In honor of today being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d do a rundown of the other bulls*** holidays that we continue to acknowledge despite their having lost all meaning or purpose.

7) Valentine’s Day.

Human beings seem to have this illogical need for ceremony and ritual. You can be a complete Homer Simpson all year long, but as long as you remember flowers on Valentine’s Day, you get out of jail free. Or, at least, you’ve fulfilled your obligations. Valentine’s Day is the Catholic Church of Holidays. Go through the motions and the slate is wiped clean. Forget, or worse yet, half-ass the holiday and the Boss is very mad. Isn’t the idea to be good and romantic every day, all-year long? But I guess we all know deep down this is impossible, so we put up with this meaningless holiday of obligation. And that doesn’t even go into the forced subsidization of the greeting card, chocolate and floral industries! But hey, this is the only holiday where you’re pretty much guaranteed to get laid, so it’s not all bad.

6) Columbus Day.

First of all, who gives an s***? He wasn’t the first. Plus, discovering something by stumbling bass-ackwards onto it is not exactly something to celebrate. It’s not like winning a battle or finding a cure for something. Then there’s the whole angle of “celebrating” the beginning of a genocidal holocaust. And then there’s the fact that some white trash Italians look at Columbus Day as their St. Patrick’s Day. But the most annoying thing about Columbus Day is that we’ve never been able to settle on exactly what this is… Is it a federal holiday? Do we get mail? Are banks open? You’re probably going to have to go into work anyway. Growing up in the south, I can tell you that never once did we have school off for Columbus Day. (more…)

10) Dick Butkus
This Dick sullied his hallowed NFL career by taking the job of Director of Competition for the ill-fated XFL (what the hell is a Director of Competition anyway?). Thank goodness it only lasted one season, but this Dick’s work was enough to leave a bad taste in every football fan’s mouth.

9) Dick Van Dyke
This beloved TV Land fixture is on this list for his god-awful Cockney accent in Mary Poppins. It takes a real Dick to speak with a shitty Australian accent and pretend it’s British to Julie Andrews’ face. Plus, his name is one of the few times “dick” and “dyke” ever appear in the same sentence. Neat! (more…)

#10 - HELPLESS AND IRRESPONSIBLE
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine and a whole multicolored collection of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers . . . Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon . . .”
—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
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Read about the Darwin Awards here.

RUNNER UP # FIVE:
THE LAPTOP STILL WORKS (Confirmed True by Darwin)

“Driving is not a time to be practicing your multitasking skills,” remarked CHP spokesman Tom Marshall, commenting on a 29-year-old computer tutor’s decision to drive along Highway 99 in California while working on his laptop. He drifted over the center line, and was killed by oncoming traffic. CHP officers found Oscar’s computer still running, plugged into the Honda Accord’s cigarette lighter.

REFERENCES: http://DarwinAwards.com/darwin/darwin2007-12.html

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Here are the words chosen by the American Dialect Society as 2007’s best words or phrases:

• Word of the Year: Subprime, an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage or investment.
• Most Useful: Green, designates environmental concern.
• Most Creative: Googleganger, person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself.
• Most Unnecessary: Happy Kwanhanamas, Happy Holidays. Kwanza + Hanukkah + Christmas.
• Most Outrageous: Toe-tapper, a homosexual. Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was arrested in June for an encounter in a Minneapolis airport bathroom in which toe-tapping as said to have been used as a sexual come-on.

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10. Transistors Get Way Smaller
In the race to make computers faster, chipmakers rely on exotic new materials. In January, Intel announced that the element hafnium and some new metal alloys will allow them to make the millions of switches on their microprocessors far smaller. Gordon Moore, co-founder of the company and father of the law that bears his name, called it the biggest change in transistor technology since the 1960s. (…)
9. Scientists Clone Rhesus Monkey to Produce Stem Cells
At Oregon Health and Science University, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his team cloned a Rhesus Monkey and used the resulting embryo to create stem cells. Until then, the impressive feat had been performed only with mice. (…) (more…)

Bestselling Products

The following is a list of the bestselling products on Amazon.com in 2007 by total units sold:

– Books: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling

– Music: “Noel” by Josh Groban

– DVD: “Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series”

– Electronics: Canon PowerShot A570IS 7.1MP digital camera

– Home & Garden: Pyrex storage sets

– Health & Personal Care: Omron HJ-112 digital premium pedometer

– Grocery: Senseo Douwe Egberts dark roast coffee pods (more…)

This might not be the sort of list you want to see a few days before you have to join the holiday crowd heading back home after the new year… or maybe it is. I dunno. I guess it all depends on your luck. Are you heading to one of the good airports or one of the bad ones?

The following lists come from Travel + Leisure, and the rankings are based upon percentage of flights delayed.

For the first eight months of this year, one in four flights landed at least 15 minutes late and cancellations are en route to smashing the record set in 2000.

Sounds great right? If you’re ready to roll the dice, the 10 best and worst airports in America… (more…)