Valentine's Day

Bruce Springsteen generally is not the most cheery guy in music (it's working class to be sad you know) but by far one of his most depressing songs, and beautiful, is called Valentine's Day. It's on the Tunnel of Love album and Bruce wrote it right in the middle of a period in which his first marriage was falling apart. In the song he captures the complete sadness of that one day us single folk have grown to despise.

(Yes, yes I mean Valentine's day. What are you? stupid?)

In my humble opinion Valentine's Day, like it's sister holidays Mothersday and Labor Day, is nothing more than a cheap bad tasting fake alternative for actual romance. What is there romantic about setting a fixed date for making people know you care about them? Let me start, by pointing out that an exciting and fiery love life can hardly be expected when you need a date set by Hallmark for you to actually get together.

Second, you won't get together. Valentine cards are anonymous. The point in that is that you are too chicken to walk up to the other person involved and say "Hi, I want you" (ok, maybe another pick up line might be better), which is an emotion I can totally dig, and you're also too chicken to write your name because that is the card-writing way of walking up to someone and say "I want to be your tampon" (hi Charles!).

So in the end, the person you are madly in love with will receive a card without a name and is left to guess who likes him or her. You haven't shown him or her you are, at the very least, interested, so how is that going to work out? I would like to have a list of every couple that got together because of Valentine's Day. My guess is that it's going to be a pretty short one.

And then there are the already existing couples. Valentine's Day is that wonderful moment where you give eachother flowers that smell of the supermarket you bought them in and sit in a restaurant being extremely romantic like all the other people there. I'm not trying to be bitter here (it just comes naturally I guess), but if you need a specific day to show that you love eachother, you might want to have a Dr. Phil moment. Maybe even two.

So for crying out loud, fuck Valentine's Day, Hallmark and all the other fascists that are part of this!

And no, I did not get a card this year.