Valentine's Day in Grade School

From: ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu (Nicole C. Michaud)
Date: 15 Feb. 1995

When I was in middle school (6th-8th grades), there was a
practice of sending carnations to each other: a white one to your
friends, a pink one to those you "liked", and a red one to those you
"loved".
Of course, being a SubGenius, I never got any. There would be
girls who got literally dozens of red ones. They were considered good
looking by whatever pre-programmed standards were in place. This practice
was of course designed to make the "different" feel bad, and to reward
the rest for being good little proper girls. I suppose after a few years
of this, one was supposed to feel bad enough to just give up or commit
suicide, conveniently eliminating those of us who sullied their
perfections with our offensive presences.
I was going to try to think of some fitting retribution for those
who were thus rewarded- some sort of Dante-esque Xist torture to be
inflicted on X-Day, but I just couldn't be bothered to take up my
valuable thinking time for such trivialities. Red=blood, etc. Any
suggestions? Ah, whatever, they'll get theirs, I don't have to use up my
slack even thinking about it.

*you have been blessed by a communication from*
-----UBERMistress Rev. Nickie
(or DEATHCHICK when I'm having one of THOSE spells)

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Subject: Re: Valentine's day in grade school
From: dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)

Nicole C. Michaud (ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu) wrote:

* I was going to try to think of some fitting retribution for those
* who were thus rewarded- some sort of Dante-esque Xist torture to be
* inflicted on X-Day, but I just couldn't be bothered to take up my
* valuable thinking time for such trivialities. Red=blood, etc. Any
* suggestions? Ah, whatever, they'll get theirs, I don't have to use up my
* slack even thinking about it.

Leave your own number in phone booths, and when they call, tell them it'd be
fine to do all those things with anyone else, except them.

Find the ones that are married and send than you notes to their houses.
Real smell-purty ones to get the spouses real suspicious.

Just show up out of the blue, insult them, and walk away, like that
character in the Hitchhiker's Guide books.

Take out a personals ad with their NAME on it, and give a phone number to a
local "alternative lifestyle" massage parlor or imbibation establishment.

Get a male friend to leave the intended's phone number in the bathroom of
one of the above sorts of establishments.

Send them flowers at their place of work. From "Bruce".

Send them a copy of pamphlet #1, at their place of work.

This is just top of the head, middle of the night stuff. Be creative in
destruction -- it's a Yeti trait that needs nurturing.

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Subject: Re: Valentine's day in grade school
From: roach@primenet.com (Eric Hillman)

Nicole C. Michaud (ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu) wrote:
*...Ah, whatever, they'll get theirs, I don't have to use up my
* slack even thinking about it.

Unfortunately, I do. Of course, simply crashing your own 20th
hi-skool reunion with a reasonably large tank is always a good place to
start, but that's not nearly personal enough... An eternity being
digested by some horrible Venus flytrap demon, getting uglier and uglier
with every second of exposure to painfully caustic digestive juices and
writhing, stinging spikes would be a step in the right direction, but I
think the part of X-Day I'll relish most is seeing the expression on
their faces when they realize that their entire lives have been nothing
more than shallow impersonations of humanity, that they've had their
priorities more fucked-up than they can possibly imagine, and that in the
end, in the grand scheme of things they rank somewhere between discarded,
semen-stained Kleenex and badger farts...
No, I wasn't particularly popular in high school either...

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Subject: Re: Valentine's day in grade school
From: talysman@jasmine.psyber.com (John Laviolette)

Nicole C. Michaud (ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu) wrote:

* When I was in middle school (6th-8th grades), there was a
* practice of sending carnations to each other: a white one to your
* friends, a pink one to those you "liked", and a red one to those you
* "loved".

Reminds me of a hilarious line from Harvard Lampoon:

"A red rose means `I love you'. A pink rose means `I like you'.
A white rose means `Let's be friends. A transparent rose means
`I have no idea who you are.'"

[ horrible memories of the past snipped ]
[ similar memories of my own inserted...]

I always hated the valentine exchange. About a week before V-Day, there
would be an "art" project to make your own mailbox (really a big buttly
piece of construction paper folded over and stapled into the shape of a
heart, with your name scrawled on it in crayon.)

THEN you had to go buy these cheap-o valentines that came in packages of
100 or so... can't leave anyone out, of course, or they'll think you hate
them...

But, of course, you got in return all these crappy valentines from the
other kids, who only GAVE them to you because it was part of the class
project. It disguised NOTHING! If two people really WERE friends, they
wound up buying special cards for each other, and the farce was revealed!

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Subject: Re: Valentine's day in grade school
From: ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu (Nicole C. Michaud)

*John Laviolette (talysman@jasmine.psyber.com) wrote:
** Nicole C. Michaud (ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu) wrote:

** Yeah, we did that in like Kindergarten and the earlier grades. You don't
** even wanna HEAR about when I was in Catholic school...

*No, tell us! Tell us!
* Rip those nuns another one, Nickie!

Well, I used to get beat on a hell of a lot by the other kids. The nuns
would let them do it with impunity, because I was, well, very different.
Anyway, it used to get so violent, that I would have these very violent
self-preservation instincts kick in. When I got ganged up on, I was
pretty much screwed, but when they were foolish enough to take me on
alone, WELL...

This one time, I was shaking out a mop outside on the steps of
the school. This other kid who used to beat me up a lot was sent outside
with me to clap out some erasers. He started throwing them at me, which
wasn't bad in itself, but I knew that once he ran out, he'd beat the shit
out of me. But I had a mop. He started coming at me, and I held the mop
out in front of me, just for defensive purposes.

This is when my Yeti-self-preservation kicked in, because just
instinctively I cracked him under the jaw with the mop. I knocked a
couple of his teeth out, and there was blood on those steps for years.
But at least it wasn't mine.

This was in the second grade. I got in a shitload of trouble, but
they really didn't know what to do with me, because they knew they really
couldn't justify punishing me for defending myself.
Stuff like this happened ALL THE TIME.

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VALENTINES, SHMALENTINES!
From: rabyd@brownvm.brown.edu (Bobby Rabyd)

sometimes the only time I'm alive, the only time I can really survive, is
when I come. it's like the rest of living is stagnating like the scum on
the surface of a pond. and then there's an opportunity to slide
face-forward into home one more time when , sitting on some fine pecking
chicky's hard nut of a mug, I mutter, "ungh, here I come," and body-all
(from locus solus) contorts and convulses in grotesque, fitful bursts.

-Vera, 2/17/95

NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD WOMAN is accessible as html from the address below.
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/Rabyd/Vera_Rabyd_814.html

"A weekly column that'll gradually, graphically assemble a semi-literary
map of the coptic, neo-goth city of Coven Pride. It's all about love,
labor, and traversing ones days over a landscape of pain. It lets in
unsolicited submissions and keeps out only academes and homophobes."

Editor: Vera Rabyd, Rabyd@brownvm.brown.edu

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