OK, So Maybe Valentine's Day Doesn't Necessarily "Buh-low" Per Se

This is what I said about Valentine's Day:

"Valentine's Buh-lows.

That's all I really want to say about it. But I thought I would use this opportunity to say one more thing:

If loving "Hands to Heaven" by Breathe makes me wrong, then I just do not want to be right."

I STILL feel that way about Hands to Heaven by Breathe (which I STILL cannot find on iTunes), but my opinion of Valentine's Day has shifted somewhat.

Last year I was all bitter and shit, and probably ate 14 pounds of food to drown out my misery, you know, being an emotional eater and all. This is very likely how I spent most of the Valentine's Days in my past, with the exception of when I was in college and the day coincided with a friend's birthday.

It never really was a big deal in my family and I will admit here in this public forum that when I was in grade school, and we made those heart-shaped "mailbox" things to hang off the edges of our desks, mine was never busting at the seams with those tiny box cards designed specifically to make you feel like shit if you didn't get one.

The first Valentine I ever had was one that had been assigned to me when I was a student studying abroad in college. We were all assigned one of our classmates as Valentines. I knew enough about mine to have the presence of mind to buy him a pack of Marlboro reds, a can of coke, and some Ferrero Rochers with money hard-earned by feeding leftover meal slop to ducks, a peacock and a pheasant.

We all put our Valentines' gifts/cards in their mailslots on Valentine's Day and a marginal amount of merriment and gratitude briefly flowed through the castle walls. And then we got high.

For his own protection, I will not tell you who had been assigned ME as a Valentine, but I will tell you he made this cute little card that was a series of hearts within hearts. I will also tell you that a stripper sat on this boy's face in Amsterdam and he - not surprisingly - broke out in a rash. From what I understood, the reason was NOT because of an STD that the Stripper may or may not have had, but because she had engaged in some activities onstage that involved a fruit the boy was highly allergic to. Yeah.

All the rest of the Valentine's Days afterwards seem to run together...one year, in L.A., I hung out with a childhood friend. We had Islands burgers and I promptly had a gall bladder attack. Awesome. So you can see where the holiday never quite took for me. I had long believed, and still do to a certain extent, that the holiday is what it is today because of the evil geniuses at Hallmark. And if you would disagree with that assertion, then would you care to explain to me how HALLOWEEN has become a major fucking national holiday??

This year, Valentine's Day 2006, will be pretty much the same as it ever was, with one little difference. I'll be eating leftovers and doing my laundry, probably go to bed early...but where the fact that I would be relegated to the mundane on this Pinkest of Holidays once used to grate on my nerves and self-esteem, this year I could give a shit because I'm in luuuuuuuurvvv...

It's truly amazing the amount of stupid shit one can tolerate when buoyed by the unbelievable yet undeniable fact that, despite my red-zone levels of crazy, someone who is not a family member loves me. And I love them, too. Like, in a Really Big Way.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I love you! :*