Scoring Maximum Brownie Points for Valentine’s Day -- or -- How to Succeed in Romance Without Really Trying

Since the dawn of time, men have been hunter/gatherers. Starting with woolly mammoths as a dietary supplement and progressing through the years to consumer electronics, men have sought the means for survival. However, one commodity has always been at the top of the list, more precious than all the others combined: The Brownie Point. The most sought-after item in the male survival kit.

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, it’s time for a quick tutorial in amassing the greatest possible number of brownie points with minimal work. With this tried and true method, a man can rack up obscene amounts of brownie points without breaking a sweat. (Ladies, I don’t think this will work for you. If you just get him those consumer electronics and wear some uncomfortable but exciting underwear, you'll get all the brownie points you need!)

The concept here is simple, gents. Give your wife/girlfriend/significant other/mate (whatever) a valentine every day for the whole month leading up to the big day, then give her something super special in a truly thoughtful way on the big day. Whammo! You are now rolling in the brownie points!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That’s too expensive, I can’t afford that! Well, that’s where you’re wrong; I can bring the whole thing in for less than 30 bucks! Here’s how it works:

Start out by making a quick trip to the local grocery store. Here you will find over 90 percent of your supplies, and you can pick up a six-pack while you’re at it! (Good deal, huh?) Head for the holiday aisle (every store has one) and pick up a box of little kid valentines (you remember, Go-Bots or He-Man saying, “Be mine!” while fighting off the evil Skeletor; that kind of thing -- whatever you think your lady will find cute and endearing).

Next, move over to the candy section and grab a selection of cheap Valentine’s Day candy. The M&M Mini’s in the little Valentine boxes are an excellent choice. You can also get the little Necco Hearts that say “kiss” and “true love” but if you do, try to find some in small individual packages. You’ll see why in a minute.

At this point, we have the Valentines and we have some candies; two very excellent ingredients for Valentine’s Day bliss. Now we concentrate on something for the big day itself. A box of chocolates or a Valentine’s Day teddy bear make great final gifts, and can keep you under budget. If you have a bit more money to spend, find a nice set of earrings or a bracelet for the final gift, and set it aside until the end.

Once all of the supplies have been purchased, it’s time to prepare everything. It’s best to do this ahead of time so you can concentrate on the implementation phase coming up without having to back track. Take the valentines out of the box and set aside one for each day between now and Valentine’s Day (if you don't have a month left, that's okay - anything over six days works). Save the big card, the one that says “For the Greatest Teacher in the World!” for last, and don’t worry if your true love is not a teacher; I’ve got that covered, too!

Write a quick love note on each of the valentines and put it in the little envelope provided. Good phrases include, “I’ll love you forever!” and “My heart belongs to you!” A nice touch here would be to use silver or gold ink pens, but this is not vital to the success of the mission. Next, attach one of the little candies you bought to each envelope and address it: To (your pet name for her) From (her pet name for you).

Ok, now that you have all of your supplies ready, hide them at work or somewhere she’ll never find them, and prepare for the implementation phase (I told you it was coming up!).

Now we're in the home stretch! All that's left is to find an original way to give her one of your valentines every day leading up to the final show. Try to be original! While it is acceptable to simply present her with one every day, (and the short-term benefits of this CAN be considerable!) I like to find a different way for each day. It helps build anticipation and that is ALWAYS a good idea! Hide one in her car before she leaves for work one day. Get one of her coworkers to smuggle one into her desk another day. Perhaps place one under her pillow. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

All of this valentine-giving activity is the perfect build up to the big day. Valentine’s Day is the day you want to pull out all the stops. Take her out to a nice dinner and a play (NOT to a movie! Four hundred other guys are trying that gag tonight. Be ORIGINAL!). If you can’t swing all of that, just cook for her yourself. Not only is this considered romantic but if you absolutely can’t cook, and you try anyway, you get bonus points for the attempt!

And now, the moment of truth is upon you. Here comes the big payoff. Remember the big valentine that said “For the Greatest Teacher in the World?” Well, that’s what brings the whole thing together. Inside that card, you complete the back-to-school theme by writing “I did all this because you’ve taught me the true meaning of love!” Present this to her along with your special, final gift, and go get a sponge because she’s going to melt! The month of attention and affection will have her so squishy inside that she’ll be completely blown away by this final, most thoughtful gift of all!

