Sidney beat me to the tsk-tsk, and Tracker beat me to the claim that while a cookie-cutter approach is probably a bad idea, there might actually be something here. Love may be some combination of mystewy and magic and chemical compulsion, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea; We've all fallen for at least one of the wrong people, and some of us make that mistake -- the same mistake -- again and again and again. What's wrong with demonstrating that there are other options? And perhaps more to the point, if thse seminars are such a terrible, crummy idea, what do we say to the women who keep falling for self-absorbed Bad Boys, the guys who keep falling for needy, self-loathing babes? That they're SOL, that their chemical make-up dooms them to responding only to unhealthy triggers, and that they should just go join a celibate religious order? "Go with your gut" is swell if your gut sends messages that leave you happy and fulfilled. But if your gut is a little upgefucked -- maybe because you picked up some screwy messages in childhood -- then it seems to me that introducing the gut to the brain could make for a very productive relationship.

Harri, dear, a couple of things. First, there's nothing wrong with waxing snotty about another writer's abilities, but if your comments are to have any authority you had better be able to demonstrate some serious chops of your own. Sadly, you don't have them.

Second, I'm sure you imagine your handle to be the height of wit. Unfortunately, it is both yesterday's joke and wrongly spelled: If you really want to tweak those clueless rubes who don't kow the French for "green bean," you'll want to spell the surname "Covair," so their tiny little pois-brains can sound it out phonetically.

Not to worry, though, I'm sure your killingly elegant prose-style will protect you from ever getting fired. Absolutely. And listen, no foam on that latte, ok?

>Would it be unbearably sad for the family of the deceased if they encountered his or her face on another person in Barnes & Noble?

No, but it would be unbearably sad for the local independent booksellers -- or those who haven't yet been forced out of business by what we fondly refer to as the Evil Empire.

Support your local independent bookstore.

It doesn't really make sense to boycott a product -- a movie, a tourist attraction, a book, a particular brand of chocolate -- merely because it's being touted to a group (i.e., the Fundies) whom you despise. Is the theory that anything they like, or might conceivably like, is inherently garbage? What do you do about the fact that pretty much everybody likes ice cream?

Understand, I'm totally on board with despising the Fundies and believing that they have played an enormous role in destroying -- though not permanently, one hopes -- much of what is valuable about this country. But boycotting the film because the company that made it has the gall to think it might appeal to the Fundies as well as to other folks...this to me is nuts.

This is hands-down the best article I have read on Salon in two years. All kinds of applause.