Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Come on, man.

Republicans don’t trust women.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I was promised a recession.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

T R E 4 5 O N

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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50Comments

  3. 3.

    ploeg

    And assuming that fucking it up is the goal for your Valentine’s Day, fuck it up in your favorite way.

  4. 4.

    Linda Featheringill

    Good morning, Mistermix.

    Today is a good day. I seem to have recovered from the horrible bug I was wrestling with yesterday. And I have the day off. And we have enough money in the bank to make the car payment. And the car insurance is paid. And we found new resources for food. And the city water department came out [already!], parked in front of my house, and turned off my neighbor’s water. We are such goody-two-shoes that we took care of our turnoff notice last week.

    Altogether a good day.

    Have a good day Mistermix. Remember to express in a handwritten note how you feel about your beloved.

  7. 7.

    debit

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Remember to express in a handwritten note how you feel about your beloved.

    It’s a good thing I’m currently single, as a handwritten note from me would read something like:

    Dear illegible, I squiggle your indecipherable forever.

    Love,

    Scrawl

  8. 8.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    In my twentieth year of happily married life. Have never exchanged valentine’s gifts. This one anecdote, like a snowy day in January invalidates global climate change, equals all the evidence any person would need my worldview is correct and exchanging gifts leads to divorce and unhappiness.

    ETA: Inspired title, mistermix. “To occupy my time…”

  11. 11.

    Jennifer

    I’ve always been of the opinion that Valentine’s Day exists for the sole purpose (besides a boost for Hallmark and florists) of finally sending the unhappily single over the edge. By the time VD rolls around, the unhappily single have slogged their way through the family holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as the couples’ holiday on New Year’s Eve, and made it through the darkest, dreariest month of winter. VD is scheduled to convince those who have avoided suicide through all of the above to finally get on with it and off themselves.

    Fortunately, I’m happily single, so the above does not apply:)

  13. 13.

    WyldPirate

    Feh…Fuck Valentine’s Day. Just another capitalist plot–heavily promoted by Hallmark– to entice people to spend money wastefully on on worthless bullshit that they will soon dispose of in the trash or toilet bowl.

    Wanna get your sweetheart some flowers? Why by ones that are soon to be brown and dead? get them a pot of dirt and some seeds, a rose bush and a bug or a potted plant that will bloom.

  16. 16.

    mr. whipple

    In my twentieth year of happily married life. Have never exchanged valentine’s gifts.

    Same here. I tell the wife that life with me is the gift that keeps giving.

  17. 17.

    Kryptik

    Being amongst the romantically destitute, I’m gonna go OT instead, and wonder:

    Anyone else seen the new budget proposals that Obama’s put out? Wanting to invest is good, but a lot of the cuts are putting a bile-y taste in my mouth, especially considering the real sacred cows are still virtually untouched…and nearly all the GOP and (if Steny Fucking Hoyer is to be believed) a good number of Dems want to endorse the GOPs plan for even more scorched earth cuts. While the poor little fucking proles suffer, don’tcha know.

    Feh.

    EDIT: Oh…and it seems from general reaction, just about fucking everybody still thinks Obama is personally responsible for increasing the deficit by multi-trillions via his own spending. You know, despite most of it being thanks to fucking rich-level tax cuts and above-the-board war spending that Bush and his cronies hid for 8 years so we could stomach the costs of his bullshittery.

    So…yeah. I’m not too concerned with V-Day when it honestly feels like nothing but hate emanates from this country toward anyone with any kind of fucking sense.

  20. 20.

    zzyzx

    Driving into work this morning, KEXP decided it would be a good idea to play depressing recent breakup songs. It’s one of THOSE rainy Seattle winter mornings. If I had just been dumped, my car might have ended up on a ditch on the side of 520…

  21. 21.

    Southern Beale

    Mr. Beale has to work late tonight so we celebrated Saturday night. We went out to dinner at a nice fish place and had tickets to the hockey game. We went into the pro shop, bought each other some team merchandise, swapped bags on the concourse, said Happy Valentine’s Day, and that was it.

  22. 22.

    liberal

    @Kryptik:

    Wanting to invest is good, but a lot of the cuts are putting a bile-y taste in my mouth, especially considering the real sacred cows are still virtually untouched…

    I’d love it if they cut ag price supports, but since that’s welfare money for Red Staters…

  23. 23.

    Murphoney

    We decided to avoid the rush and celebrated vday last Friday. Made reservations for dinner and then found out when we got there that Buck Pizzarelli and Jerry Bruno were playing (jazz), y’know, over there in the corner, while we ate.

    It’s always nice when a music legend surprises you with some dinner accompaniment.

  24. 24.

    Stefan

    And let’s not forget the awkwardness when you’ve gone on a few dates with someone a few short weeks before Valentine’s. You can’t quite ignore the day, but on the other hand, you’ve only been on a few dates and aren’t really a committed couple yet, so acknowledging it pushes you further and faster than you might want to go at that point…it’s a mess.

  26. 26.

    Nicole

    Finally caught the bug the husband and boy had, so I’m sick. For those of you going out, remember to tip your server decently. My husband waited tables when he was in his 20s and he said Valentine’s Day was always Amateur Night, with lots of diners who don’t go out to eat the rest of the year. Tough night for those who depend on tips.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    We don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day in my house. Mme Omnibus does NOT like the holiday. Her birthday is on the 12th and it is always imposserous to get reservations anywhere because of all “romantic” events planned for VD.

