Craigslist Files #25

Tom Waits wrote a song called "Come On Up To The House" that sounds like some kind of drunken, downtrodden spiritual, the kind of hymn you might hear in a run-down church where all the parishioners are failed, middle-aged clowns with morphine addictions. Waits repeats the title at the end of every line, urging the broken souls of the world to congregate and decompress together on common ground. Maybe he's talking about a place of worship, maybe a local tavern. It doesn't matter what "the house" is, so long as we come together to find solace in community. This is all just a really roundabout way of saying that I had to visit the craigslist page for Mobile, Alabama.

See, craigslist is an ever-expanding cyber-sprawl where most of the storefronts have nothing but racks of rotting meat and cardboard cut-outs cruelly mimicking better things than you will ever find in the businesses themselves. Walking along that fetid, never-ending avenue, I sometimes feel a weight on my spirit that must be lifted. So, as Tom Waits says, I gotta come on up to the house. For me, "the house" is the reassurance that if I go to the craigslist page for a real-world location that couldn't possibly be better than the worst of craigslist itself, I will most assuredly find the horrible inverse of gold. And indeed I did. Observe, the Activities page for Mobile, Alabama.

Totally New Alternative Dating Site

They don't want relationships They dont want dinner and a movie click here to browse through photos of real men & women in your area that only want 1 thing: SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT's 100% FREE Get Started With Your Free Profile Here
(large gap)
Once he'd finished, he rolled over, pulling me on top of him. We fell asleep like that. His knot wouldn't

Sure, this generic hook-up site ad could appear in any location, but how about that bizarre narrative fragment at the end? I feel compelled to finish it myself. So, let's see. If I were writing a story about anonymous Internet sex in the buttcrack of Alabama... "(His knot wouldn't) come loose on the torn denim he used to bind my hands behind my back. I can't believe I thought this was a good idea, meeting a stranger on a website with such poor grammar. But it was FREE. How could I pass it up? I hope they put something flattering on my tombstone."

lawnmower racing anyone wanna go with

going racing tonight its fun and cheap only 5 dollars to get in give me a shout if you wanna go (phone number)

Ya know, The South, I really didn't want to believe all those rumors I heard about you. I saw this ad and I thought to myself, "This has got to be fake or a joke. Human beings don't actually do things like this". But then I did some research and confirmed that, yes, there are whole communities of people who get together to race their rider mowers. I mean, I grew up in Ohio. That's not exactly a great bastion of cosmopolitan lifestyles. Still, lawn mower racing? Congratulations, Alabama. You just depressed me from thousands of miles away.

Beauty Pageant

Miss Liberty Pageant – June 27, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Accepting Contestants
Girls ages 0-18
Boys ages 0-6
If interested, e-mail for more details

Where to begin? Alright, let's go for obvious. The wording of this ad suggests that there is one pageant, the Miss Liberty Pageant, that accepts a very broad demographic of contestants. The rational part of my mind knows that there must be some sort of division system to keep people from entering their 4-year-old sons in something called the Miss Liberty Pageant, but then again the rational part of my mind didn't believe people would organize lawn mower races, either. Also, the absurdist in me loves the idea of forcing girls as young as infants to compete with girls as old as 18.

Thanks, Alabama. I feel simultaneously better and yet worse for coming on up to your house.