For many, love is bliss. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. [Insert other Moulin Rouge soundbites here]

For some, love is a burnt match skating in a urinal. Love is a battlefield. Love is hell.

And it is for these sad, bitter some, that the Black Hearts Party was created. For the 17th year in a row, on the evening of February 14th, legions of the jaded will collect and revel in thier total and utter contempt for the ultracommercialized holiday that is Valentine’s Day.

From the B.H.P’s own manifesto:

The principle mission of the Black Hearts Party is to propagate the truth about love. For it’s not some fanciful concept in which we believe. It’s the truth, a truth that doesn’t need you to believe in it in order for it to be true. Still think love is all puppies and Celine Dion, that we’re nothing but a bunch of stunted, juvenile emotional fuckwits? Lucky for you, the Black Hearts Party is also dedicated to providing succor to our brethren, our fellow believers, those who stand beside us against the rising tide of Monica & Chandler memorial plates and Julia Roberts movies. And when the love of your life pours you a hot, steaming cup of “wake up and get the fuck out of my life”, we’ll be there for you too.

Sounds like a blast doesn’t it? Well, it is, actually. The Black Hearts Party, now in it’s 17th and final incarnation, is one of the bitchinest and most exclusive parties on the eastern seaboard. It’s one of the more highly debauched events you might ever hope to find, even in bad old sin city, NYC; just because there is no love, doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of sex, drugs, and rock and roll to take its place…and the Black Heart’s Party has all the above on tap.

Want to attend? Is your spirit for life and love so spiked by emptiness and hatred that, were it up to you, all those who feel warm fuzzy sentiments about Valentine’s Day should be ritually disemboweled with blunt instruments? Tough titties, you’re not invited. And unless you’ve been invited, you can’t come.

However. There is one small way you can make it. You can write an essay, explaining why you should merit an invitation.

The rules are simple. Tell us, in your own words, why you deserve to come, be it a sob story about how they broke your little heart, a poem about how irritating it is that they only started going to the gym after you dumped their fat ass, a doctoral thesis on how hot and easy you are — whatever. Originality helps. Points for brutal honesty. Proper grammar makes us horny.

That last line reminds me of our publisher.