Cupidwatch 2005 [#3]

You’d think in the days preceding Valentine’s it’d be emotionally healthier to seek out a willing recipient of a box of bon bons instead of rummaging through local attempts to score gratuitous attention from the holiday. Sure, but imagine how certain marketing weasels are bound to feel when their half-witted spin on Feb. 14’s festivities goes ignored, for no other reason but because they’re the 14th agency of the week craving a mention for their hubba-hubba-hubba sales pitch. So, because hapless flacksters seem at particular risk to die of a broken heart, noticing their effort surely transmits more affection than a back alley handjob.

But the bait became weaker as the past week rolled on. A company called Moneris, the country’s largest processor of transactions involving plastic, reveal that sales at candy, nut and confectionery stores during the first half of last February increased by 214 per cent over the preceding two-week period, even though the flow at restaurants only went up six per cent. Maybe it’s because a survey conducted by Human Resources Management students at George Brown College found that 45 per cent of cubicle drones have received salacious e-mail from co-workers, 37 per cent said they, or someone they “know”, has been caught in a sexual encounter while on the job, and 60 per cent of respondents are currently lusting after a colleague. Yet they’d better scrub themselves down before heading to the office, given how malodorous men are a turn-off to 55 per cent of females, according to a poll commissioned to get attention for AXE shower gel, which 43 per cent of women insist is ”the most important thing” a man should apply before a V-Day date. By contrast, only 22 per cent of those ladies are turned off by a poor conversationalist, and just four per cent care how he’s dressed. And while 41 per cent of the coveted 18-24 demographic will take two showers this coming Monday, only one-quarter of those aged 55 and over can be bothered to double dip.

Residents of this country, according to Scotiabank, spend an average of $61 on Feb. 14 – $74 by men, $47 from women. But while girlfriends get a $100 splurge, wives settle for half of that, compared to $54 wasted on boyfriends and $40 on husbands. This disparity oughta be taken up by The Pay Equity Task Force, subject of a Monday protest and news conference from the ever-cheerful Canadian Labour Congress on Parliament Hill. And for the 41 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women who confess to forgetting V-Day, in spite of all this consumer overkill, a card emergency response operation from Xerox will be churning out 500 last-minute color prints to save the day. Furthermore, according to Nokia, one-quarter of the population one-quarter of the population “would rather say ‘I Love You’ by text message than say ‘I Love You’ orally.” And where do these courtship rituals lead? To a life in the suburbs, a place where The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s timely report finds your own ticker is more likely to explode from a sedentary lifestyle. Look at it this way – the less burden you feel on Monday means the more likely you’ll suffer through another Valentine’s Day.