Art about cars from Australia, via Autoblog.

…but all too often, when I consider the pattern of my life, I realize that much of my strength is devoted to avoiding any clear perception of what sort of existence I have, so that with luck I don’t think too much about the life I’m leading until it’s over.

I may well have posted this story before. Not sure, not gonna try to search.

When I worked at the newspaper, years ago, we had personals. There were all sorts of weird things about this. We had to reject the many NAMBLA personals, for example, and deal with the outrage of potential child molesters who were denied the opportunity to rent new catamites. We had to deal with the paper’s tradition of free personals about nothing, in which a kind of mini Usenet/LJ of odd characters socialized and fought via mailed 3×5 card and free weekly paper. And then there were the dating personals.

As a free weekly in the pit of sin that was Los Angeles in the 1980s, we pretty much had a category for anything seeking everything else. There was a lot of pervy amusement to be had. Most of it, though, was men seeking women per the usual pattern. After every issue we’d get a torrent of mail that went to any woman at all who advertised. And the men seeking men was a huge moneymaker, since “traditional” personals didn’t accept that at all.

Sometimes we’d have uneven columns and holes in the pasteup. In most sections of the paper we’d run a small house ad or something similar, maybe a freebie for a long time advertiser. In the classifieds section, we filled them up with fake personals.

At first a couple of the women in the production department put in their own personals. This is how we discovered that the same guys send the same letter and the same picture to any woman who advertises at any time, ever. After a few weeks of this we had a “Wall of Shame” in the production room with ten in a row of the same 8×10 glossies and lovelorn notes. The pictures were real “keepers”. I remember one gentleman in a cowboy hat and Speedos in front of his trailer, and another with a Tom Selleck moustache and a combover leaning on a Mercedes. That kind of thing.

And this was born the Great Personals Competition. Anyone who wanted could enter, and write their own fake ad. Whomever received the most responses in the first week won.

I don’t remember most of the ads. I do remember the top two. #2 was courtesy our classifieds guy’s girlfriend:

Buxom blonde twins, 19, seek man for threesome. Pillow fights, tickling, and whatever else follows. Age, looks not important.

That got a tremendous amount of mail, falling out of the box and annoying the secretary. But it wasn’t #1. The winner, the classifieds guy (and talented cartoonist) himself, wrote:

Affectionate but diffident male gymnast, 18, seeks father figure to explore gay lifestyle. Hairy or a bit overweight a plus.

The amount of mail generated was truly heroic. The wall of shame was entirely covered with hopeful men, straight and gay, thinking they’d hit the motherlode of fantasy fulfillment. And then we all went downstairs to the Two Guys from Italy and drank, because that’s what we did there.

I have just purchased two tickets to the Gang of Four show in San Francisco on May 2.

So no matter what else, I’ll be in SF that weekend. This gets me out of town. WOOT.

The emu will peck, as springheel_jack can verify.

Tonight I saw someone that I sort of know, but she doesn’t know me at all.

This is because she is a friend-of-a-friend of mine, so I know a few things about her and I’ve met her very briefly once. But more importantly, it’s because she’s in my “Myspace” network, so the other day about ten mouse clicks into bored myspacery I ran across her page there, including her photos.

And this is why I was standing in line behind someone tonight thinking “I know just how good she looks in her underwear, but she doesn’t know that I know that”.

It must be really neat being a stalker nowadays.

NO.

Worst dating service. Ever.

I just celebrated Crapmas a day light by opening up a package with scissors and neatly cutting into the shoulder of a t-shirt so that the left shoulder on top has a nice long slit in it. I don’t want to do the Flashdance thing, and the shirt is not replaceable (end of a limited run). Anyone locally here good enough at sewing to repair this for me?

If not I’ll just take it to the dry cleaners and get them to do it.

Bat at Home Depot Found to Have Rabies

From the Los Angeles Times:

A bat has tested positive for rabies and health officials are asking anyone who came in contact with it at a Home Depot to call the county’s Animal Care Services.

The bat was found Tuesday evening in the outdoor garden area of the home improvement store on Warner Avenue, authorities said. Tests confirmed Friday that it was rabid.

Authorities requested that anyone who came in contact with the bat call (714) 935-6106. They also urged customers who took children to the store Tuesday to ask them if they saw or touched the bat. Rabies can be transmitted by a bite.

Is there any evidence that this frienditto thing steals auth info? I mean evidence rather than shrieking. I can’t find any.