What do I want? Oh, I have no idea . . . but, based on the failure of my past relationships and the kind of things I tend to go for, I have developed a pretty good clue about the items that are no good for me.

I know to look for the following alarm bells when dating now:

1. Bad or absent relationship with father

2. Default emotional state is: Unhappy

3. Must have chaos or drama to feel alive

4. Must move or switch jobs every 3 months or 3 years or both.

5. Communicates backwards

6. Complains about life in a way that it seems like everything is happening just to her (a.k.a. "victim" syndrome).

That might be it. I tend to ask and notice such things on dates. Of course, when they hit all 6, I find myself wildly attracted to them, but I also know it's doomed.

What makes your alarm go off?

Long ago (yes, after the Matrix first came out, color me "geek"), I got interested in patterns and chaos. I read a lot of books on chaos theory, on pattern recognition, including some Steven Pinker items on the brain. It's fun to discover strange things about the world and put them in your head. Since then, I've always been kind of aware of things that seem like patterns, but which are maybe just coincidences upon which I place more significance than I should. (Don't worry I'll talk about sex in a minute.)

I'll notice different people bringing up the same subjects with me, seemingly out of nowhere, where I can't find the origin (which is usually television). Or the same theme repeating in different parts of my life (which is probably just me subconsciously making connections . . . from television). Or certain numbers or colors that seem to be everywhere all of a sudden (from sports usually . . . on television).

In the last few weeks, the theme has been people who have suddenly decided they want to live with me. Why? I have no idea.

Person # 1: I met her through a friend. She was blonde and very cute, had a child who I thought was kind of sweet and adorable. We dated for a short while, hadn't really gotten very serious yet, and she kept talking about wanting to get out of the apartment she was living in with her sister and a friend. She wanted some place else to raise her child. I didn't really think anything about it. I just thought she was just expressing her concerns. I figured I'd be helping her go apartment hunting soon. Then, out of the blue, she noted that I had an office and a spare bedroom that I'd converted into a storage / workout room. Again, I am Mr. Oblivious. I finally got it when we were at Home Depot and she started kidding me about buying some wallpaper (which happened to be the kind of wallpaper you'd put in a kid's room) and re-doing my storage / workout room. I kidded around with her, and then all of a sudden she got mad, because I wasn't taking it seriously. It dawned on me then that she wanted to move herself and her child in with me. We'd dated about three weeks by this time, saw a couple of movies, stayed over at each other's place once, and were really just starting to get to know each other. And that marked the final phase of that relationship. Suddenly, she had better things to do on the weekend rather than take her child to the zoo with me or out to the park, etc. I felt sort of guilty, kind of bad, but also like maybe I had better things to do as well.

Person # 2: I worked with this guy years ago. He hadn't worked for the place very long when I started having to counsel him about following some of the girls out to their cars. It wasn't just once; it was every night, and he was an eager, smiling kind of guy, and there might have been a little bit of a cultural difference and a language barrier, but when your supervisor (i.e. me) tells you, "Don't follow any more women out to their cars anymore. Not for any reason or you're going to end up getting fired", I would think that would beat the doors down of any cultural misunderstanding. We did end up firing him, but for other reasons. Somehow, he got my number at work, and years later (i.e. now), he's calling me a couple of times a week, leaving dozens of voice mails. He wants my help getting him a job. I tell him he's got to apply and go through staffing (which is true). He wants to work for me specifically. (I don't really have that kind of authority, though I could probably arrange it if I wanted to, and I pretty much don't.) He wants to borrow $50. (Uh . . . what?!?) And now, last, but not least . . . he's asking if I live alone. Yes, I do. He needs a place to stay. First, he has no job. Did he forget I knew that? He probably can't pay rent, right? Second, I barely know this guy and I fired him years ago. Third . . . really?

