Valentine's tip: Bitumen is not romantic

During the break period for my first class I went to the student lounge to pick up a free copy of the Wall Street Journal Europe, a paper in which you can always find fascinating and life-altering articles. Did you know, for instance, that a recent merger has put a new name at the forefront of world nickel production? If you didn't, you certainly do now. And if that is as boring to you as it is to me, don't worry, you will soon forget about crappy old nickel production. Woohoo.

On the backpage of this particular issue was an article about a heavy grades of crude oil, and one of the products that was mentioned was bitumen. My friend Charlie and I were riding up to the fourth floor on the elevator while making jokes about bitumen when a girl got on the elevator and pushed the button for floor three. As we neared her destination, and just before the elevator voice intoned "floor three", I noticed the girl rather desperately pushing the "door open" button. You know, this one: [<>] As best as I can figure, this girl was horrified at even the remote prospect of potentially getting asked out for Valentine's by guys who like to laugh about bitumen.

I don't know, maybe she is the daughter of a bitumen magnate, and was terribly offended that we would dare speak ill of bitumen. Some may argue that talking about heavy crude oil products isn't the pathway to impressing the gals, but I would vehemently disagree. After all, oil is the patriarchal figure in a whole range of romantic products. It makes plastics, for one, without which some of the fancier valentines day cards couldn't be produced. Oh, but what's that you say, you are tech savvy and send out your valentines via email? Well, you just better forget about that buster, because without our friend plastic, you can just forget about using a computer to check that email valentine. That's right my friends, I suspect that wouldn't be any love in the air at all tonight without the aid of plastic! I shudder to think what people did before plastic; I would venture that this is the reason for so many arranged marriages in earlier, pre-plastic eras.