Funny How

There seems to have been something of an improvement.  Anyway, today's Webcam Wednesday of course, so this looks dire and isn't fancy:

Valentine's Day is cutesy and a bit naff.  In fact i think maybe British people are less into cuteness than most other cultures, but anyway, it is.  Putti (cherubim), fluffiness, pink, love hearts (which btw are completely useless as organs) and so on.

In fact, it reminds me of all those cliches about Romantic love that float around everywhere, and i wonder why it's like this.

I think it's partly because we're scared of love.  We're putting something out there and making ourselves acutely vulnerable, and Valentine sort of gives us permission to do it in a kind of joky and anonymous way.

However, i personally also find it extremely creepy.  Look at it this way.  We have a holiday which gives permission for people to engage in anonymous activity whose targets may well find it unwelcome, or if they do find it welcome it might only be because they don't know who it's from.  They might imagine some cute person, perhaps someone about whom they've been daydreaming, has sent them the card, but what if it's some nasty lurky person with a personal hygiene problem and no respect for your personal space.

I have sent anonymous Valentine cards myself in the past.  On one particular occasion, i was trying to reach out to someone, and of course i have no idea how it was received.  However, oddly, on that occasion it was immediately followed by her getting together with someone, and i sometimes wonder if i was instrumental in that.  In which case it was a good thing.

I'm afraid i don't think of Valentine's as "just a bit of fun", because love is serious business.  It's not the cute, pink, fluffy bunny stuff but something a lot more gritty and real than that, even if it's romantic love, and that cute padding can stop you reaching people because you will do the clicheed, stereotypical stuff and somehow regard that as enough, when in fact it's just tired old rather ineffective symbolism.

So no, i'm not very keen on Valentine's Day, mainly because it's sort of an invitation for stalkers to stalk, and believe me, we really, really don't want to be encouraged to do that.  Maybe all i need is a bit of balance, but at least for me, i don't wanna go there.  Any such advance i would've made would've been unwelcome and spurned, and rightly so.  Maybe it's just for the beautiful people.  But if it is, isn't that a bit unfair?  There's this holiday for pretty people and us ugly people are in the outer darkness.

So no, not a fan really.

Now, there may of course be an element of sour grapes here but i address that at the end.  Whereas it may be OK for the Beautiful People to celebrate Valentine's Day and people may imagine their secret admirers are among the Beautiful People, some of us live forever in the outer darkness and i get the impression that that "some people" refers in fact to rather a lot of people, probably the vast majority in fact.  So yeah, sour grapes maybe but sour grapes i probably share with most of the human race.

Who are the Beautiful People anyway?  Well, apart from the play title, which is oddly uncelebrated on this 'ere blower tangle, they are the people who turn up in adverts and propaganda films with wonderful lives because they chose to vote for a particular party or not to buy Brand X.  They are the people who were listening to the lecturer, who was probably also one of them, in 'Dasein Ohne Leben' (which is this:

).  To be sort of fair, they're also the people with big shiny biceps striding forth into a sunny future where the next Five Year Plan will bring a 300% increase in the production of tractor parts.  Here's one of them:

On a slightly related note, i'm reading 'The Hydrogen Sonata'.

So, these are the Beautiful People and i am not one of them, never have been and never will be.  To be honest i'm not even sure being beautiful makes you one of them.  No, no, no.  I dwell in the Outer Darkness instead, the social Siberia.  And i'm not even blaming anyone.  I'm rambling.  Off to look at more Soviet propaganda posters now, in an attempt to recapture my lost youth, and a lost world come to think of it.

I've decided there is to be one more Valentine's video this year - tomorrow's.  After that it'll be urine strips from here to homelessness.