arms of a woman

Amos Lee - Arms of a Woman (pops)

My festering hate for this time of year is soothed over ever so slightly by the sultry sounds of Amos Lee, a singer-songwriter from Philadelphia who plays the best Bill Withers/John Prine songs that neither wrote. It's silky soul/jazz/folk, and proof that music doesn't have to be complex to be good, nor does it have to be part of a current trend. Old music is good. People need to learn that.

I got my papers done this weekend. I had to resort to the dirtiest trick in my book to do it, but I did it.

My trick? Wu-Tang Clan, "36 Chambers", put on repeat and played loud. It's inspirational music, dammit. It feeds my rhythm, and I write better to a drumbeat. The only problem is that it's so incongruous to my topic, I have to filter out the lyrical influence. It wold just be too weird to have a paper about the history of the ancient Greek sporting festivals with a thirty-two bar interlude about trying to survive in the ghetto by selling drugs for a living.

I did that paper for World Civ, and I wrote five minutes on how BitTorrent works for my Communications class. The topic itself was easy, as far as the history of it goes, but explaining the technology to a non-geek audience is hard. I have to resort to really weird metaphors, like cops at intersections and gourmet cheeses, to make the theory accessible to the common man.

So back to how much I hate Valentine's Day. I hate it a lot. Having never been in a successful relationship during the season leading up to the dread day, I guess I've never seen the upside to it. Seems like a big waste of resources and manpower that could be spent better.

Then again, I should probably shut up, since an entire side of my family has at one time or another depended directly on the holiday for their job security. You see, both of my father's brothers and one brother-in-law work or have worked at Flowers, Inc., a company that makes Valentine's Day crap in particular, and generic holiday crap overall. You know, balloon arrangements, teddy bears, mugs, flower arrangements and the like.

So if you ever need free or discounted party favors, I'm probably your man.

But I really hate the holiday. It's a giant slap in the face for those of us who aren't romantically successful. It's saying to us, "You are a failure in society". That, to me, is really unfair.

La vie es injuste, though, so I'll quit bitching.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!