Valentine's Day is approaching and our nights will be filled with stuffing our faces with chocolates and bawling our eyes out to the newest Romantic Comedy. There is, however, one thing that is sure to dry those weeping eyes. La Crosse was recently rated the most romantic city in the county.

Now before you go jumping to post this as your Facebook status, the study was done by the video rental kiosks Redbox. The sole criteria for the ranking was based off of the simple fact that we, as La Crosse citizens, rent the most romantic movies when at Redbox  in 2011. So is this a simple pat on the back or is it truly a great achievement for La Crosse?

Chances are Redbox is racking in the cash on this study. What a genius marketing ploy. Talk about romantic rentals in time for Valentine's Day and you'll be the first name people have in mind when they want to rent one.

Wisconsin, in general, is seen plastered all over their list. Coming in second is Green Bay, sixth place goes to Wausau, and ninth falls in with Madison. In fact, all those listed on the top ten are located in the northern Midwest, while every city on the top least romantic cities are in the south. Are we just too cold to go out and do anything besides rent cheesy romantic movies?

Another problem that arises with the "survey" is the simple fact that not every city has a Redbox kiosk. Sure, there are 28,000 Redbox locations nationwide, but how is this distributed? In fact, the Redbox headquarters are located in Chicago, giving the northern Midwest a slight advantage to have a surplus of machines to choose from. La Crosse alone has a total of eight locations.

Truth is, these findings aren't the most scientific.  They base their idea of "most romantic" on movie dispenses, but we should take it with pride. La Crosse as a whole is known for many things-- some better than others.  With such a negative drinking culture in the city, it is nice to know that we can now be known for this too (even if it is simply for commercial gain).

Too often we get caught over analyzing a complement. Sometimes when someone says, you look nice; you should just say, "Thank you." And when someone tells you that your city is the most romantic in America, you proudly say, "Yes." So for now, let's thank Redbox for giving a small town in western Wisconsin its 15 minutes of fame.