shakespeare had his sonnets. i have love letters to okcupid
Excerpts from actual messages I have sent to unfamiliar women on OKCupid since January.
(to a sweet lady whose "most embarrassing thing to admit in public" was that she cries at the end of Armageddon every time)
Ahem.
You know, for some reason, I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to fall asleep. You know why?
::trollface::
(....)
So. You say you like writing, saving people, baked goods, and knifing things. These are all things I like as well.
Perhaps you are secretly a superhero. Perhaps I am too.
I don't know if I could date someone who has a picture of Mao on her wall...but I'm willing to find out.
Dinner and absurdist historical conversation? My treat.
(to an adventurous spirit who studied abroad in China, listed 250 favorites, loves Princess Bride, and ended her profile with "a little bit of geek, please")
Ni hao, [REDACTED]! I've been meaning to message you forever, but I'm kind of shy about this sort of thing. (Conversations, easy. Breaking the ice, hard!)
(....)
So. Most curious thing first: How little is "a little bit of geek"? Like, reads Wired, has a jailbroken iPhone, can recite hundreds of movie quotes off the top of his head sort of geek? Or Deep Geek, full of years of comics mythology, writing Firefly fanfic in C++, and hiding a massive labor-of-love Comic-Con costume in his closet?
I'll let you guess which one I am. (Hint: Your first guess will be wrong. And now that I've told you that, so will your second. It's the old iocaine powder trick. :] )
(to a stonerette who began her profile with "Just call me Soul Train.")
Hello, Soul Train! You have one of the chillest profiles I've ever read, and not just because you're an ice cream lady and your profile pic has you leaning out of a Mr. Softee truck. (....)
(to a gentle poetess who grew up in the rural Midwest, promises brownie points to anyone who knows what HTML and CSS stand for, loves folk and hip-hop, desires a boyfriend with a sense of humor, and "misses her roots")
Our lives may be driven by similar objects:
A rolling tide of corn leaves.
The trembling, solemn yawp of a single plucked chord.
The warm, syrup-sticky bite of spilled beer on mahogany.
I went to college in Ohio. These things are well known to me.
Are these the roots you speak of? Or do they run deeper?
HyperText Markup Language.
Cascading Style Sheets.
Web designer, I'm guessing?
I used to be a web programmer.
Never again, if I can help it.
Oh dear. This message is far too serious.
Is P. Diddy a man dreaming he's Ke$ha,
or Ke$ha a woman dreaming she's P. Diddy?
Shizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Hello, fellow literary nerd Internet anthropologist who loves The Moth! Either OKCupid is really good at helping people find themselves, or this mirror is unusually clean.
Are you going to the Moth at Southpaw next Monday? Perhaps we could meet for drinks and stories. Heavy on the stories and light on the drinks, if you prefer.
(to a she-troll who answered "I spend a lot of time thinking about...." with "Karl Rove," "Favorite food, TV, movies" with "Which one is Trapped in the Closet?" and "You should message me if...." with "You like my uncle. You can write a good haiku. And you're not ashamed about collecting female body parts.")
Hey, you. Nice uncle.
This is a complete sentence.
See what I did there?
You had me until
"collect female body parts"
Reverse psych creep bait?
You're a clever one.
Maybe we would get along.
Hooray Internet?
Taxonomic note:
Trapped in the Closet is food.
Obviously. (Duh.)
No plans this weekend.
Want to grab some Pad Thai and
talk about Karl Rove?
"Art," she says.
It takes an admirable humility to for an artist to describe her work in quotation marks. :] I wish I could call what I make art, but I'm not sure it even qualifies as "[(*Art?)]"...
Speaking of. Funny story: I was at a party at the Silent Barn in Queens a few months back, and a bunch of guys from Copenhagen were playtesting this new card game they'd come up with called "Fuck You, It's Art." At the beginning of the game players wrote ideas for art games on index cards, which the dealer shuffled into a deck. The dealer then drew cards one at a time, reading each card aloud, and players had to respond by shouting "It's art!" "It's not art!" or "Fuck you, it's art!" Any players whose opinion was in the minority had to take a shot of aquavit. No one ever wins at "Fuck You, It's Art."
That's pretty much how I feel about that kind of thing. (....)
It will never be practical for you to own a dog. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get one.
Hullo. I am the marriage counselor between art and mathematics (they don't always get along). I hate Marshall McLuhan and disagree with everything he's ever written. I love people-watching and I like bagels with cream cheese and lox almost as much as you do.
Perhaps we'd get along. :]
(to a current-generation hipsterette who adores Beat Generation hipster poetry)
"dropping knowledge bombs" oh hell yes
Bad horror, bats, and Faulkner, eh? If you like SARS Wars, attic bats, and Flannery O' Connor (ballsiest lady author of the 1950s!), then heyyyyy you.
(Also you're very pretty. But I imagine you hear that a lot.)
Hooray for people not afraid that other people will think they're crazy. Jack K had the right idea.
And I guess the nice thing about coming full circle to the Beat Generation, the angel-headed hipsters of our own generation starving hysterical naked listening to antifolk in the coffeehouses where Ginsberg used to hang out, is that this time we have the privilege of knowing how this same story ended the first time around.
Anyway. Hello!
"What's for dinner? Outer space."
You, ma'am, are an excellent accidental poet.
And though I can't say I share your love of Marshall McLuhan, Fruity Pebbles, or screaming, I find your passion for such things intriguing, and familiar in spirit if not in substance. And daydreaming, stock footage (and Eisenstein-like montages thereof?), funeral dirges--all underrated. If such things make it into your films, I'd love to see them sometime.
Mediums. Messages. Exciting.
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