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Profiles In craigslist #6,221: In April I wrote an opera, but that still needs some tweaking ...

2009-07-10T18:32:13Z

College Girl Needs Phenomenal Literary Agent! (Downtown)

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Reply to: xxxxxxxxxzx@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-07-09, 6:50PM EDT

I am a 22 year old student who has just finished her first 300 page fiction novel. I am going through the process of editing it myself and tightening up loose ends. I have 4 other novels planned, 1 of which already has 100 pages completed.

I am looking for a literary agent who has the means to get me an amazing book deal with a big publisher. I want this literary agent to stick with me through all of my novels so that we can both profit. I want to be close to my agent as if we were family. I'm young, very marketable, and basically guarantee that I am not just a one-time novel writer. I started this book last september, finished most of it by january, took a couple months break to concentrate on classes, and then finished it in the past 2 months. I move quick, but my work is quality

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: negotiate

———————————————————————————————————

Also, I would like a pony and a tiara, no — make that two tiaras, one regular and one where the diamonds are pink. I would prefer it if you would pick up the tab for our first meeting, and I’m partial to the Russian Tea Room, but I’d settle for the bar at the Algonquin, even though I know what a cliché that must sound like lol. Let's just call it "ironic" lol.

Now, as for my advance. I’m thinking in the low-to-mid millions, but between you and me, I’ll give you permission to settle for the higher 750’s-to-800 thousands if push comes to shove, seeing as how there’s a depression and also I realize I have to pay my dues. But in that case I must absolutely insist upon retaining the film rights, up to and including full script approval and consultation on casting. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, because this book is me, it is my baby and it is my soul and that’s hard for people to understand but all the greats feel this way, I assure you, about their writing.

Finally, I’d like to get all this petty paper-pushing nonsense wrapped up and out of the way by the end of the summer — sooner if possible so I can take a couple of weeks around Labor Day to just decompress at the beach and get ready for Novel Two, so if you can get back to me ASAP about this that would be awesome. I'll have my cell turned off tonight and most of Saturday because of plans with friends (whom you must understand come first with me, always) but I will be free most of Sunday so possibly we can do brunch? If that's too "short notice" any time during this coming week would be okay too I guess.

So I guess that's it. I'm eager to get to work and so are you I'm sure so, shoot me an e-mail and let's get started! So excited lol!

Oh and Binky you bitch, if you’re reading this now you can just go eff off, you had your chance and you blew it.

And that concludes today’s Profiles In craigslist. craigslist. Leaving me smiling quietly to myself since 1995.

I effin love these guys

2009-07-10T18:02:47Z

I can hardly express the degree to which this fills me with joy.

So it's official

2009-07-09T23:50:55Z

There is now no longer a solitary split second in your entire fucking life on earth in which you need suffer the outrage and indignity of knowing a blessed moment’s privacy.

Okay, is it just me ...

2009-07-06T22:46:33Z

Or do you think this coffee table is supposed to look like underpants?

In Which Nature is Awesome

2009-07-02T21:00:44Z

Recently I was at Jack's on 45th Street, which is basically a little discount store that sells discontinued and overstocked stuff and crap. More discontinued/overstock than crap, usually. And they had these little planting kits, that consisted of a little glazed, ceramic flower pot, soil and seeds for about $3, so I bought three little pink pots of sweet peas for my bedroom window.

It took a while for me to get around to it, but when I finally put the things together, I had a total blast. It turns out that the soil wasn’t actually soil, but these little … disks, like small hockey pucks, the size of like, a can of Fancy Feast, only thinner: maybe half an inch thick. And you dropped these things like Alka Seltzers into a dish of water, and they would swell up to around five times their original size and become this very rich, moist planting medium, enough to fill the whole pot. This utterly enchanted me, so much so that I went out at lunch time today to buy several more pots for my sister’s kids and for her boyfriend’s kids also. I don’t know why it is, but I am completely in thrall to almost anything that swells up in water. A few years ago, I got my nephew a set of these little bugs, maybe an inch or so overall, that you could soak in water overnight, and the next day they would be the size of a small tricycle. Okay, not really, but they got incredibly large and I think I enjoyed them more than he did.

