The first piece of good news is that comments are fixed. As it turns out, I was a couple of versions of Movable Type behind, including one major upgrade. Shockingly, my installation of the upgrade was entirely without incident, and the new interface is much easier, looks snazzy, and worked the first time I installed it. I've never had such an easy experience with MT in my life -- and right when I was about to lose hope and conclude that they were abandoning it to promote TypePad.

The second piece of good news is that the first day of the book's official existence was loads of fun, including an Amazon review that called me the Paula and Evan the Simon. I wouldn't have put it quite like that, but it's pretty damn funny, and I'll take it. I know from peeking at stats that lots of you visited the book's page, which I worked very hard on, so thanks for that. You can also visit the book's MySpace page, which is Evan's handiwork. I like the idea that you can become our book's friend. It is a friendly book! Be its friend!

And now, what brings me here today: the wedding of Marie-Elizabeth Mundheim and Taylor Mali, reported this past weekend in the New York Times. Go ahead and look over the basics; I'll wait.

If you don't want to, or if you're not an NYT subscriber (it's free!), I'll sum up the gist as follows: Boy and girl (boy will eventually win the National Poetry Slam four times; girl will attend Oberlin; yowza) meet when they're in high school, they keep running into each other, she acts like a flighty weirdo because she's a little too much of a product of Oberlin in the not-so-good way, he sends her poetry on tape which she promptly uses to evaluate other potential suitors, she comes to her senses eventually after some deaths and other tragedies force them both to reevaluate. She trains to be... a life coach. Their wedding guests write good wishes on purple index cards and throw them into a blazing fire, because it's that kind of wedding.

This is an exceedingly easy story to make fun of. Seriously. The National Poetry Slam? Dude. The Incredibly Meaningful Sweater Incident? DUDE.

Nothing will make you read four billion relationship stories quite like trying to write a book about relationships. I cannot tell you how many success and non-success stories I have heard in the last year and a half. In fact, one my favorites was on the "Cringe" episode of This American Life, which I downloaded and was listening to yesterday on my Zen Nano. There's a story in that hour (all of which is awesome, as all of This American Life is awesome) involving a lady whose boyfriend joined the Hare Krishnas, and when she gets to the line, "It was 25 feet long and I ironed the whole thing," I dare you not to laugh hysterically. But anyway, I have learned one thing about stories like the Mundheim-Mali story, and here it is.

Don't laugh. Because your story will probably be stupider.

Honestly, every story I've heard that ends well sounds, in some way, either dumb or horribly off. You met... how? He did... what? Ask my mother about the time my father ordered a clam pizza. That's what she got for trying to be coy and cooperative. I have a weird feeling that those crazy kids from Oberlin and Bowdoin are probably going to do pretty well, goofy poetry and all. The story sounds weird, but all such stories sound weird. The best one I ever found myself in certainly was weird. It was past weird. Past the point of "Oh, you're making that up." And I suspect that the best one I find myself in later will be equally weird, if not weirder.

Ask not for whom the purple cards burn, people. They burn for thee.