First, I'd like to thank my good friend Dan for linking to my blog from his site, www.theartofdansilver.com. Those of you who came from there, thanks for visiting and not voicing your utter disappointment in my petty rants and tantrums. If you came here by chance, damn your luck and move on. I understand.

Now, welcome to the Useless Holiday Department. Today's special, Valentine's Day. Or is it St. Valentine's Day. Call it what you want, it's fucking useless. Call me bitter, call me jaded, call me Earl, but don't call me some hopeless romantic, yearning for love's passionate blaze to burn brightly within my breast. Biggest pussy holiday in the known universe.

In reality, Valentine's Day makes New Year's Eve and Halloween look like bona fide holidays. Think about it. Valentine's Day probably started out like Halloween; you know, some sort of weird pagan ritual day that the Catholics assimilated about 1500 years ago to give their lame ass religion some cred with the local citizenry.

Something like this: "Hey you godless heathens, why the fuck are you sacrificing a goat to some insipid love god when we've got this saint you can feast with? So, come on over to our "church," drop some of that gold in our "poor box," have some wine and we'll toast St. Valentine." To which the locals replied, "Will there be heart shaped candy, stoopid cards, and inflatable hearts? 'Cause if there are, we are so there!"

Now, thanks to Hallmark, American Greetings, and FTD, we have "Valentine's Day, the marketing event of the winter!" Think I'm off the mark here? Just try going to Target the day after Christmas. The wife and I did. Know what they had already started displaying. Yep, Valentine's Day cards, bears, candy, balloons, underwear, socks, condoms, and hair gel. The stupid fucking day was a full 45 days away and already we were being inundated with the Red Menace. I almost went berserk. Close call. I bought some mixed nuts and got the hell out.

Maybe my bitterness with this tremendous waste of time stems from being the awkward kid in school (read; really tall and fat, so I was a little imposing to my classmates, especially the girls). The popular boys all had their bags stuffed with candy, cards, and phone numbers. Me and my ilk, we got a few from the girls who appreciated us for being us (read; the ugly, unpopular girls), and maybe some crossed out cards from girls who felt sorry for us as we sat and stewed in our bitter juices until tender and ready to burst.

As time passed, the day got worse. If I had a girlfriend, she expected flowers, cards, candy, dinner. I expected sex. Stupid me. Finally, I met the perfect woman; my wife. Our first Valentine's Day together, she came to my work with a picnic basket of cheese, salami, crackers, and champagne. We went to a park; ate; drank; made out; and I was back to work in an hour. It was cool. That night, I made dinner and we had sex. Finally, a Valentine's Day I could get behind, and get some behind (hummuna, hummuna).

The reason I say she is perfect? She agrees with me and my feelings on this otherwise futile waste of time we call Valentine's Day. If we do celebrate it, we try to go out of town and gamble, drink, and have sex. It's totally cool, and it's not necessarily because of some stupid saint, or Cupid, or a druid love god.

Valentine's Day is for kids. We spend a shitload of money on candy, little toys, and DVD's for our kids and get them those crappy little cards for them to pass out at school. That's it. Other than that, I'm done with the 14th of February. Nothing special. Just another day, except you can't get a table at a decent restaurant.

Now, let's get to the real important days, like St. Patrick's Day.