And Oddly Enough, Not Even A Word About Al Capone

      In love?

      Too much damned money on your hands?

      Want to give yourself memories you'll eventually regret later to the point that you'll wish you could just scour your brain with bleach, an abrasive cleanser and steel wool, but, dammit, there'll be photographs and credit-card payments to remind you regularly and acerbically of your naiveté and utter stupidity?

      Then has this blog got the stuff for you.

      Now, boys and goyls, go out and get your respective Lerrrve Thangs On.   This blog is SURE it'll be worth it.  

      By the way, when you go, don't forget the tacky souvenirs: no romantic excursion will be quite right unless you bring back silly momentoes that will inevitably seem to snigger at you for your foolishness like schoolgirls do at the local nerd whose pen has just exploded in his pocket.  

      As for the Doc, he'll be spending next Monday doing what he does every February 14th since he ceased to be an idiot: getting tits-to-the-gills, three-sheets-to-the-acrid-wind, Walter-Huston-on-a-bender DRUNK. And trying very, very hard not to give himself a migraine from rolling his eyes at all the sickeningly-earnest young lovers and tortured couples that think the day means anything.

      Yeah, yeah, yeah-- you're right. I shouldn't be so cynical. I'm sure it's a wonderful, blissful day--- for chocolatiers, florists and greeting-card conglomerates. They need their days, too. After all, how could we expect them to survive on Christmas and Easter alone? So, please, please, don't be cynical. Think of the little florists, walking the streets like desperate Ophelias begging for change.

      So, put a little love in your heart, even if it's like inhaling from a strychnine-laced cigarette, and please gift generously. Your local confectioners need you, and you won't get laid if you don't.

The last part of this message has been paid for by the Hallmark Corporation, where our verses may be empty and trite, but at least they're convenient. And they're for you. After all, you can't spell "Hallmark" without a "mark," and nothing says love like a culturally-coerced gesture of appeasement on corrugated cardboard.

Hallmark: Saving Your Sorry Ass With Disingenuous Tokens Of Affection For As Long As You Can Remember. We Care So You Don't Have To.

And have a very, very happy Valentine's Day.   Because you're special and you deserve it.

For those few of you interested, there actually is (at long last) an update on the Other Site. This blog recommends it only for those insane enough to care about the Doc and his cats and his ritualistic Changing Of The Face (such as it is). For the rest of you, I recommend sticking to the silliness of the main site.

      ADDENDUM: Wisdom from a scient reader:

Love is like a Nirvana song. You only think it means something when you're caught up in it. Afterwards you learn it's crap and you spend the rest of your life trying to understand what you ever saw in it.

(Or heard in it, the Doc dares to interpose.) Can't say I agree, but I can't say I disagree, either. (Smells Like Spleen Spirit?)