Cal: Okay, okay, it doesn’t matter if you’re ugly as f***, or you’re ugly as s***. It’s about talking to women, and I know how to do that because I observe, because I am a novelist.
Andy Stitzer: What? You never told me that before.
Cal: That’s because I’m not an arrogant prick, Andy.

Let’s talk about how judgmental I am. Or observant, depending on your take of the situation (I like you already, People Who Think I’m Just Overly Observant).
Match.com has made me come face-to-face with something I already sort-of grapple with on a daily basis- the snap judgment.
I’m not proud of this aspect of my personality. Nobody, including me, likes to think that they can be sized up completely based on a few random observations. It can make me catty and mean. It can make me WRONG. Oh, so wrong. So wrong that I want to crawl into a hole somewhere and be comforted by no one but my wrongness.
Usually, though, I happen to be right. And those moments of rightness just spur me on. And so, the cycle continues.

Last night, I posed a question to my Facebook page. Namely, is it wrong to dismiss a guy you’ve been talking to because of his frequent use/misuse of LOL. And exclamation points.
Out of roughly fifteen comments, half of them said “Yes” and the other half said “Ditch him. LOL!” (Basically. I worded the question wrong so I spent thirty minutes deciphering what the “Yes” and “No’s” meant) And now I’m more unsure than ever.

Other things that have made me want to run in the other direction, in the week that I’ve been doing this online dating exercise:
- A hefty guy who goes on and on about how he wants a “healthy” girl. Technically, I’m an extremely healthy size 9. Technically, he is NOT. Is it wrong to say, “See ya”?
- Writes sonnets. Plays guitar. Would play guitar TO ME.
- Badly worded sentences, makes me think English might be his second language. Then see “born and raised in Illinois.” Some people are just not word-happy. Is that so wrong? (Yes. No. I don’t know. My head hurts.)
- Doesn’t watch TV. Is that really that big of a deal? (Yes. Oh God. WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME?)
- Is young and divorced. I really didn’t know what to make of this one.

I don’t even know where to leave this post. Except to say that the list goes on and on. And I know we joke about “dealbreakers” but what if we’re too dealbreaker-happy? What if I’m too dealbreaker-happy, so worried about another classic case of Fruit Blindness?
Oh, help. Help, help, help.
— One thing I’m not unsure about- Dear Straight Men, if you are on a dating site like this, do NOT take a picture of yourself with your camera in a darkened room. You ALL look like murderers. I don’t care if your mom is on the couch in the corner, cuddling puppies with a rainbow shooting out of her face. You look like you want to eat my insides with an oaky Chianti. —