It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!!A yearly occurrence that takes place slightly after you’re done bemoaning your latest Giftmas haul disappointment (A decade’s worth of Hanes underwear is so much better than the Playstation 3 you wanted, thanks Mom!) yet precedes your annual Easter basket pillage! The second largest card sending occasion of the year, the fourth largest candy selling holiday of the year and possibly the most bitched about date in the entire Gregorian calendar. None other than the notorious Valentine’s Day. Commonly known as the leading cause of plummeting self esteem amongst single sad saps everywhere. If I had a dollar for every angst filled anti-Valentine’s Day blog, magazine article and radio show I’d have the capital to invest in that boob job I’ve been planning to get for years.
One might wonder what spawns such slew of vehement hatred.
Common reasons for the popularity of anti-V-Day sentiments might include but certainly are not limited to:
-People will use anything as an excuse to bitch. Excessive criticism of everything under the fucking sun makes the world go round.
So what’s an angry bitter asshole to do?
Trying to set a world record for most Morrissey songs sang along to in a 24 hour period?
Or realize that you are not defined by what your MySpace marital status is.
NEWSFLASH: It’s not the end of the fucking world if you’re single. YA RLY. Movie at 11.
Chances are that regardless of your actual level of social awkwardness you will have someone to celebrate February 14th with at some point in your life. Provided that you don’t actively try to repel any potential mates, one of these days it will be your turn to surprise thine chosen paramour with your best Dita Von Teese impersonation. Hopefully within the confines of thy boudoir. Until then try your best to avoid pulling a Mrs. Havisham of Great Expectations fame. FYI in case you failed 9th grade English: Miss Havisham is a very peculiar dame who chooses to wear a wedding gown 24-7-365 and keeps a decaying wedding cake at the table, due to the fact that she was jilted at the altar by her fiancée. Assuming the whiny cunt persona is about as appealing to any possible suitors you might encounter down the line as pearl diving in the endless forests of 70s style jungle junk. Keep it up and you’ll be reading Twilight to your 15 cats in the solitude of your studio apartment 10 years from now. Freaking out over the fact that you have no one to swap bodily fluids with by a certain self imposed deadline will project an aura of desperation around you. An unhealthy unconscious force field that attracts sleazy tools who will detect your inner self loathing and thus only see you as an easy conquest. Predators read desperation like Helen Keller read Braille. So fucking relax and spare yourself some future heartbreaks. If one’s self esteem is fragile enough that one collapses emotionally at the sight of white doves, creepy naked babies clutching a quiver full of arrows and giggly high schoolers holding hands, then perhaps scheduling a therapy session is in order. If you can’t deal with bearing witness to the above mentioned things then you are clearly not strong enough to handle living in the outside world.
In addition to the whole “Woe is me, I’m single” sob story being unappealing to romantic prospects, constant griping to everyone within earshot is more than likely to drive away your platonic friends too. Misery might love company, but only for a limited time. If you spend the entire month of February in a bitchy cynical funk, eventually people will grow tired of your kvetching and cut your Debbie Downer ass off. Throwing a pity party and inviting everyone else to it regardless of the RSVP for 28 days out of the year is the antithesis of chic.
And for the love of Raptor Jesus, if you value the friendship of your coupled/engaged/married friends, keep your comments as to how “People should love and cherish each other daily as opposed to just on February 14th ” to yourself. After all they’re not committing a major crime by paying $100 for a fondue appetizer or buying lacy underwear. You might think it’s stupid, but you’ll look like a huge asshole for letting your acrimoniousness affect your ability to let other people live their lives as they see fit. Nobody wants to be around a person who is simply incapable of being happy for others.
-Insert slight tangent for exemplary purposes only here-
I hate politics (and more importantly politicians) with every fiber of my being, but I still kept the joy killing to a minimum when my best friend referenced her celebratory Inauguration Night Obama Drunk-a-thon.
-End tangent-
Don’t act like love is dead and everyone who partakes in customary V-Day traditions is but a mere puppet in a joint Hallmark and Necco ploy to sell paper goods and conversation hearts. In other words, don’t be a wanker of epic proportions.
I do not get paid to endorse the holiday. I do not work for the “Pro Valentine’s Day Ministry of Propaganda”. And while I am not encouraging you to be an official V-Day cheerleader complete with a red, pink and white uniform, I would like to point out a simple fact. The truth of the matter is that if you spend all your energy nagging and harping, the universe has a funny way of bringing you even more to lament about.
