Wine Can Save You From Serial Killers, Divorce, and Bad Roommates

We all knew wine was good for you, but now it turns out to be a complete lifesaver. Here's how to protect yourself with wine. The next time you're out on a first date, or your next occasion interviewing a roommate, employee, or mail-order spouse, make sure to give them a glass of wine. As them to swirl it carefully, sniff deeply, and then tell you what they smell. They may demure, and appear uncomfortable to be put on the spot, but put them at ease, and tell them you are deeply interested in what they might smell in the wine.

If they can't come up with anything good, or if they even admit they can't smell anything, then run like hell. Because they're probably a psychopath.

Yes, that's right. According to research results released last week, most psychopaths have an impaired sense of smell.

Sure, you could do the same trick with a rotten egg, but who carries one of them around all the time? No, wine is most certainly the best psychopath detector, and it has calming effects, which minimizes the danger of getting hacked to pieces with a machete on the first date, having your tongue stapled to the desk when the job interview goes bad, or waking up 15 years into the marriage and realizing you're married to an insane person.

Of course, we all know that psychopaths have the ability to be extremely charming, and can easily pull the wool over people's eyes. Which is where the corked wine comes in. Yes, you finally have a good use for that TCA-tainted wine that smells like wet cardboard. When you need an extra-special, utterly-failproof test for psychopaths, just pour them some corked wine and see what they say. If they can't smell anything, they're probably a psychopath. If they try to bluff their way through describing alluring aromas while making sustained eye-contact over the rim of the glass? Call. The. Police. I recommend having 911 queued up on your speed-dial for moments like this.

Yes, if you're a wine lover, you can now rest even easier. In addition to being good for your heart, wine will be there to save you from falling prey to the world's most devious human predators. The world's safest places will be wine bars from now on. As if you needed any more of an excuse?

Read the full story.

Image of lunatic courtesy of BigStock.

Posted by: Alder on September 25, 2012 11:14 PM: Tweet; Share this post elsewhere: Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit; Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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Comments (10)

Dusty wrote:

09.26.12 at 7:49 AM

I would not have wanted to be someone working on that study! I have a very good sense of smell (my girlfriend calls it a superpower). I hope that means I am very well grounded! They next time someone tells me they can't smell what I am getting out of a wine, my heart will probably skip a beat!

Michael Alberty wrote:

09.26.12 at 9:36 AM

I don't know, Hannibal Lecter had one hell of a palate.

Alder wrote:

09.26.12 at 9:38 AM

That's just the thing Michael. If Hannibal actually could smell, he would have known that Amarone was a much better choice with liver than Chianti.

Sarah May wrote:

09.27.12 at 4:02 AM

I teach a wine class and this semester I have two students that swear they cannot smell a thing. Should I watch my back?

CJ and PK wrote:

09.27.12 at 4:26 AM

Just a note for Alder: if you go back to the original novel, Hannibal Lecter did indeed specify an Amarone. It was changed to Chianti for the movie version, presumably because they thought its audience wouldn't know what Amarone was.

(Second only, in its assumption of ignorance, to the renaming of Alan Bennett's brilliant play "The Madness of George III" for movie audiences, on the basis that they might think they had missed Parts I and II...)

Wine Harlots wrote:

09.27.12 at 8:42 AM

So I'm just an asshole, not a sociopath?

the drunken cyclist wrote:

09.27.12 at 9:07 AM

Sure. Now you tell me... Where were you when I dated that psychopath when I got out of college? Huh?!?

The Real Mark wrote:

09.27.12 at 1:39 PM

Sarah-Yes, don't keep them too close, or piss them off too much either.

Wine Harlots-What's Up? Umm, yeah some people might just kind of suck and not fall into sociopath level

TimWmason wrote:

09.29.12 at 4:33 PM

Umm this might explain why Hannibal never finished his wine

Sondra wrote:

09.30.12 at 11:11 PM

Well, it could also be as simple as a zinc deficiency - we lose our sense of taste and smell when zinc levels are low.... might be worth supplementing for those folks who can't smell, psychopaths included.