Valentines Day

So I look at the date today and I think, "Oh God, it's that time of year again". Valentines day, or as the businesses would probably like to call it, "all your money are belong to us" day. Exactly why this day exists has always intrigued me. Now, I can see the logic in wanting to do special things with that special person, but why reserve a particular day for it? There's 363(4) other days in the year, so why this one? So I thought I'd look into a bit more.

Typically, it's origins are rather boring. The name comes from a St. Valentines, who allegedly arranged illegal marriages, as some big and important person had declared marriage illegal because they found that single men made better fighters. There was also something about secret love letters and prisons, but that was about as interesting as it got. On February 15, there used to be some old Roman holiday, which was actually quite cool. It involved dipping torn up bits of wolf in their own blood, then running around and painting every women you could find with said blood-stained wolf bit. The funny thing is, the women enjoyed this. From this I conclude that ancient Roman women were actually all goths, and thus liked that sort of thing. However, the Christian church, always keen to ruin other peoples fun, decided that the painting of women with wolf blood wasn't really all that Christian, so they decided to replace the Roman tradition with what we now know as valentines day. Well, that's the general gist of it anyway, and I may have combined several theories together because I like the sound of them, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the above is a fabricated load of waffle.

Now that's all well and good, but I still don't really understand what the modern valentines day is all about. The purchasing of cards with really cheesy messages on, that have been produced by some bloke in a back room of some factory who gets paid to write cheesy messages to put on greetings cards. Just because you can buy a card with a message that was written by a complete strangers isn't really much of an indication of your own true feelings doesn't really prove a whole lot in my opinion. I guess what it all boils down to is my dislike of the way that nice holidays are becoming increasingly over commercialised, such as Christmas, Easter, and all the other ones that I can't think of right now. Valentines day is going down the same route, pretty soon it will be meaningless and filled to the brim with cheap plastic stuff. Which is rather quite sad, as the concept of valentines day itself is quite a nice one. I have nothing against the concept, just the way businesses try to sell it to us. And, of course, there's no resentment in the fact that I'm currently single :P

Well I apologise for the length of that; I do have a nasty habbit of going on and on (and on and on) sometimes. If anyone has subtracted a case of chronic boredom as a result of reading this, and needs someting to ease their pain, then might I suggest clicking here for some Team Laser Explosion action. Lastly, I hope everyone has had a good day. I know I have, I had pie and waffles for dinner, which rocked mightily. Until next time, drive safely and remember that if you should come face to face with a rabid emu, then the best advice I can give is to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction, screaming as loudly as possible. Goodnight folks.