Of all the Saints throughout all time,
I loathe the most Saint Valentine.
I am all about celebrating amore,
Just don't make it into an awful eyesore.
The candy, the flowers, the hotel bills,
It's all enough to give me the chills.
The candy hearts and the tacky lingerie,
Why won't it all just go away?
The arrows, the diapers, the little wings,
If I didn't laugh I'd cry at all these things.
It seemed fitting to lead with a Valentines poem as I segway into the rhetoric saturated holiday that's been depressing the masses since Pope Gelasius set aside February 14th. to honor St. Valentine in 496 A.D. This year falls just over 1,000 years before they were introduced to chocolate, so you can get out of here with your Whitman's Sampler. As early as January 3rd. the isles of the markets seemingly start to blush as they turn various shades of pink and red in preparation for this over commercialized holiday. Like a filthy predator skulking in the grass, stalking the unsuspecting pathos of singles all over the world. I feel that there is nothing wrong with being single and I resent the fact that I am made to feel as though my life is somehow sad and incomplete because of my single status. Please don't take my tone for bitterness, I am wide open to the possibilities that love has to offer, I just don't appreciate being pitied. Love should be a natural process, not a stressful last minute hail Mary pass to find a date, ANY date, to take to a romantic comedy and to a restaurant that you can't afford. Appealing to my pathos, tugging at my heart strings like a maniacal puppeteer with his marionette has got to stop. It is everywhere, even Papa Murphys is offering a heart shaped pizza for the budget minded Valentines victim. Dating is difficult enough as it is without all the pressure of this holiday. I'll be spending Valentine's day alone this year with a wee bit of Scotch and a heart shaped pizza, and I wouldn't have it any other way!!
