Personal Crap

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Meaford, ON, Canada
A big lover of all types of media, from Movies to Video Games, Books to Music, Television to Stage.

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Okay, here's the deal: Blogger has been having problems with their counters as of late, specifically with those blogs marked as having adult content. Now, this particular blog was marked as adult content since it is written as a train of thought, including all the rotten language that flows through my head constantly :) As a result, I marked it adult for that, not for having pornographic photos all over the place. So, simply put, be aware that there is language on this blogsite, and if you are offended don't bother complaining because I wrote this so that you'd know it before reading, and it is your fault if you don't believe me and decide to possibly get offended anyway. If language of a vulgar nature might make you upset, go read something by Disney.

12/18/10

3rd BGJ Blog Entry

Misc. Ramblings - February 14, 2005 - 07:45 AM.

I was looking at the Sunday Star yesterday, and noticed that they have joined the ranks of papers and magazines that present language the way it is spoken, without censorship or bias. The front page of the Ideas section of the paper had, in an oversized summation of the front page article, the word 'Bullshit,' capitalized as you see here. I, upon seeing this, felt my respect for the Star grow considerably. The reason, I feel, has to do with truth. As unfounded a belief as this is, I feel that with all the media manipulation going on in our time, a source of information that has the balls to say things in plain, simple, easy-to-understand language that reflects the way real people talk and discuss current affairs, is more respectable because of it. Some of you may know that I have a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, and it is another example, a magazine that, for the most part, isn't afraid to say what it means. Of course, entertainment magazines in particular do seem to have an easier time of being so upfront with their language; Rolling Stone and Premiere have been putting whatever language the quotes include into their publications for years now. EW isn't quite ready to do it all the time, but I've seen a few 'shit' and 'fuck' comments between it's pages. Good for them, I say, let's talk plainly, toss away the lies that are plaguing the world, and get down to reality.
 
Which brings me to reality television. I watch basically one reality show, 'Survivor.' I used to watch more of them; 'The Apprentice' comes to mind, as well as a few others that lasted just one season. I can't bear to look at some of them anymore, mainly due to the fact that reality basically sucks. Let's watch a show where already successful business women and men vie for a position that pays them even better than what their own profitable business does! Yahoo, a show about success greedy for more success! Or, even better, let's watch as a really attractive guy gets to choose a potential wife from a bevy of extremely attractive money-grubbing women, and even better, let's watch him neck and feel up all the women before he decides! Yeehaw, there's some good television! And so REAL! I bet there are tons of really attractive people out there who just will never be happy unless they are proposed to in front of a national audience, because we all know that attractive people just can't seem to get any dates without help.
 
And that, Dear Reader, brings me to Valentine's Day. Isn't it sweet, how men and women strive to find the perfect gift that says 'I love you,' hunt around for the perfect place to have dinner, and look forward to a night of unabashed fucking, all in the name of romance? Here is the real origin of Valentine's Day, as written in the book "Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things", Charles Panati, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, NY, 1987, pp 50-52:
 
The Catholic Church's attempt to paper over a popular pagan fertility rite with the clubbing death and decapitation of one of its own martyrs is the origin of this lovers' holiday. 
 
As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans engaged in an annual young man's rite of passage to the god Lupercus. The names of teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion, for their mutual entertainment and pleasure (often sexual), for the duration of a year, after which another lottery was staged. Determined to put an end to this eight-hundred-year-old practice, the early church fathers sought a "lovers" saint to replace the deity Lupercus. They found a likely candidate in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier.
 
In Rome in A.D. 270, Valentine had enraged the mad emperor Claudius II, who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that married men made poor soldiers, because they were loath to leave their families for battle. The empire needed soldiers, so Claudius, never one to fear unpopularity, abolished marriage.
 
Valentine, bishop of Interamna, invited young lovers to come to him in secret, where he joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had the bishop brought to the palace. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods, to save him from otherwise certain execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and imprudently attempted to convert the emperor. On February 24, 270, Valentine was clubbed, stoned, then beheaded.
 
History also claims that while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight. He signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that would live long after its author died. 
 
From the Church's standpoint, Valentine seemed to be the ideal candidate to usurp the popularity of Lupercus. So in A.D. 496, a stern Pope Gelasius outlawed the mid-February Lupercian festival. But he was clever enough to retain the lottery, aware of Romans' love for games of chance. Now into the box that had once held the names of available and willing single women were placed the names of saints. Both men and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing year they were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn. Admittedly, it was a different game, with different incentives; to expect a woman and draw a saint must have disappointed many a Roman male. The spiritual overseer of the entire affair was its patron saint, Valentine. With reluctance, and the passage of time, more and more Romans relinquished their pagan festival and replaced it with the Church's holy day.
 
Well, off you go people, get those cards out and sign them. You're either celebrating a murder or the willing sluttiness and sexual slavery of 4th century women. Can't see why you shouldn't honour the day at all! Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Make sure you get what you deserve!

1 comment:

  1. I did post a comment yesterday - don't know what happened!
    Have to say I totally agree with your take on both reality t.v. and valentine's day.
    Thanks for saying it like it is

    ReplyDelete