Facebook, love it, hate it, but just like a marriage that is too difficult to leave, it’s here to stay, for better or worse.  First of all, let’s just get this question out of the way, am I the only one who looks at people from high school and wonders like a Grey’s Anatomy amnesia patient waking up for the first time, “who is that?”  I’ve squinted at the ½ x ½ pictures that are so small they make passport pictures look like 8 x 10s next to a name I don’t remember and tried to recall whether I once walked down the same hallowed halls as the mini person staring back at me.  Either they’re deliberately perpetrating a fraud and lying about going to my school or I’m looking at the warning signs of the early onset of Alzheimer’s.

Personally, I feel as though FB and I have had a whirlwind romance.  I loved FB at first, but like all relationships that start off well I’ve grown tired of some of its annoying habits.  You know things that were cute at first, but have started to annoy the living daylights out of me, not the least of which is I’m unable to stalk the one ex who I’m curious to know whatever happened to him and more importantly how the hussey he married is aging because he’s not on here.  Sigh.  And just between us, word on the street is the early 90s were her best years, but I ain’t one to gossip, so you didn’t hear that from me!

Nevertheless, Facebook is a cornucopia of information, which as a casual stalker, makes stalking, er, um black ops reconnaissance a lot easier.  I know friends who have unearthed hook ups, shack ups, break ups and the like via FB.  I know friends who have used FB to make their ex’s/people with whom their status is ambiguous a little jealous by having others penning intriguing “to be continued” cliff-hanger type wall posts (and in case you’re wondering it worked to their advantage).  For those of you Facebookers who claim you haven’t FB stalked, to you I say, “liar, liar, pants on fire,” or in the words of the father of my unstalkable ex, “tell the truth, shame the devil.”

I am surprised at the level of information that some people share, which is to say the airing of the dirty laundry, the likes of which is more appropriate for a Jerry Springer show or a bad country western song (seriously announcements of divorce proceedings or questions of paternity are more apropos for Maury or Springer.  Word of advice, if you can visualize hearing “go Jerry, go Jerry” being chanted in the background, then the content is probably not FB appropriate). I also don’t get the constant back and forth updating of the “relationship status” from things like “in a relationship,” to “it’s complicated.”  A) We’re not in the 8th grade.  At this point no relationship in our lives should be that volatile and B) What does that even mean?  If I’m dating someone and he posts an “it’s complicated” status, you can be bloody well sure it’s gonna require a five family sit down and it won’t be complicated for much longer.

My real beef with FB though is the posting of old high school pictures. Hello FB Powers that Be, I lived through high school once, I don’t need to keep reliving it!  How am I supposed to reinvent myself when I’ve got constant reminders popping up that there was a time in my life when I kept Aqua Net in business?!  Although at the time every high school girl’s M.O. was the higher the hair the better, I can confidently say I’m not particularly proud of the fact that at a certain point in my life I had 4 inch teased hair.  So, thanks, but no thanks, I’ll pass on the misty watered colored memories of the way we were.  If I knew that 15 years later someone would be populating cyberspace with unauthorized pictures over this thing called the Internet, I would’ve pulled a no-paparazzi-accused-convict-walking-to-the-courthouse-move and placed a hand in front of my 4 inch hair.  

In case you’re wondering, I blame Al Gore!  After all he did single handedly create the information super highway!  I’d like to romanticize my youth, but it’s very hard to do that Al when I’ve got a picture of me with giant highlighted hair and evidentiary proof that not only did I own a pair of Eastlands, but I wore them with…wait for it….white socks! I suppose I can thank the Heavenly Father that no one has started putting up pictures from the early 80s when neon reigned supreme.  FYI, before anyone gets any cute ideas, I consider such actions grounds for defriending. 

I suppose you could call me a bit of a hypocrite though because now after the repeated posting of pictures circa 1988-1993 on FB, if I see a picture in which I’m tagged and there are others in it who I know, I am dropping the tagging bombs like napalm over nam because if I’m going down then I’m taking everyone with me.

I feel a letter being penned to FB in the near future!  Until then, I’m going to claim that all pictures of me have been photoshopped and in the words of Shaggy, “it wasn’t me.”

After my last blog entry, a friend insisted that I visit Colombiancupid.com (a site that she “researched” before we headed off to Cartagena). I miss my UN diplomatic dating style of yore, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and logged on in the hopes of finding my media naranja (which for all you out there stuck in gringo land roughly translates into my other half, it’s a slang expression that’s all the rage in the Spanish speaking mundo).

Aye dios mio!  After reading some ads, I’m convinced I have a better chance of having a foreign affair at the International House of Pancakes or by way of celebrating the moments of my life with an international house coffee moment! I couldn’t help escape the feeling that I was dealing with some sort of illegal mail order bride scheme.  Take for instance Tony, who btw is “fond of Mexican food,” and prefers that his lady have “some spoken English.” I agree Tony, it helps if you both know the same language, it takes two to tango there papi.  My guess is the only Spanish Tony knows is chalupa.  The mail order bride feeling was further solidified when I noticed that they have English to Spanish translation software.  Proceed with caution amigos, things get lost in translation.  Just ask my Chilean friend Fernando, who wants “a sincere woman, that like him to do the sport, to have children and to do well together.”  WHAT does that even mean?

