GUYS! Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and this year you really need to up your game. So what's the best way to make a public declaration of your love (or crush)? Submit a FREE Mercury Reader Valentine! Simply click here, type your shmoopy-woopy's name in the box, write an incredibly sexy/romantic love note, hit submit and… VOILA! Your valentine will swoop into our February 9th Valentines Issue, which will be read by EVERYONE—and especially your loved one who will probably see it, swoon, and do all sorts of sexy things in retaliation.

THIS IS A WIN, WIN, WIN SITUATION, GUYS. But hurry! Our deadline for the Valentines print edition is THIS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4TH.

Do this. You won't regret it.

Former Merc food critic (and current bon vivant) Patrick Alan Coleman just sent me the following video, which is kind of the most perfect thing I've ever seen. It's entitled "BR Handskills 01" ("BR" apparently stands for "Battle Roulette") and perhaps taken individually, each of the video's visual elements aren't all that interesting. BUT PUT TOGETHER? Holy mother of god. When I die, I want to live in this world.

Face Hearts to PAC.

Here is one of my favorite things I've ever worked on at the Mercury. (Courtney and Erik had a hand in this as well.) It was in the paper the week that book seven came out.

It had some legs, too. Hecklers at the Powell's release party for Deathly Hallows drove by shouting "Snape kills Hermione! Read the Mercury, retards!" And, of course, we got some amazing hate mail.

"The first thing you should know is that it was not my original idea to put this song with ponies," says YouTube user SilkAMV. But what a great idea it was. Audio NSFW.

John Cheese, a writer at Cracked (yes, Cracked), posted a beautiful, tough-minded essay to their website today that was inspired by the It Gets Better Project. From reason #5: The Money Situation Will Improve (Even If It Doesn't):

As a kid, you just have to sit back and take it, not fully understanding why you're living the way you are. You're dependent on your parents' decisions and actions, whether they lead to bankruptcy or a new swimming pool. A lot of that pressure you're feeling in your teens and 20s is really just powerlessness. You feel like instead of driving the car, you're tied up in the trunk. When you get out on your own, your financial future is yours, and you can steer that bastard where you want it to go. It's not easy, but even when it's hard there is something liberating about the fact that even if you crash our proverbial car through the front window of a liquor store, it was your decision.

And just to make sure you didn't skip over the "it's not easy" part: If you think "it gets better" means you can sit back and wait for a naked genie to fart cash into your living room, it will not. "It gets better" doesn't mean life lets up, it means you no longer have to submit to it. Not like when you're a kid, when your parents can divorce without your consent or make you change schools or make you get a stupid haircut. When you're an adult, you can get pissed and swing back.

Please, don't wait as long as I did to learn that lesson. My entire adolescent life was spent in poverty because my parents gave up and just accepted that life was a spiked enema, and they just had to bend over and take it. They made no effort to improve their situation, and so that's the lesson my siblings and I took with us when we got out on our own. "There is no escaping your financial fate." I didn't push back until I was forced to. After 14 years of working an incredibly insufficient, shitty job, my back finally said, "Fuck this," and I was physically unable to do it anymore. I had nothing to go to. No backup plan. No savings. No family to turn to. And then I realized that I did in fact have skills that people would pay me to perform.

When I wasn't writing, I was putting in applications all over town. In the next town. In towns 30 minutes away. I applied to places online. When there was no gas in the truck, I walked to put in more applications. I swung harder. There are some days that I write for 16 straight hours, knowing that everything I just typed will be deleted and replaced with a completely different idea, or rejected outright. And that's OK because the success or failure is mine, not somebody else's. You can't put a price on that.

The whole piece is beautiful and inspiring and hilarious and it manages to scrape away a lot of the feel-goody/do-goody cheap sentiment that has congealed around the IGBP. Go read it. I wish we could've included it in the It Gets Better book.

Well-known for his love of architecture, artwork, and furniture design, David Lynch is designing a Mulholland Drive-inspired Club Silencio, which is set to open in Paris in September. Remember Club Silencio from the movie? It was the freaky joint where Naomi Watts found the blue box/key in her purse and Rebekah Del Rio made everyone cry. This place has the potential to be amazing with Lynch designing the interior (I might hazard a guess, and say red curtains and blue stage lights will grace the stage). He's also doing the furniture. Peep this lounge:

• Mmm, Lynchian.

According to the Guardian, Club Silencio will include a concert hall, restaurant, library, and cinema (with 24-hour David Lynch-athons?). Sooooo... my birthday is next week, if anyone is looking to buy me a li'l something.

h/t to Jessi