Dear Emile,
My girlfriend really likes receiving fancy gifts on Valentine’s Day, but I’m super-duper poor. What should I do? – Rob
Dear Rob,
You should break up with her. She sounds annoying. If you love her and don’t want to break up, get a henna tattoo on your penis. Those are very fancy.
———
I’ve always found Valentine’s Day to be a silly, useless holiday. If someone’s going to give me something or do something really nice – or the reverse – it should be because they want to, when they want to, not because Hallmark set an alarm for them. If you’re not doing nice things to and for the people you love anyway, then there’s a problem already. The thing stinks to high hell of the flower, restaurant, and greeting card businesses colluding in order to force people to collectively spend money – a sort of minor capitalist high holy day.
The matter can be clarified by comparing it to oral sex: just not fulfilling unless you feel the person giving it to you wanted to do it right then and there. Why bother, otherwise? Is the concept of a Coordinated Oral Sex Hour not ridiculous? (but, I would argue, still a better idea than Valentine’s Day) Love should not be in the business of charity.
Still, it’s important to remember that we can all find common ground with petit cadeaux such as the Candy Penis Bouquet ($4.00):
“If you want to give your sugarplum a more traditional sweet, but don’t want to lose that phallic edge—and you want it to be edible, of course—the Candy Penis Bouquet is a perfect choice. Not only will you be celebrating the time-honored tradition of giving flowers on Valentine’s Day, you’ll be saying, “How about a nice batch of tasty, multi-flavored penises, my dear?” If that doesn’t send the baby-making dance into a full-on boogie, nothing will.”
French Augmented Sixths 