Be My Valentine

What did the French chef give his wife for Valentine's Day? A hug and a quiche!

See, now the post can only go uphill from here.

Yesterday work tasked me with writing a Valentine’s Day article, stuffed with romantic advice. I told HB and he said, “That’s like having to do a poo in your hand then rub it on your face”. Evidently he’s pretty romantic (and also correct).

I asked two other friends for romantic stories and got these:

• “I remember one time Burger King sent me a meal for two voucher… I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time, so I just went in there and ate the whole meal by myself.”
• “Do what I did that year when I wrote ‘I Love You’ in hair on the wall of the shower.”

So I thought I’d better scour the internet for advice. I found 10 pieces of passable advice for work, and so much crappy Valentine’s advice. Fetch the heart-shaped vomit bucket! Here are the 20 worst suggestions. I couldn’t whittle it down any more (with my heart-shaped whittling stick. Do you whittle with a stick?)

1. “Write love notes on post-its and hide them in places like the closet, stick one on the mirror, in the pocket of the bathrobe and other such other places.”

Designed for couples, but equally good for singles: simply get drunk and do the notes the night before to ensure they are truly surprising the next day.

They made some suggestions:
“You light up my life” – on a lightswitch
“You make me hot and steamy” – in the shower
“You’re dreamy” – on the pillow

I made some suggestions as well:
“You turn me on” – on every power button of every appliance in the house, for emphasis
“Thanks for not being fridge-id” – on the fridge
:You’re clogging my hearteries” – on the full-fat salted butter
“Sorry about these corny notes” – on a bag of popcorn or, really, anywhere.

2. “Prepare a DVD with a collection of the most romantic Valentine tracks and gift it to your beloved.”

This is a fantastic idea, but I have improved it even further – why not cut all the most romantic scenes from your Valentine’s favourite movies and splice these together into a two-hour romance-fest?

Then she’s got something to watch while the cricket’s on.

3. “Recreate your first date… act like you did that time and just forget what you are now – in short, travel back to the golden moments.”

Presuming your first date a) went well, b) wasn’t at Burger King and c) was a proper date and not a drunken hookup, this isn’t such a bad idea.

Although the drunken hookup could be quite fun to re-enact, I suppose.

“What are we doing for Valentine’s Day, sweetheart?”
“Getting fucked up on Vodka Cruisers and having unprotected sex!”


4. Make Everything Heart Shaped

This pops up on a lot of sites. “Present her a heart-shaped diamond!” “Cover your bed with heart-shaped confetti!” “Cook her a meal made entirely of heart-shaped food!”

For full effect, present a heart-shaped diamond in heart-shaped box, whilst wearing a heart-shaped bow-tie with tiny hearts on it, with your hair styled into a heart shape and Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ on the stereo.

If you’re really talented, leave a heart-shaped turd floating in the toilet.

5. “Kiss her on her forehead and whisper the three magical words in her ears.”

“Abracadabra! Presto! Alakazam!”

Kind of hard to whisper those, though, on account of their being all magical and exciting. Try not to shout on accident, shouting isn’t very romantic.

6. “Wrap a red ribbon around yourself and gift yourself to your lover on this valentine's day.”

What? This is a terrible gift., your lover already gets you every day. This is like saying, “Tonight, we’re having meatloaf again… with a parsley garnish. Why are your pants still on?”

7. “Scatter rose petals all over the bed, then lead her blindfolded to the bedroom.”

Somehow, despite all odds and good sense, this Valentine’s tradition survives – presumably because nothing says “I love you” like waking up with half a rose bush stuck to your butt.

Also, why blindfolded? So you can lay her gently on the bed and she can go, “AAACKK AHH what’s that weird soft thing? Is my bed COVERED IN BUGS?”

On the plus side, it gives her something to clean up on the Day After Valentines Day.

8. “Sit down with your beloved and make each other's sketch – there will be some funny moments, but mind you they will be worth cherishing.”

This begins as a romantic idea, but quickly degenerates into “I can’t believe you think my nose is that big”.

