-Valentine’s Day is nothing more than an over-commercialized sham of a holiday exploited by restaurants, jewelers, and greeting card companies that just want to make an extra buck. Couples don’t deserve their own day, and those not in relationships certainly don’t deserve to be subjected to an endless barrage of hand-holding and heart-shaped confectionary. Those who ignore Valentine’s Day and flout its conventions are the ones who should be celebrated. Some call us heartless. I call us single.

-Besides a wedding band or the presence of a significant other, there are more subtle ways to ascertain if someone is in a relationship. An acquaintance of mine recently asked to show me something on Facebook, but I noticed he was having trouble accessing his account. “I forgot my password,” he remarked, “I haven’t logged on in like two months.” “Oh, so you’re not single?” I asked. “How did you know?” he replied. Dude, I just do.

-The background image on my BlackBerry is the logo from “Lost.” If I pull my phone out to get a girl’s number in a bar and she either doesn’t recognize the picture or doesn’t notice it, I let it slide. But if she snickers or cracks wise at my choice of wallpaper I will delete her number and disappear like the Island.

-I silently praise advancements in technology every time I send a perfectly worded, flirtatious text message. But if she doesn’t reply within the hour I’m immediately stricken with the desire to travel back in time Terminator-style to kill the mother of the inventor of the cell phone.

-Ladies, if I ask you out to drinks for our first date, don’t ask me if I’m hungry halfway through the night. No, I’m not hungry. I wolfed down three slices of pizza before I picked you up because I explicitly said we were going for drinks. I specifically avoid dinner on the first date because I don’t want to embarrass myself by eating in front of you and don’t want to break the bank when I’m not sure you’ll put out. Please plan accordingly.

-My latest fetish is that I really want to date a chick with lots of tattoos. I’m talking full sleeves, shoulders, neck, the whole nine yards. So sexy. Plus, girls like that just don’t run in the same circles that I do. I could take her to trendy lounges that play Jay-Z and Ke$ha on repeat, and she could take me to hipster bars that play bands I’ve never heard of. It’d be a totally hot, opposites-attract situation…until my parents met her and disowned me.