Holiday Rant (or diamonds are forever, you're not!)

A few years back I was window shopping with my wife about this time of year. Linda(my wife) wanted to go into one of those fancy schmancy mall jewellery stores. Not the the sort place a dyed in the wool geek like me would normally even think about going into while still breathing. Against my better judgement I allowed myself to dragged along. After checking out a few glass cases my wife ended up in front of a case chock full of little sparklies. The case had enough crystallized carbon to rekindle war production for the Third Reich. 

Pretty soon my dear wife, who is normally as down to earth as they come,  was lost in girlish ecstasy trying on rings that cost more than my first new car. Each ring the saleslady brought out had progressively larger and shinier stones. I thought I was in danger of having my retinas burned by some freakish laser effect caused by all that refracted light. I stood shaking my head in my best"ain't no way I'm buying  you that"fashion. As usual my wife ignored me, but then it happened. Linda mentioned that I had never bought her a engagement ring. She then made a pouty face and I could have sworn she conjured up a tear or too.

At that moment the sales person's eyes practically bulged from their sockets, her mouth twisted into a hateful sneer. She preceded to launch into a tirade that left me feeling that I was only slightly higher up the evolutionary scale than pond scum. The rest of the sales people were glaring at me with looks usually reserved for child molesters or desecraters of corpses. I thought about about launching into one of my rants about what I thought about their shiny rocks and what orifice they could stick them in. But, I thought better of it and slunk out the door waited for Linda outside.

Really people, those are shiny rocks. Buying a big one does not prove you love someone and it won't make someone love you. Any woman that demands a big rock to get her to marry you is not worthy of you. Move Along, keep hunting, she is not Ms. Right. Use the money for a down payment on a house or buy one of those new fangled refrigerators that shoot the ice cubes out of the door. They last for years and let's face it, you can't keep your beer cold with a ring!

If you want to know the truth about diamonds just Google diamonds and I think you will feel a little less warm and fuzzy about our local purveyors of crystallized carbon. And to top it all off the bloomin' things are ugly. And to make things even worse, this time of year we are bombarded by those mind numbingly nauseating commercials. If I hear "He went to Jared" one more time I may go berserk! Puleeeeassse give me a break!

I worked briefly for a jeweler back in the day and I can tell you that the profit margins were nothing short of obscene for most jewelery. Now I've got nothing against profit mind you, but huge profits made on the backs of virtual slaves in a market that is artificially kept high by a monopoly is something else again. So please mean jewellery lady get off of my back. Plus I should point out that I have been married 34 years. A hell of a lot longer than most people that got those big honkin' diamonds

In summation just let me say that I sleep of the sleep of the righteous. Do you think my wife would love me more if bought her a nice shiny bauble to go on her left hand third finger? I don't think so. But Linda, if you desire to drop a bundle on me, skip the jewellery store and head on down to the Apple store and pick me up a Mac Pro with dual Quad Core processors, 2 gigs of ram and a 1 tb hard drive. Now for that I could work up a little more love!

Just kidding dear.