Everything And Nothing

Legally Binding Mood Disclaimer

This pad could save your relationship. Why leave emotional communication to chance when you're in a bad mood? One note from this pad would be considered fair warning in some courts of law. ;)

$6.99

'Nuff Said

Jason Pellegrino says the problem with Internet dating services is not enough hot-looking people are posting profiles. So he and Sean Cohen created www.hotenough.org - for "fit, good-looking" people.

Prospective members must submit pictures and must be rated an 8 or higher by people already in the club. Once you're in, you can e-mail other hotties for $9.95 a month. A few months after launch, membership was at about 1,000.

Hey, it sounds like Darwinian cruelty, but if all you are looking for in a prospective partner is hotness, this may be the place for you.

I haven't found a business partner yet, but Jason and Sean inspired me to come up with a few more ideas for dating services:

• SmartEnough.org - MENSA members only, IQ test scores must be posted (and verified)
• DumbEnough.org - A site for men who know they really just want a dumb chick. IQ test scores verified
• RichEnough.org - Send in your last three years income tax returns for verification purposes (Now the real service would be to link up the men in RichEnough to the women in HotEnough because we all know that's what's going to happen in the end anyways.)
• TallEnough.org - For tall women (who always complain that the short girls snag the tall men). Height posted on the site is verified...with information on whether you would feel comfortable next to him in 1-inch, 2-inch or 3-inch heels.
• SaneEnough.org - After years of dating crazy people, now sanity can be verified. (Find out if it really is you driving everyone insane.)

For when you've really, really mussed things up

The world's tallest roses. They measure over five feet in height.

$249.95

12 Very Honest Valentines

By Kimberly Bonnell and Pamela Redmond Satran for Glamour magazine (Feb. 2007)

1. To my childhood crush: You were so gorgeous when you were 11. If you got bald and fat, I don't wanna know about it.
2. Faster a little to the left, please. Your left, my right.
3. To my best guy friend: I love your mind, but that's it.
4. Thank you for lying about how my butt looks in that dress.
5. I'd love you even more...if you used Listerine.
6. Whatever you've got in that Frederick's of Hollywood box, I'm not wearing it.
7. To my office "husband": Eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, I love you!
8. Hey, hot stuff: Wish you weren't gay, Happy Valentine's Day!
9. Honey, if you want to see me naked, turn up the thermostat!
10. Hi, cute pharmacist! This should clear up by Saturday. Wanna go out?
11. To my favorite girlfriend: Too bad you're a girl, because you're the one I love best!
12. No, I won't get back together with you, but I'll take the roses.

Yes, love can break your heart

Hopkins cardiologist Ilan Wittstein, M.D.

Broken-heart syndrome (also known as acute stress cardiomyopathy) is a medical term coined by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Heart Institute in Baltimore. The condition occurs when an emotional trauma makes the brain release so many stress hormones that heart muscles become paralyzed and almost stop pumping blood. The result is symptoms, such as chest pains and shortness of breath, that resemble a heart attack - but, unlike a heart attack, the condition is reversible. (So lovesickness probably won't kill you, but it could send you to the emergency room.)

Create your own custom candy for Valentine's Day

Use a fine grater to sand off the messages on Conversation Hearts, then write your own sweet nothings with a food-coloring marker!

[ via Real Simple magazine, February 2007 ]

How to keep your husband

No need to worry about it anymore. Just wear the apron, read it and sweep! No nagging, no gaining weight, no gossiping, no bossing him around. It's simple really. Perfect gift for the staunch feminist on your list! ;)

$9.99

Po' Folks Marriage Counseling

Kit contains earplugs and a blindfold. ;)

$7.95, giftapolis.com

10 Bad Guys Worth Dating Anyway

• The Much Older Man, to get that creepy Dad thing out of your system.
• The Too-Good-Looking-for-Me-Guy, because those are your insecurities talking, and you should tell them to shut up!
• The Dumb Jock, because there's a lot to be said for endurance.
• The Potentially Gay Guy, for the potentially forever friendship
• The Pretentious Intellectual. If nothing else, you'll have the whole who-vs.-whom thing solved forever.
• The Euro Snob. Steal his fancy bath products!
• The Noncommittal Guy, because he's a rite of passage that will bond you with every woman on earth.
• The Guy Who Needs To Be Saved, to teach you that you can't do that for anybody.
• The Money-Hungry Bastard. You'll quickly scratch "rich" off your wish list.
• The Cute-But-Dorky, because in the long run, dorky might not matter.

[ via Eliza Marston, Glamour magazine, July 2006 ]

p.s. I dated two and married one of the above. (No, I'm not telling which ones.) ;)

Old Flames Still Smolder

"First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity."
—George Bernard Shaw

Pamela Weintraub had an interesting article in Psychology Today (July/August 2006) about how early love affairs leave a particularly vivid mark in our minds. And the spark seems to be easily rekindled. "I've been in love with you my whole life" are common words...even 30 years later (and generally a marriage and kids later too).

In the midst of the Google generation, romantic reunions with old flames are more common than ever. (I mean, before the Internet, it took A LOT of time and effort to track anyone down that moved out of state.) Most of these reunions are between first or early loves and largely took place in their teens or early 20s, according to Nancy Kalish, a psychologist at California State University at Sacramento. (Kalish has the dubious honor of being considered the foremost expert in rekindled romance.)

Surprisingly, these romances are very successful, as long as both partners are not otherwise attached when they reconnect. In Kalish's initial sample of 1,000 lost-and-found lovers, ages 18 to 95(!), nearly three-quarters remained together after a decade of study. And when they married each other, their divorce rate after four years tallied in at no more than 1.5 percent. (Usually, second marriages are fragile. Nearly one-quarter of all couples who remarry get divorced again within five years.)

Most of the people, Kalish says, were separated by circumstance: long distances, family moves, stints in the military, disapproving parents, the uncertainty of youth. The lovers feel their separation was unjust or ill-fated and feel now they have a chance to set everything right.

The dark side, of course, is that sometimes the romance is rekindled even if both parties (or one party) is married. Kalish said that even good marriages are at risk because of the power and resilience of the reunion. In her last sample, more than 60 percent of lost-love reunions involve affairs.

In addition to search engines, high school and college reunion Web sites have attracted millions of registered users, a stomping ground for lost lovers. And, for the most part, people are finding their lost loves quite easily. (The New York Times weddings page recently featured a lost-love couple who wed — he was 93, she was 82 — 70 years after they first fell for each other.)