What Is Love?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more....

I'm sorry, but it's impossible to read or say that without the song coming to mind.  Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to you if you're into that, Happy Pity Party Day if that's your bag (really, though?), and Happy Tuesday to everyone.

If you've somehow managed to blank on what day is, and are currently panicking about what to get for your special someone, well done, you've managed to forget one of 3 days you must remember when in a relationship (Valentine's Day, their birthday, your anniversary).  You're probably rushing around trying to scrape together dinner plans and a gift, so I appreciate you taking time out of that to read this, I really do.  To thank you, I will give you a gift suggestion he/she will love:  my custom tattoo sleeves.  As a special Valentine's Day promotion, they will come included with your name on the inside of the right arm so your significant other can pretend to have an immortalized poor decision.  It's the perfect gift.

Unless your name is Brad, in which case, this will do.  But you should probably get her chocolates too.  And a teddy.  And a nice dinner.  Basically I'm saying that this isn't a very good gift.

Back to the question in the title though, and it's a tricky question.  I love lots of things - Doctor Who, bacon, basketball, tea, etc. and I certainly have love for many people, but not in the way this day stands for.  I absolutely love my parents, my sister, and several of my friends, but sorry guys, don't expect a card.  As for love-love, I've only been in love once, so I'm drawing from a quite limited reference pool.  I wouldn't even be able to define what "falling in love" means; for me, all of a sudden I just realized that I was indeed in love.

The tricky thing about love though, is what defines "being in love"?  I'm not going to pretend to have the answer to that; after a near-2-and-a-half year relationship, I'm not proud to say that, in all honesty, I don't think I was still in love with my ex near to the end (although she does now fall into the aforementioned several friends for whom I have love category, so there's that.).  All I know is that it's a wonderful thing to have, so if you're in a loving relationship right now, take a moment to think of just how wonderful your significant other really is; don't take them for granted.

I don't have a real reason to include this photo, I just like it.

A few things that pop to mind when I think of Valentine's Day:

• I don't believe in the idea of soul-mates; I find it extremely cynical.  Think about how depressing it really is to imagine that there's only one 'right' person for everyone.  In all probability you would never meet them.  I also find that people use the "they just weren't the one" excuse far too often.  It's not that they weren't your soul-mate, it's either that it didn't work out, or you're in all likelihood an idiot.
• Valentine's Day was my anniversary with my ex back when we were dating.  I wish I could say that I had ingeniously planned this so as to cut down from 3 super-special days to two (if her birthday had been February 14th, it would have been perfect), but the reality is that our first "date" was at a Canucks game.  But, the take-home message here guys is that you can cut down on those special days if you want a shortcut; just make sure that it's extra special.
• I must give a shout out to Alexandre Bilodeau every year on Valentine's Day.  Two years ago today he delivered Canada it's first Olympic gold medal on home soil.  Merci M. Bilodeau!

Just makin' sure it's real; I'm gonna sell this on Ebay.

So again, Happy Valentine's Day.  I for one will be working, and then coming home to the series premiere of Cougar Town, which is, in my opinion, pretty much perfection.  On a side note, I want Laurie from Cougar Town to be my Valentine.

She seems excited about it.

Sadness Piranhas

The saying goes "Don't let the little things get you down".  These are most definitely wise words, but some days it's just not possible.  The little things seem to have planned to gang up on you, gnawing away like a pack of piranhas, until you feel stripped right down to the bone, leaving only a skeleton of throbbing profound sadness.  This was one of those days.

This is a sadness piranha.

It started with waking up at quarter to ten.  Now, any other weekday, that's fine, but Thursdays I have classes begin at 9:30.  Thank goodness that I have the car today though.  Otherwise the process of waiting for the bus would have been absolutely miserable.

Now if I were trying to make up the tedium that wore me down today, the car would have been out of gas, but the sadness piranhas felt that would have been too obvious.  Instead, by the time I got up to the school, all of the street parking was taken.  Seeing as I refuse to pay to use the parking lot, this was a problem.  I know, I know, this is really, at most, a minor inconvenience, but driving back and forth, seeing a bumper-to-bumper wall of parked cars was reallllllly not what I needed.  I checked along 49th avenue, along Cambie St., along whatever is one block east of Cambie; I even checked the half-block of residential parking that can technically be parked in that is always available to fit 8 cars or so, and, wouldn't you know it, also all full.

After 10 minutes, I was finally able to get a spot and that ordeal was over with.  Time to go to class...  For a discussion about the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Grahib situation.  Debating that everyone has the capacity for evil with a classmate who felt that all these people had some sort of undiagnosed mental psychoses was pretty much the opposite of what I would have liked to be talking about.

In case you were wondering, the opposite of that topic is Doctor Who.

By the time classes were done, I felt a vague numbness to my surroundings; uninterested would be a good description.  This is the point where the piranhas have breached all your defenses.

I got back to my car, and the song that was playing on the radio was Mumford and Sons "The Cave".  I'm pretty sure it's a happy song - I'm not certain, but there's a banjo; that's usually a giveaway - but a funny thing happens when the sadness piranhas are gnawing away at you:  they slip into your ears and contort all music so that it sounds sad. enveloping you in an acoustic blanket of depression.

