As excited as we are about this, we may be even more excited about this. Whedon-tastic!

First we heard about ExBoyfriendJewelry.com. Now we hear, via the Boston Globe, that both online and off, sales of emotionally-tarnished gewgaws have actually created a mini “ex-boyfriend economy” unto itself. Helping fuel the reportedly “unprecedented assault on jewelry boxes and dresser drawers,” apparently, are the currently “record prices for precious metals.”

I have a box, not exactly FULLfull, but containing quite a few once-shiny little items from exes. What better way to underwrite the cost of that strappy little dress I have my eye on! (Then again, those wee baubles from “Roger” will go perfectly with it, so I’ll at least have to hang on to them…)

You’re both in the Fantastic Four. Does that mean you’ll make a Fantastic Pair? Not necessarily!

Check out the Top Five Worst Superhero Marriages and Top Five Least Romantic Comics Couples as rated by the comic sites and ComicBookResources.com and Comixology.com. In most ways, these couples’ differences are more human than super-human: their various love Kryptonites include commitment-phobia, age differences, cheating spouses, skeptical friends, the slacker/striver dynamic, manipulation (in this case, of the four elements). Let’s just hope BG and The Lone Loner never make these lists!

If you were serving in Iraq, housed in a grimy outpost lacking electricity and running water, where soot, sewage, and boiling temperatures created miserable living conditions, what would you dream about? A nice long shower? Cherry Garcia? Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers? Maybe just your bed back home?

For military police sergeant Owen Powell, it was Natalie Portman. But not in that way. According to Powell’s haunting, piercing runner-up entry in the New York Times Modern Love college essay contest — Go read it! Run, don’t walk! — his take-me-away visions included the lovely Miss Portman glowing at him from across a romantic table, doing the lambada in his arms. Or, on a bad night, breaking up with him.

But either way, in a way, she saved him. “In the Humvee, I searched for that elusive image of Natalie from the night before; I hunted for her through the blood-warm passages of my mind, chased the feeling of her down tunnels collapsing with the weight of status reports and threat conditions. The thick brushstroke of a single arched eyebrow. A glance across that crowded dance floor, somehow simultaneously sharp and accusatory and mesmerizing. It was as if I had something secret and untouchable that was wholly mine, a delicate and perfect gift in a city that seemed to feast on hate.”

Powell is now back in New York City, both glad and sad to be home. The dreams are gone. But this is the reality: he could totally run into her on the street.

An image stuck in my head since last week: Cardinals vs. Brewers, bottom of the fifth, Cards down 7-1. Evidently frustrated Cards catcher Yadier Molina throws a verbal hissy about the ump’s latest call. Right quick, the two start jawing at one another nose-to-nose, like they do in movies about baseball or commercials for chewing gum.

Molina gets ejected, natch, at which point Cards manager Tony LaRussa saunters over to take Molina’s place up the ump’s nostrils. While Molina makes a big show of tossing his catcher’s gear at the umpire’s feet, LaRussa is likewise ousted from the game.

I cringe to admit that the scene reminded me of some knock-down-drag-outs I’ve had with exes. I’m sure at some point, I’ve tried to pull off some histrionic bit like Molina’s aggro-sarcastic gear-shedding. And yet? I’m oddly jealous of him and LaRussa.

Why? Because Molina and LaRussa will get to keep their well-paying jobs as professional sports guys. Even though what they did was counterproductive to the task at hand (you know, winning a baseball game) nobody on their team is going to hold a grudge, as even guys who play baseball for a living recognize that it is, after all, just a baseball game, just a bad flare-up in a season that’s 120 games or so long.

Being in a relationship, by contrast, pays zero dollars, can take an awful lot of work — and, at those unfortunate times when you do work yourself up into a bat-hurling moment, there’s no third-party commissioner to assign you a measly wrist-slap of a fine before everybody just moves on.

Can anyone tie that all up into a nice love/baseball metaphor for me? I’ll be over here with the Cracker Jack.

