The Power of Free

I am an unstoppable hoarder. I have never met a cigarette package on the ground I didn't have to have. Or postage stamps, or postcards, or letters, or cards, invitations, gallery announcements, ticket stubs, receipts.

I cleaned out some drawers today. I found camera lenses tossed with empty TOP tobacco boxes (which has the most brilliant design ever) with Soviet stamps and q-tips. If I had been going through someone else's I would have thought they were crazy. Each scrap of paper, like a physical metonymy, carries with it a memory of a place, or a person. I reviewed a good ten years of my life this afternoon. I filled a bag with odds and ends-- scraps I couldn't use, lenses for cameras I don't have, mysterious objects I kept because they were shiny. I put an ad on Craigslist, in the free section, and within minutes, I had a taker. I didn't have to put my treasures in the garbage, they are going to a good home. I am so happy. Cleaning is fun again.

Retractions

I may have been a bit too positive in the previous post. I was rereading the responses and I am not finding them as cool as I initially did, but still, they are not bad. I don't have the patience to go through any more. I must do something productive, like scan the next Fat Camille.

Multiple Choice

On my way to bed last night I was trying to figure out a way of finding smarter men on CL.

Flashback 1998

The Town of Billy-Bob*, CA

I was taking a remedial US History course at a small, private, evangelical school in the process of earning my teaching credential. Although I attended a fancy Catholic university in the City, I hadn't taken the exact general ed course that specifically covered the US Constitution. I was the oldest student (23) in the class of college freshmen (average age, 18.5).

It was about as challenging as a good high school history class and I enjoyed the erudite teaching and the subject matter. What was painful was watching my fellow classmates struggle with very straightforward material.

The Treaty of Versailles

After the big midterm exam, Instructor D got up in front of the class, fighting tears, asked the students what the connection between The Treaty of Versailles and WW2 was. Ninety-five percent of the students missed that multiple choice question.** The silence was palpable. He visibly wilted as he surveyed the blank faces of the students. No one offered a response. My heart broke for D that day, no one deserves such a moronic class.

:::::

The Versailles Winnowing Fork

Date: 2007-03-14 21:33:47
PostID: 294249435
Title: (women seeking men) Multiple Choice


What was one of the root causes of World War 2?

A)  Winston Churchill
B)  The Treaty of Versailles
C)  United States imperialism
D)  The Lend-Lease Program
Answer the question and include a paragraph to support your position.  Spelling errors, grammar and mechanics will affect your grade.

------

Did you blink? It was only up for 8 hours before it was flagged down.

This may be my most popular posting yet. I included another fuzzy bathroom portrait.

131 earnest responses.
5 flames
0 penises

I lost count of spelling errors, but as my writing is rife with them,*** I didn't hold it against anyone. (i wanted to discourage that style of emailing where the writer strings a series of random thoughts together without any editing or punctuation...) The vast majority cut-and-pasted the same article from Wikipedia. I should have known that would be an easy thing to do. Still, it at least shows me that they are capable of simple research and using keyboard short-cuts.

What really impressed me (not your conspiracy theories, sorry, gentlemen) is how many thoughtful responses I got, and not a single penis (a record!)

Mea Culpa

Men of Craigslist, I underestimated you. I thought you were only interested in cute, easy girls, but you have shown me, as a group, that you can be interesting, sometimes witty, thoughtful, educated and polite. Far from being the dregs of society, you may be the very pinnacle of culture, the lions of education and noble leaders. I wish you all well in your search for love and companionship and I sincerely hope that you all find women worthy of your gifts and talents.

Bravo!

:::::

*Will be getting its own Gazetteer entry shortly.
** Yours Truly was the only one who got it right. I am not crowing, this is a tragic thing.
***Thank you, El Cab, for catching my effect/affect mistake.

The Hera Stats

I posted the "Hera" ad for a few hours this afternoon. Usually the CL community pulls my ads down, but this time, I did the pulling.

90 replies.

3 men either referenced the Greek myth or showed some knowledge thereof.

50% of the respondees were married already.

1 penis (and the woman's hand holding it was wearing a wedding band)

NB-- Hera and Zeus are married (or Jupiter and Juno, in Latin). The gimmick is that Zeus is constantly cheating and Hera is constantly angry and exacting revenge. My joke was that Hera was looking for her cheating Zeus who is married to her already-- an oxymoronic premise for a personal ad. Two of the respondees got that.

Apologies to the Sisterhood

What I regret was that many of the men thought I was looking for a man married to someone else already. Far from it, even in jest.

1 Flame

"i avoid these temptations- be gone you demon. cheat? go back to the darkness where your bretheren belong. just because you were jilted why do you try to bring another soul into the darkness with you? you should be cast down into the pit. have a nice day."

Clingy, Self-loathing Artist, F, 31

El Cab recently turned me on to They call me Naughty Lola: a collection of personal ads from the London Review of Books. Most of them are so short that they could easily fit in a fortune cookie. He knew what a student of Craigslist personals I used to be (The Great Camille has been on haitus for a while) and he thought I'd appreciate them.

I do.

On the train, in the cafe, on the bus, in the teacher's lounge. I have been laughing out loud to gems like these (from the back cover)

I'd like to dedicate this advert to my mother (difficult cow, 65) who is responsible for me still being single at 36. Man. 36. Single. Held at home by years of subtle emotional abuse and at least 19 fake heart-attacks.

Love is strange- wait 'till you see my feet. F, 34, wide fitting Scholl's.

Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.

The best way to enjoy them is to have someone read them out loud, preferably with a fake English accent and an impeccable sense of timing.

Overweight, Insecure, with Impressive Debt

Since I am ambigously single, the temptation to get back on CL is strong.

Mediocre Artist Seeks Same

I am going to hold out as long as I can.

Call Me Hera.

I'll call you Jupiter. Jilted F, 31, seeks cheating M to 50

(ha ha, I wrote the above, can I get a date in London?)

Look, Toto, I can Right!

My mother called me the other day to say that she had rediscovered this blog while googling Frank M Vanderhoof (as the astute reader will recall, my father took home a bag of Frank's books as well). There was a rather long silence and then she added that she thought I was a good writer and that perhaps I could get some "writing jobs."

On a lark, I found myself scrolling through the writing listings on Craigslist. I quickly discovered that the people who need writers clearly have a need.

Check out this listing--

Full-time experienced Technical Editor/Collaborator for the West Coast’s number one Dedicated Server provider. Responsibilities include working closely with Product Management on new services and products to evangelize product FAQ’s, web design and customer experience.

It is one thing to mock the drunken male personals posters who can barely string a sentence together, but one would think that those advertising for professionals would try a tiny bit harder. Why is FAQ possessive? Why all the capitals? When I cull through personals replies, hypercapitalization is one of my biggest peeves. When the Germans do it, it is elegant and teutonic, but when English writers do it, they lack the appropriate black face font.

Staying 'umble

I was just taking a read down memory lane. I was trying to find some examples of the above-mentioned capitalization frenzy. I couldn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a lot of bad camille craigslist writing. I am in pain. Let me clarify that-- my ego is in pain. On the up-side, at least all of us bad craigslist writers are in good company.