Live Updating Valentine’s Journal: Where the Bitter Meet the Bored!
Who could get tired of Valentine’s day? A “holiday” that you don’t get off work, that is so insidiously well crafted that to criticize it in the smallest degree is to broadcast your unfitness for pair bonding? Yes, even hipsters hold their tongues, lest they be considered too bitter to remove their ray bans, push aside their ironic PBR empties, and drop their skinny jeans to make painfully sincere love without even stopping to talk about how ironic the whole thing is! Three to seven minutes without rolling their eyes- unless it’s back in their heads…
I’ve decided to gave you guys hourly, and perhaps even more frequent, peek into my ultra romantic sexy life. You will literally poop cinnamon hearts from the sincere joy I will provide you. I will document my unfathomably saucy Valentine’s day starting now, and close up this shit-window into my shit-apartment life tomorrow night at midnight. It’s shitacular! It will literally be funner than death, and all that such a grammatical abortion implies. From 5:00 today until midnight tomorrow night, buckle up for the most romantic thing you have ever heard, ever.
4:49: I am going out for sushi with an equally embittered friend. I will not be going to the sushi place where I once asked out the hot waitress, not because I am ashamed, but because they put sesame on the outside of all the rolls, and I’m allergic. NONE OF THIS HAS STOPPED ME from eating one half of a pumpkin pie just now, straight out of the aluminum pie plate. Seduction level: 4 out of 10.
5:00 OFFICIAL LAUNCH! Steve Jobs comes out in a Black Turtle neck and jeans. Meanwhile, I am departing to go pick up my friend for this sushi we will eat. Positives: It is Sunday and I will not have to pay for parking. Negatives: I will have to update from my iPhone, and the nearby comic book store will be closed. Also, I just washed my car, so there goes that. Also, my cardigan has drawn criticism for being too gay. Maybe I should just stay in? Seduction level: 2 out of 10.
6:00 Out for sushi.
7:25 Okay, yeah, updating every hour is going to be hard. Note to the designers of the WordPress app for iPhone: Work harder.
Sushi was very good, but guess was was on our spicy tuna rolls? Sesame. Same with the BC salmon skin rolls. There has been a sharp upgrade in my seduction level! I’m going to 7 out of 10! One of the servers at Tenshi Sushi (Reasonable prices and great service, located at 304 10th St. NW Calgary) is soooo desperately cute, and so, since I will likely never see her again or speak to her, this transcript is from by brief and unsuccessful romance with Cute-Red-Head- Waitress, who I also hope doesn’t read this and get creeped out.
(banale pay the bill chatter concludes)
Me: It’s busy in here tonight!
Red: Yeah, It is pretty busy tonight.
Me: I wonder if you are getting early valentine’s day business, since it’s on a monday.
Red: It Is mostly couples… and groups…But yeah, maybe Valentine’s rush.
Me: I’m boycotting it this year.
Red: Really? Why?
Me: I’m done with it. This year I’m going to celebrate ME with some potato chips.
Red: That does sound pretty good, actually.
Me: (What I actually said) Yeah I think it will be! See ya!
Me: (What I should have said) Yes, It will be fun. Would you like to join me?
So, with my heartfelt apologies to Cute-Red-Head-Waitress hope I assume will never read this, that was a close to love as I got so far today.
8:12 By the way, the reason I was paying for sushi was because my friend forgot her wallet. Classic Valentine’s antics! Am currently at home and considering some reason to go back to the restaurant and say something. However, every plan results in the same probable outcome. “Did I leave my glasses case here? No? Oh. Okay bye!”
9:55 Perhaps watching “Children of Men” will cheer me up?
10:30 For the last hour or so a friend of mine has been trying to set me up with another friend, who lives in Toronto. Perhaps I should move to Toronto after all. Is that desperation? Moving to Toronto? I mean, not just relationship desperation, isn’t that artistic desperation? Toronto is where Canadian TV writers go to serve tables.
10:50 Re: Children of Men: No.
10:57 Perhaps watching a film about an infertile world gone mad is apropos in some way.
11:34 Too lazy to romance myself if you catch my drift, so I think I’m going to bed. Don’t worry, I promise to update you on the big start to my Valentin’s day tomorrow morning! I’ll be updating from a lecture, so stay tuned!
11:36 Valentin’s? I used to love those ValenTinTin comics!
12:24 AM Guess which guy is still the 55,000th best Angry Birds player in the world? *This Guy*
1:41 AM Volumes 1 and 2 of Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s “Irredeemable”, finished. Once past the the expository nonsense, (the teeeeeeedious expository nonsense) I am curious to find out about The Plutonian’s creepy sexual obsession. Seduction level 4 out of 10.
9:17 AM After a herculean struggle to get out of bed this morning, I arrived on campus to the dawning half memory that my lecture was cancelled for today. Note to self: Find some useful way to get $ 7 out of parking. I should probably elaborate here on singlehood, for those who have forgotten what it is like. Remember the pretty waitress from yesterday? The one who made me feel a swift balls-pang of sexy-regret for not saying something? Well, every day something like that happens, or almost every day.
People love to give you bullshit advice when you are single. Things like “Oh, as soon as you stop looking, you’ll find someone,” but you won’t ever stop looking. Nobody ever stops looking, they have just forgotten the continuous litany of existential crises that the bachelor is forced to ask himself (Ladies same goes for you, but I tire of the awkwardness of ungenendered language).
