With a few clicks on Google or Bing, you can find out almost anything about almost anyone.

Isn't it amazing just how much dirt we all seem to crave -and of course, the media loves giving it to us. Sure, if you're a celbrity, you give up privacy. But really! Long before the ghoulish media coverage of Michael Jackson's death, I realized that privacy was dead.

It was back in the '90s, when the Pope's colon surgery was reported by the media in excruciating detail.There was even a diagram of his insides in The New York Times. Sorry, folks, but that was TMI! People! We're talking about a very private orifice of the Holy Father. (I usually phrase that a bit more coarsely, but you get my drift.) privacylips.jpg

knew then that nothing was sacred (literally), and it's only gotten worse. Yeah, sure, some of this information is good: Katie Couric let us watch her colonoscopy and that inspired many people to get tested. (The words "inspired" and "colonoscopy" are not usually found in the same sentence.) But really, I don't have to hear about everyone's, celebs and non-celebs alike. It's bad enough that I have to get these things myself; I wish that people would respect their own privacy and not tell me all the delightful details.

(Unless, of course, you write a blog, then anything goes: See The Genie Is Out of the Orifice.)

When it comes to privacy, there's a minefield out there - even for us mere mortals - and some of it is our own damn fault . . .

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

Here in the Big Apple, you not only have to plunk down an obscene amount of money for a space you'd laugh at if you didn't know better, you also have to get past the dreaded coop board. Basically, you have to prove that you're financially stable and are not a lunatic. Except in certain buildings on Fifth Avenue where you have to prove you're not Madonna and you are descended from the Mayflower. Not the hotel.

A coop board can refuse you for any reason, even if your finances are in order and you're not a rock star who shows up at the interview wearing leather, in August, and asks how many amps he can plug in without cutting off the electricty, which would plunge the building into total darkness, as if he cared.

The only safe question to ask, I have found, is which is the best Chinese takeout in the neighborhood. This will provoke a lively debate among the board members and will get the attention off you, no matter what your finances are, when your grandparents got off the boat, and what you're wearing. Yes, Chinese takeout is the ticket.

But even if you get through the interview with flying chopsticks, you still have to provide at least one letter of recommendation. When I was buying my first apartment, a friend wrote the following one for me. I didn't use it, for reasons that will become obvious, but I have saved it for all these years just for this moment . . .

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites