Love and relationship coverage has all but come to a hault today, since Madge is taking center stage. Today’s the day for Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s official divorce, according to the Associated Press. Read more about their relationship in YourTango’s Celebrity Love Blog.

Madge’s divorce isn’t the only order of the courts today. GoErie.com reports that police charged a 19-year old man in Florida with domestic battery after he threw a sandwich at his girlfriend while she was driving, nearly causing her to loose control of the car. A conviction may clarify that food-fighting does in fact count as domestic abuse.

A man in Colorado was caught in a lie, reports the The Rocky Mountain News . He pretended to have named his newborn son Carter Barack Obama Sealy for post-election press attention, and was ousted by his wife who told the newspapers “My husband’s an idiot.”

A seemingly idiotic caste system is to blame for the tragic fate of a a teenage boy in India. After writing a love letter to a girl from a different caste, he was thrashed, paraded through the streets and thrown under a trained by the rival caste, according to the New York Times.

A ficticious story of forbidden vampire love hits theaters today. The film, “Twilight” is reviewed at Freep.com.

An international study reported by the Times of India has found that that evolution has led women to prefer multiple partners. This preference is linked to exposure to men who carry selfish genes which compromise their fertility and the health of their offspring.

Here’s to a healthy, happy weekend!

We could sing the praises of a well-written novel with titillating love scenes all day. But what about a fantastic book with sexytime excerpts so absurdly horrible you wonder how they ever passed an editor?

Well, now that’s worthy of an award.

Or so thinks the Literary Review, a monthly British publication that (usually) praises top-notch literature, but holds an annual Bad Sex in Literature Award ceremony to congratulate works of poorly written erotic writing. On November 25th, the journal will unveil this year’s winner at London’s In and Out club. Last year, Norman Mailer (who checked out just a few weeks too early to accept) won the award for a few choice phrasings in his last novel, The Castle In the Forest. Of all the others contenders, it was Mailer’s description of a man as “soft as coil of excrement” and a woman who “took his old battering ram into her lips,” that secured him the victory.

So what’s the criteria for making the nominee list for a Bad Sex in Literature award? Former editor Auberon Waugh describes the motive of such a thing as a way of “gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing, or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.”

So, yeah, the book has to actually be good, so getting on the list is a feat in and of itself. One of this year’s nominees Ann Allestree, author of Triptych of a Young Wolf, which features weird “hybrid sex” between a wolf, the story’s hero, and the hero’s girlfriend, said it was “heartening” to be included in such a “list of distinguished writers.”

This year, editor Jonathon Beckman says the nominees run the gamut of being way too serious about sex, to insanely ridiculous, to illogically confusing.

Author Paulo Coehlo (Brida) describes two characters screwing as the “moment when Eve was reabsorbed into Adam’s body and the two halves became a creation.” On the other hand, Alastrai Campbell (All in the Mind) describes sex as almost clinical: “he wasn’t sure where his penis was in relation to where he wanted it to be….she started making purring noises, now with little squeals punctuating them…he was pretty sure he was losing his virginity.”

Pretty sure? He was pretty sure? Losing one’s virginity is always somewhat anticlimactic, but c’mon. Bad sex is torturous enough in the flesh. Let’s all try to avoid it in our books too.

LIST OF NOMINEES FOR 2008

James Buchan for The Gate of Air
Simon Montefiore for Sashenka
John Updike for The Widows of Eastwick
Kathy Lette for To Love, Honour and Betray
Alastair Campbell for All in the Mind
Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell
Isabel Fonseca for Attachment
Ann Allestree for Triptych of a Young Wolf
Russell Banks for The Reserve
Paulo Coelho for Brida

Money woes got you down?  If you’re one of the 1.2 million Americans who have lost their job this year (thanks ABC News for that terribly depressing statistic) then chances are tracking your spending down to the very last dime.

When you do splurge you want to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, especially when date night at the movies could end up costing you a good $50 (think popcorn, tickets, soda). To that end, YourTango (with a little help from noted film junkies across the web) has pulled together a list of the 10 most romantic new releases coming out between now and the end of the 2008. 

Twilight (November 21)There’s an audible shiver (in the theater) as they first spy the teen vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), his impossibly gorgeous face caked in a mime’s pallor, sitting in biology class next to young Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). It rekindles the warmth of great Hollywood romances, where foreplay was the climax and a kiss was never just a kiss. —Time

Australia (November 26) Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, an English woman who inheirits land down below that she must protect from interlopers with help from a man known only as the Drover, played by Hugh Jackman. Romance, adventure, and action rumored to be on a scale not seen since Gone With the Windhave Oscar-watchers on high alert. —Premiere.com

Four Christmases (November 26)Reese and Vince find their annual holiday escape plans foiled when fog grounds their San Francisco flight. When their relatives catch wind that they’re still in town, they find themselves forced out of obligation to endure a Christmas get-together with each of their respective divorced parents and wild siblings. —ET Online

The Reader (December 10)Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes star in The Hours director Stephen Daldry’s haunting period romance tracing the complicated love affair between a German teen and a mysterious woman twice his age. —All Movie Guide

The Brothers Bloom (December 19)Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody play the titular brothers Bloom, a con artist duo out to swindle an intoxicatingly zany heiress (Rachel Weisz). The film employs the quirkiness and anachronistic flourishes one might find in a Wes Anderson flick, but ultimately becomes something uniquely, refreshingly its own: a light-hearted caper, an endearing romance and a hankie-necessitating drama rolled into one. —Moviefone

Seven Pounds (Decemeber 19)Will Smith stars as a depressed IRS agent looking to make amends for the mistakes of his past by helping seven strangers.  The only problem with his plan?  He falls in love with Emily (Rosario Dawson) a beautiful woman with a heart condition. 

