-To me, Valentine’s Day is like that scene from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” where the villain rips out a guy’s still-beating heart and shows it to the frenzied throng.  For Valentine’s Day is a day when men are forced to publicly demonstrate their feelings for the gratuitous pleasure of overzealous women.  And given the opportunity to celebrate Valentine’s Day or be eviscerated and thrown into a flaming trench, most men would surely choose the latter.  I mean, hey, at least evisceration doesn’t require a reservation two months in advance.

-My girlfriend says this Valentine’s Day is special because our one-year anniversary is only three weeks away.  Of course, as she’s talking, I’m more preoccupied with my plan to merge both occasions into one gift.  Hell, her birthday is only six months from now.  Maybe I can combine all three presents into some sort of relationship extra-value meal.  

-But, after almost a year of dating, I still don’t quite get Girlfriend.  For instance, for the past six weeks I’ve been living in my parent’s house and spending the weekends with her in the city.  Last Wednesday, I had a meeting in the city, so I told Girlfriend I’d take her out afterward.  She got upset.  Why?  Because I was coming in to the city partly because I had a meeting and not solely because I wanted to see her.  In other words, just hanging out is not sufficient.  There has to be pure male sacrifice involved.  Why doesn’t she just have a flaming trench installed in her apartment and get it over with already?

-I have a new strategy, though, when it comes to navigating Girlfriend’s treacherous queries.  I call it “WWJBD?”  or “What Would Joe Bloggs Do?”  Those of you who took Princeton Review SAT prep remember that Joe Bloggs is the average American student who always picks the obvious answer, thus getting all the hard questions wrong.  Therefore, when you get a hard question, you’re supposed to first eliminate the most obvious answer – the Joe Bloggs answer.  The same theory works in relationships.  When Girlfriend tells me she hates her new hairstyle and asks if I agree, I think to myself, WWJBD?, and I’m halfway there.  It works much better than my previous strategy: “SSRFDTBF” – Say Something Really Fucking Dumb Then Buy Flowers.