There's Love in the Air... As Well As Carbon Monoxide

It's hard to ignore the fact that Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching us like the runaway bus from "Speed" that Dennis Hopper threatened to blow up if Keanu Reeves ever attempted to convey any emotion besides "mild concern and confusion." Signs of the holiday are everywhere, as stores shovel out their seasonal merchandise in an attempt to take your money which you would otherwise spend on something more valuable and useful, such as spark plugs. Shopping centers like Wal-Mart are displaying their finest romantic items, mostly neon red bras that have giant hearts embroidered on the front and a picture of Dale Earnhardt with number 3 on the back. Of course I should probably stop picking on Wal-Mart, as I predict one day in the future we will all be housed inside giant Wal-Mart community malls. Our addresses will be something along the lines of "Unit 192, Aisle 472."

Anyway, back to Valentine's Day. This exciting holiday was created months and months ago by the ancient Egyptians who also invented the calendar, time, most of the solar system, corn (which they called "maize"), and large 3D triangles known as "pyramids." Nobody knows why the Egyptians were so intent on building gigantic pyramids when they could have instead lived in mud huts and ditches like all previous civilizations before them. Some historians claimed that they enlisted the help of extraterrestrials to build these impossibly complex pyramids, and that makes perfect sense to me because if I could travel through space and visit alien species, the first thing I would do would help them build houses. Then, assuming I had the spare time, I'd hang around in their cornfields and make geometric shapes all day because God only knows the vengeance I have against corn (which the Irish originally called "maize"). Crime began to rise in Egypt as more and more of these pyramids were built, mainly because the only things to do all day were chisel pyramids chunks or push wooden wagons back and forth for no readily apparent reason. Egyptian youths soon got bored from all this monotony and decided to start defacing their town's pyramids. However, spray paint hadn't been invented yet, so the young criminals got the bright idea to hammer out gang messages on the pyramid walls. These messages are now known as "hieroglyphics" or "hydroponics" or "hydrogen" or something along those lines, and they looked like this:

This message was written by one Egyptian gang member to another and can be deciphered as: "LOOK OUT for BIRDS FLYING into YOUR PYRAMID HOUSE when YOU'RE DANCING with SOME GUY WHO HAS A DOG HEAD AND IS PROBABLY A GOD OF SOMETHING." There was so much hieroglyphic vandalism in those days that it eventually became the norm, and the kings and queens and presidents of Egypt adopted it as their official national language. Then they adopted rice as the national food and sand as the main national export. I think that was before Moses killed them.

One day King Egypt decided to profess his love to Queen Egypt by creating a romantic hieroglyphic for her. Back then, love was expressed by torturing people, burying them alive, and making them slaves (not in that order; tortured dead people trapped under 100 feet of sand don't make the best personal assistants). So King Egypt had this special hieroglyphic created just for his wife:

This image represented a slave being trapped in an Egyptian torture device known as "The Spikey Wall Crushy Thing," and showed that King Egypt would torture people simply to express the love he had for his wife and her many, many cats. This symbol of eternal devotion soon caught on throughout Egypt and its many suburbs such as East Egypt and Egyptopia. However, as time progressed, the citizens began to get lazy and grew tired of drawing those spikes and the little stupid guy in the middle, not to mention the red blood which was especially difficult to chisel from a color pallette that was limited to "tan." Eventually this symbol degraded to the following image:

Even though this looks nothing like a human heart, the Egyptians started calling it a heart because they didn't have any time to think of a better name; they were all too busy creating mummies and burying golden wands under sand dunes. Then the whole heart thing kind of took a nosedive popularity-wise because the next 3,000 or so years were basically devoted to people killing each other and burning down stuff. In fact, I don't really think anything of any importance occurred that didn't involve somebody being killed or something being burned down. So the market for expressing love died down until the 1900's or so, when such events as the Great Depression and the Teapot Dome Scandal reminded people that they loved each other. Then somehow somebody decided to make a holiday called "Valentine's Day" but I don't know how or why or when because I'm too lazy to load up Google and look. I'll just claim that it had something to do with entertainment mogul Phil Valentine, the man who once landed a supporting role in the motion picture "A Letter From Death Row" starring Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen and Bret Michaels (from the smash hit rock group Poison).

So as Valentine's Day rapidly approaches like one of those rolling logs from Pitfall, many of you are panicking and attempting to pick the perfect gift for your special lady friend. Countless other websites have offered advice for this romantic day such as jewelry, lingerie, or fancy dinners, but frankly all these ideas are just retarded. Now I don't want to give the impression that I have a bloated ego, but this website is better than any other website or object in the universe and the wisdom we dispense in gallons should be considered a national treasure and worshipped by all. With this is mind, I'd like to present you with a list of romantic shit, listed by age groups, to purchase for your special woman this holiday.

