Thursday, February 17, 2011

Promises Promises


Valentine’s Day is a day much like New Year’s once had meaning and is now an overcommercialised opportunity to drink, share with someone your undying love and have sex – ideally with the same person to whom you declared your love. Just like New Year’s Eve people can make promises that whilst said with all the best of intentions, are unlikely to be upheld.

On 31st December we all promise to give up smoking, lose weight, change jobs and spend more time with family. On 14th February we all promise that we love the person with whom we share the night and that no one has ever made us feel so special. We promise that we will listen more, talk more about our feelings and be a more responsive lover.

In reality we all end up chain smoking on the couch eating pizza and chocolate because the person we once loved has left us because we are in a dead end job and spend ever increasing amounts of time getting drunk with our mates at the pub and that the only time we do communicate is when we come home from said pub and want to “give you a good one.”

The world is full of broken promises. Ben Elton promised that his show Live from planet earth would be funny. Nicole Kidman promised that she could act, and maybe under all of the Botox and implants she is still capable of making a facial expression.

World War I promised that it was the war to end all wars, but all around the world wars still tale place. Australian soldiers are on active duty in multiple locations. The Americans have learned and rarely use the term “war” if only to keep its promise. Instead we now have police actions or peace keeping missions. If it looks a war and sounds like a war then it probably smells like a war.

John Howard once promised that there would be no GST. It is like a magic trick all of the waving of capes and wards and misdirection to the fact that there is nothing up the sleeve and then abracadabra seemingly out of thin air, we have GST. Tada!

Ian Thorpe promised he had retired and yet he is back in the pool. Turns out the sponsorship deals for sportspeople are not as lucrative when the individual is no longer a sportsperson. So now the Thorpedo is back and so will follow is the innuendo about his sexuality that this nickname conjures up.

Make up chemists promise is that their facial creams will reduce wrinkles, their herbal remedies will replenish all of the vitamins that are missing in our increasingly processed diet and that their treatment can make our hair grow back.

Warnie promises...well just about anything to anyone who has a good figure and access to twitter or a mobile phone. To be fair he does keep his promises. Unfortunately he might keep his promises a little too often and possibly with too many women at the same time. Reportedly this was his undoing. He convinced Liz Hurley to join him in his Brighton mansion for a romantic Valentine’s getaway, a plan that ultimately resulted in something that must have felt more like home detention than a Australian summer holiday. Although unwilling to leave the property Warnie maintained communication with the outside world . Out of all the people in his phone book he made the unfortunate decision to contact a porn star. Now I have never text a porn star but I am guessing that it goes down as well with one’s current partner as drunkenly texting an ex at 3am.