"HAIL PSYCHO BITCH RISE ABOVE YOURSELF / YOU ARE MY FUCKIN' VALENTINE"
--My Fuckin' Valentine, Buck-Tick

This is going to be Justin's official Valentine's Day entry, but there's some very important stuff to be taken care of before I get to all the pinkheartstuff.

A quote off of MTv: "Greenday and Blink182 may be some of the most popular pop-punk bands today, but they probably never would have existed without the Ramones, the original pop-punk band." I hate having my illusions ripped through. Why couldn't they have said "Sex Pistols" instead? I try to ignore the fact that stuff like Blondie and Billy Idol are pop-punk. I admit the Misfits and Bad Religion when people argue with me, and wish that they didn't. But to have this one shoved in my face... I have decided that I will cling desperately to the idea that nothing I hear on MTv about music can be true. Cover my ears, la la la la la.

Next, a discovery made in my British Lit class. To gain a full understanding of the profundity of this revelation, you should be at least passingly acquainted with Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, his magnum opus. Don't bother reading the whole thing, unless you're a masochist, or a Lit Major. Am I being redundant? Anyway, check Act II, Scene iv, Act III, Scene i, and the end of Act IV if you want to follow along with my thought process - check out this Demogorgon fellow. Shelley uses him as the embodiment of a process, change, what must be, the ideals of revolution, all sorts of stuff like that. He really only tells people what they already suspect, or simply refuse to admit. My epiphany revolves around the character in modern literature who performs this same function: Dr. Seuss' Sam, of Green Eggs and Ham fame. Think about this for a second. Sam is a process, the ineivitable realization of the protagonist that eating green eggs and ham is simply destiny. He might as well be a hallucination on that character's part, both sides of the conversation being internal, with an outside representation to give the process form and lend a sort of poetry to the process for the reader. Which only goes to show what a literary genius Dr. Seuss was - he essentially expands Prometheus Unbound into a 62 page format that even a four year old can understand. Brilliance. Sheer brilliance.

I realized something while I was drunk last night (and Justin edges ever so slightly towards the actual entry with that statement). For those of you who don't know, I type one handed. Laura (closer, ever closer) describes it as "the creepy spider thing." So my right hand darts back and forth across the keyboard, all five fingers moving around. My thought: There's something oddly beautiful about typing certain words, "stupid" being chief among them. "Are" is another one. It goes up in magnitude when I'm drinking, but it's always there to a certain extent. It just feels really good to type certain things. Stupid is nice because all five fingers are involved - index finger for s, middle finger for t, ring finger for u, pinky for p, ring again for i, index for d, and thumb hits the space bar. Poetry in motion, much like being blinded with science. I'm sure that all the pianists among you (cuz I'm sure there are oh so many) are immediately thinking of certain pieces that it just feels good to play. It's that sort of thing.

Pre-Event Fortune: Listen carefully to a child's counsel.

So. Valentine's Day. The one day a year now that I wear my "Love Sucks" t-shirt. It doesn't really make me bitter that I don't have anyone on V-Day. I mean, I have a 20 year streak going on that one, and why ruin a good thing? I'm not even envious of the people who are in relationships. What pisses me off are the stupid Jersey bitches who infest this campus hanging around in University-sweats-clad groups OhMyGawding over who got roses and who got candy and who got a surprise visit. Hate. HATE. But who am I to pass up an opportunity at bitterness and drunken comisseration? So when Chris got off work at 1:30AM (technically no longer V-Day, but whatever), we threw our little antiRomance shindig. All the full and partial roommates were there: Me, Chris, Daniel, Laura, Becca, and Wayde. Rob also stopped by to add to our merrie troupe. Sgt. Pepper has nothing on our club, despite our not having a band for it. While Laura sat around on my bed, I explained to her, in order, the catalog of sad stories we had collected in the room.

Down at the bottom is Daniel's whole thing with Michelle. It's not that it wasn't a sad story (twas in the extreme), it's just that we've heard that story too often of late. Next up from there is Laura's boy not being present. No good that he's far away, but at least she's got one. Rob's story was a sadder version of hers, as his girlfriend had been supposed to visit, but couldn't due to the snow. So extra dissapointment on top. Then come Becca and Wayde, who simply don't have anyone, and tried to find them with the going out. Becca might edge Wayde out for sadness because she's stuck on a useless human being as well. Then come Chris' stories, wherein he likes two people who don't seem to return the feeling - one a frat brother (and thus incestuous anyway), and one a straight boy (and thus useless anyway). The story where I have no one except for all the complicated stuff with Sasha (who wasn't there anyway) is sort of squeezed between Chris', sort of like a musical interlude, sans music. It's mostly that high because I have a personal bias for it. But the saddest story of all, I told Laura, was that I liked her, and she liked me back.

Which is true. We've gotten a couple of chances lately to hang out alone, which we haven't really done since the group project we did. And it was good. Really good. It's really been over a year since spending time with any girl except for Sasha has been this enjoyable. As for her liking me back, I have a highly accurate sense about this sort of thing. One might even call it keen. That, and there's been outside confirmation from Chris and Daniel. But I prefer to think it was mostly the keenness.

Either way, I told her that this was the saddest story. I think she knew where the whole thing was leading, given the smile that started when I got to the subject of saddest story. But yeah, I like her, and she likes me, and... and nothing. She's got a boy who she's been seeing for something like two years now, and they're not planning on breaking up anytime soon. So there lies the dilemma. I compounded things by covering all the remaining bases: pointing out that I make a terrible boyfriend, that I wasn't actually drunk enough to let all this slip without thinking and was just using that as an excuse, that I'm always out for sympathy and that even my explaining this was only a further attempt to get it. And that I would respond to any musings by telling her that she shouldn't risk changing anything with her boy, and hoping that she will anyway.

The extra-ironic part was that this was no longer V-Day, by any stretch of the imagination. I had managed to make things a little more awkward between us, and also remove all the "Maybe if..." hopes that I had. And Chris spent his effort on the two unresponsive objects of his affection. So, as we realized after everyone else had left, we had passed through Bleeding Hearts Day unscathed, only to dash ourselves against the rocks of some random morning. We've just got the mad skillz, yo.

Latest Fortune: Stake out a place in the shade and enjoy.

And then there was a riot.

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