It’s Valentine’s Day and already I am disgusted. Not at the actual holiday, of course, but at all those bitter crybabies out there who celebrate this day the way normal people celebrate a case of contagious hemorrhoids. Listen, just because you didn’t receive a Valentine today doesn’t mean that the rest of us who did are shallow, smug Hallmark elitists. It just means that, well, you’re a loser. I did my ten minutes of research and found out that this day is about saints, and therefore deserves our respect.

As many as three saints, in fact, bore the name of Valentine. It’s hard to separate the men from the myth – they either evangelized, illegally married couples, signed notes with “from your Valentine” or all of the above. But what is clear is that all three of them suffered brutal persecution and martyrs’ deaths so that today we could, in solemn remembrance, wear and eat licorice panties.

There are complaints that Valentine’s Day – just because it sells enough candy to bail out Enron – is becoming too commercialized. Well, as my friend Luke points out: Heck, if it’s being commercialized, then it MUST mean something.

Take, for example, how commercialization helps the Winter Olympics. Remember when people wanted the World Trade Center flag to be carried during the opening ceremonies as a symbol for worldwide freedom and unity? That was a terrible, terrible idea that would’ve damaged everything the Olympics stand for. On the other hand, having a logo-clad Picabo Street ski down Mount GalleryFurniture.com until Katie Couric announces that it’s time for another mLife commercial – this was the correct way for the Olympics to gain respect.

But I do agree that Valentine’s Day gets a little excessive. I’m talking about those (i.e. males) who treat Valentine’s Day as if it were the nuclear arms race. You know, the people who say to themselves, “Well, last Valentine’s Day I carved her name into my arm, this year . I’ll carve her portrait on my chest!”

My favorite instance (that is suitable to print) of Valentine’s Day gone wild is a recent article in USA Today reporting that the W Times Square hotel in New York is offering a dessert called “Sex in the Sheets.” For $18, you receive a pint of ice cream, butterscotch and chocolate sauces, whipped cream, and of course, a plastic sheet. For $20 more, you get a cheap Polaroid to record the messy affair.

But I have to ask, is it really necessary to take pictures of this? Would you really want to show to your friends, relatives and children, pictures of yourself coddling with something so slathered in dairy products that it could be anybody or any animal? I’m betting these Valentine’s Day pictures would never resurface – until the day you run for Congress, of course, in which case these photos would find their way into the hands of every man, woman and child in the free world.

Maybe it make everyone happier if we returned to the simpler, more wholesome Valentine traditions of third grade, where thanks to the public school system, kids were forced to send love to each other. I’ll never forget how I labored over my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cards, making sure that the cards with Leonardo – the BEST of the Turtles – would go only to the girls I liked. After the day was done, I would run home with my construction paper box so I could find out which girls were candidates for holding hands and possibly marriage. This would include anyone who gave me candy, drew hearts on the card and/or spelled my last name correctly.

Then I would sigh happily and wait eagerly for the next day when the girls would show their love by not beating me up on the playground.

So I’m excited that the tradition of Valentine gift giving will never die out, no matter how much you losers without so much as a candy heart to your name will protest. A recent survey of Europe done by Amazon.co.uk confirms V-Day’s popularity. Apparently, one in nine cards was sent by people to themselves “to save face on the dreaded V-Day.” And “one person in 10 admitted to stealing a card from a sibling or housemate.” When the meaning of a holiday becomes so powerful that even the French want to maintain their dignity-you know the magic is there.

And before I forget: Dan Nguyen, if you are out there, I love you.

Dan Nguyen is a senior in computer engineering and journalism and mass communication from Iowa City.