Massive-breasted heiress, 38, seeks ...

April 23, 2005 5:15 AM

The London Review of Bookslands on my doormat twice a month, and is packed with erudite and entertaining essays. But I suspect I am not the only subscriber who turns to the remarkable personals section first.
posted by handee (43 comments total)

I wish there were some way of finding out how many different authors those personals have, and whether any of them have ever got laid for free... but they are works of genius.
posted by apodo at 5:40 AM on April 23, 2005

These people have more wit than your average critically acclaimed author and yet they are single. Makes me despair somewhat...
posted by Termite at 5:47 AM on April 23, 2005

[This is good]

Love the personals.
posted by hardcode at 5:55 AM on April 23, 2005

Good Lord, Ms Dee! There really are only 200 people on the internet!

[ex uly person]
posted by hardcode at 6:04 AM on April 23, 2005

Woman, 36. Likes [...] screwing with your head. It’s not that I don’t like you...

...it's that you're a woman.

</men are assholes>
posted by DaShiv at 6:07 AM on April 23, 2005

Okay, I'm thick. Where's the double entrendre in "Louisiana: A Dream State"? I hate it when I can't decode dirty jokes.
posted by maryh at 6:12 AM on April 23, 2005

When I read things like this, I really love the human race, its so great when everything is so beautifully in plain sight. Excepting the "Louisiana: A Dream State" thing, which, maryh, I didn't get either. sorry. I thought that it might be because a dream state is also one that isn't real but it isn't a double-entendre, just a funny double meaning. That's my guess.
posted by blindsam at 6:30 AM on April 23, 2005

Yeah, it's the funny double meaning. To me, it sorta insinuates that Lousiana is very boring.
posted by graventy at 6:34 AM on April 23, 2005

Reminds me of my own ad of 20 years ago which began: "Bad Catch wants True Love anyway..." and continued to mention that I was "too tall, too skinny...not upwardly mobile....drinks and smokes to excess...". This was to be an antidote to the then-current sort of ad in which all men seemed to claim to "love poetry and long walks on the beach" and to be in touch w/ their feelings. I did receive 6 replies and enjoyed dating one of the respondents who, picking up on my "Bad Catch" theme, went with the fishing notion saying: "Am I beautiful? Well, one man's Mermaid may be another mans's carp!". She was fun.
posted by Hobgoblin at 6:43 AM on April 23, 2005

My favourite, from August 2003:

People who use museum postcards instead of letter–paper; people who own garden composters; ticket collectors who cannot accept the idea of the bloke in the kiosk at the station disappearing to the toilet at the exact time you've arrived to buy your fare; mechanics called Andy who get stroppy over the phone if you call during their lunch hour, fully expecting you to know that they take lunch between 10 and 11 in the morning; Islington intellectuals who have named their children “Billy” or “Eddy” despite knowing full well that they will never spend any time in William Hill's waiting to hear what the going is like at Haydock; people from Belway estates in Swindon who have named their children “Mariella” or “Giles” despite knowing full well that they are going to spend most of their adult lives in William Hill's waiting to hear what the going is like at Haydock; people who shoe–horn obscure French novelists into any conversation; people who take over–sized stroller pushchairs on the Northern Line at rush hour and get shirty when other passengers refuse to dislocate their limbs and fold themselves up in the corner to make room; newspaper supplement journalists who begin every article like they're writing a novel in the hope that a literary agent will snap them up; literary agents who snap up newspaper supplement journalists believing that their opening paragraphs would make an excellent start to a novel; the girl at Superdrug who never tells me how much my items come to but expects me to succumb to the power of her mind and make me look at the little screen on her till instead; postmen who make a concerted effort to bend packages with “do not bend” clearly stamped across the front; people who go to public schools named after German saints and attend Rocky Horror Picture Show–themed leavers' parties at the end of their final term then bore everyone they know for years to come about what a “seriously good larf” it was; Bob Wilson; thirtysomethings who listen to Radiohead, believing that Thom Yorke's depressing introspection has revolutionised the British music scene and made rock energetic once again without realising that Dire Straits fans were saying exactly the same thing about them in the early eighties; people who buy organic mushrooms; people who subscribe to magazines and get excited every time a new one lands on the doormat; people who have doormats; people who applaud the linesman's offside flag; people with espresso machines bought from Index for £19.99 that make you drink the stuff whenever you go round then go on about the difference in quality and how you can “really taste the bean” although it's no different from Mellow Bird's but takes four times as long to produce; people with more than one cat; people who have bought radiator covers; people who frame museum postcards sent by people who use them instead of letter–paper; people who own a copy of Michael Palin's Pole to Pole on DVD. Everybody else write to: man, 37. Box no 16/06.


