I must protest.
Valentine’s Day is coming up and once again, I am single. No, I’m not protesting that, rather I’m protesting the advertising that makes it painfully clear that I’m single.
Jewelers, florists, chocolatiers, lingerie-ists, haberdashers, fishmongers and dining establishments of all kinds are flooding the airwaves with messages about getting that someone special something special, preferably from them. They also subtly imply that if you don’t spend money on a suitable gift, you’ll die alone, but I digress.
That’s all well and good. I have nothing against retailers making a buck. However, the advertisements all smack of coupleism, which is not only a new word I made up, but the practice of making single people feel left out.
NOTE: I was going to call it ‘one-is-the-loneliest-number-ism’ but that was just too damn long.
Rather than concentrate on the negative (chili for one, yet again tonight), I decided to make that negative into a positive, by multiplying it with another negative.
NOTE: I think that’s how it works, right? Negative times a negative equals a positive? That’s why I majored in English and not bridge building.
I hereby submit that single people should get their own holiday: St. Frutus’ Day. St. Fructus was a wealthy young man who gave away all his stuff and went to live as a hermit on a mountain side, possibly because he couldn’t get a date.
Yes, there were a lot of saints that did that, but none of them had as great a name as ‘Fructus.’ Actually, it makes a great fake swear word as well. Fructus!
St. Fructus’ Day would be August 14th, an even six-months after Valentine’s Day and would be celebrated by having single people give each other computer games, comic-books, action movies, and lightsabers (or any other Star Wars merchandise). St. Fructus’ Day greeting cards could also be exchanged (May your Epic Shoulder Piece drop in your WoW raid!) and restaurants could have Fructus’ Day specials (a bowl of chili and a Snicker’s bar).
So, enjoy your boring, love-filled Valentine’s Day. I’m looking ahead to a happy Fructus Day!
Cheers,
-Jason
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6 comments:
Recomended Reading as well
http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-warned-you.html
Enjoy
You can't just move the day of a saint.
So either choose someone like St. Maximilian Kolbe (problem: He is already patron of the family, so he won't like being the singles' patron, too) whose day is 14th August (maybe there is a hermit, on that day, too) or stick with St. Fructus for his cool name and story. Problem: He can't retroactively have died another day, so you need the 25th October; which is in [nothern] autumn so even better as a holiday for the non-couplists.
Why can't you move it? We move'd Jesus' birthday didn't we? We move holiday's all the time for national (and time off) convenience. Just have a St. Fructus Day Actual and St. Fructus Day Celebrated on the calendar.
Or, you could just go ahead and make up a Saint, as well as a background story, leaving you free to worry asbout dates of things you actually care about. You are after all a writer of fiction. :)
Well I like Oct. 25th, but that's because my b-day is the 24th, and so it would make it a holiday during the scorpio sign .. .
I say we go one better, move it, but make one of those pain in the ass holidays. Every 3rd friday of October.
Just because, Single people can live on a flexible schedule and do what they want when they want.
So why peg an exact date.
If you wanted to go even worse, make it the 2nd, 5th Friday of the year. :)
MOO
Ah, you can move anything you want, they even moved the moving of the time delay (AKA daylight savings time, because golf season is longer when you have a private jet).
I think it should be one of those really bizarre formulas no one understands, so everyone just looks on the calender. Third Tuesday after one and a half weeks past the soltice, or something like that. Then if you feel like doing it a different day, you can just tell everyone it's whichever day you want it o be, anyhow, and no one will know better.
Oh, and I finally deciphered the words on the billboard. It was a valentine ad, for something vaguely resembling metromatch.com, although I still wasn't paying enough attention to be sure I got it right. They didn't have a delivery service, I'd bet, though.
Fun article. A touch pessimistic (which doesn't mean it's wrong).
Well, when I researched some patron saints, I found many saints that had provinces that were thematically unrelated: St. Agatha is the saint of nurses and bellmakers. As for moving the date, well the other posters have some good ideas on that one. Personally, if it give St. Fructus more 'air time,' so to speak, then I don't think moving his day is a bad thing :)
Good points, Jerron and TX-Val!
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