Oh Google, What Is Love?

Ian Somerhalder and I have only a 17% chance of making it, but there is a 100% chance that I will eventually steal his hair.... and shirt.

There are some things everyone wants to know. What is the maning of life? Who really shot JFK? How does Tom Cruise keep getting work?

Cheif among these eternal and universal questions is this: What is love? To find the answer, I turned to the wisest of all modern sages, Google. I took the top 5 results as the infallible words of the Google.

The first hit was the Love Calculator. It's a pretty simple website. You put in your full name and the full name of whomever you wish, and it calculates the odds of your romantic reltationship working out. I entered my name and the name of a girl who I think is cute - let's call her Betty. Betty and I only have a 66% chance of making it. So I tried another girl - let's call her Al. (Paul Simon, anyone?) Al and I are even worse off - 25%. I then resorted to celebrities: Natalie Portman (51%) Emilie de Ravin (of Lost - 66%), Sarah Vowell (86%) and Brad Pitt (83% - which is more than he scored with Angelina Jolie - the two of them have a respectable 77%)

Surprisingly, my best chance at romantic fullfilment is with Mariah Carey (96%!) and my worst was with current man-crush Ian Somerhalder (pictured above with a low shot of 17%). Crazy McLoon and I have a decent chance of 81%.

How the Love Calculator arrives at these answers is any one's guess.

Next hit was Love Poems and Quotes. It taught me that love is like junior high poetry. It's sing songy and always, always - above all else - rhymes.

Then I checked out lovetest.com which is a pretty annoying website. You have to give your email address, but it does seem more accurate. Where the Love Calcuator justs asks for your names, this site asks for names, genders, and birthdays. I mean, if names can tell you a percentage, how much more can gender and birthdays tell you? However, I wasn't willing to give my email address away again, so the chances of my working out with Betty and Al will remain unknown.

Feeling desperate, I clicked the fourth link to iLoveLanguages. I had know idea how many langauge loving linguists there are out there. If you love reading about languages and language based journals, this link is for you. It made me think they should re-write that old song to be: "I learned to truth at seventeen, that love was meant for linguists." But, as we've already learned, love must always rhyme.

Finally, I clicked on over to AOL's personal ads. Love apparently, is of great interest to single women in their 30s and 40s who describe themselves as "great listeners" (i don't need a shrink, thanks) and "seasoned and sensual" (like steak?) This site also gave me advice on cheap dates, because apparently love shouldn't cost a thing. (Can't buy me love, indeed.) It said to go the beach or go hiking or ice skating (clearly, this website is not really designed for people in Tuscaloosa, AL where we have no beaches, mountains or ice.)

All in all, I learned five things about love: It's seemingly random, cheesy, demans too much information, nerdy and desperate/cheap. I'm just still bummed that Ian and I just can't make it work, but anyone got Mariah's number?