Craigslist Ads We Didn't Publish

So we’re looking to move very shortly here, and despite the fact that leaving our office may drain us of the bitter fuel that keeps us going, as well as the time that we have in a typical work day to write for this blog (also money), it’s time to move on. In the course of our quest for relocation, we’ve been bumming around Craigslist looking for places to rent and potential third roommates to join this sainted pair. Since we assume you’re familiar with the internet, you know what a fucking mess of a situation the “housing wanted” section of that site can be. Craigslist is great, but it also the worst.

While Anya is mostly bothered by the sheer volume of “single mother with 4 year old needs help” posts (not because she is worried about them, but because she doesn’t want to live in the same apartment complex in which they end up), Paul is mostly terrified by the sheer volume of “WARNING- JEANINE ROSS IS A MOLESTER- DO NOT TRUST” type posts. Deciding against responding to anyone that has posted thus far, we’ve decided to write up our own ad and sift through the thousands of responses we’re sure to get by publishing our age and gender.

As two of the most judgmental people on earth, we’re pretty sure we can at least eliminate the weirdos. Honestly, we’re like those forensic analysts who parse through the letters that serial killers write to the police in order to diagnose what kind of fucked up they probably are and create a profile based solely on their word choice and sentence structure. So now all that’s left is writing up on our ad to publish, and wait for the replies to come flowing in. Here are the drafts that didn’t quite make that cut:

- $500-900 Two roommates seeking third

You’re third in line for everything in this house.

Platonic life partners seeking a roommate solely to cut down on the cost of living in this infernal swamp of a city. We expect to have overnight guests, wine and game nights, occasionally loud sex, and fun. Please do not expect to be included in any of these activities.

Us: twenty-somethings, incredibly attractive, look uncannily like siblings but are not. Hate people, sweating, cockroach infestations, and being robbed. Love puppies, air conditioning, cleanliness, and a roommate that will put their goddamn dishes in the goddamn dishwasher.

You: Will mind your own business, contribute to a third of living expenses, and confine your belongings (minus furniture that we can dominate) to your room. We’re only allowing you to bask in our glory because we want the extra space of a 3 bedroom apartment for the ferrets that will be moving in. You will respect their space and acquiesce to all of their strange and various whims. Not negotiable. No smoking, no loud noises, no guests, and no back talk. Must love dogs.

- Join us in (near) the tub? (not for sex)

Paul wishes he could pull off scruffy that well and Anya wishes her sock buns looked that effortless.

We’re a pair of young (under 35) and engaging (late-night cross stitching, binge baking, YouTube karaoke) professionals (hopefully soon-to-be) seeking a third to join (fund) our New City explorations. We’re looking for a three-bedroom, multi-level townhouse to hold us and our pets, hobbies (kombucha tea brewing, fad exercise equipment, Harry Potter reenactment), and boxes of hoarded ephemera.

We do not currently having a large or steady income, but hopefully we can work out some kind of arrangement (no sex) where we help out around the house to cover our rent. We take a lot of baths together and while we don’t actually want you to join us in the tub, we might let you refill our Death by Chocolate ice cream bowls (fridge should ALWAYS be stocked with Death by Chocolate ice cream). We may occasionally ask you to hold bags, camera, bags, or court for us. Reading our minds (from distances up to the grocery and video stores) is a must. Knowing a lot of hiring managers is a plus.

Please send fully-clothed picture with response. We look forward to embarking on this fun-filled New City adventure (involving absolutely no sex) with you.

- Make our dreams come true!

We’re a dynamic and spunky pair of young soon-to-be professionals. Do not currently have career prospects in New City, but need to move out of Hometown before we kill ourselves Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina style. Luckily, we have amassed a dragon’s hoard of gold between the two of us, and, despite our parents’ advice, are ready to sign a lease and spend it in search of a better life. Yay!

This is more or less exactly what we look like, minus the poodle.

Please be a young professional that either has a job or also has a shit load in your savings account. No nudists (sorry!), no old people in mid-life crisis mode, no children, no drug or alcohol problems, and most importantly, no bros or Republicans of any kind.

Preferably you are someone we would consider inviting to wine and Settlers of Catan night even if you didn’t live with us. If you are against wine or games, forget it. If you do not recognize the picture in this ad, also forget it.

-Two bloggers with no source of income seeking sexless financial arrangement

Are you in the market for a dog walker/house sitter/court jester? Do you dream of a matched pair of dark-haired light-eyed sex kittens to live in your house for free, utilities included? Then we are just what you’re looking for!

Our ideal household.

Anya and Paul are two snarky young people with limited financial means and a blog that gets an average of fifty hits a day, and we have the Google Analytics to prove it. We are willing to live at your house, rent free, and provide all pet care (no birds or snakes) that is needed. We can also water plants, do light vacuuming on an irregular basis, and make sure that all the hair goes down the drain while we shower. As of now, we shower separately.

