And in related news … Come and get ‘em: Free Hillary Clinton campaign materials. What, they don’t even want to drink from a Hillary mug anymore? - Amanda Hess

Possibly the most far-fetched Missed Connection ever:

hot blonde in the budweiser van - m4w - 28

you pulled up next to me at the light near the Exxon. We made eye contact and continued to drive next to each other up Wisconsin. At the next light, you gave me a wink and turned off before I had the chance to react. Maybe you’d like to take me for a test drive?

I don’t know how he did it, but the guy selling this beauty managed to install a kettle grill in his bicycle. Imagine the possibilities!

We have one TV too many. The TV we’re getting rid of is a fine TV with a very good picture. It’s a 20-inch tube TV, with some sort of filter that makes the picture better.

And I’m selling it for cheap. $40! $10 extra gets you a DVD player!

So why can’t I get anyone on Craigslist to commit to my TV? The first person to reply to my ad traded seven e-mails with me, asked for directions, and set up a time to come over. Then she stood me up and e-mailed the next day, saying she’d changed her mind. A gentleman e-mailed offering $40 for both the TV and the DVD player. Another fellow e-mailed saying he’d be willing to make the drive “all the way to Del Ray” from Bethesda only if I knocked off $10 from the price. Then there was the guy who I had to call, who didn’t have a car, and was wondering if he could take them home on the bus and which bus he should take. I looked up the bus map and schedule for him, but then some jerk gave him a TV and he wasn’t interested anymore. Two people have told me they were ready to come over and buy it and didn’t show up. The most recent kept me on the phone for 15 minutes last night, asking me to describe the video inputs (there’s a photo of them on the ad). Then he asked me to e-mail a link to the ad, along with my address, so he could “Mapquest it.” Guess what? He didn’t call or show.

Do I need to add some Web video to move this thing? What am I doing wrong here?

Now THIS is a missed connection. Some selection from its 1131 words:

• Guys aren’t good at expressing their emotions. This writer, in particular, is definitely not good at expressing his emotion in public (hence, the third-person). Yet I understood somewhere, that all humans have a common thread. They want to be cared for, appreciated and loved. This holds true for everybody–even for that crazy Asian that wants to build a dynasty. Silly Asian. I hope this letter makes you smile, even if nothing else comes of it.
• I wanted to tell her, but couldn’t.”I don’t want these girls. The girl I want to know is here.”

  But I was young and naive and didn’t understand what listening to your heart meant. How would she and I be able to handle the awkwardness of seeing each other after that remark?

• The hero has learned a lot from his trials and tribulations. There’s new meaning in the motto, carpe diem. And oh yea! He’s learned not to look like a gargoyle 24-7 and women find him much more attractive.His adventures will continue. Good luck, hero!

Who wins?

Cute girl at Arlington Jail visiting an inmate Sunday evening - m4w - 28

You were so cute but I felt way too uncomfortable to talk to you in that setting. Are you single?

You offered me hand lotion - m4w - 36

Hey, I was at the White Flint Mall yesterday. You offered me hand lotion but I asked you for a cookie. You said no cookies. I was holding the big telescope and in a rush.

Craigslist Missed Connections are like stories in The Onion: Usually, the headline is the best part. A cursory overview of the past week’s connections yields a you said my dog was beautiful – w4m, a cruised you outside of bank, Clarendon - m4m – 35, and a MASSAGE CONNECTION - m 4 w.

Once you get into the body of the MC, though, everything gets a little shadier. When it’s at its best, Missed Connections serves as a quaint and amusing clearinghouse of urban meekness. But when at its worst, the site urges otherwise normal people to turn to the Web to holler at that super hot (and buff) at Target they were too shy to talk to in person. Often, these virtual hollerers get some real courage real quick.

