The Impersonals

Bohemian wannabe seeks woman under 40

Bohemian wannabe seeks woman under 40. I engage in watching "BattleBots," "Star Trek" reruns, getting high off triple espressos, and other such pathetic activities that men without mates fall victim to. (Regarding the espresso, I am seeking help with this by going to daily EA (Espresso Anonymous) meetings, yet I still have not reached the point where I've acknowledged that I have a problem.). I also read a lot of 50's crime fiction and have recently written my first screenplay. I play way too much softball. I like Fish 'n Chips, Frisbee throwing, and good conversation. I'm basically a quiet person and for the most part, enjoy quieter, non-jarring activities. Although I am not involved with any type of political activism, my political positions are left-wing. (I'll probably only get responses from undercover CIA agents now -- I hope they at least buy me expensive dinners and spoil me with garish gifts at the taxpayer's expense.) This is a pretty lofty goal, so I'm not making it a requirement, but I prefer someone who leans left. I need someone who is intelligent and thinks freely. You should be reasonably beautiful (at least to me). I require a photo in your "initial" response. I have a strong preference for artists. I want to be with someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously and wants more out of life than acquiring "stuff" and attaining social status. Alright, here comes the small print: Although I don't have an issue with monogamy, I have no desire at this point to marry or live with anyone, especially with a woman with children. At the moment, I have the means to get by, but don't have a lot of money. No "involved" women. And no smokers. I used to smoke and it's just too tempting to be around all that sweet smoke. Equal Opportunity Seeker of Women. You will not be discriminated against on the basis of your race, religion, or cultural affiliation. Gypsies may however receive preferential treatment.

I ran this personal ad for a few months, getting about 100 responses. I replied to none of the responses. Basically, I got 4 different types of responses, described below:

Legitimate responses

5% of the responses were legitimate. In general they were too terse and had bad grammar and spelling. None included a photo as I requested. In fact some of the women were a little indignant that I even asked for a photo. I would not have been a harsh judge of them aesthetically, and I don't think it's too much to ask in the 21st century for a simple scanned photo. As for the poor grammar of these responses, I am quite willing to forgive that. English grammar is mind-boggling. Anyone who reads my writing who knows grammar, knows that my grammar is pretty shaky. The poor spelling on the other hand, is, in my opinion, inexcusable, as you could check your spelling in a word processor before replying to a personal ad. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I just can't take anyone seriously who cannot at least try to present themselfs in a professional manner.

Complementary responses

5% of the responses were in this category. The scam responses which I describe below annoyed me, but these type of responses really angered me. Basically, people in this category sent me terse messages saying that my ad was tremendously great and amongst the funniest personal ads they have ever seen. That is all they said. They expressed no interested in getting to know me better. In my younger days, I dreamed of being a writer. And I'd send stories out to good journals and once in a while the editor would say, "very funny," or some kinda shit like that. And I'm thinking, Asshole, if it's so funny -- if it's so goddamn funny that it moved you to take the extra effort to tell me it's so funny, well why in the hell don't you publish the thing? Isn't funny good enough, or does my shit have to be bourgeois as well in order to fit into your narrow little world. It's the same thing with the personals I guess. If I'm so goddamn funny, then why am I not good enough for them? Rationally I know they're just being nice, but if they think my personal ad is such a fun fucking read then they should offer me money to publish it instead of wasting my time with their praise.

30% of the responses were from women claiming to live outside of my country, the United States. Most claimed to be from Eastern Europe. Sometimes they had so-called agencies representing them. The responses were generic, like the porn responses described below, so it's unlikely they even read my ad. I'm sure this is some type of scam. I just haven't figured out what exactly the scam is. Below are some examples:

For the sake of privacy I altered Ludmila's email address (above) in the off chance that she is for real. I love how she starts out with: "Hello, Mysterious Knight!" I can't think of anything less descriptive of me. Knight? Mysterious? You gotta be kidding? I'm a poor, lonely loser living in public housing. This woman, if she does exist, really has to wake up to reality. No sane man in the U.S. is going to mail-order her out of her misery.

60% of my responses came from pornographers. With possible exception of tailgaters (I'm referring to the bastards who follow too close when you're driving) , bill collectors, IRS workers, and the production staff of "Barney," pornographers are the most disgusting people on the planet. The vast majority of pornographic responses to my ad were generic, banal messages, which pathetically attempted to mislead me into thinking they were from real women looking for sex. The web sites of these pornographers were all garishly designed and full of what I suspect to be pirated porn. Below are examples of porn responses.

It's pretty obvious that the response above is a covert porno response. The "sexual attitude" is the biggest tip-off. This is sent from yahoo id cands446. If you look up the profile, you will find a link to a web site with a bunch of teenage girls poking fingers into their vaginas. What most pornographers don't understand is that this kind of shit is grotesque, not sexy.

It's remarkable how the two individuals words "have" and "some" are now conjoined to form one complete word -- "havesome." His true genius however, is revealed by his use of the word -- "extinuating." What an incredible concept, making up your own words. I mean, why even bother to wait for words to appear in the dictionary before using them? Itis just themost moogoopalific idea Iveever shmegergled.

I could imagine this guy pushing porn in a TV commercial similar to the way they peddle crap in those cheap TV commercials from discount warehouses. The commercial would go something like this:

Never whack off without fodder again!
For the price of one porn site, you get 28 porn sites!
Wow!
That's 20,500+ pictures!
And it's all gotta go!
Good God, get me to a mental hospital...
The prices are insane!!!

A few weeks after posting my personal ad it became evident that I wasn't going to get anywhere. But at least, I thought, I could save the responses and make this dumb little story about my experience. The experience was not however shocking enough. Even the banality of the pornographic responses doesn't really cut the mustard. What I wanted was some real, honest-to-goodness hate responses from my personal ad so that I could publish them here for shock value.

I was somewhat surprised that the statement in the personal ad about being "left-wing" didn't attract a right-wing nut to send me a hate response. I thought that perhaps if I added the fact that I'm Jewish in the biographical information that accompanies the ad, it might be enough to prompt a Nazi to call me a Commie kike. At a bare minimum I wanted someone to call me a hook nose, bagel eater. I actually am Jewish, yet had been classifying myself in the biographical information as an atheist because I think of myself as more an atheist than a Jew. Unfortunately, when I changed my designation from atheist to Jew, it didn't foster any hate responses. This absence of anti-Semitic hate almost made me nostalgic for my boyhood days when children angrily asserted that I killed Jesus. Oh, the good ol' days...