Country music-worthy metaphors, sci-fi, sex tapes, even Disney: This one is up there with the best breakup letters EVER.

Riddle: What’s the opposite of a breakup?

Answer: Frequently married — to each other! — porn star Annie Sprinkle and butch multi-media artist Elizabeth Stephens.

Yep, the super-committed couple is at it again — for the fourth time, and they’re counting. Yesterday marked the momentous occasion of Annie and Beth’s wedding — their fourth annual, this one with a green eco-love theme.

As part of a seven-year project of their collaboration the Love Art Lab, Sprinkles and Stevens get married once a year for seven years. Each wedding corresponds to the color and properties of one of the seven chakras.

Just a few of the reasons Annie and Beth’s relationship might inspire the pants off you:

They met when they were younger but fell in love “later in life;” they are a successful collaborative team; they turn love and sex into art; they aren’t afraid of love or commitment, or at least do a bang-up job of overcoming those fears; the hell — the first three times – with the ban on gay marriage; Annie beat breast cancer in their first year of marriage; they are openly sex-positive; they tried to have a baby but when it didn’t work opted for a black lab; they encourage others by sharing their story; they are just cute as pie.

And now that gay marriage has been legalized in California (finally!) their lastest nuptial might spread love into the world with more than costumes and performance art. After all, what says “Congratulations on your continued connubiality” more than shared health benefits and hospital visitation rights?

You know you want to see pictures from weddings one, two and three….

An interesting piece ran in the New York Times about Shelia Weller’s new book, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon–And the Journey of a Generation. These three musical pioneers — and true romantics — had the bold task of making sense of romance in the era of “free love.” While each cites traditional romantics as models for their work (Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday for Mitchell, the Gershwins for Simon, Rodgers and Hammerstein for King), there was nary a Cinderella story to be sought in that decade’s feminist movement as women turned away from traditional roles and began to openly explore their sexuality. The question remains, as the article mentions, whether romantic love and promiscuity (for lack of a better word) are compatible. (Ask any college student in America the same question and you’ll see we have yet to reach a conclusion.)

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Mind Hacks recently featured a highly amusing husband and wife rating chart from the 1930s, invented by marriage counselor George W. Crane, MD, Ph.D. How it works: your spouse earns merit or demerit points based on his or her behaviors and characteristics. Some (“Snores”) are things we can still relate to, while the rest offer a curious peek into the norms and expectations of that era (demerits for a husband who “talks of efficiency of his stenographer or other women” or a wife who “fails to sew on buttons or darn socks regularly”).

Crane aimed to be “scientific” in the development of this test; true to form, according to the American Psychological Association, he started the Scientific Marriage Foundation, which took a “scientific” approach to marriage and claimed to have set up more than 5,000 marriages.

I wonder what a modern version of this questionnaire would look like. Demerits for “brings laptop to bed”?

Anyone above the age of 16 may not have noticed, but prom season is in full swing right now. Perhaps no place in the Land of Breakup is more fertile than prom, where so many relationships reach their denouement. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Rob Spillane has compiled a book of prom memoirs by various and assorted writers entitled The Time of My Life: Writers on the Heartbreak, Hormones, and Debauchery of the Prom. I haven’t read the book (yet!) but I must say that the cover — a random collage of prom-goers from the powder-blue-suited 70s up through the more modern vamp-goth ensembles of the zeros — totally made me do one of those huge did-she-just-walk-into-prom-wearing-THAT? double-takes.

Fortunately, those of you in New York City can hear these stories right from the folks who wrote them tonight at McNally Robinson (50 Prince Street, near Lafayette), at 7 PM. The free reading features writers Cintra Wilson, Walter Kirn and Mike Albo. If it weren’t for the fact that I have to work (darn bills keep demanding to be paid), I’d be there with shoes-dyed-to-match-my-dress on. Instead, I’ll task you all with going, then coming back here and reporting on it. Now go forth and boogie…under the tinfoil stars and giant heart made of balloons, of course.