Person # 3: I have a relative who has a brilliant mind, but who is also the world's biggest slob. I have never seen anything like it (not even on television). The last time he got sick, he ended up in the hospital, so me and certain members of my family went to his house to pay some bills. I can't describe what we found. I don't even really remember what all the garbage was, just that it was everywhere. We got garbage bags and cleaned up the entryway, the kitchen and one bedroom before we got too exhausted. Other than the newspapers, magazines and empty food boxes / cans, I remember finding a sack of unopened potatoes that had turned to soup on the floor. We wore gloves and disinfected ourselves, because of the roaches and rats. We cleaned it up, got him settled and never heard from him again. We even sent the police over to check on him, because he wouldn't call us back or come to the door when we knocked. Now, he's in the hospital again, and they won't let him go home until the house is cleaned (again). He told me in the hospital yesterday that he would have to come live with me until his house got cleaned. I don't think I said anything for ten minutes. I think I just stared at him in shock. I was nice. I said I really just couldn't manage that. I work full time and just don't have time to take care of him, besides the fact that there is nothing seriously wrong with him. He doesn't have cancer or diabetes or HIV. He just doesn't ever walk so his legs get swollen and lose circulation, then the skin dries out, cracks and gets infected, which is why he was hospitaled the first time. Did he not learn from that first experience?

Why is it suddenly everyone wants to live with me? I'm reasonably together, but I'm not so well-off that I can just have people move in with me for free. I pay a mortgage, go to work, have a sensible budget with room for splurges every now and then, but I don't dress in suits and drive a BMW. I drive a Honda. I usually wear jeans. My sneakers are about ten years old (note to self, buy new sneakers). Why do people think I'm the guy who should be taking care of them all of a sudden? Oh, I get why they would want it, but I don't get why they just assume I'll just do it, no questions asked.

I'm still trying to figure this one out. As patterns go, I prefer the color blue popping up everywhere. This last one has me baffled.

Here at the OKC, we provide a consolidated, compressed, Reader's Digest version of Y.O.U.

How many times have you STRUGGLED with presenting the endless upon endless facets of yourself to an adoring audience? Tired of working and sweating to justify the contradictions in your own personality? Do you worry night and day that all those potential dates will consider you TOO COMPLICATED? Does having depth simply EXHAUST you?

Now you too can present yourself simply and neatly with  no added dimensions. Be simple. Be attractive. Be a better, more straightforward you. It's as simple as a few clicks of your mouse. Answer a few simple questions, click the buttons on a few tests and in five minutes you could be receiving pictures of men's penises from all over the world. It's only seconds away. For added responses post a picture, pick from our reader's choice of cliches, simple phrases like, "I hate writing about myself," and "I'm outgoing" and the ever popular "I'm looking for someone fun and friendly to who likes to travel".

How will you know if it's working? We guarantee that in less than 30 days you will receive messages from men indicating approval of the size of your bust and bottom. You WILL garner romantic gestures such as "Hey, Babe, nice rack" and "gotta eney nekkid pics?"

(Yourresultsmaydiffer,somerulesapply,batteriesnotincluded.)

Okay, so I'm being a dork, which is what I do sometimes, but it does make me wonder how much you can learn from a person just by reading their profile. How much can you honestly reveal about yourself? How much are we really willing to reveal? And, after all, isn't that what meeting and getting to know each other is all about? Revealing yourself in small, easy to handle dosages? And I'm not bashing OKC. Honestly, as someone who has flirted with women picking out single serving frozen dinners (always a good sign, but not necessarily conclusive) in the grocery market, I probably have a better chance of meeting someone with at least a few common interests here than asking someone out cold.

Get it? Frozen dinners, cold. . . obviously you have no sense of humor. Me either.

Still, despite having no picture, I've managed to meet a few penpals and I've reached 80%, which is of course my only real goal. I don't really want to date anyone; I just want to reach 100% so I can collapse at the mailbox with and embolism and a smile on my face. On the plus side, maybe the paramedic picking me up will like the Lean Cuisine Stroganoff!

So, I see a lot of profiles listing this movie as one of their favorites.

Don't get me wrong: I liked it, but I don't think I'd list it as my favorite.

It was inventive, a nice spin on a relationship movie, and I'm glad it ended the way it did. I must admit, I was getting a little miffed and if it had ended any other way, I'm pretty sure I would've ended up hating it.

