here i go again on my own...

whitesnake wisdom to pass down on the upcoming solo valentines day;

"Here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known
Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone
An' I've made up my mind
I ain't wasting no more time
I'm just another heart in need of rescue
Waiting on love's sweet charity
An' I'm gonna hold on
For the rest of my days
Cos' I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams
An' here I go again on my own
Going down the only road I've ever known"

Yes, Whitesnake and a stripperesque Tawny Kitaen sliding around a white Jaguar sucks pretty bad, but not nearly as much as Valentine's Day on the whole. What a shitty contrived excuse to sell flowers, chocolate, greeting cards, construction paper and jewelry. I've been alone for most of the vdays of my short tenure but I have to say the few where I was fortunate enough to have someone weren't spectacular or enriching or markedly more romantic than any other day. we as a society buy into this push for mass consumerism and god damnit I think it needs to stop.

A small history lesson on the origins of this celebration provided by my apostolic upbringing. St. Valentine was a martyred priest in Rome who was ordered to renounce his faith by Claudius II. When Valentine refused he was sent to the prefect of Rome who commended him to be beaten with clubs and then beheaded! According to liturgical texts this beating and beheading occured February 14, 270 A.D. [5 years of Catholic school does serve me on some level, who knew?]. Where does love fall into this? Well as a priest, St. Valentine was marrying young couples and centurians. Somehow this translates into millions of profits for all of said industries. this makes me want to vomit. people skipping around town joyously in love, spending money on useless material items and how do you think St.Valentines feels, forever entombed in his catacomb?

what a bullshit excuse to make couples spend money and those of us 'relationship challenged' people feel like shit for not having anyone. well guess what? not me! not this time! not on my watch, on my shift! i'm not staying in and i'm not hitting the town. i'm gonna stand in the street and yell at all the happy couples the sad truth of this bullshit consumer celebration. i mean who really benefits? people who are already having sex are going to have the same boring sex they always do except with some tacky neglige thrown into the mix, lonely people will feel a little more lonely and the fat cats at all those chocolate companies and those hack greeting card writers will be living big, fattening their wallets on a priest that was beaten and then decapitated.

as an exercise to relieve my sincere disgust at this putrid tradition i would like to shout a couple fuck-you's to the various heads of state that keep this miserable wheel turning. to hallmark, american greetings, the taylor corporation, carte blanche industries, 123 greetings, rennaisance greeting cards and sunrise greetings i just want to say fuck off and stop wasting trees for useless cards that will no doubt be taking up precious landfill space in a week or less. to hersheys chocolate for wrapping your kisses in that annoying foil that you can taste all outside the ediface of your kisses, i would like to say go fuck yourselves. to 1800-flowers, hoogasian flowers and all the florists across the country I'd like to say find a real job. to kay jewlers, tiffanys, the diamond exchange and all the hasidic jewlers of antwerp robbing john q public of three months salary and effectively enslaving the southern half of unindustrialized africa to get some stupid shiny rocks, let me just say, burn in hell you solace fucks. and finally to victoria's secret and your dreamcast of angelic models, destroying all hope, wreaking havoc on every american woman's body image, making me feel ugly with every browse of your catalog, every minute of your fashion show, enough peril in my blood to let it boil, enough envy and wrath at the unlikelihood to touch your soft supple breasts that the veins split and my arterial cavitys flood with bloody valentine red and seeps through my teeth let me just say, thanks for picking up adriana lima, she wouldn't have to do a damn thing.

good to get that all off my chest. so to conclude, valentine's day is a sham of the most flagrant order and it sickens me that some of you will engage in this but then again who am i to judge? just remember what you are celebrating and that's the fact that a roman catholic priest refused to renounce his faith and stop marrying soldiers, so he was beaten with clubs and then beheaded. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!