9. “Would you like your life to be read as a romantic novel? You can get a romantic novel customized with you and your beloved as the hero and heroine… each novel will include personal details.”

Ally spun around, cry of outrage dying on her lips as she surveyed the man standing shirtless before her. His ebony skin gleamed in the sunlight, thickly muscled forearms flexing as he steadied himself against the side of the rocking boat. Lustrous black curls dripped languidly onto his smooth forehead, and a spark of animal lust ignited in his treacle eyes as he insolently raked his gaze over Ally's slight form.

"Oh, HB..." she sighed.

10. “Re-enact one of the all-time great love stories, like Romeo and Juliet.”

THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

11. “Invite your girlfriend to dinner. Put a ring in her glass of champagne. As she sips the drink, she will be surprised to find the ring. Immediately go down on your knees and propose.”

Actually she will not be surprised to find the ring, because champagne is clear. Red wine would be a better bet for this, or possibly beer (Guiness would be ideal).

But make sure she doesn’t choke! That’s not romantic. For most people.

12. “Pot a plant that will grow and loom for her.”

Quite apart from breaking the living-thing-as-gift taboo, who wants a plant that will “loom for them”? How big of a plant are you giving this poor woman? “HAPPY VALENTINES DAY I LOVE YOU HERE’S A BANANA TREE.”

Have just realised this is probably meant to be 'bloom', but still.

13. “Grant three of her wishes this Valentine’s Day – tell her whatever she demands will be granted. The one who loves you wouldn’t demand much!”

Well, that’s risky.

14. “Go out on a boat.”

Boats are romantic as fuck.

15. “Write her a love poem.”

Poetry is the most romantic thing ever, especially if you can manage to make it rhyme or steal one off a famous poet and hope your Valentine isn’t literary enough to call you out on it*.

If you decide to do your own, the traditional “Roses are red, violets are blue” format works well:

“Roses are red, so is this wine / Drink the whole bottle & say that you’re mine”
“Roses are pricey, picnics are gay / I’ve kind of fucked up this Valentine’s Day”
“Roses are red, so is my penis / Play your cards right & you might get to see it.”

16. “Make a booklet of romantic vouchers and give it to your Valentine – they can redeem the coupons whenever they like!”

There’s nothing technically wrong with this suggestion, except that it is so barf-inducingly corny that you may never get beyond the first coupon (“Give her a scented massage whenever she likes – even if there’s a game on!”)

17. “Write a cover letter to apply to be his girlfriend/wife”

I love this suggestion, possibly the most out of all the suggestions.

“I am writing to apply for the position of Wife, and also the supplementary positions of Missionary, Doggy Style and Woman On Top (part-time only).”

18. “Send him on a Love Hunt – small or large in scale!”

The idea is that you send your Valentine on a wild-goose-chase around town, to romantic destinations: the spa, the CD store (where his favourite CD is on hold for him), and finally to a nice hotel room. This is actually quite appealing if you were to make the clues cryptic.

Fuck knows where he’ll end up.

19. “Insert candy surprises into balloons before inflating them - add a folded-up Valentine's message then inflate each balloon.”

So in order to find the love messages, your Valentine has to pop each and every balloon (or wait until, a week later, they resemble nothing more than a grandfather’s ballsack (I assume, having never seen one of these)). Grand! Nothing is more romantic than the sound of rapidly popping balloons. Why not go the whole hog and splash out on a piñata?

This could also be combined with the chap who wrote, “"I knew that I had to do something sweet and special... I cut about 100 hearts out of pink, purple, and red paper”.

20. Play Truth or Dare

Because there’s a game that never goes wrong.


*Here’s one I prepared earlier:

When our eyes first met across the room, I felt my heart ignite
A tiny spark that lit the dark, an ember warm and bright;
And as I came to know you, that tiny ember grew
‘Til all my heart was burning, and all my thoughts of you.
And as we journey onwards, through every squall and storm
The fire that burns inside of us will always keep us warm
And if you should ever doubt me, or think our love has died,
Just remember that small ember, that flame of love inside.

