[As I have nothing new to say on the topic, I shall merely republish my post of exactly a year ago]
When I were a lad, the point of Valentine's Day cards was that if you really fancied somebody but were too shy to say it, you sent them a Valentine's Day card ('VD' card, for short?) but you weren't supposed to sign it, which is pretty pointless when you think about it.
Somehow, the whole 'tradition' has now been completely subverted and it's just another reason/excuse for buying champagne, chocolate, a greeting card and some flowers for your existing partner. Can anybody pin down when this happened? It must have been over the last twenty years or so.
Other important dates in history that I'd like to pin down...
1. When did we adopt the European tradition of having fireworks on New Year's Eve? That must have been in the late 1980s sometime.
2. When did rappers stop wearing baseball hats back to front and start wearing them the right way round? Some time in the 1990s, I'd guess.
3. When did people stop putting their qualifications on their business cards? I think I can pin that one down to 2001 or thereabouts.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Obligatory Valentine's Day rant
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24 comments:
just another reason/excuse for buying champagne, chocolate and a greeting card for your partner
you miserable sod !
anyway - (1) is very clear, it was 1999
as for (3), I have used business cards since *ahem* the 1970's and never put qualifications on 'em
Related to (3) - when did people start to put qualifications in email sigs sent internally within corporations?
My company had a ban on qualification on business cards for years. I suspect it was because the younger workers were all better qualified than the older bosses. Things have changed and all the bosses have MBAs, so qualifications are on cards now.
ND, I came back to the UK* in 1993 and was surprised to see a lot of fireworks on New Year's Eve 1993.
* After nine years in a European country where they had 'always' had fireworks on New Year's Eve.
Anon, do people do that? That is sad.
MA, my current employer stopped in 2001, which was really annoying for me 'cause that's the year I completed my alphabet spaghetti.
No1, Fri 30 dec 1988
No2, Tue 7th May 1991
No3, Mon 5th Sept, 2000 ( on the return to work after the holidays )
Glad to be off service, as I said to the wife this morning :0)
PB, thanks, most helpful. Do you happen to know when we stopped being scared of global cooling and started being scared of global warming?
Got me there, I can give you a year, 1988.
It was a hot summer in the US and James Hansen was giving testimony to the US senate and claimed we are all going to fry, which people where at the time as they had run out of ice cream, and the TV news went big on it.
Everything changed when marathon became snickers and opal fruits became starburst. My world was turned on its head, it will never be the same again.
I blame all the mongs who couldn't tell Stork from butter.
The old valentine tradition is sorely missed.
(1) It was great fun to send someone an anonymous card and watch them speculate (with great pleasure) who could have sent it -- especially if they had no idea. For those of us too old or married to ever reveal anything to the recipient, it was a delightfully wicked yet innocent delight.
(2) For those now younger than I (from my memories) it was fantastic to get even one card, let alone to be able to say to envious friends that one had received two or more.
What a shame. This is one reason why the whole financial mess gets me down often. Some very good things are being deliberately destroyed by stupid, arrogant humourless f***s (ie the Prime Minister) and they will never be recovered.
Everything is commercialised these days: Valentine's day, Mother's day, Father's day, Easter (which is actually holding out well, due to being a moving target, I suppose) etc etc. Valentine's Day is like Christmas - designed to make the unhappily single even less happy in the hope they will console themselves with retail therapy.
A working date for a fear of global warming is 1991, at which point it was mainstream as in Blue Print for a Green Planet Seymour and Grardet, which had been published in 1987 and had achieved international sales.
Magazines such as The Ecologist had been at the theme earlier but I think you can regard those as establishing the market whereas Seymour and Girardet were exploiting a mass market and derived considerable benefit from encouraging hysteria.
The Cold War was more or less over and so legitimate concerns about the state of the planet became the new focus, which is why I quote 1991 rather than the actual publication date.
As one reviewer on Amazon puts it:
Readers must read critically, however. Several times I found the authors overstating their case. One wonders, for example, if more widespread paper recycling programs would really make this industry, "hugely profitable, and the scourge of paper litter would vanish." (90) I was simiarly skeptical of their discussion of the Borana tribe, a people who "live almost entirely on milk--with a little meat from time to time" but do not suffer from heart disease usually associated with a high fat diet. (70-1). These and similar exaggerations, perhaps made with best intentions, are dangerous ammunition for opponents who wish to discredit environmentalists.
WOAR, good call, 1991 sounds about right but can you be more specific? I'd assume the tipping point would have been sometime in late summer when it was warmer generally, maybe 17 August 1991 or something?
The restaurants all rip you off with crappy set menus too!
How about when did we adopt the American "trick or treat" beggery. Seems about 1990 ?
When did it stop being a crime to park on the pavement ? About 1990 ?
How long will it be before xmas shopping starts the day after Easter
When did people start thinking that money was more valuable than food, water and air. 1694 ?
Also when did IT stop becoming a useful tool of production and turn into time sapping comfort blankets for commercial slaves (email, twitter, iphone, blackberry's etc) If you look at the Apple adds there is nothing they claim they do that actually helps produce anything. It pains me when I get on the 1845 to Wokingham and immediately everyone, yes everyone bury themselves in an iphone or blackberry playdrug
Does your wife have a view on the VD card issue ?
When did Great Britain (a proud name) start being called the United Kingdom (an intensely silly name).
My guess is around joining the EU but have no firm proof.
RS, I don't know about t&t. Her Indoors insists on the card-choc-champers-flowers.
NC, England + Wales = England & Wales; England & Wales + Scotland = Great Britain; Great Britain + Northern Ireland = United Kingdom. UK is something different to GB and I am a pedant. Although I'd prefer to be able to say "England".
"When did Great Britain (a proud name) start being called the United Kingdom (an intensely silly name)." After the Act of Union (with Ireland) i.e. 1801. Referring to the country as England or Great Britain is just an inaccuracy of the sort common among such an unintellectual and ill-informed people as the English.
Well the title then was the "United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland" then but this did not prevent Queen Victoria calling it Great britian & I think either shortenings were reasonable. If anything, since we are no longer united with (most of) Ireland the UK title is not valid & the GB one much moreso than in Victoria's day.
Can anybody pin down when this happened? It must have been over the last twenty years or so.
Coincided with the dumbing down of education.
Ever realized how alone you were on Valentine's Day?
My gf dumped me yest, and now im celebrating V-Day by myself, depressed.. What great timing.. I just had to rant about it.
"Louisiana"... Never mind mate, they're like buses, there'll be another one along in a minute... Or, if you're lucky, three at the same time. :-)
When I was a kid, we wrote several valentines day cards with lots of witty (for kids) limericks full of innuendo. Anonymous. It was great fun.
Now it is a way for a woman to guilt-trip / abuse a man into supplicating to her and a way for the man to undermine his relationship by killing her respect for him.
Looks like the "modern" V-day thing is older than you'd think: http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/1455/
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