So, my latest internet entertainment these days is coming from the Craigslist personals. I started by answering a couple of ads and was really successful with my first one, but my second one was a total failure, so I posted an ad of my own. That is when the fun began. A few offers to be my Sugar Daddy, one awesome opportunity to get to know an exhibitionist in Concord (its too bad I have no other reason to go to Concord, that could have been a fun errand), and a few fun dates later, I posted another ad.

This time around, I got even more bites on the line, including one of those gun-toting national security types at a government facility nearby. I also had a response this morning from a gentleman by the name of "Hot Desire". He indicated that he was "interested!!!" and with three exclamation points, I knew that this was going to be my soulmate. Just try to stay dry when you read the words of this smoothie:

Hi,


I am not for commitment. Need the passionate hug, kiss and the extremes of bodily pleasure.

I am 31, Indian, brown skin, black hair, sporting a frenchie. Interested in moto sports and soccer. I am as tall as 5' 7 and as light as 176 pounds. :-)

I wish to go for trips to mountains and river sides.

I work as a engineer and earn handsome.


If it interests send a pic.

In other CL excitement, I finally can relate to Pink when she says "I wanna start a fight!", only, I prefer to fight mentally. I had a brilliant spar with a very bright young man who resorted to all of our favorite shaming tactics. I will give him credit for not pulling out the "fat" accusation, but I was waiting for it. Transcript of the fight along with a link to the ad will be sent upon request.

Pet Peeve #437: Lazy students.

In the last 48 hours, I have received four increasingly frantic emails from a student wanting to know not only the titles of the books we will be using in persuasive writing next semester, but also the ISBN numbers.

I know she's trying to order her books from Half.com to avoid paying full price at the book store. I do not begrudge her for that -- I did the same thing in college and, especially, in grad school. What I do begrudge her for is bothering me with something so trivial during finals week when I have a million papers and portfolios to read, grammar exams to correct, and grades to calculate.

It's not as if the information isn't out there. She could trot over to the book store -- at most a 5 minute walk from where ever she is. (Very small campus.) She could look at the bookstore website, which lists the books for each course by both instructor name and section number. She could look on Amazon or Half.com or -- gasp! -- the textbook publisher's website.

I don't have my copies of next semester's books in my office. They're on my desk at home. Frustrated by email #4, I replied that I didn't have the ISBNs handy, but gave her the book titles, the names of the editors, and the edition numbers -- more than sufficient info to look the books up online. (And she could have found all of this out two days ago, when she sent email #1, if she's just taken the 2 minutes she spent to write me looking up the info on the bookstore website instead.)

Well. My cordial and relatively detailed reply was not enough for this girl. Oh no. Within 5 minutes, she had replied with "The website I'm using won't let me look up books without the ISBN so I need you to get those to me a.s.a.p." I called bullshit and asked for the name of the website. She has not responded. I mean...that's just dumb. What business would purposely limit its sales by requiring an ISBN number? It's not like most people have the info on hand when they're book shopping. Can you imagine walking up to an employee at Border's and saying, "Do you have a copy of 978-4130-1031-2 in stock?"

On principle, I am not going to reply to that email even once I get home and have the books in front of me. I refuse to facilitate laziness and do her work for her -- the babying cannot begin before the semester even starts. If she wants to buy her books online, an exceedingly simple task, then she can look up the damn ISBN numbers herself. Or just type the info I kindly provided into Half.com -- I am certain she would be ablel find the books that way.

One of the ways I pass time when I'm subbing as a computer teacher is to catch up on "Best of" in Craigslist - one of the few sites that isn't blocked on the district internet, strangely enough. Anyways, I found this today and had to share. By the way, yes, I was thoroughly disgusted by all that transpired on Election night, minus the bid for Prez. And those of you who enjoy Feministe, there's a photo of Obama's chief speech writer groping a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton while a friend of his "pours beer" down her throat and grabs her hair. Greeeat. Another fucker who likes to put women in their place by reminding them that they are nothing but meat sockets who can be violated at will. Just what I love to support.

Back to the original thought:
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best of craigslist> SF bay area> Lost: My Right To Marry Originally Posted: Wed, 5 Nov

Lost: My Right To Marry

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Date: 2008-11-05, 6:36PM PST


I went to bed early last night and when I woke up, I discovered I'd lost my right to marry. It's pretty easy to recognize--four California Supreme Court justices spotted it several months back, although it took them a long damn time to finally find it. It's in like-new condition--I personally haven't had a chance to use it yet, and was really looking forward to the opportunity. A couple of my friends and family still have theirs, and even enjoy it so much they've used it several times. If you can find it for me, I'd really appreciate getting it back. I'm not sure, but I think the shady gang of thugs who stole it were heading for Utah or maybe Fresno, so please keep an eye out. Thanks.

Student quote of the day: "A high pressure working time is coming to me, even though I am a study lover." This would be a Chinese student writing about his anticipation of finals week.

I love ESL students (and their unintended humor). They have great ideas, and such a difficult time expressing those ideas. I give them a lot of credit. I'd be incredibly frustrated if my shoddy language/vocabulary skills reduced me to sounding like a third grader in my college papers, yet my ESL kids don't seem too bothered. They just want to learn.

Better late than never, I say...