In a step beyond the virtual pet Tamagotchi, computer simulations like the PlayStation game Tokimeki Memorial provide the lovelorn with the experience of dating a girl.

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The foghorn on the Mendocino headlands moaned through the night like a lovelorn elk, the only clue to what lay outside my windows at the Albion River Inn.

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Urbane and urban: "Hitch" is very much a tale of Manhattan -- lower Manhattan, where Ms. Mendes's Sara works as a gossip columnist for an upmarket downtown tabloid, and farther-flung parts of the island, where Hitch counsels gauche, lovelorn men in the art of approaching and attracting the women of their dreams.

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And nowhere elicits lovelorn sighs more than the Uffizi, with emblems of love like Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" gracing its walls.

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Its overheated word patterns and lyrics about a heart standing still and a boy named Bill captivated a generation of lovelorn girls and set the stage for a long series of angst-ridden singles.

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With my third novel, "The City of Devi, " it seemed natural to return to second-person, in which my lovelorn heroine Sarita could address her missing husband Karun, whom she sets out to find in the desolate streets of war-ravaged Mumbai.

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One of those who recently attended the course was 30-year-old Abdallah al-Sufyani, a lovelorn former university student from Taif.

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