Everything feels colourless; just shades of gray (and realizing that I had inadvertently dressed entirely in grey did nothing to quell the feeling).  I stopped by Kits High to pick up a cheque for the basketball tournament the team I coach is in this weekend, and ran into a former teacher of mine.  We chatted briefly, and she said "Well it's great that you seem to be doing so well!"  I do a good job of disguising my piranha attacks, you see.

I nearly hit breaking point when I drove up to the gym.  The entire block that I always park on was being occupied by production vehicles.  Who needs production trucks parked on a one lane side street?!  Seriously, what the fuck?!  Again, I know, objectively it's a minor inconvenience, but for the second time today, I was feeling despair while looking for parking.

But then a funny thing happened.  Not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in at odds with the rest of my day.  I had an appointment to help my sister's friend study for her physics midterm, which is tomorrow.  A quick sidebar: Although I have only one actual sister, I think of two of her closer friends as sisters as well.  This is one of them.  In the spirit of equal, unconditional brotherly love, I jokingly rank them.  End of sidebar.  Helping her review physics while chatting about whatever popped into our minds - at one point the conversation was me telling an anecdote about dumb blondes who managed to somehow confuse computer programming as being connected to geology.  That's a true story, which is rather saddening in and of itself.

The funny part was that doing this obliterated all the building sadness from earlier.  By the time she felt entirely confident with the material, I was feeling mentally back to normal.  So, thank you Emily; I don't know how you did it, but I am awarding you the title "Emily the Sadness Piranha Vanquisher".

They don't look nearly as intimidating like this.

Also, for this feat, you have been upgraded to sister #1:

Why isn't my life like TV?

I'm currently reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, and in it, he makes an interesting - and I would argue, true - observation about reality television.  To paraphrase, Klosterman argues that reality TV is in fact 'reality', not in the sense of art imitating life, which is the supposed intent of reality programming, but instead life is imitating art.  What I (he) mean(s) by this is that the product of reality TV being culturally relevant is that the audience then tries (whether consciously or not) to emulate the character archetypes depicted on these shows, thus making them an accurate depiction of reality.  It's an interesting viewpoint, and I find it hard to do anything but agree with Klosterman.

In my case, it's not reality TV that produces this effect, but instead scripted programming.  There are certain shows that, when I watch them, I want to exist within their fictional universe; I want to be a part of Cougar Town's cul-de-sac crew.  No, the impossibility of that wish is not lost on me, but still it exists.

See, they're saving me a spot at the end of the couch next to Ellie.

The TV technique that I wish could be utilized in my life the most would have to be the montage.  I will once again borrow from Cougar Town here.  The following video is in my opinion, perfection.  Nothing needs to be known about the show to appreciate this montage:

The song is "Leave Your Boyfriends Behind" by Leona Naess, and is an example of what I consider a montage song.  I listen to it and can picture a montage of events of my life that haven't happened, nor are likely to.  I bring this up because the song that's been in my head all day is another such song.  I was told to listen to The Weepies "Gotta Have You" at around 2 A.M. last night, and it's been replaying in my head since because it's an amazing song.

I then find myself wishing my life could montage (it's a verb now) into a montage (back to a noun), ideally about me and the girlfriend who I had recently been in a fight with, both separately reflecting on the positives of our relationship, either through quick flashbacks of the two of us laughing together in a sunny field or at the beach(silently of course; the music would be over the audio), or by looking at photographs that evoke similar memories.  We would then both realize the need to reconcile and simultaneously set out to find the other, meeting each other somewhere in the middle because that's how TV logic works, leading to the two of us sharing a meaningful kiss that, if it were a TV show, would be referred to by viewers as the 'Tyler-and-[insert name here] moment'.

This is, of course, absurd in oh so many ways.  For one, I don't have a girlfriend.  So when I say that I wish I could experience this situation as a montage, it implies that I wish to have a serious enough fight with the girlfriend I don't yet have to warrant such a montage being situationally relevant.  For another, I wouldn't be able to experience the aforementioned non-existent girlfriend's part of this montage; as I'd be busy what with holding up my end of the montage material, thus making the end product not quite as special from my own perspective.

If you haven't noticed the most absurd part of this though, don't worry, I'll cover it now.  Having my life contain montages would involve, and in fact require,  the moments in between these large, supposed 'important' moments of my life to be skipped over.  I say supposed because it's the little, every-day moments that make interpersonal interactions special.  Consider my imaginary relationship montage above:  How did I meet this girl?  Why do I like her?  Are we a good couple, or are we mutually destructive?  What was our fight about?

I really can't answer any of those questions, as I don't have even the slightest inkling as to the answers.  I don't know anything about this relationship or fight other than the fact that this mystery girl is apparently worth reconciling with.  Our reconciliation and high points aren't even audible; the music is the only sound playing.  So I don't even know what we talk about when we're together.

Back to the importance of the small moments though, one of my tattoos is based off of the song "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx A.M., and the words 'Open Your Eyes Life is Beautiful' are tattooed onto my right shoulder.  I'm not going to pretend this is some deep viewpoint; an identical sentiment can be found in the timeless cliche 'Take time to smell the roses'.  I fully acknowledge and embrace this mantra when I'm picturing my montages. I wouldn't truly want an edited relationship; the little moments, the ones where this mystery girl's presence alone makes me feel happier, will be far more cherished than our time spent laughing on the beach and affectionately staring into each other's eyes, speaking without words due to the music.  I guess that this is the message was trying to get out from the moment I started writing this entry: Open your eyes; life is beautiful.