Found here after much searching.
posted by blag at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2005

I wonder what "stonking pecs" are.
posted by annathea at 8:02 AM on April 23, 2005

Large pectoral muscles?
posted by Bugbread at 8:05 AM on April 23, 2005

something i've been wondering recently - are the ones posted by upper class "agencies" for real or bitter sarcasm? they're so misplaced...
(hmmm, on the link given there aren't any, so perhaps they've given up - i'm a month or two behind, since they take a while to arrive in chile (and i don't seem to get them all, unfortunately))
posted by andrew cooke at 8:12 AM on April 23, 2005

Toilet duties. That’s where you come in – buxom, 22-year-old blonde stereotype not shy of adjusting the surgical stockings of 73-year-old misanthrope with poor bladder control. Failing that, just send care home brochures to Box no. 08/05

wtf?
posted by matteo at 8:22 AM on April 23, 2005

Gotta get MrMoonPie to share the bit o' prose that caught the attention of his babe of a bride...
posted by NortonDC at 8:36 AM on April 23, 2005

"Louisiana: A Dream State" isn't a dirty joke, the double endente is that it sort of implies that Louisiana is actually an halluciantion. The add's a comment on the dryness of English humor and simultaneously on the possibly imaginary state of the Good Catch in England.
posted by hob at 8:40 AM on April 23, 2005

I recently discovered the LRB personals too and fell in love with everyone there. I have had the suspicion they're all written by the same person, but maybe I'm just too pessimistic.

How do you go back in the personals archive?
posted by funambulist at 8:51 AM on April 23, 2005

Article about the LRB personals.
posted by kenko at 9:02 AM on April 23, 2005

> Tolstoy, 34, seeks Anna

This didn't work out very well for Anna the first time around. Will she bite again?
posted by jfuller at 9:03 AM on April 23, 2005

Fantastic. From kenko's link above:

Some chances are once in a lifetime. Not this one, I've been in the last 12 issues. Either I strike gold this time or I become a lesbian. Man, 43.
posted by blag at 9:14 AM on April 23, 2005

I like you because you read magazines with big words. And you’ve got great booblies. I can live without the first. But the second is non-negotiable. Shallow man, 34. When I say ‘shallow’, I mean, damn.

These are some daaaamn good personals.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:17 AM on April 23, 2005

C_D, you beat me to it. I just saw that one, and I was laughing my ass off.
posted by blendor at 9:32 AM on April 23, 2005

sometimes no-one gets the prize, incidentally. i think that's when the advertising editor has had a really bad week.
posted by andrew cooke at 10:07 AM on April 23, 2005

Eric Morecambe, dogs, spring, crispy duck, good dialogue (written and oral), tea, slapstick, Thatcher’s death, vodka, cheek muscles.

Hysterical!

And DaShiv, you know, just a word to the wise: being bitter about women never did attract a higher class of women. Just something to keep in mind. ;)
posted by scody at 11:06 AM on April 23, 2005

This is as gay as I get. Man, 37. Box no. 07/07

I, too, suspect these are a put-on. They're far too uniform in tone, most are reveling in multiple, similar layers of droll, winky-winky sarcasm, etc.

Oh wait, the LONDON Review of Books.

Sorry.
posted by gramschmidt at 11:15 AM on April 23, 2005

Okay, let's show those LRB readers a thing or two about winky-winky sarcasm. If there was a MeFi personals page, what would your ad look like?
posted by Termite at 11:41 AM on April 23, 2005

Yeah that's not London, Ohio gram.

Thanks for the link - these were great.
posted by kavasa at 11:47 AM on April 23, 2005

Reading Metafilter makes me sexy. Why, I've increased a full breast size since plucking down my $5 last November. Man, 32 Box no. 05/01
posted by Monday at 12:06 PM on April 23, 2005 [1 favorite has favorites]

Chomsky seeks Greer

Eeeewwwwwwwww!
posted by QuietDesperation at 12:26 PM on April 23, 2005

blindsam: "I thought that it might be because a dream state is also one that isn't real but it isn't a double-entendre, just a funny double meaning."

