This totally fucked up love story from hell is the basis of a Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim, and also the blackly comic Ettore Scola film “Passione d’amore” (1981). A soldier, Georgio, is transferred to the bowels of the Italian countryside. There the grotesquely repellent Fosca becomes obsessed with him to the point of hysterical seizures. Disgusted and repulsed, Georgio finds himself reluctantly drawn to her through the sheer power of her unrelenting adoration.

Bored Parisian housewife, played with cool detach by Catherine Deneuve, and seeking erotic satisfaction, takes a part-time job as a prostitute at a high-class brothel. Ennui...ennui...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

From Bowie's first major album, Space Oddity, comes this letter that wonders whether she feels the same way...

They say your life is going very well.
They say you sparkle like a different girl.
But something tells me that you hide
When all the world is warm and tired.
You cry a little in the dark,
Well so do I.
...And when he's strong,
He's strong for you.
And when you kiss
It's something new.
But did you ever call my name
Just by mistake?

Pedophilic obsession. Homoerotic cholera. Mann wrote: “It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom.”

From the show Happy End. You can never trust a man named “Johnny.” Everyone knows that. Johnnys are always bad, mean, heartless bastards. The sixteen year old girl who lost her heart and cash to Surabaya Johnny certainly can’t help herself. Pain is sexy. Everyone knows that.

I would never have thought of asking
where you got that peculiar name,
but from one end of the coast to the other
you were known everywhere we came.
And one day in a two-bit flop house
I'll wake up to the roar of the sea,
and you'll leave without one word of warning
on the ship waiting down at the quay.

The essense of relationships summed up in four lines...

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye

In this play from 413 B.C., a Greek dame persuades the women of Athens and Sparta not to have sex with their husbands and lovers until the long-warring men of the two cities made peace. Proof that if you withhold men’s favorite activity you can keep them from their second-most favorite activity.

Ha-ha! The girl you dumped me for is sooo much uglier than me! Hey, wait a minute…

I feel jealous and I feel mean
is she so nice that it makes up for her face there's no way
do you have to keep your eyes closed
do you have to keep the lights down low
oh I bet you wish you had a blindfold can't you see
you're leaving me for an ugly girl

The author, who brought us “Love in the Time of Cholera,” tells the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar. He was killed by the Vicario brothers to avenge their sister, who lost her virginity to him. When I lost my virginity all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

For so many reasons this Valentine's Day episode of The Simpsons is one of our all-time favorites. There's nothing like watching stop-motion videotape of the exact second a kid's heart rips in half, after the girl he loves cries out on national television, "I don't like you. I never liked you. And the only reason I gave you that valentine is that nobody else would!'' And then of course, there's Homer Simpson counting off on his fingers the answer to his daughter's question about how to let a boy know that you're not interested in him...

Let me handle this, Marge, I've heard 'em all.
'I like you as a friend', 'I think we should see other people', 'I don't speak English'...
I'm married to the sea', 'I don't wanna kill you, but I will'...
'Six simple words: I'm not gay, but I'll learn.'

If the title of the song isn't enough then the lyrics pretty much speak for themselves...

Boyfriend boyfriend yes I had your boyfriend
Now late at night he calls me on the telephone
That's why when you call 
All you get is the busy busy tone
You're upset 'cause you're one stuck-up bitch
Maybe he needed a change a switch
And who am I not to oblige
Especially if the man is fly
So call me what you like 
Call me what you like
While I boot slam your boyfriend tonight

In order to secure the affections of her own husband, Helena must meet the challenge set forth by him to take the ring from his finger and conceive his child. Then he leaves the country. She in turn fakes her own death and impersonates the true objects of her husband’s love. According to the title, the “ends” justifies the happy reuniting of this arrogant asshole and his machination-spinning, manipulative bitch.

He spent his life articulating the utter joy of inflicting pain on the virtuous. His protagonists generally suffer a mundane series of rapes and mental and physically abuses all under the eye of an unflinching or totally absent God. Good times.

After surviving Chinese street gangs, magically enchanted warriors, an eight-foot-tall Chewbacca-looking thing, and director John Carpenter singing the theme song, Jack Burton saves Gracie Law from being married off to an evil sorceror who shoots light from his mouth. They kiss and live happily ever after, right? Nope. Ah, reality.

We’re all weak and broken. Carver’s stories quietly show us little moments in the ill-fated journey as the ice slowly melts in our bourbon.