Unclear on the Craigslist concept

The casual encounters section is what it sounds like. It’s for people looking to hook up and share bodily fluids, some of whom don’t even expect money in exchange. Kind of a fun place to lurk if you enjoy snooping on the more tawdry side of the singles scene.

And then there’s

Charming girl seeks prince… – w4m – 28

which ordinarily would lead in to a plea for someone who can go all night. Instead,

I am a Orthodox Jewish female seeking the same in a older Jewish male. I am very conservative and traditional in keeping a jewish home. I do keep Kosher always and seeking marriage and to start a family.

This poor woman. What’s she going to do when guys by the dozen start emailing her pictures of their unkosher meat?

D.

Mother of all Emo

Natasha was the ultimate Goth chick. If it weren’t for her Herman Munster head, she’d have put some filthy notions into my prepubescent brain.

D.

You know what they oughta do?

It seems like our government is reactive and not proactive with respect to terrorism. Some guy hides explosives in his shoes and now we all have to take off our damned shoes at the airport. This most recent guy hides explosives in his underwear and now they’re strip-searching folks in Nigeria. And boy are the Nigerians pissed about it.

Remember Robert Redford’s job in Three Days of the Condor? He was a reader. His task was to skim through all manner of thrillers and determine if there were any ideas or themes that might be of interest to his CIA handlers. This seems rather inefficient, though, because you’re wading through a sea of published novels to find the occasional interesting tidbit . . . and the fact that they are PUBLISHED novels strikes me as an unwanted filter, such that you will only find plots that have some commercial appeal (at least in the mind of one publisher).

A book proposal featuring an earnest young man strapping explosives to his nut sack would not, IMHO, go far. And yet it happened.

So here’s my idea: our government should hire writers of marginal talent to serve as professional brainstormers. What they would do all day long is generate ideas for terrorist schemes against the United States. They would have to be marginally talented writers because those professional authors are too used to thinking, “Gee, will this sell?” to come up with any really rotten ideas. But take some guy who has published a couple of short stories in some lesser known zines but can’t manage to land an agent, let alone get his book published, and he’d be a wellspring for the half-baked ideas of which these terrorists seem so fond.

I’m not talking about me, mind you. I’m happy with my job. But I suspect there are a lot of writers like me who actually need the work.

There would doubtless be some unintended consequences. I hate to think what DHS would do with a plot about female suicide bombers hiding plastique in their breast implants.

D.

What the Oughts wrought

The Oughts brought us the iPod (2001),

and YouTube (2005),

Hard to believe there was life before YouTube. The Oughts wrought the Wii (2006), the domination of cell phones over landlines, the rise of the GPS . . . and Octomom.

Just. Plain. Wrong.

While we’re on the topic of fertility, the Oughts wrought Duggars #12-19 (Jason through Josie).

The Oughts wrought 9/11, Chimpie and WMD, Darth Cheney and his shotgun, meltdowns and bailouts, Katrina and Gitmo.

And the Oughts did not wrought blogging, since Open Diary launched in ’98, Live Journal in ’99, and blogger.com in ’99. But the Oughts did wrought this blog, which turns five in March 2010.

I know I’m forgetting a few million other things the Oughts wrought.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

D.

Say what?

Jake and I made a buy-toys-for-the-underprivileged run to Toys R Us tonight. We bought some really neat building blocks as a boy present and a Chimera Barbie doll for a girl present. Really had to resist the urge to buy the blocks for BOTH the boy and the girl, since I think it’s terribly unfair that girls get all the boring dolls while boys get presents they can DO stuff with, but it’s not like we know these kids. And, face it, most five-year-old girls would look at wooden blocks (no matter how cool) and say, Blocks?

We were rung up by a young woman who looked about seventeen, and while she was helping us, a young man of similar age leaned over and said something to her. She said, “I’m sorry, but I have a boyfriend!” He said “No,” repeated himself, and she said, “Oh, they can help you with that at customer service.”

I’m wondering what he asked her. Maybe, “Do you have something real flashy that’s fun to play with?”

Oh, but it was murder on the road today. We now live in an area where folks don’t know how to drive in the rain. The freeway was gridlocked (which rarely happens here, even in rush hour) so we took surface streets home, and that was almost as bad.

When’s someone gonna come up with a teleporter?

D.

The hots

Beyond my comprehension: the nerve of People magazine declaring someone, anyone, the sexiest man alive. Maybe it’s just the paradox that one woman’s hottie is another woman’s slime bucket. To wit,

Um.

No, really, I overheard some women at work talking about it, and words like “greasy” and “slimy” were tossed around with abandon. And People just picked Depp for SMA back in 2003. Look at this list, does this make any sense at all?

1985 – Mel Gibson, 29 – First person chosen
1986 – Mark Harmon, 34
1987 – Harry Hamlin, 35
1988 – John F. Kennedy Jr., 27 – longest gap between selections (eighteen months); only winner now deceased; youngest winner. Only non actor to win.
1989 – Sean Connery, 59 – oldest winner
1990 – Tom Cruise, 28
1991 – Patrick Swayze, 39
1992 – Nick Nolte, 51
1993 – Richard Gere, 44 & Cindy Crawford, 27 – People took a one-year hiatus from Sexiest Man and instead awarded Sexiest Couple
1995 – Brad Pitt, 31 – first of two awards
1996 – Denzel Washington, 41 – first and only African American winner
1997 – George Clooney, 36
1998 – Harrison Ford, 56
1999 – Richard Gere, 50 – first two-time winner (previous win was shared)
2000 – Brad Pitt, 36 – first solo two-time winner
2001 – Pierce Brosnan, 48
2002 – Ben Affleck, 30
2003 – Johnny Depp, 40
2004 – Jude Law, 31 – youngest British winner
2005 – Matthew McConaughey, 36
2006 – George Clooney, 45
2007 – Matt Damon, 37

Crazy people are overrepresented (Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson). And some of these are just plain sad. Harry Hamlin? Nick Nolte?

Dude!

So maybe it’s not a physical thing. Like Tracy was saying in her comment to the Tiger Woods post, maybe it’s all about fame. I mean there must be some reason why groupies find people like Steven Tyler irresistible.

Erm.

Looks like the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills had his way with the man.

Sex appeal is so much easier to understand with women than with men.

D.

What Tiger proves

I say Tiger Woods proves that if a guy can get any woman he wants to sleep with him, he will.

Karen says that the women who slept with him were skanks who were only interested in his money.

Discuss.

D.

That’s totally what I want to know.

The scary thing is, my son claims this makes sense in context.

Good lord, now I’m hungry for wolf kebab.

D.