Awwwwww...
An interesting day at the Rainbow Bridge.
Rainbow Bridge is a place of both peace and anticipation as departed pets await their beloved owners. There are plenty of things to keep them contented while they wait: trees you can't get stuck in, endless meadows, splashing streams, thickets perfect to hide in for pounce-attack games.
But one day the residents noticed some rather...unusual newcomers arrive.
The koalas and the kangaroos slipped in rather quietly, but then came the bearded dragons, the skinks and the goannas. The influx of snakes startled an entire family of cats up a tree. Pythons, cobras, tiger snakes, brown snakes, and even fierce snakes. There were so many at one point, it seemed the ground itself was alive with writhing. A burly wombat shouldered his way through the crowd and plopped down in a
shady spot, barely missing a Jack Russell terrier who yapped indignantly as he abandoned his position.
And then the crocodiles showed up.
Finally, a Great Dane managed to get up enough nerve to approach one of the reptilian giants.
"Um....excuse me," he said hesitantly. "But why are you all here?"
The croc dropped her jaw and laughed. "Same as you, mate," she said. "Waitin' for someone who loved us."
The dogs, cats, gerbils, and other "typical pets" looked at each other in confusion, then at the plethora of weird, ugly, and downright deadly creatures assembled. Who on Earth could possibly love some of those faces?
"I see him!" shouted a green mamba from his vantage point in one of the trees. A cacophony of squeaks, hisses, bellows, and roars erupted as the mob surged forward toward a lone human walking across the field toward the bridge. The other animals managed to catch a glimpse of him before he was overwhelmed by the crowd.
"CRIKEY!" he shouted joyously right before he was bowled over by the wombat.
"Well I'll be," said a Persian as she tidied up her fur. "It's that Aussie my human liked to watch on TV. Had to be the craziest human on the whole planet."
"Oh, please," remarked a echidna as he hurried by. "Is it really that crazy to passionately love something God made?"
And for some entertainment...
Here's my subsequent Craigslist post:
Upon posting my first w4m CL personal ad, I've received upwards of 500 emails (and still counting). Only 10% of these emails I read more than once and kept in my inbox for further perusal. Here are some tips for the kind of people who were part of the 90% whose messages I immediately sent to my trash bin.
For those of you with short attention spans, here's the most important one :
Read the ad, and respond accordingly.This means:
- If I use paragraphs, please use paragraphs.
- If I capitalize words and spell "you" out, please do the same.
- If I d0n't type like this, d0n't think it's t0tally c00l f0r y0u to type like this.
- ..oR tHiS, fOr tHaT mAtTer.
- I'm not an idiot, I can tell if you're copying and pasting a response. (Mentioning that you like hitting up bars and clubs when I mentioned very specifically that I don't, is a clue.) Since you're probably answering ~20 ads anyway, I don't feel too bad about deleting your message.
- Same thing about MySpace profile plugs. If you don't want to bother telling me about yourself, obviously I'm not worth your time.
- If I do not list ideal male physical attributes, don't send me a photo of yourself shirtless.
- If I do not mention sex, don't send me a picture of your peen.
And other random notes for consideration:
- Just because I describe myself as ethnicity A, doesn't mean that my parents were born in country A, or that I particularly identify with being from country A. Therefore, writing things like "women from country B are too materialistic for me" doesn't come across so well when my mother was born in country B. Mentioning that you have/haven't dated girls of ethnicity A isn't winning points with me either. It gives off the impression that I am just "girl from country A" to you.
- I have no idea why guys think it's creative to describe themselves as cars, but it's not. Maybe you're trying to emulate e.e. cummings, but you're failing. And failing miserably, believe me.
- Looking at pictures of guys trying to be macho and serious is getting rather morose. What's the deal with guys and smiles?
And now here are a few tips for those of you posting ads:
- Take an honest look at yourself. Lamenting the lack of depth and personality while looking for a guy who is 6'2", well-dressed, has beautiful hands, and six-pack abs doesn't quite speak very favorably about you.
- Trying to market yourself to the entirety of the male masses probably doesn't work in your favor either. It's almost hilarious, going through other ads and seeing how homogenous they all are, complete with cleavage/ass/leg photos. The nice and decent guys (presumably, the ones you're looking for) probably aren't going to answer your ad. I don't really see what the need for that kind of marketing is either - I made a conscious effort to narrow down my audience to a small niche (no cleavage, no ass, no leg, no mention of sex, no drinking, no going out on the town), but I still received 500+ emails.
Sure, 90% of them were crap, but the 10% that were nice and sincere makes it all worth it. And that's still 50 emails...
My faith in the male species has been restored
So I posted a w4m ad on Craigslist, and...let me just say I'm glad that my listing expired last night. :P I've gotten some very nice responses, and a particularly low number of shady emails (which included one married guy ew). Most of what I've deleted were emails which were obviously copied and pasted, or from guys who didn't know how to write correctly.
Yesterday Vicky sends me
this link, about someone who faked a hardcore w4m ad and published every one of the responses (including personal information), later asking people on the internet to identify the respondents. (Idiot.)
What really got me was the number of responses he apparently received in 24 hours: 178.
I received exactly
400 emails in the same amount of time. (Try THAT for a so-called Craigslist experiment, LOL.) So, there are apparently more guys looking for nerdy, articulate girls rather than guys looking for quick sex. Glory hallelujah.
