Yahhoooooo the tills are ringing, the lovers are a'trembling in anticipation, people will laugh with joy, others will cry with misery. Some will promise eternal love and others will wake up and smell the coffee and realise that all ain't what it oughta be in the Garden of Lurrrve.

Yes, it's St Valentines Day.

If you thought St Valentine's Day was all about love, you'd be wrong; its about money . I walked through the supermarket the other morning and saw all these fancy schmancy gift packs and red hearts and wrapping paper and bows and I thought... "awww fuck that, what a load of bollocks".

I mean, seriously...suddenly on one day of the year everyone loves their significant other enough to do something special for them? Spend money on them? Appreciate them? What happened to the other 364.25 days?

Or is it the one day of the year that hiding the truth becomes too hard to handle? When you realise that what you feel, and what you are supposed to feel are two completely different things?

In this frenzied, culturally-created romantic fervour they've sucked the clueless, the uninmaginative into paying through the nose for some coronary-organ shaped chocolates clad in red foil in a shiny cellophane-wrapped box that tastes no different from the pick'n'mix chocolates further down the aisle. Don't forget to add the long stemmed red roses at a million bucks a pop, throw in a smaltzy card expressing undying love and tie it all up in fancy paper with hearts all over it and 50 metres of fine red ribbon.

Does it shout out "I love you!!" with vehemence? Or does it screech "Im so tacky I have to fall for this crap" instead?

And yes, the tills really ARE ringing - according to the news, Joe Public this year could spend as much as $9 million on flowers alone for V-Day. Considering New Zealand spends $150 million annually on flowers, its a big chunk of cash, although at $120/doz for special long stemmed reddies its hardly surprising, huh.

Isn't romance about surprise? Thoughfulness for its own sake? What's so bloody romantic about falling in with being told that today is the day to make yourself look like a complete twang?

I ain't never falling for this shit.

What a c r o c k.