substitute

WHEREAS, the Feast of St. Valentine has repeatedly proven offensive or inconvenient to the majority of the American People;

WHEREAS, the Feast of St. Valentine has been demonstrably debased by unseemly commercialism and rapacious greed;

WHEREAS, all attempts to celebrate the Feast of St. Valentine in the common way debase the true arts of love;

WHEREAS, the above factors in combination have continued to cause strife, discomfort and misery in the Greater Portion of the American People;

WHEREAS, the activities surrounding the Feast of St. Valentine debase and shame the American People;

AND WHEREAS, a more appropriate and honorable claim to that day exists;

NOW, THEREFORE, we decree that the celebration of the Feast of St. Valentine be hereby ABOLISHED;

AND WE FURTHER ORDER that the Fourteenth Day of February each year be rededicated to the celebration of the birth of Joshua, Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, who, by the grace of God, ruled his people wisely and well for more than twenty years.

via boutell by kfringe at http://kfringe.livejournal.com/282716.html

I have received this communication from "Jemifer" or "Jenifer" (spelled both ways) on myspace. It looks like Jem (Jen) has had a whole lot of coffee, because this all obviously came out in a rush. It's rare for someone in a calm state of mind to misspell her own name. There's a lot to chew on here, and I will have to consider my response to her very carefully. Clearly she's a passionate person and a serious thinker, and someone who is thinking outside of her box.

I have met "net-friends" many times but haven't had her experience of feeling nervous, or wondering what they'll look like in person. And I did let go of my expectations years ago, about damn near anything. But she's probably a lot younger.

She does bring up a good point about dishonesty, particularly where size is concerned. I have a refined and quite serious fetish that requires my girlfriends to be at least three meters tall and not less than 20 cm in diameter, and I can't tell you how many times some hopeful bachelorette has insisted that she meets these requirements only to disappoint — INSTANTLY — on first meeting.

I'm not sure what Jem/Jen asks of me, or any of us really. The call to adventure is clear, and she's an encouraging person with a touching faith in the victory of love over the petty barriers of distance, appearance, and language. However, the language itself becomes a problem and it's hard to say how we should respond to her.

Anyway I'm at a loss. Maybe one of you can help her out, or at least find out how she spells her name.

Hello am Jemifer...............
In meeting net-friends for the first time, just remember that they are probably as nervous as you are! Its always a shock for me to finally SEE someone Ive known "o nline" for ages, but it will pass quickly.
Let go of your expectations - the expectation that i will like you (and the corresponding fear that i wont), and the expectation that you will like me (and the fear that you wont). The beauty of the net is that there are no looks, no accents, no physical barriers to filter through....
Just the essence of ones soul. You look on the net for women that would bring out the beauty of their hearts, and yet you bring in the same expectations that might have caused you to fail in finding a mate in the real world. If women lie to you about their size and their looks, then that is because you expect them to lie to you. If you could see my inner beauty without tainting it with your physical expectations, you would be amazed at how many Gems you could find on the net.
On the NET, you have the chance to behold the beauty of ones spirit.
Accept people for who they are, and stop expecting them to be who you want them to be, and you would be surprised how many beauties will break your doors down. Try it, and you will have the same success both on the net, and on the real world.So cyber relationships that turns into real time relationships can and do work.If you go into it with the right attitude then you wont be disappointed. For me, look s didnt matter. I fell in love with the way person opened up to me.
sweetie.
And if u care for a private chat also u want to know more about me u can contact me with this e-mail address
jenifernxtblock4u@yahoo.com....hope to hear from u soon..........

Jenifer.....

It's funny to put "lunch" instead of "love" into pop songs. I think Henry Rollins turned me on to that. It's even funnier when you spend 4 straight hours doing that in Tijuana while waiting for your friend's car to be reupholstered, but you'll have to trust me on that. Hey! You've got to hide your lunch awaaaay. Etc.

A new discovery is law -> lol. This is especially good when applied to pompous speeches, or in this case anguished Bible passages. From the Book of Romans, Chapter 7, verses 22-23 (NIV):

For in my inner being I delight in God's lol; but I see another lol at work in the members of my body, waging war against the lol of my mind and making me a prisoner of the lol of sin at work within my members.

