Valentine's Day

Well I have been reluctant to do this post. I feel like I've been dreading typing this, because I have never liked this damn holiday. First of all, that seems like a misnomer. "Holiday." We don't get this day off, banks aren't closed and people don't really travel. To many people, Valentine's Day is about romantic love and men having to buy flowers and a litany of gifts for their woman. Clearly, this is a woman's day. The Greeting Card lobby rolls out the ads and guilt trips as many men as it can into doing ridiculous things for their significant other. Now, I know everyone who reads this will just say, "Damn, Expatriate, your just jealous!" Yea, probably, but tough shit. I'll post about anything I damn well want. In thinking about what I wanted to write about this day, I started thinking about my own love life, or lack thereof. LOL. Recently, a good friend, exhausted with my ideas about how hard it is to find a good woman, basically gave up and suggested I try online dating. Well, first off, I'm not paying for shit, so that's basically out the window, but I did enjoy researching it. If you type in on a Yahoo search for "Online Dating" 180,000,000 results come back. Obviously, not all of these sites are dating sites, but a good many are. Some are Christian dating sites, or strictly sexual sites or sites meant to help gold-diggers find sugar daddies. In this niche world we live in, even love and lust can be compartmentalized into a search for whatever interest piques your fancy. For me, I just don't feel that a computer screen and a few lines of text can define what a person really is and if anything clicks. In informing my friend who suggested this route of my decision, he gave up and is refusing to give me any further advice on dating. I don't blame him. I guess I'm not bitter these days about Valentine's Day, I just fail to see the point. I guess I fail to see the point of online dating either. Both Valentine's Day and online dating share the aspect that they are both superficial, temporary and confusing.