Have a Schadenfreude-Filled Valentine's Day

Great. It's Valentine's Day. I won't say that I've always hated this day, but once I hit middle school and they stopped giving out those cheesy Valentine notes to everyone and started giving out carnations to the pretty people, Valentines Day started sucking amazingly. And not in the good way, either. By seventh grade, I caught on and started sending carnations to myself, just so my astonished classmates would say, "Somebody gave you a carnation?!" Even while Anne and I were dating, I still hated this holiday, although only on principle. Nothing more romantic than principles, right?

This is the first Valentines Day in something like fifteen years I haven't spent around my less-principled peers nailing all sorts of tail while I send myself carnations. (The fact that I'm calling it "tail" might explain why I'm not so lucky in the world of love.) There are two more things mollifying me this Valentines Day. The first is the existence of venereal disease, which I for one won't be contracting. And of course, tonight's the Westminster Dog Show. I have mixed feelings about these dog shows.... On the one hand, there's my cooing affection for every dog paraded around Madison Square Garden. My apologies to the entire human race, but I much prefer dogs to people and I've got nothing but contempt for the snooty purity-Nazis at Westminster naming their poor dogs Champion Lady Margaret of Cunningshire Waltzes or Kevin or something stupid like that. (Seriously, the Suffolk spaniel at last year's Westminster was named Kevin. What kind of freakwad names their dog Kevin???)

Just as in the human world, it's the most dolled-up frou-frou pedigree that invariably wins Westminster. Never the most loyal dog or the friendliest or the dog with the best sense of humor.

When I get my first puppy down at the animal shelter, I'm not going to be looking at the animal's breeding. I'm looking for a dog that I can bond with, one who's cerebral and introspective and who likes long conversations about our feelings and spending hours in Barnes and Noble without buying anything.

I heard some woman on the radio complain about being single in her thirties on Valentines Day, and at first I felt a sort of kindred spirit with her: see, I'm not the only person unattached on Valentines Day. And then there was a tad of resentment. Wait a second, I thought, why is she single? Not why isn't she married or why isn't she engaged or why isn't she in a meaningful long-term relationship — you need to find the specific right person for one of those — but what's so wrong with this woman that not one man in all of central New Jersey will ask her out. Is she hideous?

Seven seasons of Sex and the City have made me skeptical. It's more likely that she's just plain picky and petulant, that she's looking for the same sort of fairy tale relationship that Carrie eventually found — he's handsome, urbane, and, oh yeah, "the next Donald Trump" (which would kind of negate his handsome and urbane qualities). Honey, that's fiction. Your soulmate probably won't rank very high in the pantheon of great men, and I'm spending all my sympathy on your unfortunate soulmate who's out there waiting for you to come back to reality.