Lunch is the lol, folks.

The Greeks have four words for love. There is agape, or spiritual love; storge, which is familial love; philia, which is the love between friends; and of course eros, sexual love.

I have problems with all four. Eros is a wasteland for me and always has been. My family is a source of constant trouble, much of which I cause myself. And I've been spiritually dead for quite a while; agape was a comfort for years but has been the worst of all in the last year.

My current problems are with philia. I value friendship highly — perhaps too highly — but I don't think enough about its meaning. Assumptions are dangerous; the expectations for spiritual, familial, and sexual attachments are defined much better.

Friendship, though? People use the word "friend" to describe every level of intimacy from acquaintance to sexual partner. The rights and responsibilities of friends are defined by each person individually. One person may believe that "friend" means someone who would die for you, and another thinks it's just someone with whom he's friendly. To complicate matters, many people distinguish among their close friends, a circle of friends, and acquaintances but don't make that explicit, and use the word "friend" to describe all of these. I've seen complete splits between friends over the definition of the friendship, where one believes that a friend is someone who lends money, or shows up at the wedding, or stands up for you no matter what, and the other has a more casual view of the arrangement.

All of this confusion can occur without anyone being malicious or even neurotic. The meaning of friendship is fluid, and assumptions go unchallenged for years. What's worse, people change their idea of friendship sometimes without realizing it. Think of children and their lists of friends and enemies written down in deadly seriousness. You're my best friend; she's my second best friend; he's my enemy. Thirty years later they may have only casual friends and be deep in family life.

I'm in a strange position. I'm forty and single, without much family. I have friends from college who live mostly in Los Angeles; I rarely hear from them, and I find it hard to connect with them now. Years ago they moved on to other stages of life and left me behind. Part of the bond of friendship is shared experience. When I left the entertainment industry, when they all got married and bought nice houses, when they found their own new social circle, I didn't belong so much. On some nonverbal level the friendships got awkward and were discontinued except for a few letters a year. I learned a lesson, but not well enough.

I have some friends from jobs, too. Once again, these mostly fade after the environment is gone, in just the same way as the college friends. Once again, the people I knew there changed their lives (as I did too, probably), and the bond got weaker as we had less in common.

My current circle of friends are mostly regulars at a coffeehouse near me. They're a lot like me in some ways: intelligent, verbal, interested in ideas and arts and entertainment, funny. Most of them are at least ten years younger than me. It's a loose group with subgroups, and not everyone likes everyone else, but it functions as a circle of friends pretty well.

Over the years this group has changed a lot. Most of them were very young then, and are near 30 now. The ones who went to graduate school or to drink themselves to death or some other final destination have departed. Others are maturing and moving on to other lives. Quite a few have moved out of state or are planning it; several are married or engaged. I remain at the table: the aging bachelor dilettante who hangs out. Not only are my friends people I can't experience eros with, but the philia is starting to look bad.

Apart from the personal anguish this causes me (it's not a role I enjoy), I can see the bonds of friendship stretching in a familiar way. I have much less in common with a thirty-year-old married couple with a child and a condo than I do with a twenty-year-old sophomore with a rock band and a Marlboro habit. Whatever these people actually think of me as a person (which is another problem entirely), the common ground of friendship is shrinking. This is intensely painful for me, even though it's at least the third time it's happened.

So what does this mean for philia, and me? It means that friendship is far less than I want it to be, and that my own unspoken definition of the word is too strong. It's not that anyone I know is a "bad friend", or that I have a "bad" circle of friends. Because of my own flaws, I remain the same while they move on. Because of their own life patterns, they adapt, grow, and find new ways to relate to others that aren't compatible with the world of the coffeehouse slacker.

In my own way I'm still on the playground in grammar school, where friendship is all you've got. Without agape or eros and with troublesome and painful storge , I've hung on to an outdated philia that doesn't make sense to people with grown-up lives.

Not for the first time, I find myself a child in an aging man's body, looking in wonder as the adults go about their business. How do they do it? Why can't I? Who will be my new friends?