Anyway, I planted the seeds and put them in the sun and the next thing I know, Nature is happening all the fuck over my windowsill. Within two days, they were already starting to sprout, and within a week, I had seedlings. After ten days, these fuckers are catapulting toward the eight-inch mark in height. Not only that, but nearly all of them “took” and they’re so sturdy I actually suspect they may live long enough to bloom. I honestly have no idea if this is about right, time-wise, or if the planting medium had some kind of magic go-boom dust in it or something. But it’s completely fascinating to me. The first thing I do every morning now is go and visit my little green things, to check on their size and overall condition, and it’s amazing. The past couple of days, I swear these things have grown more than an inch overnight. And the hilarious part is, I feel really good about it. Which is insane, but it actually feels like some kind of achievement. Like I’ve accomplished something. And they don’t care. They’re all, like, “look, just gimme water and don’t knock me off the sill, okay? I got this, really. I’m good.”

But I watch them, and I marvel at how cute and strong and self-reliant they are, and I'm careful to water-but-not-overwater, and I switch their positions around so that each one gets a chance to be in the middle for at least a couple of days (for some reason, the one in the middle always seems to be the tallest, and I have theorized that this is because the light is most direct there) and I blog about them and think I’m doing something right, or even at all. It’s awesome.

Now I understand why people have kids.

You can always tell a serious runner

2009-07-01T23:47:01Z

by the impeccable condition of her pantyhose.

Another reason I think I'll remain twitter-free for yet awhile, thanks.

2009-07-01T16:28:34Z

Good God. You publish a book, it’s going to get reviewed. It gets reviewed, some of them are going to be bad. Did you not know this going in? For Christ’s sake. If you want everyone to think you’re a brilliant talented genius, never let anyone read your work but your mother (your dad’ll just want to give you “constructive criticism”). I’m not even a successful writer, and I’ve had bad reviews. New York Magazine, which exists for the sole purpose of giving bad reviews, and has done very well for the last thirty years on that one simple premise, absolutely slaughtered a play of mine a few years ago (thankfully it was only online, and not in print). It wasn’t fun, but I didn’t write a letter to the editor explaining to them that they were mistaken. Nor did I ask my friends to do it for me (a tragically common trend in NYM’s letters section). Not because I am such a good sport and I appreciate every failure as an opportunity to learn and grow, but because I am not a fucking moron.

Seriously, do these people not realize what idiots they’re making of themselves? On the one hand, you want to assume that must be the case, but on the other hand, how is that even possible?

Sometimes I forget how sad my life is.

2009-06-30T21:16:20Z

Years ago I had an acquaintance who confided to me that her secret, “inner life” was so complex and vivid she often could not differentiate between the things that happened to her in reality and those she had merely fantasized about. Not in a big, scary way, more just in a petty, inconvenient way. Like, thinking she had returned your call because the conversation with you she had rehearsed in her mind had felt so authentic she just assumed it must really have happened.

At the time I thought this was odd, but not as disturbingly so as I probably would have found it, had I not assumed she was just using this as an excuse for blowing off my phone calls.

As someone with a pretty rich fantasy life myself, I can safely say that this has never happened to me. I mean, it’s rich, but it’s not that rich. My real life isn’t that rich. The one exception to this is my dreams. For most of my life, I have had incredibly dense, deeply and subtly layered and richly symbolic dreams, full of brilliant and sometimes stunningly beautiful imagery. This has become less true over the last ten years or so, but even now, I occasionally wake up from a dream so colorful and bizarre — or so utterly terrifying — that I lie awake for a good hour afterward, just reflecting on it. Or alternatively, recovering from it.

That being said, there are certain things about my dreams which are pretty predictable, even prosaic. Certain types of dreams, for instance (the “oh my gosh, an undiscovered door in my apartment with a whole suite of beautiful and heretofore undiscovered rooms behind it!” dreams, for instance), come up again and again. For the first thirty-five years of my life, I must have dreamed about losing my keys at least five times a year. But there are also certain things that are reliably absent from them. I never have what you’d call “wish fulfillment” dreams (winning the lottery, waking up to discover I’ve magically lost 40 pounds). And I never have sex dreams or even romantic fantasy-type dreams, except insofar as I sometimes dream of finding myself in absurd and preposterous situations involving sex, like the time I got to first base with Drew Carey. Or the time Al Franken and I agonized over whether or not to indulge in an extramarital affair, before finally agreeing that too many people could get hurt, and it would just be wrong.