I was particularly unsettled by the fact that Jesus who is 41 and from Texas, not to be confused with Jesus 33 from Israel, is looking to marry someone young enough to be his daughter as he’s only interested in ladies who are 20-35.  And FYI, “Magic,” also a Texan, is “just as comfortable in shorts at the beach as in a tux at a formal.”  Really Magic?  Because I know that I’m sure as hell not as comfortable in a ball gown as I am in beachwear!   I mean does anyone in the movies ever say “let me slip into something more comfortable,” and don a tux?

29 year old Nicholas from Colombia (South Carolina that is), thinks he’s “very attractive” and is in search of a woman who is “good looking, hard working, and a giver.”  Can I get an amen from the ladies that it’s music to our ears when a man specifies that he wants a “giver”?  Reading between the lines here, Nico is looking for a maid or a sugar mamita who can afford one.

I suppose it’s not much of a shocker that the authentic and uber caliente Colombians live in Miami or nowheresville, FL.  The best looking one was 34 year old Juan from Miami who wants to date anything from a fetus (18…hola can someone say barely legal) to someone more age appropriate (37).   I’m tempted to ask What Would Jesus do in this situation, but I think we know (see Dallas Jesus above). Anyway, Juan is hot enough that I may be willing to overlook his potential pedophilia like tendencies. 

Perhaps my favorite posting was from Len in LA who writes, “Am I musical you ask? I can move a little bit. All my tan skinned friends steal my sh&t on the dance floor…it used to make me a little loco.”  Um, borderline racist profile!  And please no profanity, Juanes!

As of now, my best hope for global love is “Kenneth” my hot sounding and funny South African travel agent who I might use to book part of my SA trip.  I love him because he’s a straight shooting bloke who tells me what’s bollocks and what’s not.  Sorry Nico, but that’s the kinda man I like, one who takes care of ME, but at the same time doesn’t blow smoke u know where!  Seriously, the only smoke I want to see is the smoke billowing up from Victoria Falls.  Kenneth’s office is only two blocks away from mine so I might have to have an in-office consultation to discuss details.  He did suggest that I might enjoy having cocktails.  Ok, he said it in reference to the rest period on safari, but that’s a minor detail.

Maybe I will meet my international man of mystery in South Africa and be swept off my feet by his bastardized, yet irresistibly cute accent!  But seeing as how it has the highest HIV rate in the world, I think the only thing this Sheila will be kissing is my safari guide’s butt so as to ensure I don’t get eaten by a Lion.

Until then, I plan on doing my own “research” by going to rugby and cricket matches (btw, am I the only one who finds it extremely annoying that we’re the only former colony where those sports and high tea never caught on)?

It seems as of late, I’ve become a bit of a facebook junkie.  I blame the recession for my new heroin like Internet addiction.  With a slow down in the economy, I’m forced to find ways to entertain myself  to fill up my non-billable office face time.  So, one day when I was on facebook I saw an ad for a site called something like meetlatinopeople.com and I thought, hmm…I do love South Americans, Latins are romantic, and I do need to start something in the pipeline for Valentine’s Day since that chubby arrow carrying bastard seems to have missed archery shooting practice the last few years when it comes to me (thanks a lot Cupid).   And although I’ve dipped my toe into the match.com and eharmony dating pools on occasion those sites are dead to me.  So, I wondered if it would be kosher for me to sign up or if that would be the equivalent of a goy infiltrating Jdate.

I jokingly passed the site onto a few friends and asked for their input.  One of my girlfriends from the DC area encouraged me to go onto USmilitarysingle.com as “US MilitarySingles is where the real action is because the ratio of men to women is off the hook.”  As much as I love a man in uniform, I’ve had enough long distance relationships to last me the rest of ma vida.   I asked a married guy friend of mine who couldn’t get enough of the latinas back in his single days and loved to be called “papi” by his, um, lady friends for his opinion.  His first response was “wow-if that sight was up when I was single, I would’ve been on it! You should go for it!” 

So for giggles I decided to check it out.  I made a fake profile, i.e.,  just enough of one to allow me to browse the members.  Oy veh.   Where do I begin?  Como se dice, the site is mega B&T.  Where were the caliente Argentinian and Chilean men?  The guapo Cubanos and Colombianos?   Evidently still in South America.   And P.S. I wasn’t the only gringo/gringa on there trolling for hot latins.  Quelle suprise!  I question the ethnic background of those guys who claimed to be of “mixed race,” because they were mas blanco than I am so I decided that “mixed race” is code for white.  

One of my favorite cheesy ones was by a guy who claimed to be a doctor, but had one too many buttons undone on his shirt (btw, not sure which is worse…exposed chest shirt guy or naked picture guy,  you know the ones where a guy is in his boxers showing off his “awesome bod” by taking a picture of his reflection in a bathroom mirror).   Somehow I’d love to tell guys like that to “button it up paco, if we want to know what’s under there, we know how to find out, no need to flaunt it for us or draw us a map!”   Another favorite of mine was by a guy who must’ve been using a tripod on a timer to take his picture because he was taking pictures in front of a bed where someone else was sleeping!  I could tell that he was using  time delay because the person who was asleep had changed sleeping positions.  C.R.E.E.P.Y.!  My all time favorite though was the drag queen’s profile.   I think that one is pretty self-explanatory.

Needless to say, if I want Latin love then I’ll either book a flight to South America or Miami or at the very least listen to a Juanes C.D.