Valentine's Day is Dead to Me.

Yesterday I had a brilliant idea, inspired by a friend's Facebook post. I was reminded that Valentine's day has gone from the third or fourth most fun day in elementary school to a completely useless holiday in college. I realized the sole difference was the Valentine's shoebox. So in an attempt to revive that same spirit I loved so much in elementary school I woke up early this morning to make a Valentine's card shoebox. This is the story.

The Prep

I had an old Airwalk shoebox that I thought would work well, step one was to cover it up, because only the lazy kids who didn't smell very good had undecorated shoeboxes in elementary school. I decided to use an old edition of the scroll for the base decoration.

I then proceeded to cover it with hearts and words I printed out, the most important of which was my name, what good is a Valentine's shoebox without your name on it. Else how will they know to whom they're giving the Valentine?

Class the First

I didn't have high hopes for the first class of the day, I don't really do much talking in that class so I doubted I'd get much attention other than confused glances, and I definitely wasn't expecting any Valentine's.

I was right. 

The most interested conversation I had about the box went something like this?

 Kid: "What's with the box?"

Me: "I'm trying to bring back the valentine's shoebox tradition, it's in case anyone wants to give me Valentines."

Kid: "Oh."

And then the class ended. I managed to snap this pic before I headed out the door.

(you'll note that I added several candy kiss sayings to the box to make it seem more festive. I couldn't find my red marker, so I had to go with black)

Class the Second

Someone was nice enough to take a picture of me and my shame.

Now this class I was a little more excited for. I do a lot of talking in this class, and I actually know people, so I figured I'd get some comments and at least a few hastily scrawled Valentine's added to the bunch. Still no luck, people just were not interested at all. My favorite comment was from a kid with whom I talk a lot in this class, it went like this.

Kid: "Why do you have that box Alex?" (He uses my name as often as possible in conversations, I don't know why)

Me: "Oh you know, just trying to bring back the holiday spirit, whatever happened to the awesomeness of elementary school Valentine's days?"

Kid: "...we're not in elementary school anymore Alex, we grew up."

It quickly became apparent that using such a large box was a bad idea.

That one cut deep.

Class the Third

Third time's the charm right?

 

I was certain this class would be better, it's about three times the size of my second class, more people means more potential Valentine's cards right. Right, technically. I got about an equal number of comments, but one girl had apparently come to school prepared this Valentine's day, she had a binder full of cards ready, and was quick to fill it out and add it to the box.

Otherwise, like the previous class, all the box served to do was make it hard to work on my desk.

In Summation

After a long hard day, I was excited to get home and tally my bounty.

 Here are the results:

All things considered, I was quite proud of the box.

Lid's off! Let's look inside!

Oh, just as I suspected. One card.

Fortunately, it was a scratch and sniff that smelled like chocolate. Which easily counts as two cards.

What did I learn from this? I learned that apparently the real meaning of Valentine's day has been lost to my generation. Everyone is too busy holding hands with and buying gifts for their significant other to take time to think about the real reason we celebrate this holiday. If we can't even take time out of this busy season to stop and fill out small tear off cards for people we hardly know, how can we possibly hope for a day without war or violence, a day when we can all live in peace? We can't, and until people start thinking about what really matters again, we may never see that day.

Some people may claim that it's time for me to start growing up. I would argue the opposite, I think it's time for people to finally admit that they really haven't grown up at all.

**UPDATE** 

The spirit of Valentine's day is not dead! I returned to my room to find that one of my roommates had taken time to remember what the day is really all about, and had acted accordingly. There is hope for the world yet.

That's so gay

I watched a YouTube video a while back that really got my goat, not because it says "don't say gay" and I like saying gay. Just because to prove what a terrible person you are for saying gay, it uses a really inaccurate analogy. This isn't the lover of the evolution of a language in me talking (though he enjoyed this post as well) this is the semanticist in me talking.


