Facebook Dating

Well thank the lord and Hallelujah I am finally feeling like my old self again friends!
And if I don't say so myself it is about damned time too. The year 2008 has so far been... shall we say... trying. I lost my man, I lost my dog, and apparently I came pretty close to losing my job as well. (How much would That have sucked! The answer is a lot... a lot, a lot, a lot.) But with the support of my family, my friends, my fans, and my God, I have managed to gather the pieces of myself back together, and to regain my focus on the present.

I have come to truly appreciate the love in my life in a way that I never did before this year. I have grown much closer to my family, discovered my true friends, and maybe most importantly I learned the kind of value that I place in myself. I settled for less than I deserved, and less than I wanted out of my life for so long that it became a bad habit, a routine of complacency. I don't take my life for granted these days, and I will never again allow myself to be sated by anything less than true and complete happiness.

Perhaps sometimes it takes a huge shake-up to remind you of all that you have to be grateful for in life. I have people around me who truly, truly love me, and who value me exactly as I am. I feel so blessed to be able to share some of that love here with you guys. I would like to send a sincere thanks out to all of you who hung in with me during the downtimes. I know it hasn't always been pretty. But I can honestly say that am back now, and I am a better, stronger person than I ever was before. I feel awakened and alive and I am ready to embark on this new beginning. I am at the start of a glorious new adventure, and I am so excited to bring all of you along with me on this amazing journey.

Now that all of this is behind me, we have EXTREMELY important matters to cover here.
So let me not waste any more of our precious space talking about the past, and let us get on with the new day at hand!

First off on the list of extremely important topics I want to cover today...
FACEBOOK
I was incredibly reluctant to join this thing in the beginning. I was pretty certain that it was a community of people half my age who knew what a Hannah Montana was. I was not interested in joining yet another online popularity contest. I had done the Friendster, I had done the MySpace, and my only rewards were offers of "awesome ring tones" and "quick ways to make cash at home". Not really a stellar marketing pitch.

But then a fan at the stage door told me that he had built me my very own fan club on this site that all the youngsters were on called Facebook. My very own fan club... for real?

Have you ever heard the old Groucho Marx adage, "I don't want to belong to any club that would have a person like me as a member"?
Yeah, well guess what?
I'm not Groucho.
The first thing I did when I got home that night was sign up for an account so I could join my club. Hey, why the hell not? I mean I am one of my most favorite people! It was a no-brainer, really. Come on! What, you wouldn't join your fan club? I never said I wasn't a narcissist kids. Read the title. I've got issues.

So the Facebook was fine. It was kind of fun. I didn't really spend much time on it. Until that is I found myself suddenly single and looking to... meet... people... men people... for meeting and discussion of current events.

Ahem.

Look guys I am not going to front with you here. I am NOWHERE near ready to begin any sort of relationship. I need lots more "me" time before that is going to happen. But dating? Well why not, right? I mean a girl has to fill her Monday nights somehow! And I am beautiful, smart, talented, kind of a narcissist, but still a pretty good catch I think.
So why the hell not, I thought! Let's try one of these nifty dating applications!

So THIS dear readers, is why the hell not.

The show I work on has a terrific youth following.
This is fantastic for concession sales, and not so great for my dating prospects.
I would say 80% of the people who are my Facebook "friends" are people who I don't actually know. Lots of show fans, and your assorted creepy internet stalkers, but mostly sweet, harmless teenagers.

So in the hope of not dying a single, old New York woman whose rotting corpse is discovered only after her dogs have eaten her face, I added one of the dating applications called "Spark". Now I'm not expecting to meet anyone super fantastic out here, but casual fun dating could be in the works, right? This is what I thought anyway when I signed on for this catastrophe.

So in this particular dating application you say "Yes" or "No" to pictures of people who are in your network of friends. This means that when "Fan A" asks me to be his friend and I accept, all of "Fan A's" friends are now in my network. So when I sign up for Spark, I get to rank "Fan A's" vast assortment of friends.

Hey Guys!
Want to feel like a huge creepy pervert?
Try this on for size!
I am thirty.
"Fan A" is let's say... fifteen.
So now I find myself alone, in my apartment, a thirty year old single woman clicking through pictures of high school sophomores, and waiting for Federal Agents and or MSNBC to kick in my door.

What the hell guys?
Nobody has a cute, rich, single Uncle out there?
I mean COME ON!

I felt like a pedophile.
I mean click after click,
"No, no, no, OH GOD NO, no, no, Ew No, no, blech! Not even when I was 15, no, seriously?, no, ugh NO!"

When you do select "yes" the application asks you why you have deemed this person click worthy, and then handily supplies you with several vapid adjectives to choose from such as "hot, cute, rich, etc." I kept wishing that we could select a reason for rejecting a candidate's photo. Something along the lines of, "Prison, prison, my mother, HIS mother, prison, Bellevue, prison, my sense of decency, etc." You get the idea.

And I demand to know which "friend" of mine knows so many freaking people in Norway! Apparently I am EXTREMELY popular overseas, especially with the Norwegians. (And I think I might be a model in Turkey.) If I get one more dating request from someone named "Svensk Oolarksttuygn" I am storming the embassy and demanding an explanation.
Either that or I am moving to Scandinavia.

So if you are in my network, cut an old lady a break, huh?
Maybe add some older folks to the mix?
I know someone out there is holding out on me!
I will find your rich uncle if it's the last thing I do!
Until then...if you see me on "To Catch a Predator" it's not my fault.
Seriously.
I'm blaming Facebook.