Like Smiley Faces and a Basketful of Kittens

...the Vows column almost always makes me gag. That said, I find it as addictive as Nestle Crunch covered crack. (Hmmm, did my drug choice just date me? Crack is so two score ago...) Anyway, come Sunday I generally rush out into my hallway to pick up my copy of the Times, scramble through the paper to find the Styles section, immediately flip past the hipster in the Night Out With column that I've never-nor-will-I-ever-again hear of, and look to see who has tied the knot of holy matrimony.

The relative worth/lessness of this section of the paper has been commented upon ad nauseum, so I won't bother throwing in another two cents, but I will confess that I was rather pleased when the New York Observer began running its own twist on the state of love, running engagement notices. These longer profiles of blissfully happy youngish people really provide the raw information I'm looking for. They always tell you how and where the couple met, they always discuss the impediments to their love (poor as a church mouse! a Seventh Day adwhatsis?) and they're oftentimes subtly or not-so-subtly mean-spirited. I mean come on, feed the rest of us a little marrow, right?

But this week's Love Beat (the first half at least) not only relates a great story, it's a profile of two excellent people, Emma Taylor and Rob Tourtelot. In a disclosurey sense, they do happen to be good friends of mine. But I think their story transcends this bias because I think I'd find it cool anyway. And, it completely renders my last blog entry wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Which is rare.

See Emma and Rob did, in fact, meet on Nerve.com! That's right, one of the sites I called out but a day ago for being the last refuge of delusional desperadoes looking for love. Well, dear reader, when I'm wrong (and again, I stress this is a rarity), I do like to admit it. So, perhaps I will wade back into the murky, sex-offendered waters of the online dating community. Cause with an open mind (and a full can of mace), a girl just never knows when she might meet her destiny.