But throughout it, I kept thinking, "Gee . . . Summer is kind of a flake." She wants all of the benefits without any of the risk (yeah, I know, like the movie said "she's a guy!"), she does what she wants and isn't concerned with how it affects other people (like the guy she's dating), she doesn't seem to know what she wants and doesn't seem to communicate what she does know very well. In fact, she seems to leave it all up to him, while intermittently running hot and cold.

Even at the end, she didn't appear to concerned that she'd hurt him. Could she really have been so oblivious as to his feelings when she invited him to her party and went with him to the wedding and danced with him? It felt a lot more like she just liked having someone around to dote on her while she knew secretly that she never intended to give him anything in return.

But that's obviously a guy's perspective. So, I'm curious, for all the people who listed this as their favorite movie, what did you see in it?

Or am I just mean? I can't help it. He whuffles and I can hear a big long exhale like the snort of a bull, but he never runs away. He keeps coming back for more.

Relax. He gets his cuddle time with me, on the couch, on the bed, on the kitchen counter--NO! BAD KITTY! GET DOWN FROM THERE!

Sometimes I wonder why I have a pet, then I imagine the angle at which he views me when I'm stumbling naked to the bathroom in the middle of the night with my eyes crusted shut. This makes me think, despite being safe from predators, getting free food and water, and free cat toys, he might have gotten the raw end of the deal.

My deep seated motives for annoying him are as follows:

I secretly envy him. That's right. P@@#y envy. It's a terrible thing.

I'm secretly a masochist and enjoy getting scratched.

I'm keeping him healthy. I hate to see him sleeping his life away. This gets him off the couch. This gets him some exercise. (I'm reasonably certain this is why women do the things they do . . . reasonably, that is.)

I'm getting him back for waking me while I'm snoring because he has decided that would be a good time for a head and/or ass scratching. Doesn't he get enough of that when I'm sitting on the toilet?

I have a lot of other machinations and feeble excuses, but I won't bore you with them.

If you are like me and have discovered that you are a cat annoyer, I would like to hear from you. How do you annoy and why?

It seems like every now and then I have to fill in certain details about myself. Age. Height. Salary, etc. For so long I've been used to checking certain boxes that it's almost a habit. I keep catching myself checking the 30-ish box. I thought I was 5'9". Last time I checked I was, but the last time anyone checked I was maybe in high school? I can't remember. I don't go around measuring myself usually. I'll take a minute here to let all the "size doesn't matter" jokes float through your head.

Done? Good. One of my last dates informed me very nicely that I was not 5'9". I thought I was. She said I couldn't be because she was 5'9". I knew she was tall (for a woman), but I figured us at about the same height. She insisted I was 5'10". We should have just found a measuring tape, but we had better things to do. Now, I'm checking the 5'10" box usually, just based on her opinion.

Salary, too. You get used to knowing you're making about so much a year, so when the year comes that you realize that somehow over the years you've been making more, well, I was slow to catch up to that. Besides, I tend to pour it all into the mortgage, so it doesn't feel like more even with an annual inflationary raise.

My point is that we all have an identity, a way of thinking about ourselves, that we're attractive or not attractive, nice or mean, funny or dry, and even when it changes, we're sometimes slow to recognize it. I think I'm nicer now and funnier now than I used to be, maybe because have more experience, have less to prove, care less about how I'm perceived, have had my heart run through the wringer a few times (which either hardens it or makes it more empathetic).

Self perception is the placebo of the soul. You end up being what you think you are until someone tells you different. I like the idea that if you're happy, you'll end up attracting happiness. The good thing about it is even if it doesn't work, you still get to be happy in the end. It's a nice idea that I can't prove, the idea that you should become the qualities you want to attract in a mate. There's no downside really, even if it doesn't work to attract anyone.

To this day, even though I've always been pretty happy with my looks and personality, I'm still surprised when someone else thinks I'm good looking and fun to be with.

