Whew... It's Over... Or is it?

So, Valentine's Day is done. Put down for another year. Kaput. Finished. All you guys out there, let's breathe a sigh or relief. Ready. One. Two. Three. Wwhhhheeewww. That felt good, now, didn't it?
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the holiday. The concept of spending a day out of the year with your true love and celebrating the relationship that you have is a beautiful and wonderful concept. Maybe you get to chill out. Get some Chinese take out. Watch whatever's on sports center and the latest horror movie to hit the shelves at blockbuster. Have a few drinks. Pass out on the couch with a chocolate mustache from the pink filled chocolates you picked up. Wake up the next morning and, at least this year, realize its Sunday and smile to yourself that the weekend's only half over. Awesome, right? While this may be a bit of an exaggeration of what I expected the 14th to be like, it's closer to the truth of what I expected than what actually happened.
You see guys, the females out there have a vastly different view of what Valentine's Day means from ours. From what I gathered this past weekend, your average female dreams of a day where you do all of the following at least once: wake up with her in your arms, make breakfast in bed and eat it while staring into her eyes dreamily, let her get dressed in the outfit she picked out after half a week debating between choices and tell her how beautiful she looks until she stops disagreeing with you and blushes, surprise her with chocolates, roses, and the most serious, mushy card that CVS has to offer (nothing funny), Usher her to the fanciest restaurant in town that you thought to reserved a month ahead of time, order her dinner for her, all fancy like, take her on a romantic walk that isn't windy, cold, or in any way, unpleasant, carry her back to the room. tell her your deepest fantasies in her ear, serve wine and appetizers while cooking her favorite meal for dinner, feed her dinner, all sexy like, give her jewelry or some other valuables, think of activities for the night to show you love her, that last ALL night, make it to midnight without crying.
Now, this again is an exaggeration. (I love those, because that's what real life feels like sometimes) Here's the problem with these two views on February's famous holiday. When they collide head on, what results are two very disappointed individuals. Let me give an example. This past Saturday, I went to a total of five restaurants, each of which had waits of between one and three hours to be seated for dinner. The reality is that if you want a seat on Valentine's Day and the pleasure of walking right by the other scowling couples waiting for a seat, you need to do some serious forethought. I know, guys. Forethought, really? Thinking about it beforehand, with our busy schedules of work, sports, beer, and sleep? Well, yeah, that's what I'm suggesting. In all honesty, every single guy that I saw waiting for a seat looked like the most miserable kicked puppy that got thrown into the doghouse, with their dates sitting with crossed arms and an "I can't believe you didn't reserve a seat!" look on their face. It got me mad. I was mad at a lot of stuff.
First, I was mad at myself. I was mad that I was stupid enough to think that Valentine's Day was going to be the easy, Chinese food, chocolate mustache day that I thought it would be... I was mad at being forced into the situation of waiting for a seat. I was mad at women for their putting their significant others into that situation.
The ultimate result of my Valentine's Day was not a bad one. It was very happy, for both me and my girlfriend. We were together, which is what we agreed mattered most, and we expressed our feelings for one another. That's what it's all about. But I was disapointed- in myself, in men in general, in women in general, and in Valentine's Day and what its become over the years of commercialization and pop culture.
So I started thinking of how to rectify the situation. As is the case in most situations, a compromise seems to be the best solution. Guys need to realize that Valentines Day, with its chocolate, hearts, theme of love, etc., is a women's holiday, as much as we want our chinese food day. We really ought to think about Valentine's Day ahead of time. Reserve a place for dinner. Go out and buy that mushy card and that sexy lingerie that you know she wants. Make it romantic for her. For crying out loud, if we can't put our nose to the grindstone and pull something like that off, we don't deserve the women we have.
Girls, maybe you need to give us a break. It's impossible to pull off the perfect date, although every guy wants to outdo the others on Valentine's Day to make their date happy. There will always be a broken high heeled shoe, a mistaken cancellation at a restaurant, or the car that breaks down on the highway on the way to the lobster house. Some things are out of our control, and we can't give you everything, as much as we would like to. After all, our money is finite resource. Just remember that we are trying, and that we love you, seriously.
In any case, with a little bit of thought and a lot of effort, we can bring back Valentine's Day the way its supposed to be- a day to express our appreciation towards the people we love most.

We're all Gonna Die... Wait

We're in a recession. There's no doubt about it, and most folks are getting tired of hearing it. You know the song and dance: It's only going to get worse before it gets better, the world is going to see some scary changes in power, the whole deal. Let's be realistic, however, before we swallow the shotgun whole before we can even pull the trigger. While nervousness is important in specific amounts, it is also a strong liability when we allow it to control our decisions. Because the United States was nervous, it got involved in multiple conflicts that it should not have. Because I was nervous, I missed that just because Prudentius' narrations sound like the Bible doesn't mean they're the same thing, and I ruined my Major Authors final last semester. Because the control guy in the sound booth at Saturday Night Live was nervous, Ashley Simpson's lip-syncing career was cut hilariously short. In essence, when we're nervous, mistakes happen.
Where the typical American is at right now, the world is a scary place, and nervousness is a typical, acceptable reaction to that. But lets not let that get out of control. We need to face the facts and actually look at the bright side of things over the dull.
These conclusions may seem a bit over reactive or unfair, but let me tell you where they came from. This morning, over a particularly delicious cherry danish breakfast, I was reading the free magazine that come with the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe, a truly fantastic publication, called either Globe or Boston... I can't remember. A particular article by a columnist named, I believe, Tom Kearns discusses the inability for people to better themselves during a recession. While I can agree that it is difficult for people to maintain the lifestyle that they maintained before the recession began, I cannot simply lose my faith in human beings to be able to better themselves in any situation. I find Kearns' conclusions highly insulting to the human race, as they seem to be reduced to beings with the inability to think as sophisticatedly as we do. For example, if a school of fish live in a bowl with plenty of room, and then because of thir owners inability to cope with the economy, leave them on the sidewalk, and the water slowly drains out of the bowl due to evaporation, then I would expect those fish to, once they have too little room to comfortably live next to one another, duke it out or panic and make their situation worse.
Now, of humans were in a similar situation, say, oh I dunno, their monetary system was draining slowly but surely, I would not expect to see them spasming and flopping their tails in panic. Rather, I would expect them to make the necessary cuts to their way of life and develop a workable solution to their issues. Defined by our ability to work together and to rationally work our way out of these situations, humans are some of the only living beings that deserve that destinction, but deserve it they do.
So rather than being so preoccupied with getting out of our troubles, I believe that we will have time to slow down our lives and to realize the good things that we have already. These are the good things that can come from a recession, and to imagine that the human race will behave in no other way than to panic and flail is to not have an accurate understanding of our cognitive abilities.