Miss Information is on spring break. She’ll be back next week with an all-new column. Until then, kick back in your lawn chair/cubicle seat/Craftmatic Adjustable bed, down a couple of Jäger bombs, and enjoy this one-hundred-percent regret-free best-of.

Have a question? Email . Letters may be edited for length, content and clarity.

Dear Miss Information,

I have a hypothetical situation for you. Okay, so it's not hypothetical. It's one I've encountered many times. You find someone online who seems interesting. You exchange emails. Then photos. You see that the person's not attractive. Really, really not attractive. How do you handle this? A) Be gentle and honest, B) Tell a little lie, C) Offer to be friends, D) Just not reply and hope they get the hint? — Pick One Please

Dear Pick One Please,

Sorry, no can do. It's like ridiculously hot young redheads or my Grandma's favorite potato chip. You can't stop at just one.

To that end, I'll go with E) All of the above except C. Why not C? Because I don't believe in that friendship shit. Maybe if it's a really nifty person you met through a friend of a friend or some new guy at work, but some one totally random from the online personals? No way. You make this offer to one guy. Next week it's two. Two months later and you're emailing and instant messaging with a dozen plus people you're not attracted to and never intend to meet outside of cyberspace. And for what? You're not bedridden, agoraphobic, or incarcerated. Pen pals are for people who don't have any other options. You do. So make a decision and move on.

Wait, Miss Information. How do I make a decision? You still haven't told me which option.

That's on purpose, Pick One Please. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Whether you go with A) Honest, B) White Lie, or D) Blow-off depends entirely on the situation.

Is it someone you've been doing a lot of conversing with and you're worried you'll wound his fragile ego? Might want to go with B. Do his emails read like they're cut-and-pasted and he's been chatting up scads of girls? Then A's probably a good option. People like that are better at picking up and moving on. Were you always vaguely creeped out by him and now that you have that JPEG with the blurred focus and pubic-looking sex-offender mustache even more so? Go with D and don't look back. There's another, even crazier option. You ready? Just say something like, "Hey, I'm sorry but I changed my mind. Good luck," and leave it at that.

No matter what option you pick, you run the risk of alienating and/or offending some people. But good news! There's an easy way to avoid all this mess: Don't start conversations with people until you've seen their picture. I don't care if they're embarrassed or they can't post one because of their kids, church congregation, mean-spirited frat buddies or uptight job. You don't go into a singles bar wearing a ski mask, and you don't go online, in the year of our Lord 2009, without posting a friggin' photo.

Finally, keep in mind that snapshots aren't necessarily giving you the whole story. Some of the hottest fellas I've gone out with, I remember being dubious about their pictures. The opposite was true for guys whose photos were so smoking I turned them into my screensaver only to discover they looked like the a five-foot-one version of Edward James Olmos. Take a chance once in a while. You might hit the Photoshop jackpot.