The annual Valentine’s Day post.
February 13th, 2008[This post is getting many many hits from people new to the page, so I’ll just add a short “hi”: I’m a 32 year old professional writer you haven’t heard of, but nothing I write has any real bearing on this post. The oldest parts of the post are the numbered list and the defense of Valentine’s Day. That defense was originally circulated in response to people bitching about other people celebrating the holiday, or about the very existence of the holiday. I don’t care if anyone celebrates it, but I find that bitching loathsome.
The other parts have accumulated around that nucleus, which is why it’s the annual Valentine’s Day post even though its focus is mostly elsewhere.]
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This has appeared many places over the last six years, in a large variety of forms. Its antecedents were message board posts, emails, blog entries, and conversations stretching back to the 90s. When people started requesting a repost or copy of the original thing, I started jotting new notes on the same old crumpled napkin. The current version is an amalgamation of all those things.
These are just things I know. There are other things I don’t know. Don’t go thinking my horse is too high, cause most of this shit was found out the hard way. Some of it I learned from mistakes I made, some from mistakes I saw, some from mistakes made against me.
Substitute pronouns as appropriate.
Click on the thingie for the full post.