Coupled folks love to tell you the narrative of how they got together. They love to recount the exact and precise circumstances in which they were drawn together, but everyone has those stories. They are as common as fighting over money, or being familiar with the Superman origin story. Brief tangent: Why did we all turn on the Sam Raimi Spiderman films so quickly? I liked the first two. I thought they were good, and I liked all the details that were in there for the comic book nerds. Anyway, with couples, the more common the story, the greater the effort to make it sound implausible that they got together in the first place.
“Oh, well If I hadn’t been working on the same floor as Susan, we never would have met, and it’s just a lucky thing I moved to Regina 16 years ago, or we would have missed each other!” says Steve.
“It was destiny that Lewis and I turned to eHarmony at the same time or we never would have been matched that week!” Says Louise.
First of all, Louise, you would have been matched with someone else and you would have found other coincidences to see as written in the stars. Second of all, Louise, you should know that my good friend was matched by eHarmony with an alcoholic, abusive, severely depressed, ketamine addict from Winnipeg, and yet they have never made a commercial out of that story- Maybe because they didn’t get married. “I never used to have Special K for breakfast, but now my husband and I do it every day! Nothing numbs the pain of my shattered dreams and jawbone like horse tranquilizers! I love you, Gary!”
My point, if I may return to it, is that single folk are frequently looking for those kinds of coincidences in their daily lives to see as part of the Great Narrative Arc of Their Own True Love. In fact, there was another very pretty woman in the restaurant I was in last night, but I have chosen to focus my attention on this waitress.
BY the way, I have hatched a plan, as suggested by a friend, to go back to that sushi place and drop off a bag of chips (and flowers if I can afford them today) for that waitress and leave her my number. I suppose I am not too old for sweeping romantic gestures, but I am pragmatic enough to know that I will feel less discomfort if I do nothing instead of being outright rejected.
11:38 AM I’ve left the University, after wandering around in the basement of the science buildings, and may I just congratulate the university on an amazing collection of hazardous materials! I also stopped by the art supply store and bought some sweet new Copic pens. I needed more brush pens, and I also once saw a very pretty girl at the store, so, I’m just reminding you of the sort of thing which is constantly on my mind as a single person… She was not there, FYI. Still debating the potato-chip flower operation.
5:31 PM In the last few hours I began my self destructive eating for the day. I went for breakfast with a friend- Yes, you do have a lot of free time when you are single, that is a fact- Then I had a nap- Did I say lots of free time? Lots. LOTS. I also decided to clean my house in case more single embittered folks come over tonight. It was a cursory cleaning because I really needed some of that extra time for additional napping. You will note, I’m sure that by wiling away my afternoon and making antisocial plans for the evening, I have run out of time for Operation Hot Waitress.
I note there is a comment below from a single person who is not bitter (Somebody should snap that person up! A rare find!) about “Why Chips?”, and that is a good question. Allow me first to address your concern within the body of this update instead of replying to your comment. The idea behind chips was to remind her of the conversation we had in which I said I would be celebrating myself today with chips, and then be all cute and encourage her to join me, or think of me whilst she enjoyed chips also. HOWEVER, if it didn’t make sense to you, then it would have been awkward and stupid, because it wouldn’t have made sense to her either likely, and I would have had to try and explain myself through all the stammering and blushing. Consequently, I have cancelled Operation Hot Waitress, and have replaced it with Operation Eat A Hot Dog.
TBinns, FYI, the other hot sushi waitress i gave all my contact info to and told her to get in touch with me, which she assured me she would. Interesting fact: She did not get in touch. At all.
8:20 After eating spicy vietnamese noodles with my friends, we are now watching “Dead Snow”, which is a genre classic of Nazi Zombie films. While one could argue that it is trite for cabin-in-the-woods movies to be self aware, this one has zombies, and friends of friends are in this movie.
8:28PM Oh, and on further consideration you guys, the reason I meet so many lovely sushi waitresses is because I eat so much sushi. But if one of them turned out to be any kind of nerd, I would totally lose my mind, yes.
8:36PM You know what wintery threat I most fear? The terrifying Wendigo. That’s an evil from whence there is no escape, and no skill with snowshoes and backwoods medecine will get you out of that deal. http://www.thecorrectness.com/writing/emergency-car-repair-tips-for-the-fragile-male-ego/
9:18 Oh, I see what happened there, Single But Not Bitter Today! Well, I’ve kind of screwed myself for that particular manoeuvre, but maybe I’ll go back and have sushi there tomorrow, since I have so much spare time it’s appalling really. Here’s a fun idea: let’s all the gigantic nerds on this website see if we can come up with a good way for me to approach a renewed Operation Hot Waitress. Surely, between the whole bunch of us we can get me a date?
Dead Snow has turned out to be totally fantastic by the way, and I am loving the little nods to Sam Raimi, who we all remember best for Evil Dead and not for the Spider Man movies. I’m putting it in my top 10 zombie films.
10:08 PM The ladies are safely gone, and now I can talk smack about them. OPr, instead, I can just sit here and wind down my night on facebook chat, and watch Norwegian special features… Probably the latter…
10:16 PM Dear Samsung: Your top-of-the-line Blu Ray player sucks so much donkey dick. What the fuck is wrong with you? I’ll be purchasing a PS3 which I can’t afford tomorrow, thanks for nothing, you suck balls.
11:48 PM Despite flirting left right and centre on facebook chat, via text, and on our comedy website, I see it as quite likely that I will be going to bed alone tonight. All is not lost however, because I haven’t had to eat one goddamn cinnamon heart and I hate those little red assholes.
11:51 Cinnamon hearts are like punishment form God for inventing candy. I love cinnamon, but the tongue burn!
