Sometimes, even I need to break free of the ironclad restrictions of upper-South society. There are times when communication via calling-card does not adequately fill the evening's leaner hours. So, when I discovered that a few people I know had ventured into the weird little universe that is MySpace, I tagged along for a joyride.

It had not dawned on me, when I created my MySpace (I hate saying that -- it sounds redundant even if it isn't), that the stupid thing exists primarily as a communication tool for teenagers, and secondarily as a hookup line for the desperate.

Fortunately, thus far I have avoided the teenagers, though I fully expect that any day now one of my students will stumble upon my profile and send me some message to the effect of "OMG, Mr Gibbs, were you like totally wasted when you posted that comment! I'm gonna tell!" (To which I will reply: "Like, Whatev!!!!") I have not been able to avoid the desperate, and I've gotten "add friend" requests from every kind of mutant under the sun. Or, more likely, under Jupiter's third moon. When I first started to receive these unsolicited freakshows, I simply denied them; now I've resorted to sending messages back to the desperate ones to ask just why they think that they've anything in common with me. You're a fifty-five year old five-time divorcee/high school dropout from Dothan, Alabama. You like NASCAR, Coors Lite and truck drivers. I'm thirty-six, a badly-aging fraternity boy from Baltimore who likes Marines and pretty sorority girls, whiskey and old movies. Where do you really see a future in this relationship?