You are welcome to use it on your beloved. If it gets you laid, you owe me $10. That's how art works.

2012 Begins*

*like Batman.

Hello! Belated Happy New Year! Belated Merry Christmas!

Just a very quick post* as several people have emailed to make sure I'm still alive as they have not heard a peep out of me. This is the peep. Peep! Peep! I'm not dead, I've just been alternately away, internetless, ill and full o' excuses.

*ha ha, no it's not, it's really long and now you have to read it all

I'm moving house in 18 days! It will be lovely. House is in Chatswood (or Birkenhead, if you're a real estate agent who can't read maps) and is surrounded by native bush like a delightful urban clitoris. It is at the bottom of a hill in a cul-de-sac. I have just Googled "cul-de-sac" and apparently the direct French translation is "butt of bag", which is why Tolkien used the name Bag End. In ancient Athens and Rome they were useful because you could herd the enemy into them then fall upon them mercilessly, although I doubt they do a lot of that in Chatswood. Sometimes I think people just hop into Wikipedia and make stuff up.

Anyway, the house is in a butt-of-bag and has a native reserve on one side and a bunch of neighbours on the other. HB and I did a drive-by the other day - sadly the neighbours were not encouraging. One looked about 65 and furious with the world for keeping him alive that long, and the other one had a boat in the driveway. It was called "Wet Dreams" (the boat, not the driveway). I'm not sure how classy our new neighbourhood is. House photos to come!

Library internet keeps disconnecting mid-post, annoying. Ooh! The computer of a Chinese gentleman sitting about three tables down from me just spouted, "Engagement Ring" in quite loud robot English. I wonder if he is planning to propose?

Anyway, here are some holiday photos! HB and I did road trip down to Christchurch, which is 9 hours car, 3.5 hours ferry, 5 hours car. Sadly the bunks in the ferry are too narrow to entertain any suggestion of joining the nautical equivalent of the Mile High Club (the High Seas Club, perhaps). Has anyone joined the High Seas Club? Tell me, I will be impressed.

We played a lot of alphabet games, one of which was so involving that HB missed a turnoff and we went to Raglan by mistake (one does not go to Raglan unless it is by mistake, generally) and had to double back; we also played Tractor Horse Beehive, which is a game where you have to see a tractor, then a horse, then a beehive and then you get a point (similar to the games of Tractor, Horse and Beehive, but vastly more complex). When you see them you shout, so that everyone knows they are yours.

The game started slowly because of five hours of no beehives (we added in llama, plane, moving train and mating animals as surrogate beehives, but there were not many of these either) until on the second day we hit a rich seam of beehive just above Marton. HB saw it first. I was not happy. Luckily, I made up for it by making an immense amount of puns about Bulls. Have you been to Bulls? The town slogan is "Herd of Bulls? A Town like No Udder" and they have charming signs on all of the businesses, as follows:

Sorry about the poor quality photo, it was out the car window. There are also signs on the police station ("Const-a-bull"), the Subway ("Submerge-a-bull") the RSA ("Respect-a-bull"), the $2 Shop ("Afford-a-bull"), the real estate agents ("Live-a-bull"), the doctor ("Cure-a-bull"), the pharmacy ("Indispens-a-bull") and many, many more. You're just lucky the library internet will only let me upload three photos today, because I took photos of all of them. I will show you the other ones another time.

We also went through the delightful town of Whatawhata, the Maori pronunciation of which inspired a minigolf business ("Whatawhata Putter") and the English pronunciation of which inspired a country song about heartbreak in small town New Zealand ("Whatawhata Shame"). HB refuses to move there and open Whatawhata Putter. He said I was Whatawhata Nutter and I snorted out my nose and said "Travers-a-bull" and he almost put me out of the car.

There are actually quite a few good country songs to be written about small towns in New Zealand. Offhand I thought of "It's not Levin without you" and several more which I have now forgotten but wrote down and will share with you later, when I find the piece of paper I have written them on, although I suspect HB has thrown it out.

