You're quite fit for a fat ginger bird

February 14, 2012 8:27 AM

Rhodri Marsden, journalist and erstwhile member of Scritti Politti, decided to ask Twitter about their worst Valentine's Days. This was the result.
posted by mippy (31 comments total)

2010. We decided to mosey down to an afternoon matinee at the student film society. The movie that day happened to be Lars von Trier's Antichrist. As the end credits were rolling, my date's cellphone rang. It was her mom letting her know that her cherished childhood cat had just died. Happy Valentine's Day.
posted by theodolite at 8:33 AM on February 14, 2012 [10 favorites]

@rhodri there was 1 where my bf lent across the table to kiss me, setting fire to his hair on a candle. Then he made us watch eraserhead.

With his hair still on fire? Cause if so, best David Lynch movie night ever.
posted by permafrost at 8:34 AM on February 14, 2012 [13 favorites]

permafrost, I came in to post that exact same tweet. Hilarious.
posted by ukdanae at 8:38 AM on February 14, 2012

theodolite, that's more than 140 characters. Your story is too verbose for Twitter. Actually, telling stories on Twitter is a bad idea altogether.
posted by demiurge at 8:38 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Fancy VD dinner, inexplicable nosebleed, dripped bright red blood into yellow soup. Vivid! Stirred quickly, but eagle-eyed date not fooled.

At least she didn't take any of my soup.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:49 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

@rhodri I rented Happiness by Tod Solonz mistaking "dark" for "romantic" comedy. 134m of unremitting bleakness followed by stunned silence

Yeesh, that's bad.
posted by capnsue at 8:54 AM on February 14, 2012

Three of my breakups (and the two worst) have been on VD. I've got a Heroscape session planned for tonight.
posted by cmoj at 8:54 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

@rhodri I took my first ever Valentine to dinner, saved up for it. On the way I lost all the money on a 3 card trick.

I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for this one.
posted by magstheaxe at 8:54 AM on February 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

I missed the boat on this so here's mine:

Aged 16, a card marked 'For future reference' & opened in college cafe. It made sex noises and was inscribed 'SORRY'. There was also a Ted Baker condom enclosed. He's getting married this year. Not to me.

There was also the aspiring comic who spent day dressed up as sub-John Shuttleworth character, making me take photos of him. (He spent the day moaning at me for not zooming in on him, clad as he was in a second-hand deerstalker and a really vile golf jumper, asking strangers if they could get their whippet in shot.) My parents drove us to Skipton to do this. He refused to buy me a peg doll from Oxfam because 'I've spent enough on you before'. (I don't know what this meant. A year before - and this should have been a red flag - I had a migraine and asked him to go out to get some paracetamol. He said 'No, I've already bought a paper for you to read.' I told him there was change in my purse if that was the objection, and he said he was busy. So I guess I set myself up for that one.)
posted by mippy at 8:56 AM on February 14, 2012

Actually, telling stories on Twitter is a bad idea altogether.

This and Rhodri's Bad Date story thread disproves this.
posted by mippy at 8:57 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Three of my breakups (and the two worst) have been on VD. I've got a Heroscape session planned for tonight.

I think I may have spotted where you are going wrong.
posted by biffa at 8:58 AM on February 14, 2012

The Bad Date thingy
posted by mippy at 8:59 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

First date on Valentine's Day, got stood up. Luckily, I was already in a bar. Ate the candy I was to give to her.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:21 AM on February 14, 2012

Fancy VD dinner, inexplicable nosebleed, dripped bright red blood into yellow soup. Vivid! Stirred quickly, but eagle-eyed date not fooled.

If you read VD as "venereal disease" this stories is suddenly the best story ever.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:25 AM on February 14, 2012

Three of my breakups (and the two worst) have been on VD. I've got a Heroscape session planned for tonight.
---
I think I may have spotted where you are going wrong.

Well, the combat system is a little reductive, but the whole 'build the terrain as wild as you want and then field a weird squad on it' is pretty fun. Now, if you find yourself in possession of an old Necromunda set or two, then you'll be cooking with gas! (and also skulls)
posted by FatherDagon at 9:32 AM on February 14, 2012

Valentine's day 2007: My band broke up, my best friend got expelled from college, my date cancelled, and the government shut down my sandwich shop.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:37 AM on February 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

Talking about hearts and Scritti Politti, this has reminded me how much I love pre-heart-attack Scritti Politti, don't like them at all after that. Green Gartside came back to life with a totally different sound.