Then last night I had one of the strangest, saddest, nicest dreams I’ve ever had. (Oh, come on, you’ve read this far and couldn’t figure out that was where this was headed?) I was at a museum with some family members, and we were watching a documentary featuring a noted authority on eiospherics. It was a fascinating film, but I had to admit the part that particularly caught my attention was this particular expert, who was … not so much handsome as rather charmingly geeky, in need of a haircut and possessed of a lovely sort of self-deprecating arrogance. The film ended and we wandered to the food court, which featured a smoothie kiosk with a colossal fruit peeler and juicer, twice the size of the hopper of a City sanitation truck, filled with terrifying, machete-like blades that could strip, chop and pulverize a bushel of pineapples in seconds. The counter was manned by two men in smoothie-franchise aprons, under which both wore not suits, but jackets and ties, which I thought was rather unusual. As I got to the front of the line I realized that one of the men was the eiospheric engineer. I was so delighted to meet him that I struck up a conversation: indicating the tweedy sport coat and knitted tie he wore under his smock, I asked, “is that to preserve the academic atmosphere of the museum food court?” and he chuckled and said, “Well, it’s funny you should ask because yes, that’s exactly the intent.” And we laughed and I told him I’d seen his film and we discussed it a little. He was rather impressed with my superficial understanding of his academic discipline because as he explained it, most lay people couldn’t even spell “eiosphere,” let alone knew what it was (if you can even imagine such a thing). I responded by playfully spelling it for him (by the way, it’s “eye-o-sphere,” not “ee-o-sphere,” but don’t be embarrassed if you’ve been pronouncing it wrong all these years. Most people make that mistake too).

We went on like that, chatting and flirting and generally charming the socks off each other over the smoothie counter, while the mangos and coconuts were pulped and liquefied in the background. In minutes it was as if we had known each other all our lives, but then, somewhere outside my apartment, someone began banging relentlessly with a hammer. This happens a lot in my building, by the way, or at least, often enough to be kind of a “thing.” It’s not actual construction; or at least, not in the conventional sense of nails being driven with a hammer. This is more just a kind of insistent, repetitive BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!!! and it goes on like that for hours sometimes. The first time it happened, after half an hour or so I started wondering if it was someone trapped in their bathroom, banging on the steam pipe with his shoe to signal for help.

Anyway, that’s when I woke up, at first disoriented and then rather sad. I kept wracking my brain, trying to remember if this enchanting man was someone real, someone I knew in my daily life and had dreamed about. Trying to put a name to the face. But no. He was just a face in a dream, and I would never see him again. We would never meet for coffee, never get to know each other better, never enjoy another pleasant, funny, eyelash-batting discussion of the eiosphere.

I wish we’d had more time together. I miss him already.

Love, Death, Friendship, Crackers, Dirt Bikes, Sex, Cranapple ...

2009-06-26T20:58:45Z

A co-worker just gifted me with the jacket of a book she had found on the "free book" table at her gym. She didn't bother with the whole book, just the jacket, because that was the only item of note. It's a self-published, hardcover novel from around the late 1970s, with jacket photos of the author who, as God is my witness, could be the father of the “Love Story/Captain America” guy later dubbed “Douche Quadbike” by the first of his many parodists.

Anyway, the blurb on the jacket (written by the author himself) exalts: “Read A WAR ENDS … ! It’s a universal story of love, hate, rape, murder, birth, death, joy, depression and madness! There’s something in it for everyone!”

And no, we have decided, he was not being ironic.

So anyway, after we’d both had a good chuckle over this, my co-worker asked, with some concern, “is it disturbing that you were the first person I thought of when I saw this?”

“Not so much disturbing,” I replied, “as probably inevitable.”

ETA: Oh, wait! I almost forgot: Also? In the author's bio on the inside back jacket flap? The concluding line is: "Michael plans to make A WAR ENDS ... into an epic motion picture.

Because it's good to have plans.

!?!?!

2009-06-25T22:34:42Z

Michael Jackson?

That's a third I would not have seen coming ...

Useless

2009-06-25T21:04:50Z

So I’m coming back from lunch, which I had spent at Duane Reade, dropping nearly eighty freaking dollars on shampoo, toothpaste, and other high-end luxury items, and I’m cutting it pretty close, time-wise, and frankly in my usual state of glassy-eyed, bovine disconnect from the world around me. And I get to the corner of 48th and 7th Avenue, and the light is red, so I’m just standing there. Or at least, I assumed the light was red, because there was a bus in the intersection and I couldn’t actually see the light, but the light going north to south was green, and everyone else waiting for the east-west light was just standing there, looking at the back of the bus, so. This of course just pushes me deeper into staring-at-the-side-of-an-idling-bus mode and kind of paying even less attention than usual, when all of a sudden this awful woman in front of me turns and starts snarling about how “you have to step off the curb because no one’s going to wait for you,” or something. She’s dragging one of those rolly suitcases, and had kind of a rageful look about her, so I thought, okay, random crazy person, do not engage.

