Starting off sexy

Oh, the first post.

New beginnings.

I can never think what to say for these posts.

I just...I'm so emotional right now.

Speaking of emotions, it seems like it's that time of the month...in that time of the year.

Valentine's Day.

That's right, the one day a year where all the nice restaurants are booked, roses suddenly become about as expensive per ounce as saffron and being single becomes utterly intolerable...except in "South Korea.

Yes, yes, extraordinary. Saint Valentine was just a uber-Christian superman who died for Jesus, which probaby means he wasn't getting any, so he really didn't have much to lose.

What a shock. It was all converted by the end of the 1800s into a pile of mass-produced drivel and is now the biggest card-selling raging load of piddle next to the ultimate card-selling raging load of piddle, Christmas.

So. Instead of going through all that, I'm going to focus on something a little more exciting.

Sweethearts.

You know, those cute little lumps of sugar and dye that convey muddled messages that run the gamut from "Dream Girl" to "Wise Up". INCLUDING, I kid you not, "Book Club" and "Let's Read".

Golly, Suzy, I really fancy you, you want to...you know...hold hands and whilst perusing a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

That's so HOT.

What they are is little lumps of sugar and gelatin produced mainly by the New England Confectionary Corporation, or NECCO. Anyone who's spent their time on the supermarket checkout line staring longingly at candy knows of NECCO wafers, probably the most unappealing chalky pieces of garbage on the market today. What you may not know is that they make about $100 million a year in sales.

Impressive.

What you ALSO may not know is that in WWII, the military commissioned a huge amount of these wafers, as they were practically indestructible and did not spoil. If only good-tasting food were so convenient.

NECCO originally was called Chase and Company, after the founder, Oliver Chase, invented a lozenge cutter and a pulverizer for sugar in 1850. This man must have been some sort of genius. But he was entirely outdone by his brother who, in 1860, invented the lozenge printing machine and came out with the little Conversation Hearts we know and feel entirely ambivalent about today.

Well, I can't really criticize them. I mean, you can't really do much with a lozenge printing machine.

This year, according to the National Confectioner's Association, "About 8 billion hearts will be produced this year; that’s enough candy to stretch from Rome, Italy to Valentine, Arizona and back twenty times!" You know, in case you wanted to make a small, sugary bridge between the two entirely unrelated cities.

Incidently, this is the webpage for Valentine, Arizona.

Wow. Elevation: 3,802 feet? That's the elevation of ROMANCE.

Another little aside...National Confectioner's Association?!?!

"Hey, Bill, what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm the chairman of the National Confectioner's Association!"
"Oh...yeah? Uh...what do you do?"
"Well...we...uh...figure out how much candy it would take to reach from one place to another."

Takes all kinds.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm craving some printed candy. I'm gonna go scribble on a hershey bar.

Happy V-Day!

Remember, if you spend over 40 dollars on a meal, sex is not a gift, it's an obligation.



Sources:
Wikipedia, of course.

http://cockeyed.com/inside/hearts/hearts.html

http://www.candyfavorites.com/shop/conversation-hearts-origin.php

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