Yes Man (December 19)Jim Carrey stars as a man who decides to spice up his life by saying yes to everything in his life that he would normally say no to.  Zooey Deschanel co-stars as the romantic interest, with Bradley Cooper appearing as Carrey’s best friend. —New York Times

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (December 25)David Fincher’s adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story stars Brad Pitt as the title character, who is born an old man only to youthen (in the words of the similarly age-reversing Merlin in Camelot) throughout his life until he becomes a stud capable of wooing Cate Blanchett. —Entertainment Weekly

Marley and Me (December 25)Based on the New York Times’ bestseller, this appropriate-for-all-ages dramedy follows one couple (Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson) and their energetic pup, Marley, as they navigate through life’s challenges and changes. —Moviefone

Revolutionary Road (December 26)Directed by Sam Mendes, the movie has the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Mr. Mendes’s wife) reunited for the first time sinceTitanic. Now they are the miserably married Frank and April Wheeler, with Kathy Bates as the relentlessly chipper real-estate broker who sold them the house on the suburban street of the title. —New York Times

A recent YourTango article explored the concept of giving up certain foods for a dietary restricted partner—whether based on choice (like a kosher or vegan diet) or necessity (a gluten allergy). The reader comments were all over the map. Some women said they’d certainly make the gastromonic adjustments because love is ultimately more important than food. Another stated resolutely: “I would never give up my right to a cheeseburger! NEVER.”

Forgoing cheeseburgers is one form of sacrifice; the risk a Kansas woman took for her boyfriend resides on a different level.

ABC News reports that Julie Wallace, 46, got to know Justin Lister, 26, from his frequent visits to her pharmacy in McPherson, Kansas. Lister had been working in a machine shop when a metal splinter shot into his leg. His wound became infected and caused an unbeatable infection in his kidneys. His name was eventually added to on an organ transplant list. Wallace offered to help her frequent customer. Somewhere between doling out his numerous pills and driving him to dialysis appointments, the couple fell in love.

After moving in together last March, Wallace initiated the idea of donating Lister one of her kidneys. Wallace and Lister fortunately shared an A-positive bloodtype, the strain that approximately one-third of the US population has. The chance that their tissue types would match was far greater. After three months of extensive testing and evaluations, the couple was deemed a match. They underwent the kidney donation and transplant surgeries at the end of October.

We recently learned that long-term romantic love activates a portion of the brain associated with calm versus the anxiety- and obsession-based center that a new, butterflies-in-stomach love ignites. For this Kansas couple, forever connected through a life-risking donation, we hope the long-term love region of their brains are going wild right about now!

One-night stands: for or against? The Daily Bedpost posed this question earlier this week, and readers responded in favor of the casual liaison. Em and Lo, in turn, laid out ten basic rules of the one-night stand.

After all, knowing you’ll never see him again does not give you (or him) permission to be rude. Some of our favorites (abbreviated, and with a bit of interpretation): Do make your intentions clear. Do not talk about your father’s alcoholism or your sister’s rehab. Do talk about safe sex.  Do not get mushy and romantic. Do it doggie-style. Do not kick someone out before sunrise. Do one-night it with an Italian. Do not update your Facebook status with said Italian’s name.

Of course, being a dating and relationships site, YourTango also has a guide to one-night stands. (Hey, we take care of you!) So to the above list we add:

Do tell a friend where you’re going. (Just in case.)Do not sneak out of his bed without saying goodbye. Do ask for his digits if you want ‘em. Do not leave your bra at his house. Do not go into a coma.Wait—that last one is not in our one-night stand guide, but after reading this essay on Nerve, we thought perhaps we should add it. “The Little Death” is possibly the worst one-night stand story we’ve ever heard.

She still isn’t awake. For ten minutes now my attempts to wake Katie have progressed from a gentle nudge to a violent assault that would likely get me arrested in most states. She’s still breathing, so she isn’t dead. Thank God.

While her body lies prone in my bed, I frantically search the room for my phone, although I have no idea whom to call. Is it too soon for 911? How long can you wait before it’s considered gross negligence? If I call the paramedics, they’ll call the police, who will call Katie’s parents, who will undoubtedly get a lawyer. The remainder of my college fund will be used to cover the legal fees.

One minute you’re bringing a girl back to your apartment, undressing each other as you fumble with the lock, and the next minute you’ll never be a doctor.

Click here to read the full essay.