from Robot Love and the World Beyond

Does everyone have one of these?

Alright. So grocery shopping on Valentine's Day morning was probably not the best idea.

The place was full of glassy eyed morphine addicts picking up their romantic dinner ingredients for two. While the girl next to me who's feet I swear were not even touching the ground grabbed handful after handful of mushrooms, I delicately selected my eight. While the guy french kissing his cellphone was choosing which whole salmon he wanted to share (with his cellphone?), I asked politely if the fish guy could cut his smallest filet in half and give me one piece. Oh, and five mussels too, please. You'd have thought the condom rack was a Cabbage Patch Kids display in 1983 and the flower department looked like an audience at a Smith's concert. Even the cashier gave me a dirty look as though I were wasting her time with my paltry grocery order for one. And I knew her!

Contrary to popular belief, I'm really not that jaded about love. I know what it feels like to not be able to keep even a single grape down because you're so sick to your stomach with longing to be next to someone. And I'm sure it will happen again. Some day. But it's just that when I'm not in it I don't want to hear about it, see it, taste it, smell it, experience it vicariously through someone else, be confronted by it while buying new Odour Eater insoles or, worse, be made to feel like it's something that's lacking in my life. And that's what Valentine's Day is all about, shoving the lack of love in your life down your throat with a toilet plunger.

So tonight I'm someone's "No Other Option." You know what I mean. The Valentine's Day go-to guy for a female friend who's options are either a drink with you or changing the 2000 Flushes in her toilet and she forgot to buy the 2000 Flushes.

Here's to not being alone on Valentine's Day because of a toilet bowel cleaner.