QotD: My <3

Who or what do you really love?

Happy FTD and Hallmark Day everyone.  Since the topic of this QotD is "love," I felt inclined to share a bit from quite possibly my favorite book of all time, The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson.

"Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down.  But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood.  Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception - especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong.  They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony.  I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

I find that part pretty interesting, for a number of reasons.  In my office, I have a large sheet of metal hanging on the wall, aptly titled the "Fluff Board."  On this board is a collection of magnets on which are printed countless superlatives.  It's basically a Magnetic Poetry kit for marketing, if such a kit existed (it may now, but there was no such kit when I first made the board).  It's filled with words meant to evoke emotion of some fashion, or find some way to grasp the reader.  Imagine, although passe, is on there, along with words like embrace, solace, paradise, escape, and others that, when used properly, work to make the reader believe that whatever is being sold can instantly turn their frown upside down, and revert the pear-shape of their day.  And if my numbers are any indication, it certainly works.

It's truly an absurd thing, but when you think about it and take a look around, it's certainly not groundbreaking.  If you consider professions that in reality create nothing concrete and deal mainly in words, you could pretty much get the same result by giving a Mad Libs book to a monkey.  Think of movie reviews, and how often you see "riveting" or "a must-see."  We're not inventing new words, but rather putting the same words in different order.

Okay, maybe it's not exactly that simple, but it's damn close.  I mentioned this Fluff Board to a client once (after countless drinks at a lunch meeting), and he immediately insisted that I make one for him filled with business buzzwords.  I told him to get me a list of words he wanted (I spent about three weeks putting together my original fluff list, and I add words constantly), and I had a metalworker friend make it all fancy.  Now, when he talks to investors or even his executive staff, I'm sure he uses that board to try to rally the troops.  My partner has a similar board in his office, but it's filled with marketing buzzwords.  I can't stand to even think of some of the words on that damn board, but he seems to live by it.

We are wordsmiths.  Like I said, we create nothing new, we just rearrange the words in the global lexicon.  So as you are getting ready to cuddle beside your loved one, or perhaps down a bottle of pills and cuddle with your depression, consider that word "love."  It means only what you let it mean, because it has been perverted over the years by people such as myself, who use it to make you buy something.  This is best explained in a line from the pilot episode of AMC's "Mad Men."

The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one.

Happy Valentine's Day.