Valentine's Gift Guide

A handy little gift guide for the girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress in your life whose value can be measured in chocolate.

by Dave McAwesome

For some people, this is a happy occasion. The rest of us hate those people. All bitterness aside, however, I must take this opportunity to remind you that I am a tremendous gift-giver when it comes to the lady-types. And so I've decided (against my fierce, selfish instincts) to provide some last-minute advice to you last-minute shoppers who clearly don't deserve the significant other you're with on account of your last-minute-ness. I have compiled a short list of Valentine's No-nos. Veritable Don'ts in the St. Valentine's Day quest for sack time (in fitting ode to our patron saint of canoodling).

First off, video games are out. Even if you're a lady-type getting a gift for your guy-type (pfft, this holiday is a girl's dream...just sit back and watch the gifts pour in...you're not expected to give anything, except your body assuming the dinner we take you to is above par) nothing says "I have very lukewarm feelings for you" better than a video game. Face it, MaddenKing or HaloRoxxors or whatever your online screen name is, PlayStation is only for those Valentine's Days when you're home alone.

Also verboten, a book titled "So, you've decided to have a threesome," "Swinging and you," or any variation thereof. If you look deep down into your heart, you already knew this, despite your Penthouse Forum fantasies (Gah! Pop reference alert! With the slow and steady demise of porn mags, what with the interweb and all, Penthouse Forum may go the way of Menudo and the Backstreet Boys. We may need another catch-all reference for such libidinous occasions. Go to it, boys and girls.).

Quiet please, for my new favorite non-gift: Name a star after your tongue wrestling partner. There's a company called International Star Registry which, as the name attests, registers a star in the name of your sweetie for a cool $54 plus shipping and handling--guh? shipping and handling for what? They gonna drop a red dwarf in your mailbox? Or is this a garden-variety scam where they charge a mint for something the United States Post Office could easily mis-sort for much less money. According to their homepage, naming a star after someone is a perfect Valentine's Day gift. Everyone's tired of flowers, they say. Yeah, dude, no one ever likes flowers. Those ugly things are always getting in the way. Thank you, International Star Registry. Thank you for paving the way for eternal single-dom. Fortunately, we know better. We know it's bad hoojoo to hand someone a plaque with some kind of text to the effect that "This K5 main sequence star with a temperature of around 4000 degrees Kelvin is now named Sweetie-cheeks. Congratulations." How romantic, indeed.

My mission complete, I'm going back to sleep now in the hopes that this day will soon be over.