February 15th, 2012

Dead Stinky Love

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Inter-species Love.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you Bizarro Jazz Pickles. I know that VD is a mixed bag (Valentine’s Day, not venereal disease, which is a terrible bag and not a mixed one at all) and it can be everything from sublime to inconsequential to racist? to depressing as hell. I have no control over that fact (if any of you thought I did, I apologize for leaving that impression) but I do hope that whatever your circumstance today, you’re dealing with it in stride.

Because I am going through my second divorce (first one in 1996), I decided this year to portray a darker, yet completely realistic view of romance. Lately, I’ve been fond of saying,

“Romance is like Russian roulette with five bullets –– the odds of escaping unscathed are extremely slim.”

I have long believed that, even when I was happily married. Years ago, a psychologist friend of mine said, “All relationships end. You either break up or one of you dies.” So it is undeniably true that the only way to leave a relationship without pain is to die first. That doesn’t mean the relationship isn’t worth it, of course. In my nearly ten years of marriage to CHNW, I can honestly say that most of them were the happiest of my life.

But all things, especially great things, must come to an end so I am not morose today. I am thankful for the years of happiness within the marriage and look forward to years of friendship now that it is over.

On the lighter side of things, here is a cartoon about skunks. I think it was the J. Geils Band that had a hit back in 1980 called “Love Stinks.” I didn’t like that song or that band and this cartoon has nothing to do with it, but it comes to mind. The larger idea behind this cute love story is that it is inexplicable why we fall in love with who we do. You can site all kinds of psychological reasons reaching back to the way your dad treated you as a child or whatever, but in the end, the process is so subconscious and natural that you cannot control it. Who among us has not looked at other couples and thought, “What in the world does he/she see in her/him?” It boggles the mind sometimes. But 3 million years of evolution kicks in and there you are, a victim of your own desires, whether they make sense or not. As Woody Allen famously said of Sung Yi, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” That compulsive, IQ-reducing brain drug that we call infatuation is unpredictable, unrelenting, and irresistible. Sometimes it leads to ecstasy, sometimes to prison. No way to know which you’re in for until it’s too late.

So today I am wishing all of you luck in love, healthy and reciprocal relationships, and that you are not wishing you were dead, which, unfortunately, is also a common feeling associated with falling in love.

Hang in there and stay crunchy, Jazz Pickles!