If you're online dating and the thirty-one year old you're speaking with says he's retired, in my experience, it means, 'retired against my will to Alcatraz'. If he says he's a gourmet chef...it's likely he cooks on specific days for the rest of the fellas serving lifetime sentences. < p>

I met this guy recently on a dating site: you know, in my quest to find what ails society...and I was bored. He wanted to msn...about three one-line messages in, it was fairly obvious he was Amy Winehouse's less sober, more dysfunctional siamese twin. I haven't taken him off my msn list because I find him entertaining. The profile messages he puts up have not changed my first impression that he almost certainly resides in a cell with the ghosts of Robert Stroud, 'Birdman of Alcatraz' and a syphillis infected Al Capone. My web friend is likely the most dangerous of them all.  He wanted to go on webcam...and usually if someone wants to go on webcam, they want to show me their 'junk'. I told him no. I felt like I was trying to negotiate with Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson during one of their window smashing, complimentary fire hydrant removal cat fights. I"m pretty sure the chaos the two of them create in Hollywood is a ruse to keep us from finding out that they are actually drug lords from Afghanistan, funding the Taliban. Anyway,  the aggressive foot stamping that ensued after I told The Man From Alcatraz that I was not going to go on webcam may have caused a fault worse than that of  San Andreas Fault System.  It could, in fact, make the San Andreas fault seem like the wrinkles of a castmember from 'Gossip Girl' in comparison. I would feel just...ghastly... for....days...if I found out that something I had done or not done caused enough seismic damage to bring down the Golden Gate Bridge.

He is not the first fella to raise red flags for me. I just found out today that someone I spoke to on the phone a couple of years ago was actually in jail for 20 years for violent crimes! Something about him had just not felt right to me. Thank God I'd blocked my phone number!  I guess if there is a silver lining in finding out I narrowly escaped going out with a violent inmate, it is that my radar is actually not so bad!