For us single types, Valentine’s Day is “Singles’ Awareness Day.”  I take this as an insult: we are aware of our singlehood for 365 days a year.  Now just because you people have dates, carry roses around like herpes, and gnaw on your chocolate bars like obsessive-compulsive plague-carrying rats, doesn’t mean that we should be “aware” that we don’t.

   We who don’t have dates on Valentine’s Day have more important things to attend to: we can ponder upon the consequences of the shooting of East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta, we can reflect on the anniversary of the 2005 terror attacks that took place in Makati.  I propose a toast to the philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer, the critical theorist who wrote “Eclipse of Reason,” who celebrates his 113th birthday today.

   See, you Valentine’s Day-celebrating idiots don’t have the monopoly of “owning” a single day in the calendar.  If it takes you that one day to tell your significant other that you love him or her, if it takes you that one day to give gifts or to make each other feel special, and if it takes you a red-letter day in a calendar to remind you that you are in a commitment you have a serious relationship problem.

   So hooray for being single.

   Something smells fishy.  For one, Jun Lozada ’s version of “the truth” has yet to be backed up by hard, solid evidence.  For two, Senators are grilling Lozada like bad barbecue for hours on end.  For three, no government official has yet to stand to say, “Hey, we’re going after the wrong man.”  Had I been the chairman of the Senate committee hearing out the NBN-ZTE fiasco, I would have let Lozada go right now and sent a subpoena to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo the very next day.  Then I’d send for the President herself.

   I’m not saying that I’m supporting Lozada.  I admire Lozada for owning up to his own faults, but I feel that he’s not telling the public the stone-cold truth.  The day Lozada comes into a Senate investigation bearing contracts is the day I will stand behind him.  But I feel for the man: the Senate investigation on the NBN-ZTE deal is fast turning into the new national embarrassment.  The kind of embarrassment that makes an EDSA IV very, very possible.

   However, we must be reminded that a change in leadership is not the reason why people troop to EDSA whenever the need arises.  A regime change is a consequence of EDSA: this is the reason why Erap Estrada still prattled about being “the true President” of the Philippines following EDSA II.  Going to EDSA is an expression of dissatisfaction, of discontent, the collective sentiment of a people pissed off with the government.  EDSA is to say, “We’ve had enough,” period.  Not, “We’ve had enough, so we want so-and-so to be in Malacañang.”  It baffles me to no end that someone as intelligent as Sen. Miriam Santiago would reduce EDSA to a regime change.

   But as far as the NBN-ZTE probe is going, something smells fishy.  As much as Jun Lozada is telling what he knows of the truth, the Senate has - in my view - reached a dead end in him.  Nobody’s seeing Benjamin Abalos or Romulo Neri being grilled for ten straight hours, which is a bit odd: probing Lozada further is a dead end.

   I say, let Lozada go, and go after the big fish.

* - apologies to Dr. Seuss