Pre-heart-attack is the first 11 tracks of Early
posted by w0mbat at 9:43 AM on February 14, 2012

I once knitted a boyfriend a pair of romantic socks, but I only actually finished one sock. That was prob worse for him than me.

I suppose it depends on whether he was in the Red Hot Chili Peppers or not....
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:48 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter's own by the way.
posted by edd at 9:52 AM on February 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I decided to read these while listening to this. Lent it a rom-com feel.
posted by msali at 10:12 AM on February 14, 2012

Wow those Brits speak a whole other language. I spent ten minutes trying to figure out what "redundant" meant.
posted by snapped at 11:54 AM on February 14, 2012

I quite liked

@rhodri relationship in full breakdown, so I went alone to a conference about rape, where the organisers got into a physical fight on stage.

and

@rhodri oh. Just split up with bf and spent day fielding texts from an Arsenal fan who wanted to 'dress me in a Spurs kit and hate-fuck me'.

Romance is still alive.
posted by Fnarf at 1:04 PM on February 14, 2012

My girlfriend left for work in the afternoon. I figured I'd have some surprise ready when she got home. It was an unseasonably warm day and the balcony was open- she called up saying she forgot deodorant, would I throw it down to her. Instead I took it to the railing, leaned over and dropped it. She held her hands cupped right in front of her face to catch it. It bounced right off her palms and broke her two front teeth in half. I rushed her to a dentist; it cost us around $500 to emergency repair her smile. Most unhappy/expensive Valentine's Day ever, and I hate to think how people might've been skeptical of the story.. Your boyfriend did what to you?!
Secret: Strong enough for a man, made for domestic violence.
posted by hypersloth at 1:32 PM on February 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

Most of these are absolutely horrible. But some of them prove that ideas of romance are relative:

For example:

"i was once given "teach yourself photoshop in 24 hours" book."

If I went home with something similar, I'd be the king of Valentine's Day.


"...spent day fielding texts from an Arsenal fan who wanted to 'dress me in a Spurs kit and hate-fuck me'."

And that's how I met your mother.

...my recent ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend went out to dinner and I sat at home reading poetry. Pretentious bisexual heartbreak.

I hope she's not still single if she doesn't want to be. Because, seriously, self-awareness is a very attractive trait.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:51 PM on February 14, 2012

I spent ten minutes trying to figure out what "redundant" meant.

Rock 'N' Roll mate.
posted by biffa at 4:35 PM on February 14, 2012

For those of you wondering, 'made redundan't means fired, sacked, pink slipped, laid off.
posted by axiom at 9:03 PM on February 14, 2012

Actually, telling stories on Twitter is a bad idea altogether.

This and Rhodri's Bad Date story thread disproves this.

I’m going to have to disagree. I couldn’t get though more than a couple of those. I found it far too much trouble to figure out what they were trying to say.
posted by bongo_x at 12:25 AM on February 15, 2012

I was also very distracted by the fact that there’s still a Scritti Politti. I liked "A Perfect Way" but I had no idea that was an ongoing concern.
posted by bongo_x at 12:28 AM on February 15, 2012

It's an intermittent concern - there was an album in 1999 and another, back on Rough Trade, a few years ago. Neither were the electropop that Scritti's known for, but they're very good. Green's a superb songwriter, with a tremendous ear for hooks. I still think that the best Scritti album is Songs to Remember (a structuralist tribute to black music), and hope that one day it'll get the remaster treatment bundled with the B sides and 12" tracks (including the BBC session version of A Slow Soul, which slows down, loses the saxophone and knocks the album version into a cocked hat) and the full ten-minute version of Faithless (which is mutating into the second half as the album version fades).

(Very annoyed that I left getting tickets to the April Scritti show too late and it sold out, and I probably have to play a gig myself on the night of the extra show. Green still has an amazing voice. A bit like Smokey Robinson, except Welsh. Probably more given to Marxist theory than Smokey Robinson, too, come to think of it).
posted by Grangousier at 12:44 AM on February 15, 2012

I’m going to have to disagree. I couldn’t get though more than a couple of those. I found it far too much trouble to figure out what they were trying to say.

Really? Surely that has to be more of a trans-Atlantic translation issue than a Twitter issue. Is this really that opaque?

Bad date in 2005: "so, how big is America then?" to an American.
posted by rory at 1:40 AM on February 15, 2012

'made redundan't means fired, sacked, pink slipped, laid off.

Technically, only "laid off" is a decent synonym for "made redundant" -- it's a downsizing "eliminating the position, not the individual" thing and covered by specific UK employment law.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:33 PM on February 15, 2012