I think I'm quitting driving.

I hit a motherfucking SUV today. There was damage to my car, and there was a scratch (that came off with a little light rubbing) on the SUV. I fucking hate driving and occasionally life in general.

Here's what the car looks like now:

Emo Conservatives

Now playing: Daft Punk - Robot Rock / Oh Yeah
via FoxyTunes

Oh, National Review, what won't you make up a "liberals destroyed it" myth about?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "War On Christmas," where "every" retail store "forbade" its employees saying "Merry Christmas" to customers out of a desire to "Discriminate" against "Christianity". Most of the examples of stores I've heard this myth about are Wal-Marts, and anyone who thinks Wal-Mart gives a rat's rotting corpse about anything other than cash is retarded. When I first heard of this, I worked at Best Buy. That year, we had gift cards with a Christmas tree on, as well as one with a menorah. The two years after that, I worked at Borders, where we had no shortage of Christmassy, and even Jesusy items for the season. At no point was anyone, to my knowledge, told to say any specific holiday greeting to anyone else, or refrain from saying a specific holiday greeting. I have never bought the utter horseshit idea of a "war on" any particular holiday. It certainly didn't help that it is notorious liar Bill O'Reilly's pet project from late October to whenever he gets tired of hearing himself talk.

Today, on Valentine's Day, the bastion of conservative circle-jerkery known as the National Review Online had a column on how awful Valentine's commercials are. I happen to agree with them, mainly because most of them are sexist and based on an ancient and irrelevent way of thinking. NRO, however, claim the problem is the same as the "commercialization of Christmas and the candy-fication of Easter". Okay, I don't like the commercialisation of Christmas either, mainly because I like to think of that holiday as one of family togetherness and sharing what we have in common. Easter is something I haven't celebrated in some years, so I don't care so much.

But then, the NRO went on to say that Valentine's has been reduced to "mail-order seduction by a nation of salivating Caligulas?" The obvious meaning is that Valentine's Day, in the modern tradition a celebration of love, has lost its original meaning, and this has happened recently as a result of the loss of "traditional morals", meaning of course since "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air. This is yet another example of tories being desperate for a time that never existed and using holidays that never or only recently meant what they want them to mean.

Much like Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day has its origins in a Roman festival. Lupercalia, yet another Roman fertility festival, was celebrated between the equivalent of February 13-15 and was abolished by Pope Gelasius I. According to Prof. Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, no link between a saint named Valentinus (the alleged basis for "Saint" Valentine's Day) and a celebration of romantic love existed until the time of Geoffery Chaucer, when courtly love became popular. In short (too late), Valentine's Day and its historic predecessors have been, and always will be, about fuckin'. And really, I'm not sure why conservatives have a problem with that. Maybe they don't like what they find at every branch in their family tree.

(Fuckin'.)

----------------
Now playing: Daft Punk - Face To Face / Short Circuit
via FoxyTunes