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!

Well, the Internet is all afire over reports that George Clooney and his girlfriend Sarah Larson have split. Both People and In Touch magazines are reporting the split, thus giving all other media the opportunity to report on the two magazines reporting on the split. (Way to circumvent the original unattributed source!) Anyway, In Touch Weekly quotes a friend of Larson as saying the pair broke up because the two really had nothing in common. A gazillionaire actor who wants to save Darfur and a cocktail waitress from Vegas half his age have nothing in common? Really? I mean if these two kids can’t make it, who amongst us can? Certainly no one on the full roster of celebrities who have called it quits in May. USA Today has a handy roundup for you here.

Phomance: the old-fashioned kind of courtship, where you talk on the phone rather than email and text? Nope: phomance, comes the word from CNET, is a type of phishing scam aimed at the online dating community. “We’ve all done foolish things for romance,” writes Ben Nahorney, about his interaction with a phlirtatious phomancer from the phormer Soviet Union, who was, as he tells it, “‘I’ll wire her money just to take care­ of her sick puppy’ gorgeous.” See where the scam might come in?

Fortunately for everyone but the scammers, Nahorney is not only a member of a dating website, but also a senior information developer at the security software company Symantec. BUSTED! In his blog, Nahorney describes the warning signs that came along with his initial feelings of hope and excitement, and which tactics he pulled from his own bag of tricks to reveal the true nature of their would-be victim/would-be scammer relationship.

But you don’t have to be, well, a senior information developer at a security software company in order to sniff out a phony. Nor should you quit online dating in phear. Just remember what BG says: “be aware, but don’t be scared.”

Once in a while, staying at the pub and chanting your football team’s name loudly with your mates actually turns out to be the better idea.

Fear not, Xbox widows (and widowers) everywhere! There is now proof that your next video game experience could not onlybe fun, but could also save your relationship. Rachel Shukert’s hilarious new article on Salon.com (it’s Premium, so you’ll need a subscription or day pass; of course, I’ll summarize here too) tells the story of a frustrated wife and her video game-addicted husband in a marriage. He spends his time shooting things in a video fantasy world; she fears the man she married has become one of the very aliens he’s always trying to blow up. (“…[N]oise-canceling headphones,” Shukert writes. “You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn’t come up with anything more misogynist.”)

The solution? (more…)

Apparently it’s not just wine that gets better with age. According to a study by Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist, the happiest Americans are the oldest Americans — and one thing those happy seniors are not is lonely. Yang believes that’s because older people have, in general, learned to be more content with what they have than younger folks.

As a case in point, Florida’s Highlands Today featured Lou and Dottie Mingacci, who have been married 62 years. Lou’s Wednesday morning Bingo outings represent his rare moments of separation from his beloved, the World War II vet tells the paper. When asked what keeps him happy, Mingacci quickly replies: his wife.

Isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?

Maybe it won’t surprise any of you to find out that roughly 50% of Canadians — reputed to be the politest people in the Northern hemisphere (the Minnesotans being too polite to challenge them) — break up in private places, mainly their own homes, so as not to embarrass the other person. (Or, um, because it’s cold outside?)

The Vancover Sun article bearing the news — based on a recent poll by Ipsos Reid — quotes psychology professor Guy Grenier as saying, “I suppose that’s probably a good indication of relationship etiquette.” I suppose. But just because a breakup happens in private doesn’t mean it feels private. I mean, the most humiliating place I was ever broken up with was in my own bedroom. Would have been private, I guess, if there hadn’t been a PARTY going on downstairs. I’ll cry if I want to, thanks!

By the way, call me an impolite New Yorker, but aren’t they focusing on the wrong half of the respondents? I mean, where are all those other people breaking up? Gretzky’s?

(By the way #2, the comments section here would be a good place to share your own good/bad/ugly breakup-location stories. Especially you, our neighbors to the north.)

If only someone had managed to convince Shanta Dargbeh. Oh, dear.

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.