Whine and Roses.

I'm not a Valentine's day fan. I actually loathe it, to be honest. I don't have a problem with love, or romance, per se, it's just that in my opinion, valentine's day isn't really about that any more. It's become the Xmas of romance: commercialised and sentimentalised and gooey and nauseating. Personally, I prefer not to have romance forced down my throat until the gag reflex kicks in. It's as if someone decided that the essence of romantic love, lust and desire could be distilled into roses, cadbury's milk tray, and stuffed toys holding a cutesy message on a heart. And the obsessive, let's-have-everything-in-red thing. red boxer shorts. red lingerie (whorey, but that's for another blog post). red envelopes. red wrapping paper. red kitchen utensils. red socks. red newspapers. you know, romantic stuff like... oh, wait, you mean that's just a marketing ploy? who'da guessed. not me, oh no.

I wouldn't even mind the blatant mercenary zeal with which hallmark and co. attempt to part us from our hard-earned cash; it's the sense of desperation that pervades the entire day: couples that attempt to squeeze in a year's worth of romance into one day, singles who feel that if they don't have a date on this one day of the year, they are a romantic failure doomed to die alone and have their corpses nibbled by their 17 cats.

Well, at least this year I don't have to give giri-chocolates* to my boss.

*Ahhh bugger it. I'm not explaining that one, so you're just going to have to Google it.