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Message to Cupid: Get on the stick. Or maybe, get off of it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I hope that you got all the valentines that you could store without creating a fire hazard. I want to thank everyone for the valentines, the one valentine actually. My friend Suzie sent it by multimedia text message and since I don’t have a text plan, it cost me 25 cents. Oh well, if well wishes cost a quarter then that is a pretty good deal considering what some have cost me. And my head keeps saying: “Don’t go there.”

But I really never understood the value of sending everyone a valentine in class and having everyone send you one. This is especially true when you are in graduate school. Okay, I am just using poetic license here minus the poetry. I never went to graduate school. I started to a couple of times. I got so far as to take the hours minus six that I needed for a second major in political science and then I had to have a minor — history. I went two semesters — this was a year after I graduated with my B.A. — with hopes of being a college professor, you know, one of those academia nuts. Does something need be placed here about macadamia nuts? One never knows.

Love is a many splintered thing. I am just full of them this afternoon. This is not to be confused with my being full of it most of the time.

Valentine’s Day is a day companies promoted to sell flowers and candy, I have heard many say. I don’t think that is so. There are a lot of people out there who see the romance of it all, perhaps all those hopeless romantics who are not quite like the helpless romantics. Hey, you, quit pointing your finger this way! But there is really nothing wrong with Valentine’s Day even though I don’t openly celebrate it, nor do I covertly celebrate it.

I don’t believe that Valentines Day captures the essence of love because I don’t think the collective society is capable of catching Cupid’s arrow right through the old ticker. Individuals can catch the love bug, surely, but not everyone is able. Perhaps it because love is such a deep, personal and so often indescribable emotion, state, sickness, that I equate it to a crowd of people describing an armed robber to the police.

“The guy had a bow and arrow,” says one.

“No he had a bazooka,” said another.

“He wasn’t wearing any pants,” says still another.

“No he was wearing a body stocking and was armed with a slingshot … ”

And so it goes with love.

Lust, on the other hand (huh?) being so heavily invested in the physiological, is another matter. I would really rather talk about the “Lust” word and not in the sense of Jimmy Carter’s Playboy interview where he said that he looked upon on a lot of women with lust. I like Jimmy. He was the first president for whom I voted. Getting back to lust, though, many people are hesitant to have a frank, philosophical discussion on lust. One would think that it is surprising how many have no problem — in small groups at least — talking about lust in the bawdy manner that gives the word a bad name. Yes, men like talking about lust. Women do too. But all such discussions usually run toward what they see, at least, as the sordid. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Well, I hope I didn’t pluck the romance right out of you and cut it up in 16 slices. Like the song says: “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.  Perhaps, a la Bill Clinton, I want to know what “is” is.

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Ding dong … Life after Murbarak begins

It isn’t exactly “Ding Dong the witch is dead,” but hundreds of thousands of Egyptians finally unleashed some long-sought jubilation after the announcement was made today that their dictator of more than 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down as president.

Such a transformation is sweet for millions of Egyptians who have wanted democracy in their land and those who love democratic rule should feel similarly  exuberant that such a government may finally set up shop in the Middle East. Just what happens to make a democratic form of government a reality is now in the myriad configurations of establishing such rule.

Egypt’s regional neighbors and world neighbors all look to the country now to see just what happens and how in ruling itself without, hopefully, the yoke of tyranny. It’s neighbors have reason to worry for various reasons. It’s more sinister neighbors abhor democracy and, if a free and dictator-less  Egypt succeeds, those neighbors such as Iran and Libya and the list goes on have cause to worry because — as the end of the Soviet empire shows — even a taste of freedom can be quite contagious.

Israel has a number of reasons to worry as does the United States, especially should  the transformation turn to fundamentalist zealotry as was the case with Iran and the sinister theocracy that came out of the student demonstrations there in the late 1970s. There are also varied reasons why those in the free world might like to see an Egyptian failure rather than success, mostly due to greed and politics. Perhaps they can all get together on Fox News and bloviate.

Hopefully, Egypt will choose a path toward an enlightened democracy and that its Western and other world neighbors will welcome the change.

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But wait a minute! Maybe Mubarak is not president anymore

The Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. just now told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that “the Constitution retains power” but Hosni Mubarak has transferred all the powers to the vice president. The dialogue between Blitzer and Ambassador Sameh Shoukry is very confusing.

Blitzer asked why couldn’t Mubarak say what he had to say where all could understand it? Skoukry said he didn’t know.

Is this spin?

Skoukry says the head of state of Egypt is the president who has transferred all of his power to the vice president. Mubarak has no power.

With such lack of clarity, no wonder hundreds of thousands are on the street pissed off.

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Mubarak’s arrogance could make for a new bloody phase of an Egyptian revolution

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke for what seemed like forever today while perhaps hundreds of thousands in the streets waited to hear the magic words he never said. Those words would have been, should have been: “I quit” or something equivalent. In Cairo’s Tahir Square they shouted around 11 p.m. Central Time “Get out! Get out! while Mubarak kept talking and talking and talking. And he kept saying nothing and nothing and nothing. At least to those who want Mubarak to leave.

“I don’t know if he has a brain or his brain is elsewhere … This guy is calling for more rage in the country,” I heard one Egyptian interviewed by CNN in Tahir Square say, just after Mubark’s televised speech ended.

There was anticipation in the media Mubarak would step down today. But it seems like the Egyptian people who are wanting the longtime leader gone yesterday are getting the Lucy Van Pelt football treatment. Mubarak sticks out the football and then takes it away just as the long-suffering Egyptians run up to kick it.

Mubarak spoke, through translation, as if he is the single-handed savior of his nation while he seems to be only tearing it apart with each delusional speech he makes to an increasingly angry Egyptian people. This could be the worst yet for his nation. He has a pissed-off people on his hands. That can only spell more unrest, perhaps massive bloodshed.

It seems Mubarak is too arrogant, too bought in to his own legend and his own legacy to care if even more blood is shed.

If given a chance by Clash — will I stay or will I go — Mubarak should have picked the latter. He chose the former. He is a fool. The blood, if shed, will be on his hands.