Happy Biochemical Reaction Day

So, it’s Valentine’s Day as I write this. Or, more precisely, Saint Valentine’s Day.

Yeah, that’s right. This is a religious holiday.

Yep, this is a religious holiday, even though nobody knows who the fuck Saint Valentine was. In fact, there were numerous saints named “Valentine” and we don’t know shit about any of them. In 496 AD, when Pope Gelasius I first established the feast of Saint Valentine, he said that nobody knew one fucking thing about the dude. If the fucking pope didn’t know shit about a saint 1,500 years ago, you can be pretty sure that we are not in better shape today. Usually, all we know about saints are the lies told a couple of hundred years or so after they died.

I know that a lot of you say, “Whatev. Valentine’s Day ain’t no fucking religious holiday. It is all about just telling someone you love that you love them. What’s wrong with that?”

There’s nothing wrong with that. And all that Valentine’s Day stands for supports that very sentiment. Valentine’s Day may, for that very reason, be the most perfect holiday ever.

See, on President’s Day we get a fucking day off and we don’t do shit. What has being on vacation got to do with any president except George W. Bush? And on Christmas we exchange gifts and decorate trees that we chop down so that they can die in our living rooms. What has that got to do with Jesus or even with zombies in general? And on Thanksgiving we eat like disgusting fucking pigs and then nap and watch football all day. What has that got to do with being American? Okay, never mind that last one.

But on Valentine’s Day, we do lots of things that symbolize modern love. We exchange cards, which are mass-produced emotions we are supposed to feel. We go out to expensive restaurants that we can’t actually afford to eat at everyday, to get food and service we wish our spouses would provide for us. We exchange huge candy assortments knowing that we will only like maybe three or four of the fifty candy pieces, but we will suffer and eat the other 47 nasty candies because, well, they’re there. We give flowers that we will watch wither and die as they struggle to live and reproduce before death takes them and they are forgotten forever. What could better symbolize modern love and marriage than these things, and paying twice as much for them as at any other time of the year?

The things we do on Valentine’s Day are perfectly symbolic. Valentine’s Day is the most symbolically honest holiday ever!

I know that, in a country in which, by all accounts, the divorce rate for all marriages is close to fifty percent, it may be hard to get behind this whole Valentine’s Day thing. Maybe you even have a hard time getting your head wrapped around the whole idea of love.

But don’t let divorce rates hinder your appreciation of love. Divorce is complicated and really shouldn’t be used as a gauge. For instance, divorce is higher among conservative and born-again Christians than among any other group, including atheists and agnostics. And divorce is highest in Bible Belt states, with Florida number one in the nation followed closely by Texas. God is love? I don’t think so.

But here is the thing. You can excuse the bible thumpers for not knowing what love is. After all, Adam and Eve never fell in love. They just got stuck with one another. Maybe they spent their days fucking when God was not walking around the Garden of Eden naked talking to himself, but love is never mentioned in Genesis.

So the Christians have an excuse. You atheists, who are not stoopid, believe in evolution. You believe that humans, like other animals, have evolved with an optimal strategy for reproduction. Love has nothing to do with it and, in fact, to the extent love exists at all, it is biochemical.

Human behavior dictates that monogamy is social and not genetic. After all, the divorce rates aside, 50-60% of men and 45-55% of women have extramarital affairs. But, to the extent that we feel an attraction to another person, those of you who believe in evolution know this must be a biochemical response to an evolutionary need to reproduce. The same way you feel hunger and cravings rather than actually feeling the emptiness of your stomach or the need for particular nutrients, you feel love because you need to bust a nut. The same way you feel fear rather than actually hearing your blood pumping more quickly through your veins or adrenaline thrusting itself into your bloodstream, you feel love when you want to fuck. In fact, love feels a lot like hunger and fear.

And, of course, we know from history that humans were not monogamous. At the very least, they were polygynous, with one man having as many wives as he could afford. I’m sure those dudes loved each and every one of them, too.

That’s why women are so into wealthy men. Oh, I know you hate when people say shit like that. Well, I didn’t put Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire on TV. Also, when was the last time you dated a homeless dude? What, you’ve never dated a homeless dude? Isn’t that interesting? If love was truly blind, every now and then a woman would fall for someone entirely beneath them in social status. But that’s a real rarity, as it turns out.

Study after study confirms a few things. First, women look for signs of wealth in men as a first determinant of attractiveness. Men look for physical beauty first and, as a result, prefer younger women. Women are not so picky when it comes to age: status is key to them.

That’s what love is all about.

So, to all you lovers out there, happy biochemical reaction to environmental stimuli that maximizes your chances for reproduction and optimizes species survivability and adaptability! Or, put another way, Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!

Actually, I’m posting this so late that it won’t be Saint Valentine’s Day anymore by the time you read this.

But Valentine’s Day also happens to be stoogepie’s birthday. So happy fucking birthday to me.

That’s all I have to say about that.