"It's a woman who may or may not have a penis."

Why do I get the feeling that I am the only person on this planet who does not wish to share my every move with every other person on this planet?

I'm looking at you, Facebook.

Is there no one else out there that values privacy? Hard as it may be to believe, I am actually a rather private person. Sure, I have a public blog. But I only share what I choose to, and having that choice is what makes me enjoy writing this blog and loathe logging on to Facebook.

Let's start off with check-ins. No, I don't want everyone to know where I am all the time. Even if I were somewhere really cool, like a yacht party off the coast of Italy with George Clooney. Because when I come back to work after a spectacular five-day weekend at sea, I can tell my boss and jealous coworkers that I needed the extra time off to negotiate humanity's freedom with hostile alien forces trying to take over Earth, and they will be none the wiser. It's not dishonest. It's diplomatic.

Spotify is another app that bugs me. I like it for the ability to sample music without having to pay for it, but dislike the social additives of publishing playlists and sharing songs that I listen to in my News Feed. Enjoying music is a very personal experience for me and I don't see any reason to suddenly involve others. Besides, how am I supposed to convince my friends that I have sophisticated musical taste when they can see that I've been listening to Color Me Badd and Ace of Base all day?

And what the hell is up with all these social reader applications on Facebook? First off - social reader, really? Since when is reading a social activity? Reading is one of the most antisocial activities in which you can participate, for the sheer fact that any interaction you have with another person takes away from your ability to read, and any reading you accomplish is always done at the expense of human interaction. I don't care how good you think you are at multitasking; it is impossible to read and talk to someone at exactly the same time.

But that's not what really bothers me about these social reading applications. What really bothers me is that there is no filter between the time you read a story and the time it gets posted on Facebook. In the old days (like, 8 months ago), you had to manually post a link to a story you liked, telling your friends that this particular piece of writing somewhere on the Internet was worthy of their attention. Now, as soon as you navigate to a story using a social reader, the application will share that story with your friends whether you like it or not.

Two obvious problems come to mind: the first, of course, is that I don't want everyone to know what I'm reading all the time - philosophy of Kant, yes, how to make tea without setting your house on fire, no - and the second is that I don't know until after I've read an article whether or not it will be worth sharing. After checking out many of the so-called "news stories" that my friends have shared using a social reading app, I can conclude that most of what we find on the web is definitely not worth sharing. 

I haven't even touched on the fact that Facebook reports every time you add a new friend, write on someone's wall, or comment on a picture. This bothers me immensely. Even if I didn't use any apps, I'd still feel like my online activity was exposed for all to see. Can't we just go back to the good old days, when everyone minded their own business and only shared what they did when someone asked them to share?

Imagine you're in my shoes.

"Hey, Reeny, what did you do this weekend?"

"Oh, you know. I volunteered at the hospital, listened to some indie rock, and finished reading War and Peace finally. No biggie."

Which response would you prefer?

"Oh, that's cool."

OR

"Really? Then why did Facebook say that you checked in at Chuck E. Cheese's, listened to a playlist called 'Endless Nickelback,' and read your own blog over and over?"

"700 miles? That has to be the world's longest booty call."

A few nights ago, I told a guy who was hitting on me to lose 50 pounds first. This was a new low for me, but since I'm obviously very shallow, a new low isn't actually that far down.

Corny jokes aside, I am very sorry to say that this portly would-be Casanova absolutely deserved my rude brush-off. Because my "Drop 50 pounds, then maybe we'll talk" was a knee-jerk response to his "I totally wanna do you."

Dating in L.A. is hard. I have made a slow and steady migration southward along the West Coast of the United States and I've traveled to a few different countries overseas. Nowhere else in the world have I had as much difficulty finding a date as I have in the City of Angels. It's not just the brash come-ons from overconfident fatties. It's that dating, which in and of itself is already a challenge, is now made even more challenging by all the additional problems that come with simply living in L.A.

It's hard enough to find someone you can talk to, who shares your interests, your values, your goals, your vision of the future regarding marriage and kids, and who is attractive enough that getting busy doesn't require drowning yourself in alcohol. It'd be great, too, if that special someone liked you back. This is true no matter where you live, but if you happen to live in L.A., you'll soon discover that discovery is not enough.

Let's start with the fact that here, it is possible for two people to have a Los Angeles address and still live two hours away from one another. If the definition of dating someone requires going out on dates, then distance and traffic will make it an annoying and time-consuming ordeal.

Then there's the problem of finding a place to go. All the good places will be packed with wannabe celebrities and normal people hoping to brush shoulders with real celebrities. What this means for me is a 45 minute wait for a table, snotty service when we finally get a table, and stupid conversations overheard from the surrounding tables.

And since everyone in L.A. has to drive everywhere, parking is a bitch. Even if you find a spot, you still have the task of deciphering three or four parking restriction signs and figuring out which ones apply to you. What day of the week is it? What time is it? Do I have to have a permit? What color is the curb? Is there a meter? Sometimes it's better to just save yourself from a huge headache and pay the $20 ass rape valet parking fee. Nothing kills a good overpriced dinner buzz like a parking ticket.

All of this assumes that you have found someone you'd actually want to go through all the trouble for, and despite its large population, the pool of dateable people in Los Angeles is pathetically small. Not everyone is chubby and delusional, of course. I recently met someone who was very attractive and fit, but unfortunately, he would not stop talking about how good-looking he was. He even felt the need to tell me that he knew he could get away with acting like a moron because girls would still like him anyway. He was sober. Needless to say, I didn't give him my number.

I could go into the various ways that douche-baggery ravages this city, but that's another blog post altogether.

So let's see... in the hopes that I've met someone who isn't completely retarded, I can spend an hour and a half getting ready, another hour and a half driving to the date, 20 minutes looking for parking, 45 minutes waiting for a table, half an hour driving to the next spot (because you always go somewhere else if the date is going well), another half-hour looking for parking there, another half-hour waiting to get in... or I can just take a shower, get some writing done, go to bed at a decent time, and not worry about whether or not he's retarded.

Yeah, I think I'll do that.