Then she turns back toward me and scowls something else, which I didn’t quite catch, and I thought maybe she wasn’t just snarling, maybe she was talking to someone in particular (not me). And at that point, I see this tiny, ancient, stooped-over little elderly woman, maybe 90 pounds, whispy white hair, hunched over with osteoporosis, kind of shuffling down off the curb from behind me, and I realize the awful woman is talking to her. And I still can’t tell if they’re together, or if she’s just distributing generic “the world is tough, honey, you gotta look out for yourself in this dirty town” advice to strangers, but a moment later, when the elderly woman manages to make it a little further out into the street, she stops alongside the awful woman. And the awful woman is sort of looking up and away in the opposite direction from the older one, saying “no, that has nothing to do with it. No it doesn’t. No it doesn’t. No it doesn’t.” And at this point I still can’t tell if these two are together, or if the awful one is just having some kind of schizoid episode and the old lady just happened to be standing next to her when it hit. But then I realize that OW is quietly talking to AW, and AW is just basically telling her to shut up. And at that point, the light changes and AW takes off, leaving OW stranded on the corner.

At this point, this third woman, who was apparently in no way connected to either of them, and I both sort of spontaneously form a small phalanx around OW, because she’s so tiny and so hunched over and moving so slowly she really was in danger if being run over if the light changed again before she made it across the street. And we get her as far as the next corner and AW is nowhere to be seen, and at this point I’m like, wait. So maybe they weren’t actually together, and at that point I kind of start having that thing where your previously-dormant brain starts sputtering back online and I’m wondering if maybe I should, like, do something, although I have no idea what that should be. I mean, if it had been a child, I would have felt comfortable asking her where her mother was, or if she was with someone, or calling a cop if need be. But this was an adult, and even if I had felt comfortable intruding, I’m not really sure what I should have done. And at that point, two things happened more-or-less simultaneously: First, the other woman who had helped OW across the street stopped her and asked if she was okay, and if she needed help (which, duh. I guess would have done it) and second, I hear AW calling from the other side of 48th Street, “Are you even watching where I’m going? I’m over here!!” at which point she goes tearing off along Seventh Avenue at about 5 MPH and leaves OW (who I’m now assuming is her mother) — just abandons her on the corner.

And at this point it was like, okay. This is now officially abuse. I mean, I think. Because I know that if a parent had done that to a small child, there’s no question a sane person would consider it at least neglect, and possibly abuse. But because it was an elderly person, it somehow becomes foggier, like, yes, she’s frail and obviously not able to keep up, but she’s still an adult and autonomous and if she actually knows where she’s heading, she might be entirely capable of finding her way there without her awful daughter’s help.

And this gets into an area that I’m always kind of uncomfortable with, which is, where and when to offer help? I’m always kind of freaked out by people who walk up to obviously competent, sure-footed blind people, for instance, and ask them out of the blue, in that yelly, talking to a four-year-old voice “do you need help? Can I help you find something?” I mean, I recognize that they mean well, but it’s just not something I would ever consider doing, and to me it always seems kind of patronizing. It’s one thing if the person looks lost, or is asking for help, but I always kind of wonder how I would feel if some man walked up to me on the street late at night and said something like, “hey, little lady, you shouldn’t be out all alone after dark, it’s dangerous for a woman! Let me walk you home.” Even if I really sensed he had no ill-intentions, it would still piss me off. But I also know that that may just be me, and while being insensitive to other people’s distress is hardly a fault I’ve been especially plagued by, I sometimes wonder if maybe I’m misguided in this area, and should in fact be more sensitive. On the other hand, there have been times when I’ve come across people who were clearly in distress and I have offered to get them where they needed to go, and sometimes they’ve taken me up on it and sometimes they haven’t, so I don’t know. Maybe my instincts are generally good enough, although in this case it was a moot point because the other Unaffiliated Third Party Lady picked up the ball a little faster than I did.

Anyway. The point is, the stink of that awful woman’s soul is still in my nostrils. I’m all upset and reconsidering whether I’m too thoughtless and — a frequent concern the older I get — if the fact that I have always been kind of a raw nerve has forced me to build up a thicker callous than I realize, and blah blah blah. And I am so grateful to that other woman who actually did step in to help. And I hope the Awful Woman gets a suppurating boil on her ass. And I hope her poor mother has other children, who aren’t complete suckbags.