Here’s a revolutionary idea: It lies within the realm of possibility to have fun on this dreaded day without ranting, raving and otherwise equating your existence to a Greek tragedy. When life gives you lemons, you juice that shit, buy a fifth of vodka and drink Lemon Drops until Rosie O’Donnell starts looking good. Making the best out of a less than favorable situation is not going to make one lose their hardcore points. The scene police won’t show up to take your “Edgy Nonconformist”(LOL) club card away, if you declare a moratorium on that brooding bullshit. It was only sexy when a younger, thinner Robert Smith did it. You just look pathetic.
Sweeten your sorrow and banish the blues with these Vanity Kills sanctioned V-day survival suggestions formulated especially for all you single suffering bastards!
[For future reference: Anything involving the combination of blood, booze and boobs automatically earns the coveted Vanity Kills Seal of Approval. Blood, booze and boobs is otherwise known as the HOLY TRINITY OF WIN]
To ease the eternal anguish of singledom turn Valentine’s Day into “Horror & Hooch Day”. Use “Horror & Hooch Day” as the perfect excuse to host a fabulous soiree.
Dodge a scary liquor store credit card bill by planning an advance drink menu. Have each invited guest bring a bottle of alcohol or mixer of their choice to ensure a diverse yet budget friendly variety of options. I always recommend alcoholic potlucks, because in this day and age of economic hardship BYOB allows one to have fun and sample lots of delicious beverages without getting sent to the poorhouse.
With that said, have yourself a “liquid Valentine’s Day” by indulging in alcoholic versions of sweets typically associated with the holiday. Listing ingredients for all my suggestions would up my word count to infinity, so I’ll recommend a few tasty cocktails and leave it up to you to Google the necessary components. Search engines are your friends ;) Anyhow, my personal preference lies in martinis. Chocolate Martini, Crème Brulee Martini, Red Hot Martini, oh my! Play mixologist to your friends and discover a new favorite while watching mindless carnage on your TV!
Speaking of which here are some fright flick picks in which bloodshed, organ repossession, love gone awry and necrophilia reign supreme! Not a sappy tear jerker in sight!
I highlighted the extra gory/ridiculous/bad taste picks with an asterisk.
*-Nekromantik- Girl meets boy. Boy meets corpse. Boy brings corpse home to girl for a threesome. Girl leaves boy for corpse. Boy goes batshit crazy! Slaughter ensues!
-Hospital Massacre- Watch Hugh Hefner’s ex- main squeeze Barbi Benton play Susan Jeremy, a girl stalked by a boy she turned down in her youth on Valentine ’s Day. Unrequited love + mentally unstable young man+ surgeon mask= routine checkup gone wild.
-My Bloody Valentine (1981)-Psychotic miners! Severed limbs! Teenagers lacking common sense partying in shafts! Skip the $10 movie ticket and rent the 1981 classic for extra camp value. Reenact the good old days of Mystery Science Theater 3000 by laughing at all the horror movie clichés with your friends while sipping your drinks in the comfort of your living room.
-Repo: The Genetic Opera- Spurned mob boss decides to poison a woman that chooses another, Ogre hotness and Paris Hilton’s face falling off. Not to mention some to die for outfits! It’ll suck you in from beginning to end and your seemingly never ending misery as a singular unit will be the last thing on your mind.
*-Aftermath-Feeding the heart of a corpse you just posthumously violated to your dog is the world’s most romantic gesture. All gore, minimal story line. Watch this only if you’re in the mood for something particularly macabre that will leave you feeling uneasy until Easter. If your gag reflex is easily triggered, you might want to skip this one!
-Cabin Fever- Here’s to hoping that your ex’s new girlfriend has a bad case of a flesh eating virus.
-Boxing Helena – “If I cut off your arms and cut off your legs, would you still love me anyway?” See the movie that inspired this Misfits track. I find it kind of romantic, but then again I enjoyed Nekromantik and Aftermath too.
-Candyman- Bee My Valentine!
Perhaps you find watching horny drunk teenagers getting sliced and diced by some freak in a Halloween costume who didn’t get enough hugs from Mommy to be the most passé fucking thing ever. And the notion of looking at people fornicating with corpses makes your stomach churn. Maybe you feel the urge to turn your apartment into a testosterone free zone for the evening and decide to just kick it with your girls.
Your best friends truly are your best accessories, so round up your amigas and spend the night feeding off each other’s fabulosity. Every girl must take an oath to check their self esteem issues at the door tonight. Be firm and tell your compadres that all Negative Nancies will be promptly ejected from the premises upon starting their usual routine of stapling their hands to their foreheads.
Whether you choose to stay in or be girls about town there’s always plenty of fun to be had in the company of likeminded females.
