I watch two hours of cable news every morning to get a jump-start on being irritated for the rest of the day. Even more annoying than the know-it-all and smug pundits, are the commercials shown that early. Acne medicine endorsed by has-been celebrities, an instrument used to clip the claws of a dog injected with tranquilizers, an invention guaranteed to remove dead skin cells that don't understand the party's over, and Shamwow! According to the Shamwow! spokesperson, it can soak up everything from cat urine to the bile which shot out of my mouth after I watched the next commercial. It's seasonal, and has taken over most of the time allotted for selling crap.

Imagine an office where three men in cubicles agonize over what to get their girlfriends for Valentine's Day. The actors look nothing like any man I've ever seen in an office. They're all attractive, which means once the shoot is done, they'll be racing to pick out the perfect gift for their boyfriends.

The women are also unbelievable, with their perfect bodies, fake tits, and manicured talons. As a former legal secretary, I can tell you those bitches have never typed a letter.

Down the hall, from the mail room, appears another gay guy pushing a rolling cart with a box on it. The box has air holes and I perk up. Perhaps one of the whores pretending to be a hard-working secretary will receive a Tasmanian Devil which hasn't been fed in three days. Those little guys are carnivores, right?

One woman opened the box and squealed as if she'd stepped on two copulating cats. No crazed and snarling Australian furball emerged.

Cooing like a flock of pigeons planning a shitfest over Congress, the three women bounced up and down while their six newly acquired boobies remained motionless.

"Ooohh! He is so adorable!" Each woman's red-painted mouth formed a perfect O and I began to see where this commercial was going.

"It's so much bigger than I thought. I could kiss it and kiss it."

The gay guys being paid to play it straight poked their heads around the sides of the cubicles, obviously expecting to see their co-workers on the verge of a ménage à dick.

The lucky recipient read the card. "I'm sending you this love bandit because you've stolen my heart." She held up a teddy bear wearing a black mask and a Spanish gaucho hat. It looked like a lycanthropic Zorro. "Oooh, wait until he sees what his surprise is going to be tonight!"

That's all it took for the three-member cast of La Cage Aux Folles to roll their chairs in front of computers to order teddy bears from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company for their significant others.

I took a few moments to visit the website and immediately wanted to apologize to the love bandit after viewing some of the other teddy bears which dolts would be purchasing as last minute Valentine gifts.

The Holstein bear is a black and white horror, right down to its gender-confusion. Why the fuck would a man wishing to get his nob polished send a cow as a spokesbovine? Do men possess milk-producing nipples? Where's the unnaturally large testicles? What happened to the semen-shooting penis? This teddy bear is a bad idea even without the pink sash bearing the words "Udderly in Love."

All the bears not wearing pants had a perfectly sewn camel-toe and I felt relief at seeing the Let's Get Bear Naked Teddy Bear because it wore a fig leaf. Real bears must be as modest as this caricature because I've seen documentaries of grizzlies chomping down on lost Boy Scouts, but I've never seen a bear's penis. What's up with that? Are all bears hung like my first boyfriend?

What woman wouldn't want the Redneck Red Hot Teddy Bear? Me. A stuffed bear with its flannel sleeves torn off and wearing a trucker's hat which says This Stud's For You reminds me why I don't like living in Texas. After being subjected to that image, I looked around for a gun to shoot my computer monitor, but then remembered I'm a liberal. I don't own a gun. I did consider buying one after reading its tattoo: "Hot Fur Ya."

The most ridiculous thing on the website had to be the price of the bears: $89.95, plus shipping. If a man thinks he can pry my jaws open and stick his dick in my mouth by sending me crap, he might consider that I have a blender and almost know how to use it. His Valentine dinner will be Vermont Teddy Bear casserole, with a side order of blue balls. The real way to my heart is to take that hundred bucks and pay my electric bill before the candlelight in the bedroom becomes a necessity rather than a mood setter.

My boyfriend and I met on Valentine's Day several years ago. Back then, he brought me a single pink rose and some M&Ms. This year he's bringing me a dozen red lighters. Call me a romantic, but I get weak in the knees thinking about it. There's no romance in an unlit cigarette. Ask Bogie and Bacall.

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Kat Nove is a native Texan, and the co-author of Global Swarming—Til Death Do Us Part—A Love Story with Zombies. Find Kat Nove online.