Seeking Crazy Female, Normals Need Not Apply
These days, there seems to be no better place to look for anything you need than Craigslist. Second-hand gadgets. Cars. Bikes. Stolen puppies. Furniture. Robot components from the future. Romance. Even things people just want to get rid of for free. You name it, Craig‘s got it.
The Personals section can be a lot of fun to read through when you have a few minutes to kill. Some of the listings people put up in the dating and “missed connections” sections are unbelievably weird, and great for a cheap laugh. So, when Tara was talking about some of the listings she was reading the other night, I thought it might be funny to create a ridiculous personal ad myself (obviously directed at her) and post it.
I took to Craigslist and started writing a personal ad in the “men seeking women” section. It took me about five minutes to write. My intention, the whole time, was to write something that would immediately sound so ridiculous that nobody would take it seriously. Especially if I mentioned someone by name.
Click me! CLICK MEEEE!
There’s no way anyone would actually respond, right?
I got four responses within half an hour of posting it. I was surprised. Seriously. Read this crap (click the image to the right). Tell me if you don’t immediately know that it isn’t for real. By the way, the “PAWTY PLATTAH” and “WITH MY PANTS” parts are Clone High references. You know, just so you don’t think I’m weird or anything. 
In any case, for the record (I say that too much), I’m not interested in Craigslist dating. Especially after being told by @4Whorin, “I met my first love AND my first STD on the Craigslist personals.” Dude makes me laugh.
But I’ll admit that one of the people who responded to the ad piqued my curiosity. She described herself as nerdy (bonus points), and in her email signature, quoted, “God is real unless declared an integer.” Both of which I appreciated, as a geek myself. Sounds like a cool person, at the very least.
So there you have it. What started as a joke with Tara ended as an interesting social experiment with surprising results.
Maybe people are more attracted to “ridiculous” than I thought. I know I am.
4 people have commented. What do you think?Walk Like Hooker. Draw On Arm. Eat Tomato.
Dares are fun. It’s fun daring other people to do things. It’s even more fun when they actually do them (which doesn’t happen often, in my experience). I’m not talking about utterly stupid things that endanger people or break the law. Of course, I can’t condone that. But if you’re comfortable enough with yourself that you can do something fun, albeit potentially humiliating, without backing down, then you have my respect.
Yeah. Anyway. This is just going to be a fun little summary of a beautiful Toronto afternoon this past weekend with Dudehead and Lisa.
The lovely Liz recently asked me if I would go wear some hooker shoes (she called them “stripper heels” – same thing, right?) and take pictures. I said yes. She didn’t think I would actually do it. It’s funny, I get that a lot.
I'm sitting on a giant shoe. How fun is that?
We found a store on Yonge Street that had what I was looking for. We went upstairs and found a wall full of shoes and boots of every shape and size. Some of those boots were longer than my legs, I’m sure. But the gigantic red heels screamed to me. They were the ones.
The girl who found my size was most helpful. I’m sure she thinks I’m a transvestite now. It’s just a shame that she wouldn’t let us take pictures. Props to Dudehead for the ninja picture taking, but I would’ve loved to have had video footage of what came next: The walking. How hard could it be?
I have a newfound respect for women who can wear shoes like this, and actually walk properly. I also think they’re crazy. But skilled, nonetheless. Lisa described my attempt at walking in this ridiculous footwear as akin to a baby deer taking its first steps. I would’ve hit the floor at least five times if she hadn’t been holding me up.
The poor, shocked employee had a mini heart attack every time I went down. I’m really quite impressed with the build quality of those babies. I was sure they were going to break at some point, leaving me to pay for them.
The rest of the afternoon was almost as much fun as scraping my feet to pieces trying to walk in shoes that made me as tall as Dudehead. It was a surprisingly beautiful, sunny day after what was a fairly dismal and rainy Saturday.
We walked past a gym, in front of which were people trying to get passersby to accept free trial memberships. They were super friendly. One of the reps was drawing on another rep’s arm with his pen. The girl let me draw on her other arm in exchange for my information. How could I refuse an offer like that?
@ladyowar likened me to Picasso. That's right. PICASSO.
Hours later, after some dinner, drinks and laughs, we found ourselves in a grocery store, where I ate a tomato. Apparently, I was still hungry. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to eat that tomato, either. Good tomato, though. We also met a really cool dude named Shane, who happens to be a fellow tech guy out of university, working as a web developer. Seriously, how cool are the random people you meet on the street in this city?
You should consider taking the next dare someone throws you. It could be a very liberating experience. And hey, you might just have some fun in the process. So how about telling me about some of the dares you’ve made good on? I know I’m not the only one. Live a little!
2 people have commented. What do you think?You Devious Bastard
Most people appreciate a good prank. Even more people appreciate watching them happen to others. If you’re going to be the one dishing them out, then it’s important that you’re also able to take them as well. We call people who can’t, “sore losers.”