In the case that the people use "gay" in both these videos, it's being used as an adjective. "That top is gay" could have just as easily been said "That top is blue", you know, adjectives. Now they then say, something like that's like saying, that top is so 'girl wearing a skirt as a top'". Bad analogy. "Gay" functions both as a noun and an adjective. 'Girl wearing a skirt as a top" is only a noun, and therefor can't be used as an accurate substitution in this case. Well nouns can be used as adjectives (I call them adjectivized nouns, even though that's not a real term) gay in the cases presented in this video do not represent said "adjectivized nouns" they are simple adjectives. While the denotation of the sentence doesn't change, the connotation changes immensely.


A more correct analogy would be like saying "shoot man, that car is so white!" You could understand many different things from that sentence, the first is that the car is in fact white in color, another is that the car is something that the speaker relates heavily to something else it deems "white" a "white person" something very clean, or the inside of an Oreo (maybe the car was parked between two very large tires). Admittedly this too isn't the best analogy, but at least it's semantically correct. The difficulty comes from the already ambiguous and multi-faceted connotation of the word gay (if Middle English is to be appealed to at all).


To accurately process something that someone says, the key elements to consider are not the audience's understanding of the sentence, but rather the context, and the speaker's understanding of the word, and most importantly, the speaker's understanding of the audiences understanding of the word.


The moral of the story is, Hilary and Wanda were not only semantically incorrect in their assessment of the individual conversations, but showed a lack of understanding of denotative language, in that those being confronted probably never had the noun "gay" in mind when using its adjective form, just as someone who calls a very unattractive, silver colored car "white", may not be trying to offend me, a white person, but may simply be saying it reminds them of the inside of an Oreo which, as their experience would dictate, is also what they commonly associate with the word. The damning facet of language is, it is only useful to the extent that it succeeds in relaying a thought or concept to another person. If language misses it's mark, blame the person for the thought, or the language for its inability to relate it, but just as you shouldn't and don't blame good language for a poor thought, you can't condemn a well intended thought for the language by which it's expressed.

Semper giving up on things

When I originally undertook to start this blog I thought to myself, "what kind of blogger do I want to be?" The answer was obviously the type that comes across as both intellectual and down to earth. The kind of person that people both liked to listen to (or read in this case) and felt like they could benefit from listening to.
Well I have the down to earth part down pretty well, at least I think. Come to think of it, I don't really know what that term means. Like most English words and phrases I know, I didn't learn it by looking it up, I just learned it by hearing it said by a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios until I narrowed it down to my current understanding of the phrase. Which, based on context, I have to assume "down to Earth" really just means, "thinks a lot like I do." So if you find me "down to Earth" perhaps we should be friends.

Where was I?

Oh yes, "semper giving up." Feeling as if I had the "down to Earth" part down, I thought it was time to move on to the intelligent part. Which was more of a leap for me. People often take me for an intellectual, I consider that to be one of my talents; not being intellectual, just tricking people into thinking I am. What I am is witty, which doesn't require intelligence, it requires fast recall. What an exceptionally witty person does is say exactly what you would say given enough time, they just say it sooner than you do. But quick on your feet doesn't apply to blog posts. Anyone can be witty, given an infinite amount of time. The trick for me was honest to gosh intelligence.
 Luckily for me I was taking a Latin class at the time, which happens to be the universal language of smart people. So I thought--again to myself--"Latin! I'll include as much Latin in my blog as possible, then people can't possibly deny my intelligence!" Well four or five blog posts later, I realize I've more or less used up all the Latin wit I can muster. And so continuing in a long line of things that seemed like a good idea at the time (cue OK Go song) I abandoned my dreams of a half Latin, half English blog examining the the finer things in life. And it became a one man forum for me to shout and mumble and spout all the things that really get my goat (there's another one I never quite understood, "get one's goat" what the heck does that mean?). It's my own little padded room if you will.
So welcome, I think it's too late to change the name, but I'll let it sit, it's kind of grown on me. And I suppose it still fits. As long as you're here, you're semper in excreta.