And the search continues

Ah, dating. One of the great mysteries of the universe. A quick glance, an inviting smile...that unmistakable and elusive chemistry. The commercialism of Valentine's Day, with all it's heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and discount diamond necklaces, also yields a plethora of marketing to the singletons among us, from self-help to set-ups. For curiosity's sake, I took to the interweb to see what kicked up in a few searches.

On Amazon, "dating" yields 150,102 results. The top hit? A book entitled, "The Shy Single: A Bold Guide to Dating for the Less-than-Bold Dater". Seems there are a lot of wallflowers out there. It even beat out "Dating for Dummies". One quick way to shed the shyness is a tasty cocktail...liquid courage, you know.

Google turns up a whopping 201,000,000 hits. Damn. The top two, unsurprisingly, are dating.com and match.com. Both a good way to go on 50 first dates. Interestingly, the fifth hit is washingtonpost.com's Arts & Living section. Seems there's a busy single scene down there in conservative, practical blue suit, lawyer land. Perhaps NYC should take notes.

And just for fun, I headed over to urbandictionary.com. The first definition is pretty standard, but the second, "a socially acceptable form of prostitution", can describe the state of things in NYC (see match.com, as above) for some. A bit harsh, perhaps, but not so wide of the mark sometimes.

The Karma Cycle is just as clueless as everyone else in terms of dating, so no surefire advice to be found here, I'm afraid. Relax, be yourself, don't talk about your hang-ups/exes/pets, and do whatever makes you happy. Sounds pretty simple, right? That's the tricky part of the mystery. Here's wishing everyone good love karma for V-day and beyond.