These are the instructions for the requisite Valentine's Day piece. Please make liberal use of these notes, as the editor will not have time to actually edit the piece.

For starters, the piece should involve commentary on the difference between love and lust, and a scathing review of this Hallmark holiday for its ability to reduce normally sane individuals to emotional rubble. It should be quite anti-Valentine's Day, and written by a bitter cynic. However, it should also be funny, because no one wants to read a jaded rant unless it is amusing in some way - preferably a Monty Python, Brit-inspired humor, slapstick sort of way.

Unilaterally, Valentine's Day should be opposed. Perhaps it should be suggested that a movement be started to either a) get it revoked or b) get it approved as a national holiday, involving paid vacation time. It should also be proposed that Valentine's Day be rescheduled for a time during the year when people are feeling less depressed and cynical due to crappy weather - perhaps in June? Quotes from the distressed and oppressed Valentine's Day haters among us should be prominent, perhaps used as the title of the piece.

Those who love and embrace Valentine's Day, it should be stated, should be dragged out into the street and shot, as they are traitors and probably cheerleaders. That goes double for men who like Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day should be referred to, throughout, as "V-Day." This will bring up obvious suggestions for what the V-Day detractors can do to combat V-Day in all its horror, such as: soliciting prostitutes, worshipping vaginas, or calling attention to the Valentine's Day Massacre of the 1920s. The piece should be satirical in nature, proposing modest solutions to rampant V-Day disgust and annoyance, included but not limited to: a 2002 V-Day massacre of your own; solicitation of prostitutes for lewd and kinky acts; or anything else involving vast quantities of blood, gore and gratuitous violence.

In summary, the piece should be a rehash of all the usual V-Day sentiments from A to B, and should definitely seek to turn more so-called "normal" people into rabid, V-Day hating psychos.

Post immediately, as the editor has a V-Day love-in to get off to and must leave early.

- Laura, Editor-in-Chief and Hot Bitch