A smart friend sets me straight on Valentine's Day- and BACON news.

Apparently there is more to this V-Day than any chocolate lover could have suspected.

Definition: Lupercalia was an annual Roman festival celebrated on February 15.
Because Lupercalia has some connection with fertility it is like an early version of a Valentine's Day holiday. Lupercalia was named for the naked male priests called Luperci. Lupercalia involved not only fertility, but also purification rituals, and was celebrated to honor a god the Romans themselves were unsure of, but who was called "Lupercus" by the Augustan era. The pastoral god Faunus was also worshiped. The Luperci sacrificed a goat and possibly a dog, and offered sacred cakes. The Luperci donned goat skins or goat skin loincloths and ran through the streets of Rome striking people or just women with strips of goat to make them fertile. Pope Gelasius I (d. 496) (or Felix III - late 5th century) is thought by some to have turned the February 15 Lupercalia purification festival into the festival of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.
Sources: Ovid's Fasti, Adkins & Adkins' Dictionary or Roman Religion.

YAY for naked male priests. ANd Belgium chocolate and penuche fudge and gift cards to Saks.

Tonight is date night with the hubby. My turn to plan and drive. I chose an Italian dinner in a funky part of town, quick stroll of the shops then off for Martinis and I-Max, Cirque Du Soleil, the Journey of Man. He can very picky, so I hope he likes my choices.

ok.
I got your BACON NEWS. Straight from my OTHER favorite paper. The UK's Daily MASH.
( For Dooce.)

LEAVE BACON OUT OF IT, HEALTH EXPERTS WARNED

HEALTH experts were last night told to 'go fuck themselves' after advising consumers to give up bacon.

Which would you save from a burning building? One of these or a healthy eating co-ordinator?

The Department of Health in London was under siege yesterday as a mob chanted 'death to the men in white coats' and 'whoever defames the pig should be executed'.

Bill McKay, an architect from Dorchester, said he would rather disembowel himself than live without bacon, the only meat to be approved by the Vegetarian Society.

He added: "We've taken a lot of shit from these people over the years. Perhaps the time has come to throw our health experts in jail."

Rona Cameron, head of bacon sandwiches at the Vegetarian Society, said she believed the experts to be either deranged or in league with the devil.

She added: "I love pigs, they're so cute and clever. But if I was in a farmyard with the smell of fried bacon wafting across my nostrils, I swear to God I'd grab me a shotgun and a meat cleaver."

Wayne Hayes, bacon director at the Bacon Institute said: "Bacon transforms men into incredibly sensitive and generous lovers and guarantees women the longest and most intense orgasms imaginable."

Meanwhile bacon campaigners have issued a series of recommendations for health experts if they wish to carry on living instead of perishing in a huge fireball after someone pours petrol through their letterbox and sets light to it with a flaming rag, including:

• Leave bacon out of this
• Shut up about bacon
• Mention bacon again and you’re fucking dead
• Don't even look at those sausages