But this year I think I’m going to be optimistic; since V-day is all about love, and I love myself, I’m going to celebrate. And stuff my face with chocolate! Yum! I’ll curl up with my favorite snuggle buddy and listen to love songs, maybe do some therapeutic shopping, and re-evaluate my unfortunate attraction to bad boys and how that ties into spending V-day alone. Maybe I’ll borrow or rent one of these guys to keep me company. (Can you do that? God they are cute!)

But for those of you celebrating V-day with your special honey, make it count! Times are rough but romance doesn’t have to cost a lot. Like J-Lo said, “My love don’t cost a thing, thing, thing…” Spice up your sexy time with a little shower action, we know it can be hard in college, but it can be done. And if you are interested in cutting back on the spending and being a little eco-friendly, try these ideas. Save the world and have an amazing day with your special someone.

Single or not…Valentine’s Day is a day of love! So share it and enjoy it! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Seems like these days everything in the news is depressing: Chris Brown’s arrest, the crappy economy, thousands of layoffs (GM just cut 10,000 jobs), the Octuplets mom lying about her financial situation, the A-Rod/Steroid scandal, just to name a few. It’s like all you want to do is down an antire Duncan Heinz cake and cry into your pillow.

But it’s not all bad.  The Westminster Kennel Club 2009 Dog Show (AKA: happiness on a leash) is happening right now. OMFG! Puppies! Yay!!

And if puppies don’t brighten your Tuesday (monster!), I don’t know what will. Get your dose of sunshine, rainbows, and doggy faces right here.

[Every week, CC and John bring you some of the weirdest, funniest, saddest things he hears on his college campus. Join the Overheard revolution!

Leave your own overheard convos in the comments.]

“Okay, soon as I get back to my room, I’m adding this to my Facebook profile. We should all add this to our Facebook profiles. ‘Hangin’ out.’ ‘Movies.’ ‘Stupid Dog Voices.’”

“His butt is so… defined. It’s the Lamborghini of butts.”

“It’s Rudolph! He’s presenting!”

“I hate my Chaucer professor. Whenever I’m in class, he just throws chocolate at me.”

“Hey, good morning, everybody.”

“Morning was a while ago.”

“Okay, good afternoon, fine. Who’s got a final today?”

“I had Ethics at one.”

“Wait. One? What time is it now? Three? S***. Well, I guess I had a final today.”

“That dog is so damn cute. He’s the best part of my life. I’m just going to write ‘I love that dog’ for every answer on my final.”

“All they’ve been serving is poop. No, I mean, literally. I get downstairs and it’s like, ‘Well, poop again, guess I’m gonna order out.’”

“There’s never anything in crates and barrels, right?”

“Try farting on them.”

“Hey, I’m going to the grocery store. Anyone need a break from studying?”

“Holy s***, girl, grocery store is straight dope! I love that s***!”

“Did you just say ’straight dope’? You’re not invited.”

“The butt doctor is in business… again!”

“She’s blind. Found it out when I tried playing baseball with her.”

The worst part of Thanksgiving is the dogs. Everyone has that one relative with a German shepherd, two Corgis and a Schnoodle/Pug mix. Some of us have more than one of these relatives, and some of us have many, many more than one. Some of these relatives have named their dogs Bill O’Reilly. All of these relatives arrive at every holiday party.

But you can’t just tell someone that you don’t like their dogs. There is no greater insult around the Thanksgiving table; you may as well have stuffed, dressed and roasted nephew Kenny.

Political beliefs work the same way, and in some ways are more annoying, because there’s no practical limit to how many you can stuff into the same party, and they’re usually invisible, unless Uncle Joe’s got some kind of witty hat (“Republicans Screw The Country, Democrats Usually Raise Taxes”).

And so you’ve got Grandma’s staunch Grand Old Politics jumping on your new dress and cousin Laura’s furious socialist anarchism taking up all the space on the couch and Teddy and Ralph are barking and howling about the liberal media and you can’t just shoot them.

So you’ve got to find a non-violent, pleasant solution to the problem. Just how do you deal with divergently political relatives?

The simple Thanksgiving solution is to compliment their cooking. This isn’t always easy, because people will put anything in a pie these days, and it might be compliment enough to even swallow Aunt Maura’s green bean and rhubarb casserole. But a quick white lie can be an effective deterrent to all-out family feuding (“All I’m saying is that they should learn to speak English — ” “Oh, Maura, I just love the way you’ve pickled the rhubarb!”).

Dropping the ‘willful ignorance’ bomb might sting, especially when this is the year for politically passionate young people, but it’s an acceptable Big Red Button when the situation gets too dire. Refuse to know anything about anyone, anywhere: just for today, you don’t talk about foreign politics, which includes anything outside the circumference of the pumpkin pie.

Alternately, you can simply pretend you’ve got wildly inconsistent political beliefs and simply agree with everything. Play it off as a product of your age: all that multi-tasking us young folk do has taught us to radically re-align our world view every five minutes, and maybe Grandpa will be impressed and give you ten dollars or something.

If you think you’ve got the wit, you can try taking both sides at once. Try playing devil’s advocate, but do it with such dripping sarcasm that your allies think you’re hilarious and your enemies just agree with you. After all, if people disagree with your political beliefs, it’s because they’re stupid, right? They’ll never catch on (“O’Reilly? He’s a genius! He’s got the sexiest pout on TV!”)

Finally, you can try to appeal to the elementary spirit of the day: we should cast aside our grievances and unite in the common spirit of thanks.

But who’s going to buy that?

Sometimes it seems like the only thing keeping the family together is the dogs.

I first heard about the movie when I saw its extended trailer in previews for Wall-E this summer. It was just a mess of digitally edited footage of Chihuahuas singing (if you could call emphatic yelps of “Chihuahua!” singing) and prancing about Mayan ruins in Mexico. The trailer told you nothing about the plot of the movie itself, and even misrepresented the title of the film. If it’s called Beverly Hills Chihuahua, what are these pups doing in Chichen Itza?

Well, now that the ad campaign for this movie has revved up for its release, I’ve learned a lot more about BHC and I certainly don’t like what I see, for a few reasons.

First, and probably most egregious, is the fact that BHC is blatantly racist. It is rife with potshots at Mexican and Latino culture. Take, for example, the over-promoted scene in which another dog asks the prissy protagonist (Chloe, from the Hills), “don’t you speak Spanish?” When she stutters, the mastiff replies, “Hello? You’re a Chihuahua, m’hija!” As if the nature of one’s heritage determines one’s linguistic abilities. You wouldn’t walk up to a person who looked Hispanic and deride them for not speaking Spanish, so why is it okay for dogs to do it? Is this the kind example we want to be setting for children, at whom the film is targeted?

Moral repugnancies aside, BHC doesn’t look like it’s going to be racking up any points for creativity. If you include such colloquial gems as “oh no she didn’t!” and “say hello to my little friends!” among the funniest moments in the movie (why else would you include it in the trailer?), there can’t be much else worth checking out. Seriously, Disney, is it still 1992? No one has said “oh no she didn’t!” in all seriousness since overalls were popular.

With a multimillion dollar budget and Jamie Lee Curtis, Drew Barrymore, and George Lopez among the staring credits, you would expect far better from such an established label. To think of all the up-and-coming screenwriters, directors, and animators whose talents never get picked up because large studios like Disney would rather pump millions into a dead-end project like Beverly Hills Chihuahua is shameful. With the state of the economy these days, this movie represents all that is atrocious about American excess, and it would be a sin to plunk down any cash on a ticket for it. Take a look for yourself:

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