it's valentines day (feels more like groundhog day)

This article seems to sum the whole thing up pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty well. She hits the nail on the head with the statement, "Sex sells, love gives." Personally, I'm off home for a thumb wrestle. Woooo....

Capitalism still hasn't made love a commodity

If you subscribe to the Picnic at Hanging Rock school of thought regarding St Valentine's Day (it's creepy and we're all going to die), you may take comfort in the fact that you're not alone.

According to a nationwide survey commissioned by the Australian internet gift provider Red Balloon Days, Melbourne women ranked the highest for agreeing that St Valentine's Day is distressing when you're single, while Melbourne men are most likely to acknowledge the day by bestowing flowers on their beloved.
And there, in a sugar-coated nutshell, we have it. The whole, horrible conundrum. An entire 24 hours that we are embarrassed to spend alone versus the even worse prospect of having to demonstrate our most intimate emotions via the unprepossessing medium of a rose in a plastic tube.

When even the best that the experts can come up with is a gondola cruise on the Yarra (E. coli bacteria, Signorina?), or a romantic dinner for two on board the RMS Titanic in Williamstown (tagline: arrive safely this time!), what conceivable hope is there for the ardent amateur?

Unfortunately for those worthy souls who rebel against the commercialisation of love, the alternatives that don't require a financial investment aren't much better. One romance website helpfully lists shared activities that it believes will keep the passion alive in your relationship. Suggestions include playing hide and seek, finger painting and thumb wrestling. While such activities would no doubt be enthusiastically embraced by the likes of Humbert Humbert, personally I prefer something a little more adult. Not triple X you understand. Even an M rating would be fine.

But judging by the following evidence drawn from the romance industry, there aren't too many of us trying to hold out against the business of love anyway. In July 2005 Fairfax bought for nearly $40 million the online dating service RSVP.com.au, which has almost 1 million members, while last year the aforementioned Red Balloon Days came in at No. 29 on BRW's Fast 100 list. And it's not just the internet that's trading on our lust for love. Melbourne academic Dr Juliet Flesch wrote: "It has been estimated that one romance novel is purchased every few seconds in the English speaking world alone."

As with the majority of philosophical problems in Western civilisation, our ethical dilemma over the commercialisation of love is all Plato's fault. Because of that damn cave of his with its shadow puppets of reality flickering on the wall, while Ideal forms lurked outside enjoying the fine weather, Love came to be considered a transcendental concept, unearthly in its purity. This resulted in the belief that to attempt to either attain or demonstrate Love through mundane, commercial means is wrong.

It's been a long time since Plato was in the cave making bunny rabbit silhouettes for the benefit of an unimpressed Sappho. And in the intervening years, modern advertisers, with the help of Freud, have honed human desire into a lethal weapon, thereby setting up a tension on St Valentine's Day that could perhaps be summarised as Platonic Love for Sale.

It's a curious thing, however, that despite the best efforts of market researchers, powerful global brands, slick advertising campaigns and the complicity of the media, love seems to have a formidable ability to withstand the assault of commercialisation.

This failure of capitalism to co-opt love as an agent in its consumerist utopia may be seen in the constant diversion of love into sex, through the invention of popular "romantic" gifts such as edible undies and chocolate body paint. In the last edition of The Age's relationships supplement introductions, advertisements for pole dancing classes and sex toy parties were also prominently displayed.

Sex sells. Love gives. It's simultaneously a frightening and heartening thought; the only thing standing between globalisation and us is a handmade greeting card featuring a kitten curled up on a heart-shaped cushion, suggestively purring, "I can't keep my paws off you."

Take heart, therefore, from the vulgar St Valentine's Day gifts, the banality of the sentiments in the cards for sale and the sheer volume of the nausea-inducing classifieds, for they are all glorious evidence of love's ability to strip us of our veneer of sophistication.

Transfigured into a simulacrum of Pepe Le Pew, we are left floundering and inarticulate in the wake of strong emotion. When it comes to love, even the twin studs of Commerce and Marketing are reduced to two inept blokes, wandering helplessly through the lingerie section of Myer, muttering, "Not sure. About the size of my hand".

So regardless of your romantic status or attitude towards St Valentine's Day, rejoice in the fact that you're not alone. And on the day in which all roses are red and violets are blue, I suggest that you have a creepy picnic and a thumb wrestle, too.