Valentines Day

If you thought forking out for over-priced flowers was enough to contend with on Valentines Day, then spare a thought for fellow lovers in the wild, who have to work much harder to keep their sweethearts happy.

Take satin bowerbirds for instance, who bring a whole new meaning to the saying, ‘something borrowed, something blue’.

Male bowerbirds create spectacular mosaics by foraging for anything and everything blue – flowers, berries, feathers, Freddo frog wrappers – and protecting their stash from competing males. The best artwork, combined with the best dancing (a criteria shared by discerning females of many species), wins. But before you get googling for exhibition openings and salsa classes, it’s worth noting what humpbacks whales, the supposed ‘gentle giants’ of the ocean, get up to. These guys slam their 40-tonne bodies into one another, often for hours and sometimes fatally, until just the victor is left swimming.

Continue reading "Call that a mating ritual? THIS is a mating ritual" »

What’s a nice cliché like you doing in a pick-up line like this?

If you’re practising your ice-breakers for Valentine’s Day, sexperts suggest a quirky quip makes the best first impression. But it needs to be original, which rules out “You’re so sweet you’re giving me a toothache”, “If I said you had a good body would you hold it against me?” and “Don’t walk into that building because the sprinklers might go off”.

One of the most famous lines about love, if not advisable as a pick-up line, is “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”.

Continue reading "There’s more to love than sex.  Apparently" »

Tonight is the night when the lucky get to celebrate their fortune with the ones who make them fortunate. Valentine’s Day. Lover’s day. A day for the loved and a sad day for those who are not. Nobody ever mentions the unloved on this day, and they’re the very people who should be cared for the most. So I’m going to have a go.

So much of life in the 21st century is built on being loved – finding a partner, settling down, having children, making a home. Doing that makes you “successful” as a human being. By extension, not doing that makes you a “failure”. You have failed as a person. You are not loved, you are not important. You have nobody who wishes to witness your life. The heartbroken - the lonely, the loveless - are seen by society as pitiful. They are immature, wounded, insane, not complete. We insult them by telling them they “need help”.

It’s bullshit.

Continue reading "A letter for the lonely this Valentine’s Day" »

We saw this photo pinging around the web yesterday. It’s of a young Bill Clinton, future US president, meeting John F. Kennedy.

So we were wondering - have you had any brushes with fame? Perhaps even before the famed were famous? 

It’s Tuesday. REMINDER: It’s Valentine’s Day. What’s on your mind?

Valentine’s Day is upon us again, which means it’s time for Cupid to whip off his romper suit and start flapping about, making life for the cynical a living hell.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a flying baby can stir up such a mighty butterfly effect, but every time Feb 14 rolls around, I find I’m once again shocked to be enveloped by this pink and red parallel universe.

As the ‘magical’ day approaches you can feel a change in the air.  Subtle but rampant. There’s an undercurrent of urgency, of desperation. A culture begins to develop where the normally self-possessed among us, lose their collective minds.

Continue reading "This Valentine’s Day spare a thought for the cynical" »

As someone who has never been proposed to, but been married twice, I have never received or been given a St Valentine’s Day gift.

Clearly blokes have found other ways of communicating with me. Does it bother me? No. I dispensed with the pretence of caring a long time ago.

Valentine’s Day is for women who like pink, have a teddy collection on their bed, fluffy slippers, and speak, [read ‘whine’] with little girl voices well past puberty.

Continue reading "How many root points will you score on Valentines Day?" »