Below is an article that I wrote two years ago for The Ink Panther (the illustrious campus publication of Diamond Ranch High School) that finally brings to light the appalling truth about St. Valentine's Day, which, if it had any genuinely sentimental origins, has nevertheless degraded into the commercialism-driven travesty we know it as today.

I apologise that this entry is a tad late, seeing as it is already the day after St. Valentine's Day, but it seems I have inadvertently taken a draught of the river Lethe, and thus am suffering from a severe case of sloth. Look forward to more scintillating entries tomorrow (later today, rather), dear Reader; I shan't let you down. Until next we meet, I bid you farewell. Au revoir, tout le monde!

[Exit Orpheum.]

Stores across America shall soon be in shambles, their shelves left ravaged and barren, littered with the last tattered vestiges of what had once been a proud display of capitalism; chaos and entropy shall reign, as all reason and logic are cast aside for the sake of capricious emotion; the citizens of our country shall be reduced to mere automatons, babbling incoherent nonsense.

Does the chilling account above depict a post-apocalyptic world brought upon by deadly biological warfare, a world in which society as we know it does not exist, but has instead been replaced by anarchy?

Nay. Such bedlam could only be caused by one thing: St. Valentine's Day, the holiday which takes place every February 14, inspires such whimsical quotations as "Roses are red, violets are blue," and incites the addictive acquisition of anything heart-shaped, delicately laced, and heavily perfumed.

Historians would have you believe that the day was named after Saint Valentine, a priest who served during the third century in Rome. Allegedly, when Emperor Claudius II decided to outlaw marriage for young, single men, because he believed single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, Valentine defied the decree and continued wedding young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that the good saint be put to death.

According to those same historians, Valentine began the tradition of sending love letters himself; while in prison he supposedly fell in love with a young girl. As the story goes, he wrote her a letter before his death, which he signed "From your Valentine," a painfully hackneyed expression still used today by hopeless Romantics (by which I mean there is no hope for them) and other would-be waxers poetic. February 14 was the day on which our friend Valentine was executed by beheading. (How romantic.)

If the historians had their way, that explanation would be accepted as being fact. But this reporter knows the truth: that St. Valentine's Day is, in fact, a devious conspiracy formulated by the United States Federal Government in the early 1840s, designed to rid innocent American citizens of their money and individual thought. Through seemingly innocuous companies who claim to be humble businesses selling Valentine's Day cards and candy, government propaganda (ingeniously disguised as saccharine love poems) and other subliminal messages are distributed more or less evenly throughout the country. Historians effectively perpetuate the myth of noble "Saint Valentine" to keep the commoners complacent gobemouches, all too eager to accept whatever codswallop the government forces down their gullet.

Extensive research and countless biopsies have proven that in corpses recovered around the beginning of February, the fluoride concentration in the bloodstream is higher than that of the average person. As fluoride has been suspected of facilitating brainwashing, or the isolation of particular memory centers in the brain and alteration of others, further studies were necessary. Advanced chemical analysis has proven that Valentine's Day candy does indeed contain considerably more fluoride than confections sold during the remainder of the year.

The exact purpose of this brainwashing is unknown, but it is believed that the government's scheme involves American citizens spending copiously around what has been deemed "St. Valentine's Day." According to sources who wished to remain anonymous, a sudden decrease in the national budget occurs during the end of January, for reasons that would not be divulged. Of course, such a drop would prove disastrous if it were not offset by some sort of compensation, and could result in a worldwide Depression if the situation were not rectified immediately.

Thus, the teeming masses of mediocrity were made to believe a holiday existed that was based on "sharing" with the people they love, specifically exchanging ridiculously expensive gifts ranging from fluoride-laced candies to bankruptcy-inducing jewelry. It has been subtly "suggested" that if you truly care about a person, you will spend astronomical sums of money on him or her, and that true love is measured in carats. The government, in an action that plucks the world from the gaping maw of certain and impending doom, absorbs the profits received by the companies involved.

Ultimately, we must decide which is more important: the honesty of a government with its citizens, or the safety of the world. The bottom line is that "St. Valentine's Day" does more than simply salvage the United States economy, but also unites the American citizens in a common cause that satisfies the American inherent need to indulge, namely, showering one another with gifts.