There are few things I enjoy in life more than pulling a prank on a friend. Note: I emphasize friend. I don’t usually subject strangers to my devious ploys. That’s what high fives are for. The great thing about a good prank is that you can sometimes derive the most enjoyment out of the smallest ones. They don’t have to be complicated – just unexpected.
Bonus points if you guess which one is Turkish.
For those of you who don’t know, or follow me on Twitter, Turkish and I work together. He’s a close Italian friend of mine who is 12 feet tall and weighs 945 lbs. And yes, those numbers get bigger and bigger every time I describe him.
So he had this unfortunate habit of always leaving his email logged in at his desk. Naturally, when he left, I couldn’t resist leaving little “surprises” for him to find when he got back. Occasionally, I would open his email inbox, and send utterly ridiculous, nonsensical emails to various contacts in his address book (CC’ing myself, of course, in case anyone replied-to-all, which they often did).
The responses he got back never disappointed. The first couple of times, people thought he was going mad. And he didn’t quite understand what they were going on about when they replied, as he knew nothing of “his” original messages. However, after a while, my reputation started to precede my work, and people recognized the masterpieces for where they truly came from. I started getting emails directly from Turkish’s recipients, thanking me for making them laugh that day. Nice.
For my final piece, I decided to switch things up a bit, and provide some entertainment for his address book in the form of poetry. Keep in mind that poetry is, by no means, my forte. That said, let me know what you think of this novice poet’s work!
Yo. Yo.
I’m the Italian fiend
Suckin cannoli and gettin’ creamed
Nine feet tall, 800 pounds
My love affair with coffee knows no bounds
Hit me up with a laxative
You know my ass is capactive
Rollin down your street in mah Protege fiiiiiive
With my gino beats, nodding mah head as I driiiiive
Rockin my hairy chest like a mediterranean forest
Let it run wild, don’t need to hire no florist
You mess with the family, you gonna get whacked
Don’t even think about it effe, it’s a matter of fact.
For the record, I’m going to point out right now what a great sport Turkish is for taking the hundreds of pranks I’ve thrown at him over the years (like at my grandmother’s funeral) with grace, patience, and a hearty sense of humour. If you’ve been around on Twitter, then you’ve likely read about some of them in the past. Also for the record, he’s gotten me back more than a few times, so our friendship is in no way one-sided.
Talking about former pranks can be almost as fun as actually performing them at the time. I’m looking forward to hearing about some of the fun you’ve had at the expense of some of your friends, or vice versa!
P.S. Turkish, when you read this… Sorry about that picture. It was the best one I could find, I swear.
What’s in a Nickname?
Nicknames are fun. We give people nicknames for different reasons.
A person’s name may be really long or hard to pronounce, and it’s easier to shorten it. Bartholomew turns into “Bart.” Maximillian turns into “Max.” Hrvoje turns into… “Hey… you! *friendly shoulder punch*”
You may not like someone very much. Dude with a popped collar wearing sunglasses inside turns into “Douchebag.” Silly looking white boy wearing pants down to his knees and trying to be a thug turns into “Stupid White Boy.” Whiney guy who panics and makes emergencies out of everything turns into “Placental Gazelle” (don’t ask).
But most often, giving someone a nickname is an expression of familiarity or affection. Everyone else calls your best friend by his first name, but you call him something weird that nobody else understands. A bunch of jocks refer to each other as “Bro.” A woman greets her fiance, her love, with “Pooky” (*CRINGE*).
The only thing I like more than a good nickname is hearing the story behind it. And cheese. But let me tell you about a few of mine. Some of them are really dumb, but I enjoy trading stories.
I call one of my closest friends “Turkish.” Contrary to popular belief, this actually has nothing to do with my former war against the Turkish hackers. It’s a term of endearment. Turkish is the main character in one of my favourite movies, Snatch, played by actor Jason Statham. In the movie, Turkish’s parents meet on a Turkish Airlines plane, which crashed. They survived, had a child, and named him after the plane. So you can see why the nickname would be a term of endearment, as it comes from one of my favourite movies. Turkish often says to me, “Hurry up, I’m hungry, let’s grab lunch.” I reply, “Two minutes, Turkish,” and take five. I sometimes wonder if he realizes this is also a direct quote from the movie.
Turkish has a nickname for me, too: “O’Flaherty.” He says it’s a quote (“You’re a good man, O’Flaherty”) from… somewhere. Where, I don’t know. But I like to think it means he thinks I’m a good man. The feeling’s mutual, mon frere.
I call my best friend “Dudehead.” Nobody else is really allowed to call him that. And I’m not telling you how I came up with it. But I will tell you it was random and stupid. That’s what’s so awesome about it.
You call someone by an awesome yet ridiculous-sounding nickname in front of others, and you always get strange looks. Looks that scream, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” But that’s one of the best parts of having an exclusive nickname for someone, isn’t it? That inside joke between you, that little thing that makes the two of you laugh, and everyone else look at you as though you’ve just sat down to dinner wearing nothing but a thong and a chicken mask.
So I’m dying to hear some stories about some of your nicknames. Care to share?
12 people have commented. What do you think?
