The Golden Age of Fake Craigslist Personals

Good day! It's been a year now, & I just panicked because I was worried that Yahoo mail had deleted my "t_____" mail account, thus loosing all of the inspired responses from the phony Craigslist personal I posted in April of 2007. But they're still there! So, for the next week, I will slowly weed thru the several hundred & post some excerpts, preserved for posterity for their literary excellence.

A year ago, I was working long hours at a slow bookstore, so posting some fake personal ads, for the bemusement of our wallowing boredoms, seemed like a good idea. I had talked to a girl who said she got fifty responses in twenty-four hours. I challenged her that I could create a girl who could double that. I stole a picture from some poor stranger's MySpace, which I would love to post here, but it's a small world & I feel bad. Basically, it was a cute blond 23-year-old bending over a pool table, a fairly amateur, somewhat vague & fuzzy picture. This fictional creation, named Nevaeh Smithridge, had a whole back-story, some of which will seep out thru her follow-up e-mails. The original post:

all my friends started sleeping at night - 23 (mission district)

hey boys

im on the rebound after a terible love "rectangle"(ha!) why is everyone so boring in this city? my friends used to go out like every night and now there all like ive got to work for monsanto at 6 am. im like ill still be drinking tequila at six am bitch. i moved to the city two years ago (never to return to salt lake again cept for one of my stupid familys uncountable weddings). hoping to not remember my 20s very well. looking for a cute guys that don't pass out from fifteen shots or less. no short guys or computer nurds.

me: guys check me out on the n judah, but its hard not to with what i wear to work lol. i can watch napoleon dynamite a hundred more times if asked too. my five cd changer right now has too short, aaliyah, sublime, kanye west, and mos def (may he rest in peace the motherfucker). 5'7, blond, body made for dancing, up your ass.

you: steady income, no redheads, no opera, preferably tall and cares about his body, but not enough to not abuse it with shots of everclear. pool or darts. no vegetarians, yes yes yes good dancers. tall a plus. tween 24-34.

Let it be known that two hundred lonely men wrote her in less than twenty-four hours! I still feel sad for some of the nicer ones, but the vast majority of boys who respond to that, I assumed, wouldn't be too nice. Surprisingly, most lived outside of San Francisco, there were many replies from notably short men, from redheads, from vegetarians, from men over 34, from non-drinkers! I don't quite get why you'd respond to a personal if you are far off from what she's looking for...? Only two noted that Mos Def is among the living. Many, many pictures of studly guys, showing their muscles, a few penis-pics, more than a dozen with their motorcycle. For instance:

i am a lover of life i like everything and anything i am in to motorcycles as i think u know already i love music any and all kinds from rock and heavy metal to hip hop and slow dance with the right person i am very playful caring kind very loving who was married for 16 year faithfully till i found out that she had benn cheating on me for the last three years that is a deal breaker in my eyes i believe that people should be straight up and not play games and right now i am in search of my soulmate but friends our cool too which one our you how about that for a ending. in your court now.
thanks

P.S you can call me any time you like tonight would be great i live alone and i have a 9 year daughter who stays with me every other wekend i hope you and your son is having a great easter and i will talk to you soon [phone number]

Included was a picture of a portly man in front of a huge black car with huge tires. "You and your son"???

Now! Stay tuned to our weblog, & I'll post some more responses.... AND the e-mail she wrote back to a hundred lucky men.