With Valentine’s Day mere hours away, I can’t help but be filled with this burning, uncontrollable passion. You know; fury.

Valentine’s Day is easily the most unrealistic holiday. We plaster everything with hearts, yet we don’t care enough about the person to at least make sure they’re anatomically correct. If you love a person, you’ll include ventricles. Bonus points if they’re functional.

We bath everything in red and pink, and are expected to just ignore what a mixed message that sends. Wikipedia itself, the number one source of information for anyone who’s too busy to do any real research, describes the color as “danger, sacrifice, passion, fire, beauty, blood, anger, socialism and communism.”

So the next time you hand a bouquet of red roses to your significant other, think about how what you’re really giving is a flag to all around that he or she is a dangerous person looking to commit an act of passionate sacrifice into fire to obtain some beautiful blood to appease their angry socialist and communist gods. And do you know what type of flag that will be? A red one.

As for pink, the mighty Wikipedia says that “most variations of pink lie somewhere between red, white and magenta colors.” It’s indecisive, and that’s not what love is supposed to be.

Love also isn’t supposed to be about mass-produced consumerist culture either. It’s supposed to be about sincerity and showing who you truly are. No matter how many Golden Girls re-run marathons they run, Hallmark will never be able to tap into that sassy, yet sagely voice that is uniquely yours.

But if you go on a spiel about how you morally object to this accursed holiday, all you’ll get are people staring at you and continuing to demand some Tums crafted into a heart and carved with some vaguely romantic message. If Valentine’s Day has become a social obligation, what options do you really have?

JULIANA COPPA TTN

I’ve always opted to make my own cards. It gives me full customization abilities and makes me feel like still having a protractor in my life past the fourth grade is forgivable. Yes, a protractor. I take angles seriously.

For those of you who don’t have a supply of glitter large enough to survive the wackiest Mardi Gras-related apocalypse imaginable, I’d recommend faking it until you are making it. Any implications hidden in that last sentence were solely the product of a compulsive need to rhyme.

For your convenience, here is a selection of very unique Valentine’s Day cards that people will think you took the time to craft. Use them at your leisure.

JULIANA COPPA TTN

When it comes to gifts, I recommend using the same tactic. Poems, song lyrics and articles of some kind all make great individual gifts. It doesn’t need to stop there, either. Forgot Godiva, make your own chocolate. Master botany. What could possibly go wrong there?

Together, we can defeat the excessive capitalist influence and turn the symbolism of Valentine’s Day into something that really represents what the holiday should be about. We can make it what it always should have been. Well, you guys can. I’ve procrastinated too long and if I don’t get a card and some chocolate soon, my girlfriend is going to kill me.

Zack Scott can be reached at zack.scott@temple.edu or on Twitter @ZackScott11.

Recently, a video went viral on Sunday depicting Philadelphia Police Lt. Jonathan Josey II punching an unarmed woman in the face during the Puerto Rican and Latino Heritage Day at the corner of Fifth and Lehigh Streets.

The video showed the woman, who was “cited for spraying silly string at officers,” in the act before the subsequent punch was thrown.

There has been and will continue to be much debate surrounding this event, as there should be. Mayor Nutter is just one of many people who have spoken out. Some have discussed the tenuous line between authority and police brutality, like Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania Reggie Shuford, who said, “I was shocked when I saw the video of what happened. I saw absolutely nothing that justified the use of such extreme force to take this woman down.”

Others have busied themselves studying various idiosyncrasies in the officer’s past.

An interesting angle to examine is how allegations of excessive force affect police credibility outside of the afflicted department. For instance, does the Philly cop scandal affect the reputation of Temple authorities?

Naveed Ahsan can be reached at naveed.ahsan@temple.edu.

On Tuesday, Oct. 9, a Pennsylvania judge postponed the activation of the Voter ID Law until after the Nov. 6 election. No provision for the law’s fate after that date was established, however.

The Pennsylvania Voter ID Law and, more generally, voter ID laws across the nation, have drawn considerable criticism, often eliciting comparisons to previous voter limitations including restrictions on gender or race, literacy tests and poll taxes. Numbers have flown from both sides, and these numbers have also been looked at skeptically.

But I don’t want to talk about all of that. I have my own opinions about he Voter ID law, and they are rather strong. You might think that an opinion post would be the most opportune place to vent those notions, but I think there is another issue here worth considering.

When news of the law came out, Temple decided to update their student IDs so they fulfilled all the criteria the law established. This was a brilliant move that sought to avoid alienating any college student voters, a demographic which already is known to be ambivalent towards voting.

Now that the law won’t apply, we shouldn’t view Temple’s actions as in vein. The university acted swiftly to protect the rights of its student body. It should – and has within the editorial pages of The Temple News – be commended for its actions. When a hurdle to voting was presented in front of the student body – no matter what the intended severity of the onus – Temple acted to ensure that its constituents had a voice outside of the classroom, as well as within it.

It’s been impossible over the last few weeks to walk around anywhere in the city, Main Campus included, unperturbed. People asking, neigh, demanding to know if you’ve registered to vote have been everywhere.

But while the fact that I can’t seem to walk more than two blocks without being accosted by a smiling, clipboard-wielding volunteer has been mildly frustrating, I have benignly smiled and informed them that I have indeed at every brief interruption. It’s but a minor inconvenience and one that is easily tolerable when you consider their intentions.

Voter turnout in this country, especially among young college students, is dismal. Want a perspective on that? According to US Census Bureau data, voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election was 64 percent nationally, but only 49 among those ages 18 to 24. And that was up by a couple percentage points from the previous election.

I think we can do a little better than that. And these volunteers are just doing their best to make sure we do.

Well I don’t own a clipboard, but I do write a lot. So I’m going to do what I can.

Register to vote, please. In case you are unaware, the deadline is Oct. 9, so I would get on it if I were you.