To this day, I still blow it 9 times out of 10 when I meet someone that's looking at me and smiling. Tonight I made eye contact with an attractive woman on her way into the grocery store. I was waiting in line. A few minutes later, she was standing behind me. I talked to her briefly. I like how women get that shy expression when you smile at them, that little bit of a blush. She was in sweatpants and ponytail. I was unshaven. We were both slumming it and obviously not prepared to be attractive. I offered to let her go ahead and she said she was okay.

I'm an idiot. Driving a way, a dozen things occurred to me, a dozen ways I should've flirted with her, but I wasn't feeling particularly attractive just then. I was all scuzzy and fuzzy and now that I think about it, it probably wouldn't have made a difference. It's all about the eyes anyway. If I'd been dressed nicer, had shaved, I probably would've flirted with her and maybe even asked for her number, but I wasn't.

I like the joke about how men think about sex every 10 minutes. Or is it 15?

It is a joke. We think about other things as well, but we do think about sex. But have you asked yourselves what we actually think about when we think about sex? After all, sex is a broad term (pardon the pun). Is it the mechanics of sex that so interests us? The achievement? The divide and conquer? Actually, that would (in this context) more likely be conquer and divide. Do we think about the last porn film we saw? The images, the sensation, the hope, the longing, the memory of our last great pleasure? The last woman that we saw that had great legs or a great ass or a smile that turned our tongues to butter? Was it the billboard of the sexy girl draped over a liquor bottle? Do we think mostly about the beginning, the anticipation, the build up; the middle, the motion, the approaching goal; or the end? Zzzzz . . . huh? Sorry, it's a habit.

It's a daunting goal. You should pick a day or half a day, set your watch to chime every 10 or 15 minutes and actively try to think about sex like we so allegedly do. What would you actually think about?

What is it you imagine we think about that keeps us so busy every 10 to 15 minutes?

Why are all you on at 3:22 in the A.M.??? Don't you have jobs and beds?

Answers! I want answers!

On the contrary, you CAN take life too seriously. You can and you WILL!

It's hard to be fluffy in Texas in the Summer.

I love that picture of you and the fake bear, very cute.

I like hips. They seemed designed just for me as a place to settle my hands . . . and for birthing (one sometimes follows the other).

You might have slapped me around a little on your journal, but you do have really pretty eyes.

I said I like "punk" in my profile? Really? I don't remember writing that. That's not very much to base a marriage on. On the other hand, maybe it is. (I think I wrote, "I like the occasional punk".)

I've never understood sushi. I've eaten it, and it just tastes cold and tasteless unless you dip it in Wasabi. Maybe you have to be a supertaster to like it?

Putting little black dress and your overalls in the same list is like some kind of exquisite torture, you know. Cut that out.

Yes, I know, a picture, a picture! Okay! Never mind the fact that I'm hideously ugly (quasi-moto and the bald guy under the Darth Vader helmet), except when I'm smiling, of course. Then I'm a regular Brad Pitt (or, er, a slightly irregular Brad Pitt).

Just a thought, everyone gets frustrated with the opposite gender. Men and women alike. But I keep thinking, if this is your first contact with someone, and the first thing you see is how your gender sucks, does that make them attractive to you?

Of course, everyone has a right to complain, and we do, but is a dating site, a place where you're hoping to meet someone you like and who likes you, really the place to do it?

I've seen some really angry posts and re-postings of chat conversations by both men and women, and I keep thinking, "yes, you're right, that was an insensitive, stupid or just downright mean thing to say in a conversation", but is this the place you want to express that?

Us men know that there are men who make us look bad, who are crude, spiteful and rude. And we shake our heads and sigh and feel helpless, because we can't fix the bad behavior of others.

You women know that there are other women who make you look bad, who are cold, spiteful and rude, don't you? How do you fix their misdeeds in the minds of your potential dates?

Imagine we've all gathered into a big arena, and we're all milling about with name tags trying to get to know one another, looking for a spark or a smile or just someone that makes us feel good. . . .

Now imagine you hear someone two conversations away (male or female) complaining about the opposite gender, really laying into them. I just can't imagine any potential partners would be flocking to meet them, can you?

The internet is full of blogging sites where such resentments and reactions might be better received.

Just a thought. You may now pelt me with rotten bananas.