Gentlemen, the quest for brownie points is never-ending. We all struggle from day to day, just to scrape by. But with a little thought and preparation, a nearly limitless smörgåsbord of brownie points can be yours for the taking!

Now go out there and get those points! And remember to use them quickly; they expire next week.

-Sage Words

Frankly my dear, I love these MOTHERFUCKIN' SNAKES!

This past week, I saw the greatest movie that has ever been offered up to the gods of cinema. Better than "Gunga Din," "Casablanca," "Gone With the Wind," "Rear Window," "Schindler's List," "Behind the Green Door," "Robocop II," "Pooh's Heffalump Movie," "Showgirls (Director's Cut Special Edition)," "The Secret of N*I*M*H," "Slumber Party Massacre," "Dude, Where's My Car?" "My Bodyguard," "The Breakfast Club," "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," and "Muppets Take Manhattan" combined!

I speak, of course, of "Snakes on a Plane!"


Never have I seen a greater return for my cinema investment! I mean, think about it. You hear the title, "Snakes on a Plane," and you begin to make a list in your sub-conscience of all the things that should appear in such a film. Taking into account the fact that it is simultaneously a horror film, adventure movie, airline disaster flick, black comedy, mob movie and nature show, here is a list of the first dozen or so things you assume will be in the movie:

1. Mile High Club
2. Federal Agent/Hero Cop
3. Gratuitous ear-stabbing (with a high-heel shoe!)
4. Snake-on-Snake violence
5. Snake to the eye
6. Last-second airliner swoop to prevent a crash
7. Grizzled old stewardess
8. Hero Cop's partner buys it
9. Snake to the junk
10. Snake eats annoying little yappy dog
11. Privileged asshole businessman
12. Explosive decompression
13. Pilots die and passenger has to land the plane
14. "Is there a doctor on board?" (There is. He's dead!)
15. Privileged asshole businessman gets eaten by an anaconda
16. Baseball bat Fu
    

I could go on and on, but the important thing is this: This movie has EVERYTHING! You cannot possibly come out of the theater unsatisfied with this film. It is a roller-coaster ride of absolute devotion to the audience. Everything is there for you, with no pretension.

Now, let me get into some of the background. This whole thing started with a couple of screen writers getting hammered and talking about formulaic movies. You know the ones I mean; spy signs on for one last mission, falls in love with the exotic contact he meets in Bulgaria, finds out he's supposed to kill an old friend who has gone over to the other side and now questions his own loyalty while boinking the hot chick with a far away look in his eyes.

If this sounds like a James Bond movie to you, you're wrong. It's more like TWENTY James Bond movies. Now don't get me wrong, I like the 007 movies as much as anyone (except the Timothy Dalton ones. Fuck Timothy Dalton. And as much as I loved Brosnan in the role, the storyline in "The World is not Enough" blew ass). I'm just saying that they've become a bit predictable of late. I truly hope that the remake of "Casino Royale" breaks the trend.

But I digress. So these dudes are talking about formulaic movies and how you simply take two or three basic elements, add a unique twist (or at least one that hasn't been used in a couple of months) simmer for 25 minutes and "Poof!" instant hit. So they asked themselves (or each other, or the pink elephant in the room, who knows? I told you they were drunk!) what are two things that most people are scared of? The answer:

1. Snakes
2. Planes

Holy crap. Instant classic! Snakes. On a plane. It's nothing short of brilliant!



Now, most drunken idiots would leave it at that. But these guys are creative types. So one of them bangs out a script over the weekend and the other guy gets a meeting at a studio with The Suits. They walk in and their entire pitch goes:

"Okay, check this out: Snakes. On a plane."

The Suits practically fall over each other trying to say yes, and we're off to the races!

So they bring in a director, who happens to be friends with Samuel L. Jackson. He calls up his buddy and says "Snakes on a plane, Sam. Snakes on a plane."

Sam is in. They start work on the film, but the director ends up leaving. But that's okay because the new guy is Sam's friend too, and he understands the greatness they are about to produce. Work continues.