And I hope I remember never to get old.

Awww!

2009-06-25T19:04:45Z

Farrah!

I don't know why I find this especially sad. It might be the PMS.

Profiles In craigslist #6,439: Is it almost time to go home?

2009-06-15T23:59:46Z

Seeking Original Play for 3 Women (Los Angeles)

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Reply to: [XXXXXX]@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-06-14, 1:59AM EDT

We are 3 established actresses looking for an original play to put up in Hollywood. Ideally, the play would be full length
and a black comedy with a cast of 3-5 women, 0-1 man. The age range is late teens to early 30s (we are in our 20s). Also,
of different skin/hair tone which rules out mother and sister relationships.

Please email logline and/or synopsis and name and number and we will contact you.

Thank you!

Location: Los Angeles
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: Yes, we will discuss

____________________________________
Okay, so. You know, I do this little recurring thing. This craigslist thing, where I mock the classifieds and it is, on occasion, borderline amusing? So I stumbled across this and I thought, oh. This might do well for one of those. And then … I dunno.

I mean, really. Meh. “Established” actresses. Who are all in their twenties. Who think that they can’t play each others relatives … because their hair is different colors. Who further don’t know that plays don’t have “loglines.” Who will “discuss” paying you for your work. And ... sigh. At that point I just lost interest.

And that concludes today’s “Profiles in craigslist.” craigslist. Whatever. Since 1995

You stay classy, New York Post!

2009-06-11T20:29:23Z

So this is about a week late, because I totally forgot about it until something else reminded me of it just now (which goes to show you how outraged I truly was). But anyway, I was walking down the street last weekend and I passed a grocery store with a newspaper rack out front, and the headline, in 300 pt boldface type, on the front page of the New York Post was: “HUNG FU!”

Hung Fu! You get it? It’s funny because he’s dead!!

Now, I don’t want to be a hypocrite here, because the absolute truth is, if someone on my friends list were to have made this joke, in a closed entry, where only a couple dozen people would have seen it, most if not all of them unlikely to be members of David Carradine’s family, I absolutely admit I would have found it funny. And I’m sure there’s almost no one, even on the staff of the Post itself, who would characterize that paper as a reputable or responsible news source. And frankly, for all I know, there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance that the Post doesn’t even wish to be perceived as such anymore, as a matter of editorial policy, so I’m not going to make any moral judgments on those lines. Still, given all the hype about the impending death of the print news media, I do have one small hope, which is that the major New York papers survive at least a little longer than Rupert Murdoch does. I mean, he’s gotta be, what? Eighty or so? How much longer can he last? It could happen. And frankly I cannot wait to see the hilarious comedy obits his kicking off warrants.

Meanwhile, here’s a slight variation on one of my best-remembered National Lampoon jokes, from the early 1980s:

Q: What’s the difference between a fifty-year-old can of creamed corn that’s been opened, pissed in by a dog, left out to bake in the sun, and then left out in a moldy basement for six months and Rupert Murdoch’s soul?

A: Fifty years ago, the corn actually smelled okay.

Totally random, yes, but that's what the internets are for:

2009-06-05T20:12:04Z

As of right now (4:10 pm on Friday, June 5, 2009) this comment, by John Cole on balloon-juice, in response to a series of apparently mostly troll-driven comments about Obama's middle east speech, is pretty close to the top of the list of my ten favorite things anyone has ever written, in a post or comment on any blog, ever:

"Since I moved to this new platform, there have been over 300,000 comments on this website. I say that as a point of reference, so that you can fully appreciate what I am about to tell you.

The last several hundred comments on this thread, which I have now deleted (something I have never done before), were some of the stupidest shit I have ever seen on the internet, let alone this website. And this is a website that has included discussions of me falling while naked in the shower after having mopped myself into a corner, endless discussions of Hola Fruta and other frozen treats, and even threads about what gives Laura W. indigestion. Think about that.

Some of you need some quiet time with some warm milk and a binky. Some of you need a slight understanding of history and a complete tutorial on what exactly constitutes nonviolent protest. Others of you need professional help and probably lithium. This thread is now dead, you are not invited to continue this idiotic discussion in any other thread, I am locking the comments to this particular post, and I will leave you with this quote from Billy Madison:

“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Gandhi wept."

