This month's Bitter Ex-Florist episode addresses the immortal question: What's more important - How long it lasts or what you do with it? Check out my latest vlog post as I ponder this issue, and stumble into clumsy sexual innuendo over and over again.

Florists are always getting bugged about long-lasting flowers. Sure, people hate to waste money on something that's going to croak in a few days, I get that. But I think flowers aggravate people's sense of their own mortality and ultimate powerlessness in the face of the inescapable cycles of life. That may seem like a lot of burden to put on a tiny little flower, but I swear it's true. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cut flowers are the ultimate symbol of mortality.

Only once did I meet a young lady that straight-up confessed that she hates cut flowers, because she can't stand watching something so beautiful die. I wanted to both cheer and cry at that sentiment. Hooray for understanding the larger context! Boo-Hoo for not being able to appreciate the beauty anyway.

I think that it's not all about being long-lasting: if you appreciate the beauty of something even for a second, it was worth it. Sadly, in the cut flower industry, the most beautiful flowers are often the most fragile. Don't let that deter you. Give yourself over to the pure pleasure of the experience, however fleeting. *Words to live by.*

This month's Bitter Ex-Florist episode is all about money, money, money. Is there a subject that causes more bitterness than that? Leading cause of divorce and murder...Why do even bother with it? Oh right, because it makes the freakin' world go 'round.

It's bizarre that florists make crap wages. They need to have talent, skill, and years of experience. But it just doesn't pay off. Maybe because it's a luxury industry in a tough economic time? Join me as I ponder the potential reasons.

This month's "Bitter Ex-Florist" Episode is about as useless as a fake flower, sorry. And sorry to those of you who just love fake flowers. I think they're nasty. Not to mention totally inedible. But I had to toss up a sort of fake "Interim" episode since I've been way too busy getting The Book out there. "The Book" being Fresh Cut, the full true story of my life as a florist, in all its absurdity and horror. But hopefully you'll get a few chuckles out of this, and of course, buy my book and make me rich. Right?

So, fake flowers - why bother? I know there are times when you just have to use them. On stage in a play, possibly a film. But those things are already in the and of make-believe, so I think that's okay. But in real life? Yuck. Look, I'm not a big fan of cut flowers anyway, but if you're going to have them, at least appreciate their fragility: that peculiar "zombie half-life" as they sit in your vase of water and spend their last few days trying fruitlessly to be pollinated and propagate the species. 

Give them some love and attention as they sit dying on your kitchen table, and give reverence to the thoughts of mortality and the ephemeral nature of all life in the universe that they should inspire. If that seems to heavy for something you spent $5 n at the grocery store, too bad. Suck it up. Don't try to avoid the inevitable end by acquiring some cheap simulacrum that can't possibly hope to accurately impersonate the beauty of the real thing.

Oh yeah, and don't try to eat them.