The Most Important Literary Journal of Our Time

is craigslist. I've had theories about this for a while, but today they were pretty much proven.

Of course craigslist is great for all the unintentional humor of some poor soul, known to history only as fateiswithyou@aol.com, trying to sell his pet hairless rats. The Best Of section, though, is full of posts that are pure creative energy, written for no actual useful purpose. (Ok, lots of them lame jokes and rip-offs of previous entries...as with thrift shopping, one must love the hunt).

This is one of my recent favorites:

who put the dead bird in my mailbox? - w4m
Reply to:
Date: 2008-04-20, 12:56PM

a) how did you get into my mailbox in the first place, it is locked
b) did you kill the bird
c) it died horribly, that much was clear
d) you're psycho
e) do I know you
f) if I do know you I don't want to know you
g) if I don't know you, what did I do to inspire you to put a dead bird in my mailbox
h) I don't know how to disinfect a mailbox from a dead bird, I'm worried about diseases and have used five different kinds of cleaner but still feel like the bird's still in there still and like my bills and my catalogues and my coupons have dead bird on them
i) it was a hummingbird, I looked it up - they don't even live in New York - this is so f*ing psycho, I can't believe this
j) are you the mailman?
k) I'm always nice to the mailman
l) the super didn't care when I told him what happened
m) the neighbors didn't care either
n) do you have some kind of problem with birds
o) don't put anything else in my mailbox
p) unless it's an apology
q) no, I take that back, I don't even want an apology
r) what am I supposed to do with this bird - it's in bubblewrap in a bag in a shoebox in the freezer right now - am I supposed to bury it - where? how? in a construction site where they've jackhammered through the concrete - where is a person supposed to bury things in this city?
s) I could drop it in the Gowanus canal, but that seems undignified
t) I could drop it in the ocean, but the ocean is so big and it is such a small bird
u) I could drop it in the toilet but it would probably get stuck
v) I hear this whirring around my ears every time I go to the mailbox and I'm pretty sure it's ghost bird, and I'm all "it wasn't me that killed you, bird!" but still the whirring doesn't go away until I get to the stairwell
w) am I supposed to eat it - maybe you were trying to feed me - don't you know I'm a vegetarian
x) if this was Ricky, I'm gonna beat your ass, mama told you stop bothering the zoo
y) if this was Gina, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how many times I gotta say I'm sorry
z) I could drop it off the roof, maybe it will reincarnate while falling and I can start reading my mail again

It kind of breaks down at the end, but I guess the author really wanted to go with the alphabet thing. Based on the fact that the location is listed as Crown Heights in Brooklyn, let's assume that this was written by a young artsy type who accessorizes well and perhaps has ambitions. Now, back in aught-one or -two, such a person would have been submitting their cryptic short pieces to McSweeney's Internet Tendency (oh heyyy... did i just do that oh yes i did). It's an interesting trade-off between prestige, such as it is, and sheer number of people who might read the anonymous thing you wrote -- the CL fact sheet claims it's the 8th most-read English language website, with 40 million users per month. Not exactly the community forum for furries and nerds that it once was.

Today I saw something while browsing the Missed Connections that I hadn't seen before -- a bald-faced attempt to get in the Best Of, written by some Carnegie Mellon "grad student" that I highly suspect is actually a freshman or sophomore. (Then it would confirm my thesis that pretentious 18 year olds are the most direct cultural barometers.)

It isn't exactly comedic gold, but made me snort in the library today and half-consider sending the guy an email, out of air mattress solidarity if nothing else (though I have in fact obtained a real bed, my back has yet to fully recover). Maybe his post will make it to the Best Of, and then I will email him and ask how it feels, and why he stayed up til 2 in the morning writing such a thing, and why does anyone write anything, and why is reading craigslist more interesting than 90% of short stories I've tried to read lately...