Heh. Indeed.

OMG PROOF!!! That everything is OBAMA'S FAULT!!!

2009-06-05T18:00:12Z

http://www.theliberaloc.com/2009/06/04/obama-finds-hieroglyph-that-looks-like-him/

You see? it means "because" or "on account of!" THE ANCIENTS PREDICTED!! HE"S TTOTALLY RESPONSPIBLE FOR EVERYTHING!!!!

Profiles in craigslist #6,422: Sometimes this shit just makes me sad

2009-06-04T19:29:35Z

Wedding Vows needed STAT (Downtown)

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Reply to:gigs-qkgu5-XXXXXX@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-06-03, 5:51PM EDT

Have not had the time nor creativity to come up with my vows for my wedding. I am looking for a professional to write them for me instead. Please provide any past experience and contact information. You are a life saver

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I — I just — honestly? I can’t even be funny.

First of all, where the hell did people suddenly get the idea, in the last twenty years or so, that you are even supposed to come up with vows for your wedding? Hasn’t Judeo-Christian culture had a set of widely-recognized and accepted marriage vows for the past couple eons or so? Take out the fucking “obey” and you’re golden, dude, seriously. Second of all, if you absolutely insist on writing your own — no, scratch that. If you kept insisting that you were going to write your own even while everyone you know tried to take you discreetly aside and warn you that no one in the history of ever has EVER managed to pull this off without looking like a complete douchebox, and even now you STILL insist upon doing it, it should be for one reason and one reason only: because you absolutely, positively, cannot restrain yourself from standing up in front of God and everyone and publicly informing everyone you have ever known and loved that you are a tree and you give shade while suckling the bosom of the earth, and that you bend without breaking, and that you are also a bird, that flies over the meadows of your betrothed, and that you eat the seeds and berries of commitment while feathering your nest with the plumage of your devotion, and that you are likewise a meandering river, slaking your true love’s thirst and bending and twisting while still remaining true, and that NO FUCKING POWER ON EARTH WILL EVER PREVENT YOU FROM MAKING SUCH A LAUGHABLE PUBLIC SPECTACLE OF YOURSELF. And frankly, “not having the time nor creativity to come up with” anything like that does not suggest this frame of mind as forcefully as you might think. Also, if, as I suspect, you’re only doing this because your intended is forcing you to against your will, best judgment, and God-given common sense, I got news for you. She’s gonna have your balls in a clamp for the rest of your life, pal. Take my word for it. If you can’t even stand up on this one, basic, dignity-crushing thing, you will have no hope of ever spending another holiday with your side of the family ever again, I’m just saying.

And finally: Experience? You want to know how much experience someone has ghostwriting other people’s vows for them? Because Jesus Fuck, buddy, I’d sure like to hope that you’re it, you know?

But I’d probably be proven wrong by about ten seconds of online research.

And that concludes today’s “Profiles In Craigslist.” Craigslist. Inspiring me with vicious contempt for the estate of marriage out of freaking nowhere in the middle of an otherwise normal Thursday afternoon since 1995.

DOES ANYONE WHO MIGHT READ THIS HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO THE NEW YORKER?

2009-06-03T20:42:35Z

And if so, would you be willing to do me a small and entirely ethical favor which will save me upwards of $150?

Thanks!

The Dumbass Chronicles: Broomhead Grrrrl! (Part One in an Ongoing Series)

2009-06-01T18:55:53Z

Well, the warm weather is finally here, and like lilacs — only less welcome and without the pretty smell — the dumbasses are in bloom again, all along the jogging path near my house. Some of you may recall my commenting in the past about the particular species of lunatic, idiot and just plain common-or-garden variety doofus that seem to flourish along this sunny, oceanfront stretch of public real estate. Most every weekend during the spring and summer, and usually well into the early fall, it seems I may discover a new addition to the collection, and already this year is no exception. In fact, this year I’ve decided to keep a formal, running account of the maniacs and doofi, beginning with a newcomer to the show: Broomhead Grrrrl! Grrrr!

Hey, Broomhead Grrrl! I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but gosh you sure looked a caution yesterday, an otherwise seemingly normal and non-insane-looking twenty-something cutie on her very expensive bike, only with an hilarious, sawn-off length of broom inserted into one of the ventilation holes in your helmet. Hah! What a delightfully incongruous picture you made! It was almost like one of those Kaiser Wilhelm motorcycle helmets, only not, because cute! And playful! And amusing! In fact, the only part of the joke I didn’t get was, why were you wearing a helmet?