Anyway! Here is an arty photo I took with new camera (Christmas present from HB for himself, but I am allowed to use it also):

It is of a waterfall. I think it's very Zen. It is slightly blurry because life is slightly blurry.

On the way back up (don't worry, I have to go to work soon so this post is almost finished) we stopped at a beach on a little side road. Someone had been there before us and arranged a whole heap of driftwood sticks standing straight up in the sand, like this:

Photo by HB - it out-Zens my waterfall but I am trying not to feel miffed about this.

While HB was up one end of the beach taking proper grown-up photos, I was busy with my own project down the other end. It is tentatively titled "Crab Graveyard" and it is probably the best art ever:

Other prospective titles include "Watery Grave" and "We Will Fight Them On The Beaches".

(I don't know why the photos are a bit fuzzy, I think I might have saved them in an odd format. They are actually really sharp and good! You know, in case anyone wants to purchase a print.)

Anyway I really do have to go now. Backson! With more photos! I am going to go and peer over the Chinese gentleman's shoulder to see if he is proposing yet.

Wieners of the Week (Month)

Man I have not blogged in AGES. Sorry about that.

Here's a new crop of Wieners of the Week, which should probably be Wieners of the Month. Up to you. They're your wieners.


Eduardo - Eduardo is a miniature kune kune house-pig! Currently he exists only in the minds of our flatmates, but if he existed in reality he would look like this:

Or possibly like this:

I know. You are wondering how such a blatantly delightful little beast could be a wiener of the week. It is because he has caused RUCTIONS. Flat ructions. Here is how we all feel about the Eduardo:

Fleur: came up with the whole idea. Has visions of joyous pig-gruntlings dancing in her head. Imagines us tucked up on the couch on a Sunday night watching Downton Abbey, Eduardo nestled between us, little piggy snout resting gently in a half-eaten avocado.

Ben: has had a house-pig before, but a full-sized one. It was called Mr Pig and he used to condition it in the bath, "so it was cuddly". Ben backs the idea of Eduardo but in a slightly more practical fashion, mentioning things like calling other people who have bought Eduardos to ensure that their pig, three years on, is still a miniature pig. (We do not want to purchase a masquerading piglet that then becomes enormous).

HB: thinks that miniature pigs, even ones as sweet as Eduardo, should live outside. He does not seem to realise that this invalidates the entire purpose of a house-pig. HB has visions of coming home to a bathroom floor covered in suds and pig dirt, with Ben sitting in the bath with Eduardo, joyously shampooing his (Eduardo's) hair and singing a little pig song - while in the other room Fleur throws out the remnants of the shoes Eduardo has destroyed and cleans up the many, many messes of Eduardo.

HB is probably right.

Sausage Korma - This is what we had for dinner on Tuesday. We should have gone to the supermarket.

Mmmm, delicious.

It was actually quite nice, but we should probably still have gone to the supermarket.

iPhone Autocorrect - It always corrects 'its' to 'it's', regardless of grammatical correctness. (If anyone comments to say "But shouldn't it always be it's?" then you aren't allowed to read my blog any more.) The other, more puzzling autocorrect is that 'reading' always becomes 'Reading'. While I am sure Reading the place is very nice, I do get a little more use out of reading, the verb.

As a side note to that, Internet Explorer's habit of announcing, "You've opened a new tab!" is also fairly wienerish. I know, IE. This is not a surprise to me! I did it! Just then! On purpose!

Our Office - Not the people in the office, most of whom are quite pleasant, but the office itself. Many people and computers plus a small space and no aircon has managed to transform the whole floor into some sort of wonderful holiday resort for bugs. They come into the building up the nose of someone from editing, step outside into the office and think, "Cor, ain't it luvverly in 'ere!" (They are sort of Cockney germs.) And then they set up camp in the keyboards and the telephones and the air conditioning vents, and mutate into larger, better versions of themselves, and as they stand around at their weekly Germ Life Coaching meeting, congratulating one another on the life they've built for their children in this carpet-walled utopia, I begin to sneeze.

