In the long run, I hate Valentine's Day for the same reason that all of you do. It's the same heartbreak, just one that's more ingrained and historical then most.

Sure, it's a Hallmark-brand holiday. It exists only to sell flowers, greeting cards and chocolate. As a former flower delivery-boy, I can say with authority that your local flower suppliers bank heavily on your support of tradition. The fifty percent markup you pay on roses alone manages to fund the next three months of slow floral demand.

...and I'm alone just like all you other unlucky saps, so I understand your misery. For some of you, this might be the first time in a while that you have to spend this holiday alone. It was only a short few breaths after Valentine's day that my oft-referenced ex evacuated herself from my life.

To think, that was really two years ago this month�

Anyway...I can't walk twenty feet without being hit by someone's commiseration about Valentine's Day, as if the concept of being alone was invented for the sole purpose of shaming them once a year. Were I consulted, I would quickly point out the greater hurdles in life, cancer being an obvious one.

The truth of it is that the greatest hurdle is only the one we can see in our direct path, and thus being alone, however inconsequential in the end, is often monumental in stature to the small-minded.

Wild complaints are common against the phantom conspiracy that seeks to propagate the evils of Valentine's Day upon the masses. Hallmark and Whitman's being the primary target for unrequited love's angry wrath.

I, for one, champion the branding of holidays. In my eyes, the commercialization of holidays only benefits us as a whole. Think of the untold thousands employed to print these shitty WWF valentine cards. The hundreds of skilled chocolateers necessary to produce the mystery samplers you dump upon your secretary.

Think about all the people out there celebrating this holiday because they finally have someone worth dumping all this commercialized bullshit on. Remember what that felt like for the first time?

The truth is that miserable people are more to blame than anyone else out there. Miserable people remember candy hearts in their elementary school boxes. Miserable people remember giving or getting that red rose to that special someone who just happened to exist amid the middle of February.

Miserable people bemoan this cookie cutter holiday with saccharine venom, because they all know deep down inside that they long for the day when they might express their appreciation for another person in a loving manor. They long for the day when they might exploit the cover of Valentine to unload their affection upon someone dear to them.

They long for the golden shower of love just like the rest of us miserable fucks.

So in the end, it's the miserable asshole's fault, because no one wants to be alone.

I guess it just means more to me, because this is the day that I buried my father in the ground.