Because I mean, you know. Most people wear a helmet when they ride their bikes in order to prevent head injuries in the event of an accident, but clearly, if you were anticipating an accident — or even cautiously, sensibly refusing to deny at least the possibility of an accident -- you almost certainly wouldn’t have inserted a large, cheap wooden dowel through the middle of the thing that would otherwise possibly save your life in a collision or fall, owing to the likelihood that said dowel would almost certainly be plunged through your skull and into your brain on impact. Which would almost certainly dilute the humorous impact somewhat. On the brighter side, if the broom were simply to fall out of your helmet and become lodged in the spokes of one of your tires, while the resulting crash might very well injure you very badly, at least you wouldn’t be lying there like a douche with a splintered wooden shaft piercing your brain, so there’s that. Let’s a keep a good thought, shall we?

Anyway, you are a delight, Broomhead Grrrl! Congratulations on being the first in our series. Keep up the good work, and remember: safety first!

This is how the weaker animals are picked off in the wild, you know.

2009-05-27T22:38:26Z

My right arm hurts. Seriously. From like, the elbow down. A combination of repetitive stress and just really abusively large amounts of work the past couple of days. Also, there are pretzels in a plastic jar thingy in the center aisle, and I really want one, but the cover is too hard to pry off with my sad, sore arm, so I mayn't have any pretzels.

Curse you, unyielding pretzel jar! Reveal to me your pretzly secrets! Fiendish withholder of pretzeled bread!

Sad now.

roseyv @ 2009-05-26T16:53:00

2009-05-26T20:53:25Z

Ah, Miss … Watson. Sorry to keep you waiting. Please, sit down.

Is something wrong, Doctor?

Please. Have a seat.

Is it my test results? ‘Cause I mean, I feel fine. I just came in for a … you know. Blood test. For … you know. Ahem. STDs.

I understand. But I’m afraid I have some news which may come as a bit of a blow to you.

Oh, God. I don’t understand! I’m so careful! To tell you the truth, I’ve hardly ever even — I mean, I did meet someone recently, but frankly, before that, the past few years I really hadn’t even been —

Miss Watson. Please.

I’m sorry, I just —

I understand you’re upset, but I’m afraid I must inform you, in the strongest possible terms, that it’s highly inadvisable for you to be sexually active at this time. Or really, ever.

What, you mean, at all?

Under any circumstances.

But — why? What’s wrong with me?

What’s wrong with you? What are you, blind?

Sorry?

What’s wrong with you, Miss Watson is that you are, at best, a marginally unattractive middle-aged woman.

I — what?

Look at you! You’re twenty pounds overweight, you have your original teeth and breasts, you have body hair well below the eyelash level, and you’re — how old? Good God, it’s worse than I thought.

What the hell are you talking about? What’s this got to do with my blood test?

Your blood —? Oh, the tests are fine. Clean bill of health. No, the problem is — well, quite frankly, if you can’t see what the problem is, that’s half the problem right there.

I beg your pardon?

Miss Watson, since clearly nobody has ever bothered to explain this to you, I’ll try to put it in the most delicate terms possible. Sex, like love, is for young, attractive people. And occasionally, for young, attractive women, and slightly older, more interesting and accomplished men.

Are you fucking kidding me?

On the contrary, I’m quite serious. Male sexual desire is an extremely delicate mechanism.

No it isn’t!

It most certainly is. And it requires a certain minimum standard of physical attractiveness in a woman. Which, I’m sorry to say, is a standard you fail to meet at virtually every level.

Oh really? Well, why don’t you try telling that to my boyfriend? You can tell him right now, as a matter of fact. He’s right outside.

Actually, one of my colleagues is telling him, right now Frankly, we can’t figure out what the hell the man was thinking.

What? Okay, that’s it. That’s enough. I’m leaving right now and I’ll be reporting you and this phony two-bit clinic of yours to every responsible authority — Oh, hey, honey. Listen, get your coat, we’re going home. I’ll explain on the way.

Sure, babe. In a minute.

What? David, what’s wrong?

Um. We need to talk.

Oh, dear God.

Look, I was just talking to one of the doctors, and — don’t freak out or anything, but he feels pretty strongly that, um … I can do better.

What?

Yeah, he says there’s like, a whole city full of girls out there, and I’m just wasting myself, tied down to one woman, and not even a particularly hot one. He gave me this prescription.