Ah, but now The Suits begin to act like you would expect mindless automotons to act. They want to ensure the movie comes in at PG-13 so they get a wider audience. Jackson and the director are dead set against it and tell them that an R rating is the only way to go, but The Suits win this one.

Then The Suits start talking about the title. They think "Snakes on a Plane" is too trite and will drive the audience away. They want something cool like "Pacific Air 131!" Yeah! What a kick ass title! Mr. Jackson does not agree.

Knowing it's the right thing to do, Sam Jackson threatens to walk if they change the title. "I signed up for 'Snakes on a Plane' not some f***in' 'Pacific Air' B*** S***!" he says. This time The Suits cave. And to bring ultimate justice to the story, the PG-13 version sucks so much that all the focus groups hate it. They all cry out for the R rated content that The Suits were against in the first place. So a call goes out to all the actors and extras and they come back in and shoot some more scenes to make it appropriately R rated.

And the end result? The greatest film of all time. A film that, while short on story, thin in the plot area, and nearly bereft of any socially redeeming content, still delivers everything a movie-goer could possibly want or need from a film called "Snakes on a Plane!" GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

I can't wait for the sequel!





-Sage Words

Riding the skateboard of progress across the sandy beach of life.

As you might expect, I had planned to begin this experiment with something profound. However, profundity sometimes has to take a back seat to reality. Read on...

In my previous post, I discussed some of the possibilities for this blog. I fully intended to begin with an insightful political commentary, or an intuitive examination of a particularly good comic book story I was thinking of today, but instead, we have this:

SPELL CHECK IS FROM THE DEVIL!

I have never had a blog before. I was reading my friend Sid's blog and decided I'd like to try one of my own, so I went to blogger.com and signed up for a blog which is made with some sort of blogging software to blog this out onto my blog (I feel like a smurfin' Smurf!). When I wrote my carefully-considered first post to my first blog and went to post it, I ran the spell-check function that comes free with the blog. It did not recognize the word "blog".

This may well be the first sign of the apacolypse.

When did our society become so lazy that we decided to create a piece of software designed specifically to make us STUPID?!?

And it works! I know! There was a time, many years ago, when I could spell. I could take a document, scan it at arms length, and pick out any misspelled word by pattern-recognition alone! But now, with the insidious spell-checker in common use, I can't spell simple words to save my life! Already in this very post I have misspelled accross (should be: across), recognise (of course I do live in England so it may be acceptable), and apocalypse (but really, who wants to be right about that?).

So now, in 2006, we are all morons.

Don't try to deny it. If you are reading this, odds are good that you are dumber now than you were in school. You depend on a calculator to balance your checkbook (assuming you do that sort of thing), a GPS or SAT/NAV to tell you how to get somewhere, a call to "information" to find a phone number, and the unholy spell-checker to tell you how to spell a simple word like "there". Or is it "they're"? Or "their"?

Crap.

My point is, we have all become so dependant on the little whiz-bang machines and software-bots and other new-fangled, hoo-ha crappity-crap that our brains have moved on! Now we use text messaging to ensure the words "to", "too", and "two" R 4evr rplcd w/ the # 2! ROTFL!

So where does that leave us? Well, we'll never give up our computers, cell,phones, SAT/NAV's, calculators, or spell-checkers so I guess we just have to get used to being morons. Or maybe not!

According to the spell-check function of this blog, we are not "morons".

We are all "moorings".

I rest my case.



-Sage Words

Introduction

So here it is, a brand-new blog. The newest piece of content on the ever-expanding worldwide web. In this blog (as I learn how to use it) you will find a seemingly random collection of thoughts, opinions, rants, and frivolity. What you won't find is a lot of personal information about me. It's not that I'm particularly shy, I just don't care to make myself all that public.

Now, they say nothing ever dies on the Internet. This is, for the most part, true. So some day I may win the lottery or run for office or save a burning kitten from a tree or otherwise become a "public person" and if that happens, there may be some monkey who gets assigned to dredge the bottom of the great River of Information that you are floating on right now and they may find this blog. If so, they will be greeted by run-on sentences, bad jokes, generalizations, vicious attacks against no one in particular, several misspellings, and one or two insightful articles shining a pinprick of light on the human condition. For these last, I am truly sorry.


-Sage Words