Paul will make sure the bathtub stays clean by regularly taking four to six hour baths. Anya will make sure your mind stays sharp by sassing you and challenging every rule you can come up with. We will probably have sex, but not with you or with each other, and you can’t watch. We will provide entertainment as needed, in the form of lively debates on topics such as Game of Thrones theories and the virtues of cat ownership/guardianship. You may request a debate on any topic.

Prefer furnished, a/c is a must, high speed internet because duh, it’s 2013.

Half Baked Schemes: More Evidence That We're Underemployed

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we have quite a bit of time on our hands. Between fulfilling our job duties and managing our social obligations, we still end up with about four days worth of time with nothing to do but express our creative genius and talk shit to each other. If you weren’t jealous of our glamorous lives before, you definitely are now, sorry about that. Despite the outlet this blog has created for us, we’re full of schemes galore. Cooking up revenge fantasies for exes, ruining weddings, scamming our way into the professional world a la Bob Benson (minus the sexual slavery), etc.

We need to get out before we get this professional.

Nefarious schemes, one and all, none of which we can actually put into action without more or less destroying our integrity, and more importantly the moral high ground we seem to possess in every situation we encounter. We’re completely unbiased in that particular judgment call, of course, it just always happens that way! Crazy.

Many’s the time Anya has said “if only my job were more demanding, I wouldn’t have so much spare brainpower to spend on scheming and manipulation. It’s appalling how many fantastically evil things I have plotted and never put into action”. Alternatively, she could become a force for good but...ha. That’s boring. No, we’re not motivated by solving societal problems where the world’s greatest minds have failed. We’re more into coming up with some truly useless plots designed to make the world in our immediate vicinity more comfortable.

“Wouldn’t it be great if they had a thing where you just never had to leave the bathtub?” That kind of thing. “You know what we need? Something to just make us fall asleep at night without thinking and wake up feeling like a human at a reasonable hour. Like a nightmare zapper.” While those things will probably never come to fruition (guess we’re stuck with ineffective dream catchers and those trays you drape over your clawfoot tub to hold your erotica and/or snacks), we do have some slightly more thoroughly baked schemes in the making.

I’ll never leave!

If you make any of  these ideas happen and somehow make a bunch of money off of them...throw us a few bones or we’ll sue your ass(es). Unless it’s the child free ones, in which case please send us an engraved invitation and a free pass for life and we’ll let it go.

Our first idea was born of our opportunistic tendencies mixed with the impeccable timing of The Libertarian’s job interview. He was trying to decide on a place in his house to have this Skype sesh, one that looked professional and didn’t expose his bunkbed/tractor lamp/

kitchen/landscape wallpaper to the world. Which we just did, yay! Smelling a chance to make a few bucks off of the millions of unemployed people, we decided to manufacture a line of boring Skype backgrounds that send the right message to interviewers. Messages like “Look at all of these books behind me, I am an Educated Person!” or “I wasn’t lying about living in the area, look at this notable landmark out my apartment window!” or “Let’s both pretend I don’t need this job, at least for the duration of the interview!” We’re open to branding ideas. (Any thoughts on names for this product?)

Or you can use them to get out of doing the job you already have.

You’ve already read about our fake engagement videos on YouTube plot, which may not be a money maker, but then again who knows? Maybe Wonderful Pistachios will give us a commercial...”Anya and Paul do it insincerely!”. Faking a relationship is a slippery slope (especially in these dark days where even your grandmother can use Facebook), but in our situation it’s hard to resist the temptation. The demographics of our office are such that while a handful of co-workers have fully grasped our asexual, opposite sex but completely platonic relationship for what it is, and understand why there is no chance it will go further, most of the others are...well...over fifty and Republicans that really like Paul and can’t imagine that he’s not chasin’ skirts. You can see why we want to fuck with these people, can’t you?

We’ve dreamt up the worst office relationship you can imagine: fights at the office, having flowers delivered from other people giving rise to fits of public sulking, jealous rage inspired by talks with co-workers, confiding in all the wrong people about our issues, mixed in with an unhealthy dose of togetherness. Most tempting of all are those emails that our co-workers far too often send to their entire address book, possibly because they don’t know exactly how to use our email system, more likely because they’re widening the passive aggressive net for “To whoever left their coffee cup in the sixth floor sink for three days”. Reading the replies to those notes is always hilarious, but we’ve cooked up some truly cringeworthy “reply all”s that would expose our “relationship” to the office in terribly confusing ways.

But we kind of have to keep our jobs so...on the back burner it all goes.

Out of all the schemes in all the stages of baked, one really stands out to us as a money maker and a lifestyle. Child. Free. Days. We think every restaurant/theme park/zoo/store/place in the world really, should have days where children are not allowed to be there. Can you imagine the bliss? The relative silence? The ability to curse without people staring you down with murder eyes for perverting their innocent children’s ears? Walking around without worrying about tripping over creatures crawling on the floor? Since we can’t legislate good parenting, can we just kick them all out for ONE DAY a week? Fine, a month? CAN YOU IMAGINE A FLIGHT THAT DOESN’T ALLOW CHILDREN? We would pay so much extra for that shit.

Keep. It.

Make it happen, internet.

Any other brilliant schemes we’re missing?