEAL

Under the misconception that I was capable of preparing my own food, my wife let me loose in the kitchen to prepare, for her, a romantic meal for two. The trouble with cooking the Valentines meal for men is that not only is there the pressure of being in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar tools, but also the added pressure of trying to determine the quality of meal created - too good and he might have to cook more often, too bad and the only person getting lucky tonight would be the dog. Of course, the question of quality is often in the lap of the Gods as any food the average man prepares that actually makes it out of the kitchen is more often a question of luck rather than skill.

My choice of menu was as follows =

Chefs Soup of the Day - Vegetable Soup a la WeirdHope
Basically this was Heinz Vegetable soup chucked in a saucepan and roasted until a hardened skin appeared on top. The a la Me WeirdHope was provided by me sprinkling a bit of parsley in the centre of the bowls of soup.

Main Course - Spanish Chicken, New Potatoes plus random items
In a surge of inspiration, Id gone to the supermarket a couple of days before hand and picked up one of those Chicken Tonight jars, and four boneless chicken breast fillets. Great, thought I, chuck em all in a saucepan, pour the jars contents over, burn for half an hour then serve! Turns out I had to brown the fillets first.
The fillets wouldnt all fit into one frying pan, so I had to put them in two separate ones. Having never browned chicken breasts before, I was nervously watching them sizzle away, wondering how I was going to tell if they were done or not.

The smoke alarm going off was a pretty good indicator.

My wife had called me upstairs suddenly, shouting that shed done something terrible on my computer. Food forgotten, Id dashed upstairs to find her nervously sat there saying something along the lines of Oh my god, the police are going to be round..... Basically, the game shed been playing had crashed and Windows had flashed up one of those = WARNING - ILLEGAL OPERATION, PROGRAM TERMINATING messages.
Laughing, I was explaining the message when the alarm went off. I had forgotten to turn the extractor fan on, and none of the windows were open, so the kitchen had filled with smoke, tie that in with the fact that my wife then informs me to make sure I dont use oil in the new non-stick frying pan, which of course I had, which had therefore gone from a nice dark green to a scaly stained black.

Racing back down to the kitchen, the chicken breasts were definitely cooked at this point, so I whipped them off the hobs and turned the alarm off. Fingers crossed, I dumped the chicken breasts into a big casserole dish and chucked the Spanish Chicken mix on top, before shoving it into the cooker.

An hour later, I grabbed the casserole dish out and poured the vast red bubbling substance onto the plates next to the new potatoes. It was at this point that I noticed the inside of the casserole dish, never before used, now never to be used again; the burnt excess attached to the inside giving the impression of a base relief of the Himalayas.

To give the meal that extra romantic feel, Id programmed the hi-fi with a CD of quiet, subtle classical music. As I was in the kitchen finalising the main course i.e. trying to scrape Mount Kilimanjaro off the inside of the casserole dish, I suddenly noticed the music had stopped from the other room. Putting my curiosity on hold, I carried on with the scrubbing brush, until rudely interrupted by the straining vocals of Nick Kershaw bleating out = I Wont Let the Sun Go Down On Me (...about the only bl**dy thing that would mate... I thought wearily to myself at the time).

Dessert - The Mr. Fatty Express ice cream ensemble
In terms of dessert, I work on the theory that if the dessert dish can be carried in one hand, then its not good enough. The Mr. Fatty Express consists of a generous, some would say suicidal, concoction of vanilla and chocolate ice cream scoops, half a bottle of both butterscotch and chocolate sauces, slices of banana and the top covered in giant chocolate buttons. For those of you with annoying family members or friends with children, I recommend giving their kids one of these puppies; it ensures hours of uninterrupted mayhem for the parents as the kids go insane on the sugar rush provided.

Wine - Hmmm....white?
I cant remember much about the wine, except that it was white and a wedding present. My wife decided not to have any after Id opened the bottle, so I ended up drinking it all myself, hence the hazy recollection of its finer points. I can tell you that theres a delightful French white wine out there that I would recommend for romantic dining at home, but youll have to find the name of it yourself.


So, the meal over, the evening young, the cooking, washing and drying performed by my own fair hands, I was looking forward to the rest of the evenings entertainment with undisguised fervour. This is the point where one of those fine lines between dating and marriage occurs; where the romantic meal changes from being a delightful and thoughtful act on the mans part, indicating his profound love for his partner, to an expected and, quite frankly, too damn uncommon act, indicating his lack of love and inherent laziness. I came out of the kitchen, expecting perhaps the odd kiss or cuddle, only to find my wife plonked down in front of the telly, promising shed get romantic after watching the big Eastenders special where one of the main characters brained his insane love with a heavy object. Thrown by the romantic indifference my culinary exploits received after all my trials and tribulations in the kitchen, I sat down wearily beside her, blankly watching the screen, and began contemplating the same act myself....

So go on, what happened next?

That was just getting interesting, a veritable soap opera in its own right.

Plenty of women out there who don't really care for chocolates and cards, who prefer a man to show a bit of originality in his courtship rituals. So I've heard...

damn straight - there are plenty of women out there who don't require the biggest teddy bear in the shop (or in fact any teddy bears at all) - i reckon romantic gestures are all the better for the orignality and imagination used when there is no money - NEVER let money suffice for genuine effort and imagination (besides which: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle )

and as for your culinary efforts WeirdHope, well done Trust me I couldn't do better

span

Originality does carry a lot of weight with your partner, I must admit, however it often carries a random element you just don't get with cards, for example, how I proposed....

I'd arranged to do it in a Hot Air Balloon, hired a flash car for the day, and booked us in at a posh hotel for a swanky meal and a room for the night, deep in the English Countryside...

Not to go into as much detail as I did above, suffice to say my luck ran true to form - it rained for three solid days so the balloon couldn't go up at any time during the period I'd planned, I had a small accident in the car resulting in me chasing round for a replacement wing mirror and a black marker pen, the mood for the meal was ruined by a group of screaming kids from a wedding next door, and we got lost trying to find our room...

Like everything in life I guess, Love must have a balance. For all the fun you get, I've got to go through all the bl**dy bad luck in the book!

WeirdHope

A friend of mine, English, went all the way to Las Vegas to marry his bride-to-be in one of those five minute ceremonies they do over there. Now - does that count as an imaginative romantic gesture or a completely tacky commercialised degrading of human(e) love? I've never quite been able to establish a position on this one...

Anyway, they divorced about three years later. Not bad going, perhaps, by their standards, but adding up all the money spent and the trauma they put themselves through it seems a bit wasteful really. As you say, Spanner, reduce and reuse is a much wiser philosophy than live fast and die for the moment...