I’m not one to knock on St. Valentine’s Day/Single’s Appreciation Day/ Hallmark Holiday #4. My point of view is that any day that produces any emotion, be it love or bitterness or abject Mafia rage, is a good one in our increasingly mind-numbing world. That being said, a couple of years back Warren Ellis posted up this message on the internet:

Always remember: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

I was intrigued by this message, so I researched this holiday’s origins. I found Lupercalia, which is a spring cleansing festival from Ancient Rome tied to the Capitoline Wolf . To put the most important acts succinctly, priests would sacrifice a dog and two goats, shower in their blood, then cut out the entrails of said goats and whip women with them in order to increase their fertility and ease childbirth pain. There is a more left field take to this ritual, however, and although it comes from a very questionable source, I’m not gonna let things like conspiracy theories get in the way of a good joke. Here’s a fun part from it:

As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.

On an unrelated but equally as funny note, I made a pretty amusing cubee for my girlfriend today. Check it out:

To all my friends: Have a Happy Horny Werewolf Day.