  30. 30.

    Ash Can

    (Reposting my $0.02 because FYWP.)

    Valentine’s Day is for lovers as New Year’s Eve is for drinkers—an amateur hour rip-off.

    LOL! That’s beautiful. Over the course of dating and marriage, M-80 and I have been together for 22 years, and we’ve never felt any need to bother with Valentine’s Day. As far as we’re concerned, the best thing about Valentine’s Day is that Bottle Rocket has fun at school at the parties and comes home all happy, lugging a haul of sweets. That suits us just fine.

  32. 32.

    Redshirt

    It’s interesting (to me) how often in the animal world it is the males that have all the color and must do all manner of tricks in order to get the attention of a female. Whereas we humans have inverted it, entirely. See: Makeup, for example.

    The best example are the birds of paradise in the Pacific. If you saw “Planet Earth” you know what I mean.

  33. 33.

    Phoebe

    Can’t we all just eat candy?

    To me this holiday is about giving candy to people you like, like my aunt for instance, and also about fabulously garish combinations of pink and red. That’s why I don’t hate it. Because otherwise? Oh. God. Of course.

  34. 34.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    It’s early February 1997, and I’m in a fairly depressive state about my personal life. My last relationship had ended badly and it was my fault and I wanted to apologize to her, so I invited her out to dinner as a “just friends, I need to set things right with you” gesture. I want to point out that I had made this clear when I asked her. And we set a date for the following Friday.

    Everything goes nicely–good conversation clearing the air, laughing, a couple of good beers, a quality meal, etc. I drop her off at her apartment thinking “good, we can be friends again,” and I drop by the restaurant where I work to ask a friend for a favor only to discover it was slammed, because, of course, it was Valentine’s Day.

    She hated me afterward when it became clear that I wasn’t trying to restart things, and I deserved it, because when we had been going out previously, I’d done something really special for her on the previous Valentine’s Day, and I should have been aware of where we were on the calendar. I’ve never had trying to make something right go so horribly wrong. Fuck Valentine’s Day.

  37. 37.

    Morgan

    @Stefan: Really? That’s more or less the situation I’m in and ignoring it seems to be working out pretty well for me so far. Perhaps I’m a couple dates shy of the line where you have start being obligated to do something about it, but neither of us has said anything about it so far and that’s a-okay with me.

    Of course, I’m not particularly big into VD anyway. The whole idea seems a tad absurd to me. In that vein I came to the realization a couple days ago that I probably will never, ever take someone out to a restaurant on February 14th. I love to cook anyway, and the idea of struggling to get a reservation so you can go to some restaurant that’s probably added tables to pack in as many people as possible for whatever prix fixe steak/lobster meal they’ve decided to offer, with probably mediocre food and service to boot because they’re slammed all night, all because somebody decided that’s when every couple in the world is supposed to do romantic shit all on the same day because if you don’t then YOU DON’T LOVE ME, really just has no appeal for me.

    I will gladly make an awesome meal from scratch, drink copious amounts of good wine, watch some cheesy rom-com, and then make sexy time, all in the comfort of my/her own home. I just refuse to participate in the crass commercialization of romance by paying a fortune for roses or going out for dinner. No sir.

  39. 39.

    suzanne

    My husband and I are a) on too tight a budget to go out for some expensive dinner and b) sick of crowded restaurants on Valentine’s Day anyway, so we are dropping the girls off with Grandma, packing a picnic, hiking up a mountain, and planning on making out at the top. I’m just too much of a minimalist for jewelry, I’m trying to lose baby weight, so I don’t want any chocolate, and I don’t really give too much of a shit about flowers.

  40. 40.

    suzanne

    And, as a die-hard R.E.M. fan (NEW ALBUM NEXT MONTH WOOOOOOOOOOOOT!), I wholeheartedly approve of the post title.

  42. 42.

    PurpleGirl

    Don’t do Valentine’s Day most years; my special day is February 13th. This year it was the 32nd Anniversary of meeting my SO at a Star Trek Convention we were both working — I as a general aide to the sponsoring committee and he was providing nursing/medical coverage for the convention goers (he’s an RN).

  44. 44.

    Phyllis

    Gave the SO a Guy Harvey tshirt, mainly to assist him in fitting in at his workplace, which we have determined is the land of the redneck goober. We had breakfast at Cracker Barrel Saturday, and it was crowded as hell. When did Valentine’s turn into the “take the entire extended family out to celebrate” holiday?

  47. 47.

    frostys

    @Ash Can: If your family ever comes to include a little girl, I believe “Ladyfinger” was the name of the device we used to blow up our HO scale minitanks back in the woods.

    To this day I don’t know how we managed to avoid burning the whole neighborhood down.

  49. 49.

    Joe shabadoo

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus):
    Oh did you deserve it. I can’t think of a much more assholish thing to do then go out with your ex on V-day just so you can tell them that you just want to be friends.

    Valentines day, like most holidays, people get wrong by focusing on the commercial parts of it. A small gift or flowers takes no time (or a large gift for that matter) and are the easy way out. It takes thinking, time and effort to do something thats actually romantic and usually costs less money.

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