one hundred and ten years of it just being coincidence that the Olsen Twins are all over the Valentine's issue

The E3W's Guide to Wooing

Valentine's Day is just a few days away. Maybe you have a girl/boy/trans/friend, maybe you don't but want one, and you want to figure out either 1) how do I make my current boy/girl/trans/friend love me more so I can get some? or 2) how do I win over a girl/boy/transthing so I can get some?

1. Flowers
Flowers are overrated. They just die, like both you and the object of your affection will one day. Why, then, give your beloved a sign of your imminent mortality? You might as well hand them a gun and a Morrissey album. Instead, go for something that shows your enduring love, the timelessness of your passion. How about a Barry White CD? Highly recommended is his newest greatest hits collection, "Staying Power," which also implies your sexual virility. Think about it. Who'd fuck a flower? But Barry White, now... and think of the shape of the CD.

2. Love Poetry
Poetry is perhaps the very best way to show your affection. Remember, though, anybody can write sweet, mushy free verse. It takes a real man/woman/it/other to write in a specific form. I'd recommend the French Aungemont, a strict sestet wherein the first four lines' second, sixth and last words must all be the same, and the last two lines should be composed only of the first, third, fourth, fifth and eighth words from each of the first four lines, in addition to the word "screwdriver." Watch and learn:

Love, bells ring for you, bells I cast of iron because bells
are bells and I like bells just like I like you, I'll tie bells
to bells on my feet, bells can't compare in beauty to your bells.
So bells on cows echo bells on you, where I'll attach to your breasts bells.
And I love you like screwdriver, so for feet to ring
cast echo like compare so you are on on my cows!

Be sure to write it out by hand; you don't want your poetry to seem mechanical!

3. Cook for Them
Let me share a story with you:

Once a young man, Hatoro-san, was very much in love with a girl Hiroko. Well, his love had grown from a distance, for she was beautiful, and he was shy. He couldn't develop the confidence to approach her directly. So, every day for three weeks, he'd make a plate full of Japanese delicacies for her, and leave it at her doorstep with a small blue crane made of folded paper with the character for love on it. At the end of the third week, he revealed his identity to her, and they were married within the month.

The moral? RAW FISH AND SEAWEED = PUSSY.

Good luck, and don't forget who got you that girl/boy/it/other/none of the above!