We had a Health and Safety person come round once, but as soon as she stepped inside the office her head started to spin around and ectoplasm shot out of her nose.

Library Toilet Chatter - this was a woman who had obviously decided to be polite and not answer her phone in the middle of the library - which I approve of - but for some reason had ducked into the bathroom, thus creating a very odd social situation which ended up with me sitting in a stall for 30 seconds counting my fingers, then going to the downstairs loo.

The Takahe - it is an endangered New Zealand bird. It is, in fact, so endangered that it thinks it's entitled to eat other birds. It ate a duckling. I realise that duckling are not endangered and takahe are and circle of life, blah blah, but a duckling? That bird is a jerk. There is an article about this hideous act of birder (bird-on-bird murder), if you need more information. The headline is "Footage emerges of bird eating another bird" and I think this is the best headline ever. It's so... tabloidy.

That is all the wieners we have time for today! Because I have to go to work, and also nag HB about buying a bucket to put the Christmas tree in. He is handsome, but not very good at remembering to buy buckets.

Forgot to feed the larvae.

Hello! I am a busy bee.

The thoughts of a busy bee.

I've been super busy with home and work and learning to polymorph (so that when I go into work and someone says, "Oh, can you please write up this article about the debt crisis?" I TURN INTO A DRAGON*) but things are starting to settle into a nice routine.

If we had a magic clock like the Weasleys of Harry Potter fame do, my hand would spend a lot of time lingering on Library, Work, 'Up to Fucks' (which is my colleague's delightful way of saying 'not doing much': I think it is short for 'Up to Fuck All') and Doing 15k on the Motorway.

Vaguely related question: Does anyone except me take a vitamin?

Handsome Boyfriend (HB, like the pencil) insists I take a multivitamin every morning, presumably so that I don't crumble up like an Egyptian mummy (or, in fact, a mummy of any nationality - did you guys see that story about the Russian man who dug up 29 dead bodies, dressed them, and kept them around the house? I forget if he mummified them himself or if they came pre-mummified).

The multivitamin thing initially annoyed me because I felt like a show poodle or something but then I realised it helps with the polymorphing.

Between getting dropped in town at about 8.20 (HB starts work at 8.30 and we carpool as a) his work pays for his petrol and b) I do not have a car) and starting work at 12 I tend to muck about in the library, because it has free internet!

The only annoying thing about the library is that if you need the bathroom you have to pack up your computer and bag and charger, etc. etc. And that is what I am going to do now.

***

On the way to the bathroom I walked past a display on Crafts (including a book is called 'Indie Crafts', because when one is crocheting, it should be clear that one is crocheting ironically) and my eye was caught by a book called 'Maskwork'.

I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I totally am because the cover promises a level of awesomeness rarely approached by books on crafting:

Mask entitled 'Help! My Beard and Mohawk are on Fire!' or possibly, given the staunch pose, 'My Beard is on Fire? Fuck You.'

My favourite mask was Fig. 108. 'Raven with Two Beavers.' I think I might make it later.

Why would you sad when you were wearing Raven with Two Beavers?

That's it for library news but now, the New Zealand corner! Cue powhiri.

Firstly: if you're voting in the election and don't know which voting system to choose, I have written a helpful and humorous guide over here. It discusses MMP, FPP, the other ones and the Baboons of Inequality.

(Colleague came over yesterday and said, "What are you working on?" I replied, "Funny article about voting systems." She said, "Voting systems aren't funny." I said, "Well they will be." She thought for a bit then said, "You're sort of like a monkey... in a cage, aren't you. And every so often they come and poke you with a stick and say, 'Be funny, monkey!'")

If you don't give a shit about the elections but aren't done reading stuff on the internet yet, there is an NZ version of the Onion, called The Pigeon. Sometimes I think Pidgeon should have a D in it but then some people spell hamster 'Hampster' and no-one invites them to dinner.

*No-one makes dragons write up articles on the debt crisis.