In Asia...

...according to Wikipedia, "it has become an obligation for women to give chocolates to every male co-worker" on Febuary 14th. "In Japan this is known as giri-choko (義理チョコ), from the words giri ('obligation') and choko, ('chocolate')."

Yet another reason why Valentine's Day makes me cranky. And not in that fun, rage-against-poor-grammar kind of way. No, my Valentine's Day crankiness is of the unoriginal, low-grade-headache variety, the kind of crankiness no one wants to hear about because it's so familiar. I dislike coupliness. I dislike romance. I dislike purchasing and receiving oversugared crap -or, worse, not purchasing and receiving oversugared crap.

In short, my antipathy for Valentine's Day is breathtakingly boring and I hereby resolve not to devote an entire blog entry to it. Plus I scrolled backward and saw that I had already devoted an entire blog entry to my distaste for Halloween, and I don't want to come across as some kind of Grinch For All Seasons. (Did I just manage to besmirch both the Good Doctor and Sir Thomas with a single lame literary mash-up? Score.)

In fact, to redress any previous Grinchiness, I will make an exhaustive (exhausting?) list of holidays I actually like, starting...now. Now.

NOW.

1) Labor Day. How deliciously absurd is it to get time off work on a day called Labor Day?

2) Memorial Day. People died. Fire up the grill!

3) Arbor Day. Can you be cranky about a tree? Because I can't.

4) All Souls Day. I don't know when it is or what it is, and am therefore probably celebrating it accidentally, kind of like vegans in India who are accidentally ingesting lots of insect parts with their whole grains, thus satisfying their daily requirement for protein while preserving their integrity.

Mazeltov! Skol! Live long and prosper.