It’s that time of year, when love is in the air.   Like that house a couple blocks over that caught fire and was completely gutted, the smell of ashes and the lost memories of a lifetime forever turned to smoke and slowly fading recollections of what was once ours, lingering in the neighborhood for the rest of the summer, and well into winter.   Yeah…that.

This our annual celebration of all those hopeful dreamers who bravely bought with their heart’s desire, a ticket in the Lotto of Love.   You have to play to win.   And for 175,711,536 to 1 hopeful dreamers, to loose.

This year’s theme was Famous Love Quotations!   And we sincerely, are really and truly sorry if we failed to mention this when announcing the start of our contest.   And the deadline for entries, which was yesterday.   But we are sure we did.   You were probably just not paying attention as usual.   We have always had communication issues.

Before we review all those worthy contestants who just didn’t make the cut this year, despite giving it their all, let us pause and remember all the glorious winners of previous years, who are now left stunned and wondering that anyone could have taken their place…

The winner of our First Annual Contest…

You will always be remembered as the first one.   No one can ever take that away from you.   What was your name again?

Our Second Annual Contest winner, who reminded us the most cherished times happen at home…

Our Third Annual Contest winner examined the evidence and came to a conclusion as to the cause of…love.

Our Forth Annual Contest Winner reminded us that love makes us stronger inside…

Our Fifth Annual Contest Winner…

Er…   Oh…right.   Our Fifth Contest was overly affectionate and we had to call it off.   It kept calling and texting for months afterward and leaving notes in our mailbox and on our windshield and we finally had to block it on Facebook and get a restraining order.   But we will always remember it fondly.

So tomorrow we begin celebrating this year’s worthy losers.   What would Valentine’s Day be without them?   For if everyone found their one true love, it would not be such a precious and magical thing would it?   When you think about it, all those dashed hopes and dreams after coming oh so close are what make Valentine’s Day so special.   Otherwise it would just be another crass commercial holiday exploiting our deepest feelings to get us to buy cheap goods and junk food at ridiculous markups, and kill millions of lovely rose blossoms and other beautiful flowering things as a token of how much we care.   And we’ve just had Christmas haven’t we?