Valentine's Blog

In happy returns of the day, Interdome's own "one big step back the fuck up" Award of the day goes to: Valentine's Day!



A Brief History of Valentine's Day

Since, as some of you know, Valentine's Day is my all-time favorite holiday (yes, my favorite holiday of all of the holidays that will ever happen in time) I thought it might be fun to have a little cultural studies essayette on all of the things that you COULD be celebrating today, while you're playing footsie with your sweetie at the Macaroni Grill. Sure, this is as good a day as any to buy pink stuff and to light that "fragrance of love" scented candle ("bitch!" know the reference? answer is hidden below), but you could be getting drunk and thinking of all the other wonderful connotations that Valentine's Day has, in vague chronological order. If you have any good additions, write 'em up, and I'll stick them in (but ever so gently and respectfully). Let us begin...

Eternal Love in the Eternal City

Way back, at the beginning of time, before you even met your significant other, Feb. 15th was Lupercalia in ancient Rome. Naked people ran wild in the streets smacking each other with stuff to try and make each other more pregnant. Now a days we know better, and we hit each other to try and stop being pregnant. Wikipedia suggests maybe the holiday got its name because Romulus and Remus suckled on a (lupus) wolf-tit. Mmm. Wolf-tit. Think about that when you are heavy petting with your sweetie tonight.

Carnal Gnosticism

Sparing you the theology of gnosticism, there was this guy named Valentinus who broke with the church in the second century AD because he really wanted to read The Da Vinci Code in the original latin, but that was illegal, at least in hardcover. Because the church didn't like Tom Hanks, they called Valentinus crazy and chased him away to Cyprus or some shit. The funny part is, it seems that he made some of the first Christian associations to Platonic philosophy, and developed the notion of the three hypostases, which you know now as the "three men that Don McClean admires the most". Don McClean was never sent to Cyprus by the church. When you are getting your own slice of "american pie" tonight, remember that the father, son, and ghost are all incestuously getting off while watching you. And judging you.

The Original Valentine

The feast day of St. Valentine was originally declared in 496. Nobody knows who the Saint actually was. Maybe a Roman priest, maybe a bishop in Interamna, maybe a African martyr. So fuck him. What is cool is that the day was declared by Pope Gelasius I, who was the third African pope. (There were african popes??? Oh my god!!!) Relax though, he might still have been white, because the area of Africa he was from was not "black" at the time, but more lighter. Whew... that was close. We don't know for sure, because no one ever painted him. The wikipedia article picture of him looks just like every other pope from the period. Things that Gelasius did that were totally sweet include making wine a part of the Eucharist, in order to kill Manichaeans, because they wouldn't drink the wine, and then the Christians could find them. You can remember the awesomeness of the African popes this Valentine's Day when you are drinking yourself into body-of-christ oblivion so you don't feel bad about not having a date.

No Love for the Jews

Wikipedia speaks: "On St. Valentine's Day in 1349, roughly 2,000 Jews were burned to death by Christian mobs in Strasbourg. These mobs, led by nobles who owed large sums to Jewish moneylenders (usury being a sin for Christians), blamed the Jews for poisoning the city's wells and causing the bubonic plague." You can remember the usurers in your life when thinking about the bubonic plague while using protection during your lovemaking today. Let's here it for the mob.

Women and Men

Valentine was the name of an obscure character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The plot of this play was butchered into the romantic shit-comedy, She's the Man. I bet alot of people will be watching such movies tonight. I, for one, will be watching Can't Hardly Wait, which grammar notwithstanding, I feel is the best teen movie ever created. The subtitle, as it were, to Twelfth Night is or What You Will. Now, Aleister Crowley's immortal line, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!" has been adopted by Satanism and other hedonistic belief systems. One of these belief systems that 'was, like, way into Aleister Crowley' is Led Zepplin. Led Zepplin put a fish in some woman's vagina. All of this is very weird. This is why women like the theater and men like to fish, and on Valentine's Day they probably don't listen to Led Zepplin.

Sweaty Palms

Valentine Dencausse was a famous chiromancer. What is a chiromancer, you ask? A palm reader! She made predictions for the French Ministry of War during WWI! War is Crazy! Celebrate pseudoscience today by reading your partner's hand and then deciding whether or not to go to war.

Tanks for the Flowers

And... when assaulting your lover's inhibitions tonight, remember the Valentine Tank, Britain's most widely-produced tank in WWII, that fought extensively in North Africa. Charge!

I Want to Love You Like an Animal

Hilton Stewart Paterson Valentine, guitarist for The Animals, we celebrate you today! Even though many so-called fans think that your blues-inducing riffs from "House of the Rising Sun" actually belong to Jimmy Page, we know better! You don't fuck around with sea creatures in the bed room, only higher life forms! Animals! Yeah! We admire your appreciation for Skiffle Music that led you to first pick up that guitar in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, coincidentally the city where the makers of the Valentine Tank have their works. And when Eric Burdon went on to join hippie-funk band War, we're glad you were a conscientious objector and continued doing... uh... nothing... by which we really mean loving, not fighting! True to your name to the end! What the fuck is a skiffle? Anyway... take your Other to a house of ill-repute tonight, if not for our sake, for Hilton's, goddammit!


happy valentine's day, suckas...