“Keep your options open”?

Well, it’s sound medical advice, you have to admit.

David, will you listen to yourself? Do better? Before you met me, you hadn’t had a date in six and a half years.

I was going through a little bit of a slump, okay, yeah.

You were not in a slump, you were an unemployed thirty-eight year old man who lived with his mother, spent all his time playing role playing games on the internet, and subsisted on a steady diet of Cheez Doodles and Mountain Dew! You spent a third of your unemployment check on weed, showered three times a month and until the day we met, you had never once flossed!

I do now!

Because I make you!!

And I appreciate that! Jeez, Luce, don’t take this wrong way. It’s not that I’m ungrateful. You think I don’t realize all the great things you did for me? You think I don’t appreciate everything you taught me? Like … how to floss? And the importance of fiber? And … what a boob feels like?

Oh, God.

Hey, I admit it, Lucy. You made me want to be a better man.

Oh, sweetie …

And now that I am one, I think I deserve a better woman.

He’s right, you know. Trust me, I’m a doctor. I mean, I put the little pee bottles in the round metal spinning thingy, so I’m not technically a doctor, but I do have a white coat and an extremely high opinion of myself.

You hear that, Luce? It’s not me, it’s science!

Okay, you know what? You win. You think you can do better? Fine. Go ahead. Do better. In fact, I think I can do better too. You wanna know how? A hot bubble bath, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s gingersnap, and eleven back-to-back hours of Mythbusters. And frankly, just thinking about it has already given me more pleasure than you ever did!

Slam!

Wow. That was kinda harsh.

They all get bitter at that age. I’ve seen it a million times. Well, twice. Okay, once, but then this guy told me about this one other time, so. Anyway, what’s important now is that you have your life back.

Right. Yeah. I’m a free man, right?

Look out, ladies! He’s on the prowl.

Damn straight. I gotta get out there and start working my way up the food chain!

Absolutely.
…
…
…
…
So … how, exactly, would I go about doing that?

Oh. Um. Actually, we were kind of hoping you might know.

This not my house.

2009-05-14T22:35:57Z

But it is my new credenza! Which will be in my house on Saturday. I am the squee!

Do I wanna read this book?

2009-05-14T21:53:31Z

I wanna read this book, right? I mean, do I?

Because on the one hand, apparently it isn't very good. But on the other hand, it's Pride and Prejudice, only, you know. With zombies.

I mean, how do you not read that?

It is a dilemma, to be sure.

randoming randomly in a random fashion

2009-05-08T23:32:53Z

I discovered this website in a search for something else. I love it.

I bet kdpete might like it too.

http://www.copycatchic.com/search?updated-max=2009-04-28T11%3A09%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=6

Adventures in Lunch

2009-04-29T18:11:30Z

So I’m still on this diet, and I’ve gotten to where I’ve figured out what I can and can’t get in the cafeteria at work, which means I don’t have to lug as much food with me from home, which is fine. One of the things I’m supposed to have today is tuna salad, with lettuce and tomato and little slices of cucumber and that type of thing. So I brought in a can of tuna, and I have my fat-free mayo in the fridge in the coffee room. So I went up to the cafeteria and did my little selection of lettuce and stuff, in a little paper dish, and then I put a damp paper napkin over the whole thing to keep it from drying out and put it in the refrigerator.

An hour or so later, I go to get a teabag, and I see someone kneeling down in front of the open refrigerator, apparently cleaning up something that had spilled. You can see where this is going.

So I see my salad on the floor and I say, “oh, that’s mine.” And she’s says “oh, it was on the edge and it fell down.” And I’m like, “that’s okay, it’s no big deal.” Which it wasn’t — between the paper towel covering and the fact that it had literally just happened as I was walking through the door, and the fact that I keep a fruit and vegetable wash-spray in my desk drawer, I figured I could just clean it up and it would be fine. So she puts the dish down on the counter, and I get my teabag, and then I reach for the salad and say “I’ll just wa--" And at that point, the same lady helpfully reaches over and sweeps the whole thing into the garbage. So I’m like, “Oh, okay. Thank you.” I mean, there’s really not much point in discussing it at this point, so I just leave. And she calls after me “Are you sure?” And … honestly? I have no idea what that referred to. Did she mean, Are you sure you’re appropriately thankful? Or, are you sure you don’t want to root around in there and fish the individual lettuce leaves and cherry tomatoes out of the garbage and eat them now?

I just … don’t know.

I just don’t know.