Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Valentines Day is coming up. While this day no longer has any significant religious connections in the mind of most people out there. St Valentine and St Patrick are the only two saints that have had their feast day transcend the spiritual and decend to the profane.

This is not to say that your Maximum Leader doesn’t like St Patrick’s Day. He does. He doesn’t need a reason to drink Guiness, but it is sometimes nice to have one.

St Valentines Day is a different matter. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t really like the societal requirements of Valentines Day. Cards. Flowers. Candies. Stuff. Of course, most of the gifts go in the male to female direction. Boys buy/do stuff for girls. So imagine what must be going through your Maximum Leader’s brain when he saw the headline What Guys Really Want for Valentines Day on his Yahoo home page.

Let’s see… What do guys really want on Valentines Day - according to some schmoe “expert” on Yahoo? Some crap about “Romance Lite” and “A Surprise.” Your Maximum Leader was going to cite some of the piece, but re-reading it seems to be draining the testosterone out of his system. The only thing the piece’s author writes with which your Maximum Leader can agree is that men want a steak on Valentines Day. Duh. Men want a good steak any day they can get one. Great jeezey chreezey. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

(Excursus: Your Maximum Leader can only partially agree with the “steak” comment made in the Yahoo piece. According to David Zinczenko - who by the way has a cool and manly name - even if the advice he dishes out is rather metrosexual, men want a steak at a place where their girl can also get something she wants. It has been your Maximum Leader’s experience that if you want steak you either do your own or go to a steak house. If your female companion wants chicken marsala or sushi, you - the man - ought to steer away from steak. The noteworthy exception being that if the sushi is served at a high-end Japanese restaurant that also serves Kobe (or Wagu) beef.)

So… Rather than taking your advice from some gammy-handed metrosexual on Yahoo here is some advice on what to get a man for Valentines Day from your (manly) Maximum Leader. At the top of the list is sex. Basically, men want sex. Frankly, the only reason that men play along with all the Valentines Day crap we have to put up with is the hope that we will have sex as a result of our largesse. Remember that women… Men like sex.

Second on the list (a distant second after sex we might add) would be flannel. Men also like flannel. Some men like it made into shirts. Some into underwear. Some into washcloths. But we all like flannel. (Your Maximum Leader has even heard that Tim Gunn likes flannel - he just hides his love of the fabric. BTW, nice typo on the Bravo page for Mr Gunn.) February is a cold month. Warm us up with a little flannel. Of course, if you are into giving flannel shirts you might model them for us - right before the sex.

After flannel is the othe important “f” gift, firearms. Men like us our firearms. Nickel plated. Chrome plated. Blued until they are dark as night. Or the ever popular gun metal grey. We all like guns. Hows about picking us up a nice shotgun, semi-automatic pistol, or classic revolver (no pearl handles, only pimps carry pearl handled revolvers)? We’d like it. We will even be happy to clean the guns with the remains of the worn out flannel shirts you got us a few Valentines Days ago…

If you aren’t up for sex, or flannel, or firearms how about lowered expectations? Men also like lowered expectations on Valentines Day. We are bombarded by chintzy jewelry stores who want to unload heart-shaped diamoniques and “forever” pendants. We are surrounded by teddy bear factories and florists who promise to have the most unique gift in the world for that special woman (and the SKU number for that unique gift is…). We heard about the friend of a friend of a friend who’s boyfriend whisked her off for a day of spa treatments - in Tahiti - just to prove how much he loved her on Valentines Day. How about lowering those expectations just a wee little bit.

Would a hug and a kiss be okay? Would it be enough to say that we chose you for who you are and that is the biggest step we are capable of?

No?

Well… Lucky for us American Express has no preset spending limit.

Carry on.