Periodicals can be sublime sometimes.
Readers of this esteemed online weblog may or may not be familiar with the New York Review of Books, a major publication in the academic world covering books, art, and world affairs. I received an institutional discount due to my affiliation with the university and have been receiving it over the past year. It is very useful for keeping track of new publications and for seeing what the East Coast intelligentsia thinks about things. Needless to say, it is pretty uniform in its undying hatred for all things relating to the current administration.
It also provides a great source of comedy in the form of the New York Review of Books personal ads. About 1/4 of the classified ads in the publications are devoted to helping its readers find each other. Many of them like to use adjectives excessively. I know that you can find humor in ANY form of personal ad, but these might be my favorite.
Take the most outstanding example from this month:
"Spiritual, Beautiful, Artistic, ballroom, self-realized, charitable, gentle, Jewish PhD., Manhattan, occasional herpes. You: single, evolved to 73. Photo helpful, fingerprints optional."
Where to begin. I guess the reader should be grateful that this person decided to let us know, up front, that they have occasional herpes. I have a deep and burning desire for someone to read this and form a band, or a track on their next hip-hop album, called occasional herpes. It really just rolls right off your tongue. Occasional herpes. No word yet on if you have to have an occasional commitment to this person when the occasional herpes are not active.
Also, what does it mean "evolved to 73?" Maybe I'm only evolved to a number lower, or that refers to a street near which she lives or a neighborhood. Who knows. Fingerprints optional....that leaves this person open to felons who don't mind occasional herpes.
Number two on the comedy front is a very short ad:
"Married Seattle Woman wants very discreet affair with Jewish man, aged 35-65."
There are two different ways you could take this. One, this person is not confined by the traditional bounds of matrimony and is willing to go back on her commitment to her husband, but by golly it is against her religion to cheat outside of her faith. How screwed up is that? An affair with a Catholic or a Hindu would be too intolerable but somehow it is ok if the person is Jewish? A Methodist is too much to take, but a Jewish tryst is ok. Weird.
The second way is that this woman is married to a hopeless anti-Semite and she has grown tired of her husband's devotion to the Aryan race and wants to cheat on him in a way he can never forget. That would make a good plot in a short story, but I don't know how well it will play out in real life. Keep your eyes peeled to the Post-Intelligencer for the results of this one.
The bronze for most humorous ad comes to us this month from out of nowhere:
"Free Trip to Haiti and/or India with NYC-based adventure traveler, journalist, hotel owner. Must bring daughter, 15. Letter and photograph please.
I know that sometimes I am not the clearest communicator in the world, and I also understand that you have to try to fit a lot of words in short spaces in these ads to save money, but does this guy mean that you must bring your 15 year old daughter??? I saw a report on ABC News other night that Haiti had a notorious child slavery market....does this request have something to do with that? Why not say "...hotel owner and his 15 year old daughter?" It would be just as many words and a lot more effective.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Unintentional Comedy
1 comment:
Jake likes to talk at length about the conspiracy to soften the stigma of having the herp, which is often evident in Craigslist personal ads in which the poster makes it clear they are afflicted with the most common of all STDs. I'm pretty shocked to see it has bled over to the upper-class ads. I agree with Jake that it's pretty fucking disgusting and that there is no call for normalizing this shit. You fucked up and got warts on your junk, you deal with it. Don't drag others into this.
Also, is their PhD Jewish, do they have a PhD in "Jewish," or are they a Jew with a PhD? Maybe they've got the syph, too, and it's fucked up their head.
It seems personal ads have some sort of codewords and internal language that regular users understand; for example, on Craiglist, girls that proclaim to "speak greek" are letting you know that they do anal. "Evolved to 73" and "must bring daughter, 15" both seem like they may be code for something else, although I don't know what. They may just mean "I want someone at least 73-years old" and "I have to bring my 15-year old daughter with me" but those are both fairly sinister either way. The trip to Haiti ad isn't very clear because I'm not entirely sure if it's saying "i'm going to Haiti and I want someone to come with me" or if it's saying "i'm going to Haiti and I need somewhere to stay."
I do like the idea that the wife of a virulently anti-Semitic man is planning the ultimate betrayal. In fact, I think that's probably a greater possibility than her doing her cheating intra-faith or having a Jewish-male fetish.
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