Why I hate Valentine's Day...

I like most holidays. Christmas, Thanksgiving, memorial day, 4th of July, Easter - food, family, time off, and gifts. What more could I want?

But there's one holiday that always kicks mad anthony in the nuts every year. It has none of the things above. Rather, it serves as a reminder of mad anthony's total inability to immersed with members of the opposite sex. I'm talking, of course, about Valentine's Day.

Now, I understand that those who are in relationships like it as a chance to show the person they care about that they, well, care about them. But for the perennially single, it's just a reminder that they are spending yet another year alone. It's like a day for those in relationships to remind those that aren't how much they suck.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just one day. But Valentine's Day merchandise has been in stores since early January, while the last pieces of pine needles were being swept from the Christmas clearance isle. Every time I go to buy toilet paper and frozen pizza, it reminds me that I have nobody to share a giant heart-shaped box of chocolate with.

Even the Sunday sales circulars that I peruse in the hopes of finding stuff I can resell on eBay for a profit serves to mock me. The entire Target circular this week was done in a red Valentine's Day theme, complete with red coffeemakers and red Kitchenaid mixers. The back of the Best Buy circular featured a graphic of a box of chocolates, only the chocolates had been replaced with crappy romanantic movie DVD's, mostly starring Julia Roberts. (As a side note, how could a movie that starts out with a rich guy in a Lotus picking up a hooker turn into a romance? To me, it sounds like the start of a porno).

Of course, being single on Valentine's Day has it's advantages. No having to spend a ton of money on gifts, flowers, or dinner. And I do like one thing about Valentine's Day - those heart-shaped boxes of chocolate eventually go to 75% off after V-Day. Granted, it always makes me feel a little pathetic sitting alone in my underwear cramming my mouth full of 75% off candy from a heart-shaped box that I bought myself, but after the first couple boxes I'm too sick to my stomach to care....