Remember how much fun you used to have at those 6th grade slumber parties? Bumping NKOTB on the tape deck as loud as your parents would allow you to. Leafing through dog eared copies of Tiger Beat and proclaiming that you will marry Fred Savage because blue is his favorite color as is yours which surely means you’re meant to be together forever. Painting your toenails with a shade called Grape Glitterati, while mocking the size of the Captain of the cheerleading squad’s butt and gushing over Jimmy Moore the hottest boy in your 5th period social studies class. The token “bad girl” in your crew would bust open a wine cooler she smuggled in from her parents’ fridge and henceforth your alcoholic cherries were collectively popped. 8 girls getting smashed off one bottle of California Coolers Coastal Citrus. Those were the days.
Relive the excitement of all things giggly, gossiping and girlie by playing white trash beauty parlor(being white is strictly optional, LOL). Now that you’re of legal drinking age it’s all about the martinis and manicures, baby. Get into the Valentine’s Day spirit by picking bold, visceral reds as your color scheme for the evening. Don’t just stop at the fingers, toes, lips and eyes either. Take part in “Attack of the scarlet women” and bust out some temporary or semi permanent veggie dye. Try Manic Panic Amplified shades (they glow under Black Light) in Infra Red or Pillarbox Red(what I use for my everyday hair color) for club ready tresses. Perhaps Vampire Red or Rock ‘n’ Roll Red from their regular line if being a beacon of vibrance under UV Lights is too close to raver for your discerning tastes. Tint a few chunks in the front to frame your face or do it all the way to embrace your inner bitchy no nonsense diva. Subtlety is for the weak and hair mascara is for wimps, so to borrow my friend Meagan’s saying “Go big or go home”. Red is typically associated with things like power, sexuality and leadership. It will make you feel flirty and fierce simultaneously(I realize that I sound like Tyra Banks, a drag queen or a drag queen trying to impersonate Tyra Banks). Not to mention that it’s the ultimate “FUCK YOU” to all those bastards at work you had to look at all week long, in their vomit inducing pastel colored bear appliqué sweaters.
If you work for the man Monday through Friday and worry about being a potential dress code offender, luckily for you Valentine’s Day takes place on a Saturday this year. Veggie Dye is fairly easy to remove, so you can always restore your do back to your usual color while nursing your hangover on Sunday. Or take a cue from yours truly and wear a “normal” colored wig at work until the dye fades naturally. It’s how I deal with having Pillarbox Red hair with Bettie Page bangs in corporate America.
Don’t forget to snap lots of silly pics while getting all tarted up for the purpose of posting on MySpace later. Show those losers that opted to stay home and pine how much boisterous shenanigans they missed out on by being Lady Homealot.
Play an X-rated version of “I NEVER” and feel better about yourself when your friends reveal that they’re bigger whores than you thought. Though I’d probably be the most inebriated ho bag in the room. Holla!
Perhaps your new rockin highlights coupled with the high percentage of blood in your alcohol system will inspire you to get out there and do something gutsy. Perhaps hit up a bar you’d usually dismiss as a watering hole of decidedly inferior quality and flirting with boys that are a stark contrast to your usual type. Get ‘em to buy you some more drinks, suck in all their compliments like a sponge and then giving them a number to the infamous Rejection Hotline(visit http://www.rejectionhotline.com to find a number with an area code that matches that of the closest big city next to you if you’re in North America).
Perhaps the notion of spending the evening indoors getting trashed and primped feels like a waste of a perfectly good Saturday night? Yet you’re so over clubs and bars to the point where you would rather eat crushed glass than deal with some of the patrons that such establishments attract. Namely lonely hook up starved losers who seem to be short of hearing when you tell them that you’re not interested. Don’t fret as I compiled a handy list of hangouts that are likely to be free from the social plague known as the solitary male in hot pursuit of a booty call.
* Burlesque Performance – The unique experience of watching scantily clad women swaying their hips, twirling their tassels and egging on the audience with raunchy jokes will give you a chance to release pent up energy and remind you that hot girls come in all shapes and sizes. It’s an ideal approach to exterminating those pesky body hang ups that haunt your mind periodically. Ask yourself if you really think that those girls on stage give a fuck about 10 extra pounds they might carry on their hips or fanny. Obviously they’re past the body dysmorphia, since parading on display in teeny thongs and sequined pasties takes a healthy attitude paired with balls of steel. What better way to cleanse the brain of that self destructive “If I lost 10/15/20 pounds I wouldn’t be single “senseless mindset that so many girls fall prey to? Feel free to get wasted and noisy as long as you remain respectful. The girls won’t mind the hooting and hollering. Often said shows are interactive and welcome audience participation J
*Moroccan Restaurant – The presence of belly dancers is a must! A treat for both your eyes and your palette. Feast on delicious North African cuisine, while enjoying the beauty and grace of traditional dance. Bonus points of going with your girlfriends: No worries about your boyfriend hitting on the hot girl shimmying past your table and potentially ruining your evening.