Man, "double-entendre" just means "double meaning" in French. It's not necessarily about sex. That's why the Oxford English Dictionary defines it thusly:

"A double meaning; a word or phrase having a double sense, especially as used to convey an indelicate meaning."

Incidentally, it's interesting to me that dozens upon dozens of words that used to be neutral and have sexual shadings are now overtly sexual. See, for example: intercourse, ejaculation, pussy, boner... the list goes on. Strange, no?

On preview: see also hob's comment.
posted by koeselitz at 12:47 PM on April 23, 2005

> My favourite, from August 2003:

Wow. For what it cost to buy a personal ad. that length, he
could have bought himself a brace of hookers.

Paying a vanity publisher might have been cheaper...
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:48 PM on April 23, 2005

"...To me, it sorta insinuates that Lousiana is very boring."

Not from here!
posted by atchafalaya at 1:23 PM on April 23, 2005

That does it. I'm moving to London and dating all of them. Especially the wotmakesyousmile guy. And the shallow one.
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:51 PM on April 23, 2005

koeselitz, I'm aware that a 'double entendre' doesn't need to be dirty, but in this context it could have at least been funny. Louisiana is known -worldwide, even- for quite a number of things; this was just about the blandest anecdote about a state that's anything but bland. The writer of that ad stumbled into a fireworks demonstration with a sparkler and matchbox half full of snake pellets, is all I'm sayin'.
Which maybe makes her plea for sex all the more poignant. Good luck to her.
posted by maryh at 2:03 PM on April 23, 2005

My fave personal ad read (paraphrasing):

"Overweight, unemployed slob seeks MeFi's richest hottie. Color TV a plus."
posted by dobbs at 2:43 PM on April 23, 2005

My favourite, from April 2002:

In the year 2273, dogs will walk on their hind legs and eat at tables with men. The tables will float in the air, propelled by some sort of anti-gravitational force -- assuming there'll still be gravity. Which I doubt very much, because in the year 2128, fish-like creatures will invade the earth and drink its gravity like hot soup. But tomorrow you and I (M, 32) will love each other, and caress our hair like the gentle Koala-Men of Graaaxxux-9. Box no. 06/15.

As a regular reader of both journals, I particularly relish the contrast with the irony-free zone that is the NYRB personal column.

Another funny article about the LRB personals here.
posted by verstegan at 3:36 PM on April 23, 2005

And DaShiv, you know, just a word to the wise: being bitter about women never did attract a higher class of women. Just something to keep in mind. ;)

Attracting them? Are you mad? Reciprocation is the root of the world's ills. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...
posted by DaShiv at 5:04 PM on April 23, 2005

From elsewhere in the LRB Classifieds:

Accommodation offered in exchange for secretarial/collating work, helping poet sort life’s scribbles. Tel: [phone] xxxx
________________________

Published poet needs cleaner with passion for literature/drama. 020 7431 xxxx
________________________

Perhaps I'll place this one:

I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever;
...I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
..And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Renowned poet, bit of a twit, seeks experienced gardner/entomologist for occasional oral and light laundering.
posted by taz at 11:15 PM on April 23, 2005

21 and 34B with no gag reflex needs a fabulously rich older businessman to support equestrian addiction. Single status not a requirement.
posted by po at 12:34 AM on April 24, 2005

I like you because you read magazines with big words. And you’ve got great booblies. I can live without the first. But the second is non-negotiable. Shallow man, 34. When I say ‘shallow’, I mean, damn. Box no. 08/08

hahahaha
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:38 PM on April 24, 2005

Didn't The Erotic Review used to have a wonderful personals section?
posted by dmt at 3:20 PM on April 24, 2005

Actual conversation that occurred many years ago:

Englishman: Where are you from?

Me: Louisiana.

Him: Where is that exactly?

Me: Between Texas and Mississippi.

Him: Can such a place exist?
posted by bluffy at 5:40 PM on April 24, 2005

Sorry in advance for the nerd comment. Does Jerry Fodor ever offer an answer to the implicit (rhetorical) question in the first sentence of his essay (it's linked from the hypertext that says "erudite" in the post)? He wonders why people still read Continental philosophers, but don't read Anglophone-Analytic philosophers.
posted by Wash Jones at 7:18 PM on April 24, 2005