Kickass and Valentine’s Day
Kickass the doorstop dog takes his responsibility of straightening out the facts of history very seriously, and finds that the origin of Valentine’s Day is not all love and roses but is cloaked in fragmented tales of beheadings and violence to the point that the real origin of the rosy chocolate holiday is unknown, except, of course, to the all-knowing Kickass. So here’s the real St. Valentine’s Day dope: Back before recorded history, a caveman named Val Entire woke up on the morning of Feb. 14, and after his usual breakfast of nuts and tree bark, he stepped out of his cave and saw a beautiful cave woman standing on a large boulder. The woman was facing the rising sun and singing, “Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you.” Val, even though he was unfamiliar with “sweetheart” and “love,” he did know about “lust,” and “libido” and he thought it would be fun if he and the woman would go back into the cave and eat some fermented grapes and chocolate leaves, and maybe play Scrabble or something, which is what they did. And from that day forward,—though the identifying name has been convoluted by the church and various emperors, Feb. 14 has been celebrated not as Val Entire’s Day, but as St. Valentine’s Day. (Kickass reminds all that chocolate is poison to dogs.)
(See billstokesauthor.com for more Kickass and info on the novel MARGARET’S WAR.)