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Mansions are forever

Valentines' Day is here, and it's time for men to show their love for their significant other through an expensive gift.

However, most men think small - like some chocolates, or some flowers, or an 18-karat diamond set in a platinum ring. Now, is that really enough to buy a woman's love?

Hardly. Chocolates are eaten, flowers die and diamonds are easily flushed down the toilet.

Not only that, but what is a diamond? It's a rock, made from compressed coal. How many girls want to wear a lump of coal on their finger? None, except maybe for a few performance artists.

This year, why not give her a mansion?

Yes, a mansion. The home of the upper-class and the elite for years can be the ultimate symbol of love for an object of affection.

Think of the look on her face when she opens her eyes and sees a 10,000 square foot Louisiana mansion, with elegant landscaping and 27 bedrooms. That's 27 bedrooms to hold your love.

The mansions are reasonably priced, too. It's a buyers market with most mansions coming in at 1.5 million dollars. At that price, it's a steal!

One way to pay for this is to be rich. Another way is to acquire all those credit cards they offer you around campus and charge it. The best way, however, is through grueling, tortuous, hard work. The bruised skin and calluses will be a testament of love.

Testaments are good. So are symbols, written contracts and brands burnt right into the skin. They let her know "I'm yours." Not only that, but they tell everyone else, "She's mine!" Buying that mansion is the best way to get that message across. It is a sign made of brick and mortar that says "hands off."

Furthermore, most mansions are larger than diamonds, and therefore easier to show off. Her girlfriends will be very jealous. So jealous in fact, that their boyfriends will have to buy them mansions to stay on equal footing.

Not only that, but your commitment to her will never be questioned soon as she steps foot in the abode and bears witness to the wood-paneled hallway, Spanish tiled kitchens and a bathroom with gold-plated fixtures, a wise addition that will only cost a paltry million over the cost of the house.

However, the furnishings alone might be enough - a full staff of servants including a cook, butler, maid, accountant, manicurist, stable manager, court jester, rogue philosopher, witch-doctor, left-nostril inspector, paraplegic Prussian cat extruder and a full division of the 101st Airborne might just keep her around forever. It's only pinch extra - ten million.

How else can 850 months' salary last forever? There is no other way. A mansion must be bought in order to preserve the relationship that so much time and money was put into.

On the other hand, maybe one can solidify a relationship by things that can't be bought - compassion, devotion, honesty. Those things that make a relationship the sublime.

When these things are present, poets cannot grasp the emotions produced, even with the powerful and all-transcending hands of a fertile imagination.

Then again, maybe not.

Better get shopping.

Shaun Clayton can be reached at catalyst@wildcat.arizona.edu.