* Cheesy Male Revue- It’s as classy as pigging out on pork rinds while watching wrestling in your underwear, but letting loose and objectifying men is exactly the kind of corny entertainment you need to break free from frustration and negativity. Buy a lapdance for a friend just to watch them squirm. Or be the recipient of one and take in the glorious view of your comrades literally rolling on the ground from laughter. Turn the tables on the guys. After years of being judged on our two most “important” traits, specifically tits and asses, it’s time that we females gave something back to the mighty male. Obscene jokes, comparing the respective bulges of various dancers to your old boyfriends’ packages and screaming “Take it off, baby” at the top of your lungs is just what the doctor ordered.
Alas sometimes you just ain’t got the dough to party like a rockstar, which is understandable in the light of the present day economic climate. To top it off your best friend has a reservation at Château de Fromage Puant at 9:00 PM with her dude and your single girl gang is currently in the process of drinking away their tax return at the local Goth club’s Annual Valentine’s Day Masquerade and Donkey Show without you. If I were to tell you to just get over it and walk it off, I’d be full of more fecal matter than John Wayne’s colon, so I’m gonna keep it real. You need catharsis and you need it now.
I believe that now is the time to embrace your inner angry DJ girl. Pick a genre of your choice and formulate a killer playlist composed entirely of tracks that make you want to take a baseball to your ex’s skull. Because if you don’t let those detrimental feelings out, one of these days you actually might re arrange the douchebag’s cranium. I don’t care to receive e-mail which informs me that in your rage you decided to boil a bunny rabbit, hold your old flame at gunpoint or curbstomp that guy you fucked in a bar bathroom that said he’d call but didn’t. So channel your anger, pain and despair in a safe way and make some heavy mixes for your car in the process.
Personally, I’d steer clear of any songs that make you miss your ex as pining for the past is counterproductive to a rewarding future. The theme du jour is anger and violence. For the record these are my picks. I like noise, dark ambient, EBM and power electronics (basically industrial) with the hint of the occasional DMX so that is reflected in my playlist. Some of this stuff is pretty fucking unlistenable to most, but it’s what I direct my attention to when I am seconds away from turning someone’s face into ground beef.
Vanity’s “Essence of Lethal Love” picks 2009:
DMX- Bring Your Whole Crew (from 1998’s Flesh of My Flesh Blood of My Blood album) Not exactly about love, but the “Bring it on, asshole” attitude gets me incredibly pumped and ready to inflict some damage on those who deserve it most.
Atrax Morgue- Cut My Throad CD( 1996). Three track release courtesy of Italy’s Marco Corbelli who took his own life in 2007. The other two compositions on “Cut My Throat” are aptly named “Before” and “I Cut Yours”. A moody and sometimes downright aurally sadistic assault on the senses that serves as a soundtrack for my most misanthropic moments.
L’Âme Immortelle – Slut(from 2001’s Dann Habe Ich Umsonst Gelebt album)- Sonja Kraushofer’s vocals accuse the offender of being “just a slut with no honor and no pride”. After having my fill of those over the years, this song became a staple on my “I Fucking Hate You and Hope You Die” mix CDs.
Navicon Torture Technologies – Power Romance CD(2002) Auditory equivalent of open heart surgery minus the anesthesia. Music to commit a crime of passion to ( see tracks 2 & 9 for inspiration). Might appeal to you if you enjoyed the previously mentioned Aftermath.
Aesthetic Perfection –The Siren(from 2008’s A Violent Emotion album) “I don’t feel no remorse, I don’t feel sympathy, I don’t feel anything, Right now I’m feeling you” Game plan to revenge your asshole boyfriend’s latest transgression: Listen to this, drink, walk into bar and do what you need to do with the hot guy you’ve previously passed up because you’re attached. Then proceed to tell the asshole ALL ABOUT IT the next morning. No judgment.
That’s a VERY abridged version of what moves me (to kill). What on your playlist?
For all you know, true love (or just a really good lay) will come a knocking on February 15th. Don’t let past hurts and exorbitant skepticism close you off to the possibility of finding that elusive feeling. Just because you haven’t stumbled upon him/her yet and the ones that you did find were Super Jerks, it doesn’t mean that the game is over and you should go home with the tail firmly tucked between your legs. It’s not over until you’re dead in the ground. Believe in love and it will return the favor.
In conclusion allow me to say in one improper sentence what I’ve just attempted to tell you in 3,881 words:
Sitting on the pity pot= FAIL!
Now if you must fuck a complete stranger in an airport bathroom to validate yourself in some twisted way, please DO wear a condom!
<3
Vanity Kills