Happy Valentine's Day, lover!

AGE 1-3: You should probably not be dating at this age. If for some reason you are dating, show your lucky lady that you love her by hitting her in the skull with a Lincoln Log you just pulled out of your mouth.

AGE 4-10: This is what's known as the "puppy love" stage of life, where kids develop crushes on each other and write really embarrassing poetry that will later ruin any chance they have of ever becoming a Senator. Appropriate gifts include packs of gum, stolen chalk, and "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels (particularly the one where you're in the Wild West and have to fight an evil gunslinger).

AGE 11-15: Girls are beginning to mature at this point, and this means they start getting picky and whiny about their gifts. Boys, however, are still immature and would rather tie M80s to frogs than be romantic, so the chances of doing something really touching are slim to none. If you're really bored though, try getting your target of affection a coupon to Dairy Queen or one of those 50 cent neon watches that come in plastic spheres inside grocery store vending machines.

AGE 16-20: Okay, now we're getting serious here and your gifts have to reflect it. Boys are almost fully mature at this point and have developed a tough outer shell that protects them from their natural predators. Girls expect to be wooed off their feet and since nobody really knows what "woo" means anymore, men are in a tight spot. One popular romantic idea is to drive your woman in a classic convertible down to Lover's Lane, at which point the brakes will go out and you will both go careening off a cliff and explode, causing a rock star to write a song about you and your unfortunate demise. You can also give her your class ring, as that displays your undying affection for her. Unless, of course, you already careened off that cliff and exploded and died. Make sure the firemen don't swipe the ring off her charred corpse because they do that kind of crap on a regular basis.

AGE 21-30: Girls in this age group are finally considered "women" because they can now be legally jailed for prostitution. They also become highly involved in their work, causing hilarious antics to ensue when you're trying to win their hearts over. These antics usually involve a series of comical misunderstandings and embarrassing situations, so bring a gun to commit suicide just in case. Females in this age group prefers gifts such as miniskirts, attaché cases, and office supplies. For an extra bonus chunk of love, try spelling out "I LOVE YOU" in staples. Use glue if necessary.

AGE 31-40: This is when women's biological clocks start ticking away like a grandfather clock filled with blood and organs. Go to an adoption agency and swipe a baby, cover him with romantic wrapping paper, and then present her with this wondrous gift during a romantic dinner at an Italian restaurant or Denny's. Make sure the baby is of the same race as you or else he'll get made fun of at school and the Lifetime Network will make a really crappy movie about him.

Happy Valentine's Day, lover!

AGE 41-50: Women become very self conscious at this stage of life, worrying that they are "over the hill" and getting "ugly," which they usually are. So don't get your loved one a mirror because she'll smash it on your face and make you eat the glass shards. Buy some of that miracle wrinkle-reducing cream junk that they sell on TV at 3:00 AM in between reruns of "MASH" and reruns of test patterns. Include a homemade card that says something along the lines of "even though you're one step closer to dying and you're getting ugly, I still currently love you fairly much." Casually mention that you purposefully didn't buy her a mirror for the aforementioned reasons. She'll reward you with a night of lusty sex although you probably won't enjoy it because she's gotten so goddamn ugly.

AGE 51-60: These 10 years are usually the period when a woman retires from work and lives off her 401k plan that invested heavily in Enron and Razorfish stock. Purchase a nice, comfortable chair from an upscale furniture store or garage sale and say, "here love, park your fat ass into this chair and enjoy the rest of your life."

AGE 61-70: Nothing exciting really happens in this time. The chances of your loved one dying increases a lot during this period, so whatever you do, don't buy a death-related gift like a funeral plot or cursed Aztec necklace. Buy her something that is completely unrelated to death, such as a bale of hay or aluminum siding.

AGE 71-80: Buy a Tivo and get one of your retarded unemployed kids to hook it up for you so you can tape "The Price is Right" every day for your beloved. Another romantic gesture is to not ask her to sit up and get you a beer for the day or at least most of the day.

AGE 81-90: You both should ideally be dead by now, especially since there's not much you can do at this point in life. All your internal organs start breaking down and spontaneously combusting and you basically have to move into the doctor's office because it will take a giant flowchart to map out everything wrong with your body. If your brain is somehow still able to function, buy your wife something shiny and colorful, like a ukulele with glitter all over it.

AGE 91+: There is no reason to be alive past the age of 91, so just forget about it.

Although I have no idea when Valentine's Day is nor do I care, I hope my romantic passion for passionate romance has helped you find the perfect gift for that special someone in your life. After all, I am the master of romance and love; I bought my girlfriend a 9mm handgun and a box of defensive loads for this Valentine's Day. I know she'll appreciate it and find it useful when ancient Egyptians try to break into her apartment and attempt to etch images of birds on her walls.

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)