Monday, October 08, 2007

Me love you long time

Here comes love, it's like honey
You can't buy it with money

Here's the thing, I checked in the supermarket and you can, in fact, buy honey. You can buy honey quite cheaply and in rather plentiful supply despite the drought. For a semi-reasonable sum you could buy enough to cover yourself and everyone you know in honey. Fun as that may be it is not love and it is not free. I suppose that if you wanted to piss off some bees and if you had the right connections then you could go and get the honey straight from the bees. I guess that would be sort of free. Sure, you'd pay a dreadful emotional cost in knowing that you've raped a poor innocent beehive. You might even have the karmic conundrum of knowing that your pursuit of honey has caused the death of a large number of bees. The bees may even die from pining for their lost honey. Alternately, you might pay the price in beestings and, again, the emotional cost of being the death of bees. Sure, if you go and harvest the honey for yourself then you aren't buying it with money but I'm sure you'll agree that your soul will be that tiny bit diminished by your deliberate and callous abuse of bees. At which point, you'll have to spend some quality time at a bar buying the drinks which are the only things capable of soothing your savaged soul. Naturally, you'll avoid mead. The important point is that you most definitely can buy honey with money. I have some sitting in the cupboard right now that I acquired in such a fashion.

Love, however, is not something that I've ever found for six dollars a jar (it's the drought, man, and I'm right in it) at the supermarket. Indeed, it is something that I've never had the money to buy. Not that I'd particularly want love that came in a jar for six dollars. Or even a love that did that. Or even a lover that did that. Oh dear, I’m becoming all tangled up. I’d be curious to know if anyone has ever found love at a supermarket and, having done so, if they had to pay for it at the checkout. I’m quite sure that plenty of people think that love is something that can be provided for adequate fiscal return but I suspect that they’re confusing their terms. Things that you can buy for money may be fun if you can’t get them for free – getting anything for free is so much more fun though – but none of them are love. I can really come up with no decent argument in which love can be bought for money. Or even with money.

I’m not even terribly sure if love and honey have that many similarities. Sure, both are sweet in moderation but too much of either can have terrible physical repercussions and play havoc with the pancreas. As we all know, both are safer after they’ve been properly processed and, possibly, heat treated. Both are, in the right circumstances, quite yummy and fun but, really, not at all tied together and without sufficient similarity to compare. In short, love is not really at all like honey. Honey can be bought with money. Love cannot be bought with money. I strongly suspect that this couplet is all about rhyme and nothing at all about the similarities between love and honey and their relative costs – financial or otherwise. I cannot tell you how much I hate that.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it wrong that I laughed my arse off at this post? A jihad on both love and honey! Rin.

Shelley said...

And to think, I was deadly serious. Woe, etc.

Jihads all round, I say!

Dan said...

Someone else can have my Jihad. I'm full up.

Shelley said...

Woohoo! Free spare jihad!

*politely offers spare jihad to company in best possible party manners

TimT said...

These are all very good points, but I feel I should note a counter argument. In short, it is:

Yummy yummy yummy
I've got love in my tummy
And I feel like loving you
Love is such a sweet thing,
Such a good to eat thing
And that's just what I'm gonna do.


I think we can all learn something from that.

Shelley said...

Several filthy thoughts just fluttered through my mind then.

The point was that both love and honey are sweet, yes? I do agree. I also agree with this:

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love


It can, however, buy me honey. I wonder why The Beatles never mentioned that.

Anonymous said...

That's all well and good, but I believe the IMPORTANT question here is can you buy love with *honey?*

I mean, not in that sense, but who can resist a big ole chunk of honeycomb dripping with honey, regardless of how many bees had to die for me to be there standing with it between my teeth with no pants on?

Shelley said...

Well, one day we'll meet up on King Street, remove your pants, shove a hunk of honeycomb in your mouth, and see how you fare, fair Mark.

We'll keep well away from The Newtown Hotel though. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't need the honeycomb there.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'm going to have to pass on that one. But I still think that honey is probably the missing link in the money = love equation.

Shelley said...

No sense of adventure. Kids today, eh?

I think you need to elaborate on money + honey = love or love + honey = money or money + honey = love or is it honey - money = love.

Oh no! It's all too much.

TimT said...

Let's try and elaborate on this post in mathematical form:

LOVE > HONEY

HONEY = $MONEY

Therefore LOVE > MONEY.

BUT, according to some bees,

HONEY/LOVE > 1

Therefore HONEY > 1 x LOVE = LOVE

That is, HONEY > LOVE.

If HONEY > LOVE, then LOVE is not > HONEY

Thank you for your time.

Shelley said...

It's a pity that I was never much good at maths, isn't it?

colonel eggroll said...

So math and love are interconnected? No wonder it's so complicated.

BourbonBird said...

Can someone take photos of Mark when this pantless honeyfest occurs? Rin.

Shelley said...

Indeed, Colonel, indeed.

Rins, if I could persuade him I'd make damn sure you were there in person.