So it’s nearly Valentines Day again. For us Earth residents that means an imminent onslaught of red plasticy shit for sale at seemingly every store in the city. They literally have it spilling out into the street and hanging from the front rafters of their shops, you’ll be tripping over love hearts on your way to work and spilling coffee all over yourself. Or maybe thats just me.

Yes, on retrospect, it is probably just me. Anyway, moving on.

It might just be that I’m a cheap bastard but it seems to me that these special occasions are melding into one big clusterfuck designed to rape and pillage my wallet. I swear to God it was Thanksgiving only a minute ago, then Christmas, New Years and now bloody Valentines Day soon it will be Chinese New Year then fucking Easter. The cycle seems to reset every year after the summer and I think it’s all an epic hoax by people who grow flowers, print cards an sell decorative chocolates. I think they all live in fear that one day we’ll all realise we don’t need lame-ass-cards, dead plant ovaries and asthetically appealling bits of chocolate that ultimately make us fat and miserable. They worry that we’ll realize that we’ve all been had. Well I realized this already and I’m all set to pull together a pitchfork wielding posse and wreak havoc.

Or I would be if I was less lazy and a hell of a lot more organized. As it is I think I’ll just write about it as I can drink coffee while I write and writing only involves the movement of fingers. I seem to have lost my train of thought….Ah yes! Valentines Day! In an impressive twist of irony women will be the first to complain about the over-commercialsied nature of Valentines Day, however if the man in their life doesn’t tow the corporate line on the day buy blowing the GDP of a small African nation on flowers, chocolate, jewellry, dinner, champagne, cards and an intellectually offensive romantic comedy he will be branded an uncaring asshole by the aforementioned woman who spent the past week complaining about the bastardization of St Valentine.

So who was the Saint Valentine and why do I spend my life in fear of missing the day we use to commemorate him? Why am I so willing to spend all my precious, precious beer tokens on colourful dead bits of foliage and over priced set dinners? I had no idea who he was so I went to check Wikipedia and do you know what I discovered? NO ONE KNOWS WHO THE FUCK HE WAS. No one! This is what they say about him “Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14.” He is, for all intents and purposes, a dead Italian who was canonized for reasons unknown. I mean for Gods sake. I feel that this gives merit to my conspiracy theory regarding V Day. The powerful CFC ( Cards, Flowers, Chocolates ) mafia just chose a saint who no one knew anything about and then set about manipulating the feeble minds of our lady friends to a stunningly successful degree.

V Day is now a multi billion dollar industry, even our Chinese brothers have been sucked into the scam. I see the poor bastards being led along the streets of Soho every February 14th by their biological-fashion-faux-pas-on-legs, or girlfriend if you prefer the official title, being emotionally blackmailed into celebrating a day that they know even less about than I do. And the Chinese have really gone in for V Day in a big fucking way. I mean they get huge bouquets, massive bloody things, not to mention a box of chocolates that would pop you directly into a diabetic coma if you ate them in one go, then there’s the card and they usually have some sort of giant freaky-ass-shit-looking stuffed animal with a red heart stitched to the front of it. The woman carries none of these items. The man seems to both purchase them and carry them around all night feeling and looking like a pussy whipped little bitch with a wallet that goes through an impressive feat of weight loss as the night drags on.

I’ve noticed men tend to avoid eye contact on V Day, it’s the same basic feeling as being at the urinal or in a gym locker room. Everyone knows why you’re there but you still don’t want to catch an eye full of dick. Except on Valentines Day the dick isn’t your penis, the dick is you.

Us men all like to make believe that we wear the pants in our relationships, when we are at the pub with the boys we’re all cocky saying stupid shit like “Told the Mrs I was our for a few beers tonight, she didn’t like it but I told her to deal with it”. As if you would really say that. You’d get your ass handed to you and you know it, the conversation was more along the lines of you saying “pleeeeeeeease” until she gave in but assigned you an 11pm curfew and then took your wallet off you before giving you a few dollars spending money and the apartment key on a little string around your neck so you don’t lose the fucking thing for the thousandth time.

You see the reason we all have to do the V Day thing is simple. Women rule the fucking world. You think Barack Obama runs the world? Bullshit, he doesn’t Michelle Obama runs this planet and you can bet your ass Mr Obama is going to be bringing home the whole V Day assortment. The CFC Mafia have their hands in his pockets just as deeply as they do ours. Not that that’s any consolation. I’ll still be trundling along the street this Valentines Day, carrying flowers, chocolates and a card. Don’t make eye contact if you see me, I’ll be shuffling along quietly looking down at my feet trying not to feel like a complete dick.