diamond rings and house hunting.

now don't go getting all excited. BoyCat was not overcome with sentimentality at the lovely wedding of our friends on the cape this weekend, and most certainly did not ask me to join him in holy matrimony and get a little kitty condo together. a pair of single patriarchy-blamers we are still.

however, i do have something to bitch about on both of the above counts. first - diamond rings. now i am not getting into diamonds themselves and the bloodshed and misery that they have caused the world over...and i am not getting into the archaic symbolism of the engagement ring itself as a signifier of patriarchal oppression...and i am certainly NOT getting into how i can't tell the difference between a flawless diamond and a cubic zirconia from wal-mart on my best day. no, no, none of that blather. my particular beef is with those shadowy people behind the "a diamond is forever" campaign. who ARE these people, anyway? i used to think it was de beers...now it just says something like "the diamond trading company," or something equally nebulous. a syndicate, i tell you.

anyway. of all the asinine brainfarts that pass as advertising which have come out of this campaign (and i'm counting "design your engagement ring. you have a lifetime to design the perfect husband." here), there is one set of ads that surpass all levels of vomit-inducing stupidity. those ads are the ones for anniversary rings - the ones with the "I Forever Do" tagline.

holy load of motherfrigging nonsense, where do i begin??

the idea, according to the campaign's enlightening website, is that "this anniversary, show her your love is everlasting by saying 'I Forever Do.'" wait....a...minute...isn't that what the first diamond ring was supposed to mean? or perhaps if that one didn't quite take, maybe the wedding rings should have done the trick?? i feel like this ad campaign only appeals to the slowest minds of the male species among us. three, seven, fifteen years into a marriage, the idea finally dawns on them - oh! *smacks forehead* this marriage thing is about commitment! togetherness! foreverness! shit, i better go purchase a compressed piece of coal to give my long-suffering wife so she doesn't divorce me!

i honestly just don't understand. have we, as a society, become that shamelessly shallow about the institution of marriage that we acknowledge publicly that people who get married probably don't totally mean it at the time, and that just staying together for some indiscriminate amount of time afterward makes one worthy of another piece of expensive jewelry (or the honor of spending a month's salary on another piece of expensive jewelry)?

ugh. moving on. i also wanted to talk about the episode of House Hunters that i watched tonight. it was this guy named steve who was 24, a music major about to graduate from college, and had been saving since high school to buy his own place. he had long hair that he slicked back with gel, he wore socks with sandals, and he had a coffee table with the family bible in it. he lived in the dorms his whole time in college, and then bought a condo. when we return three months later to see the results, we learn that steve offsets the high price of the condo (they always buy the one that's "a little above price range," don't they?) by having a "roommate." the roommate's name is terry, he wears fitted gray t-shirts, and he and steve do the dishes very close to each other. BoyCat and I swiftly determined that "roommate" really meant "boy that i have sex with but don't tell anyone because it would make jesus cry."

though never in my life have i met a gay man who wears socks with sandals. so who knows.