How to Not Score a Cereal Date

Just a few methods that have proven unsuccessful so far:

1. Addressing me as "sexy," "hottie," "beautiful," "baby," or, God help me, "mama/moma." (Ever - but especially in your first correspondence.)

2. Sending an email with no capitalization and/or punctuation and a pathological substitution of numbers or letters for actual words (i.e. “4,” “u,” or “r” to replace “for,” “you,” or “are,” respectively).

3. Posting or sending a picture of yourself wearing a muscle shirt, flexing your bicep, doing pull-ups, or otherwise engaging in any activity inside of a gym.

4. Pursuing me despite your knowledge that you decidedly fall outside of my not unreasonable age range of 21-34.

5. Sending a page-long introduction of yourself and life history. (Especially if you share exactly zero of my interests and/or the highlights include your love of “playing around with alternative fuels” and fishing.)

6. Implying that people who avoid processed foods and white sugar are “metro, quasi-fags.”

7. Including a link to your MySpace page, which reveals your nickname to be Osama bin Laden.

8. Using the word “whimsical” interchangeably with “musical.”

9. Stating in your profile that you “only buy dinner for hot chicks.”

10. Posting or sending a picture of the tattoo across your torso depicting a naked woman whose right nipple has been replaced by a smoking gun.

11. Stating in your ideal First Date box, “Since it’s damn near impossible to get a response from anybody on this site, nothing I guess.”

12. Posting or sending a photograph of yourself that elicits the response, “Is that a human?”

13. Telling me that “Cimmonion toast crunch” would be your “choise” of cereal.

14. Standing up my roommate (or me, or any female) on the first date and then proceeding to tell her that you LOVE her via text message, 4 hours later.

15. Sending me a link to your website, which requires me to download a Chinese language pack for proper viewing.

16. Responding to “I hope you had a good weekend” with an hour-by-hour recount of the past two days, including anecdotes about your friend Mike, the contents of your grocery cart, and the information that you got behind the wheel of a car after consuming multiple alcoholic beverages. (Even if it was only because Mike was way too wasted to drive.)

17. Condescendingly asking if I realize that an invitation to eat cereal together might be misinterpreted as an invitation to eat cereal together after conjugal relations.

18. Indicating that, if an invitation to eat cereal together were, in fact, an invitation to eat cereal together after conjugal relations, then you might be interested.

19. Sending an email entitled “THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS,” followed by the message, “hey sexy how r u”.

20. Suggesting that, instead of cereal, we get some “stake and eggs lol”. (I’d like to put a stake through your LOL, dumbass motherfucker.)

I’m just sayin’.