A few minor cultural dispatches...

You know, I'm still thinking about Valentine's Day. And the fact that the jewelry store ads seem to be running about 10 to 1 vs. all the other ads out there. And then it struck me: if you're part of a "committed" couple, don't you pool your earnings? So doesn't going out and buying an extravagant piece of jewelry, you know, kind of deplete the pot for BOTH of you?

I don't know. I can't get used to the idea of spending immense amounts of money on what is a minor holiday. Okay, if you're asking someone to marry you, then I could see buying the engagement ring but...if you're sending your family into debt for it, is it really a gift?

(The other ads I really, really hate are the pajamagram ones. Basically, they boil down to this: the dude is saying "Guys, if you don't buy your woman the 'right' gift, you're not gettin' any this v-day. So spring for pajamas, 'cos, they're like, you know, a BIG hint." Ugh.)

And on the feminine side: saw a t-shirt that was all red and spangly and said "Boyfriends should be like dessert: sweet and rich."

Now, lest anyone accuse me of being a humorless feminist: I hate that t-shirt. I have no problem with suggesting "sweet" is a good trait for boyfriends (but from where I come from? Calling a chap 'sweet' is damning with faint praise). But "rich"? Why should that be important? What about "happy with his chosen career"? What about "making a living in a way that he feels does not compromise his moral values"?

I suppose, though, you can't fit the saying "Boyfriends should be compassionate souls who are following their bliss in life" on a t-shirt. And it doesn't make a clever joke.

Still, I wonder, sometimes, if the suffragists and the first-wave feminists and the people like Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth came back today, if their heads would explode over some of the stuff that's out there. I guess we really haven't come such a long way, babies, or maybe it's that we've come such a long way that we're sort of heading back where we started...

I also saw more splodey-head-making t-shirts, this time for St. Patrick's Day. The t-shirts make a few basic assumptions about the Irish race:

1. We enjoy being drunk
2. We enjoy fighting
3. It's even better if you have both at the same time.

Now, I'm (partly) Irish. I've never been full-on drunk but the time or two I've got close it was distinctly unpleasant and not something I'd seek out. And as for fighting: I'm such a conflict avoider that I make Leo Buscaglia look like a Hell's Angel. And it irritates me - yes, yes, I know, St. Patrick's day has become very bastardized in this country. And even people who probably have Orangemen among their ancestors go out and wear green and drink green beer (and I suppose, eliminate green beer, by either oral or urinary means, later in the evening.). But I don't know - it seems just so hollow and sad to me: "Hey! Here's a holiday that we've taken to be representative of a culture that has given us Yeats and Synge and the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells! Let's go out and get totally snockered and maybe get into a brawl!"

Gah. I think too much. (And yes, I know, true Irishmen usually do consume beer. But it's somehow different when it's a pint or two in the evening, as part of your ordinary social life, instead of some frenzied "amateurs night" where people drink mass quantities of really bad American beer - at least, that's what St. Patrick's Day seems to be in your average college town).

another thought: when I was a wee child in school, we used to get green bagels (dyed with food coloring) on St. Patrick's Day. They came in wrappers that said "Shalom and Erin go Bragh" on them. The memory of that makes me smile. I wonder if Lender's still makes St. Patrick's Day bagels.