On the receiving end of things, these Missed Connections have the power to spark far-flung, self-involved fantasies in the minds of the lonely or bored. Could I have been “super hot”? the MC browser asks himself. Could I have been “buff”? Could I, perchance, have been “at Target”? The MC browser posts a response: What was I wearing? What were you wearing? Is it me you’re looking for?

Let’s face it, Craigslist: Your Missed Connections are more likely to feed the megalomania of self-interested urban explorers than they are to connect mutually interested parties. I should know. Last weekend, I was misconnected.

I stumbled across the MC early on Saturday afternoon:

Crap Dance Party - m4w:

At the end of the night you tried to convince me to break out and dance, but I have slight shyness streak and am not much of a dancer. Then “Don’t Stop Believing” stopped abruptly and everyone scattered and I had to drive my friends home. Unfortunate, because you seemed like a cool, genuine, interesting group.

Maybe we’ll run across each other again soon.

This textbook scenario, I shudder to admit, fit my friends and I exactly: The Black Cat Backstage! The wallflower! The stirring finale by Journey! And now, the virtual nod to how we sort of met, but not really!

The reading of the post produced a strange feeling; a mix of awkwardness and odd satisfaction. Someone finds us cool, genuine, and interesting! we thought. And - bonus! - not in a creepy way! Still, though our wallflower did seem very nice, we felt uneasy with the idea of embarking further down the Missed Connections path. What happens when Missed Connections become connected? we asked ourselves. Nobody really knew. We decided to let the MC be.

But an anonymous 27-year-old woman was, apparently, eager to chase the connection down. Not a day later, this secondary post appeared:

Re: Crap Dance Party - w4m - 27:

I don’t think this was me, but it may very well have been someone in my ‘cool group’, since there were so few even granted access to the fabulousness of the Crap Dance Party. Can you provide more details? What was the person wearing? Where was she dancing?

My “cool, genuine, interesting” group located the post and took it in with mild resentment. Who was this 27 year old woman? Certainly, she had no affiliation with our “cool, genuine, interesting” group. She was even relatively sure that the post did not apply to her. Why, then, would she respond to our wallflower? Who did she think she was?

We considered generating a response - an MC of our own, one which straightened the facts about who the wallflower had, in fact, missed. That’s when we realized: We were genuinely considering posting the third in a series of Craigslist Missed Connections about people who almost danced to a shitty, overplayed Journey anthem together. Nothing about this was “cool,” “genuine,” or “interesting.”

Keep searching, wallflower: You will find some cool, genuine, interesting girls someday. But they probably won’t be on Craigslist.

Yesterday’s voting experiment hasn’t really gone anywhere.

It’s not for a lack of participation. Four people have (so far) commented on our ballot of potential jerks culled from posts left on Craigslist.

Nor is it for lack of opinions. Scan the comments, and you’ll find there’s some disagreement as to whether one of the candidates’ professed actions broke the law. And there are, among other things, accusations that the jerks’ claims are “bs.” (You can read the full comments here.)

Still, there’s no clear winner.

City Desk: We report, you decide!

We have a three-way tie in today’s installment of this occasional feature.

Below are three recent posts to Craigslist’s* “rants & raves” section. We need your help to decide who’s today’s biggest jerk. Polls are open until 5 p.m., so cast your vote via the comments section and stay tuned for the results.

Candidate No. 1: “having some fun with day laborers”

There is a Dunkin Donuts at the corner of Viers Mill and Randolph Rd. in Montgomery County and the freakin hispanics have over run the place. Me and one of my friends decided to play a little game with them. We pulled into the parking lot with his Ford F250 Crew Cab and they swarmed us. We told them that we needed help digging the around the foundation of a house, I think all they understood was “dig”, we agreed to $13 and hour and 4 of them got in the back. They smelled bad, well at least one of them did, so we drove over to River Rd. into one of those neighborhoods with the huge houses and large lots. We pulled up to a house, we all got out and we acted like we were calling someone on the cell phone. We told them to sit down in the shade and we would be right back. I don’t think it will be long before the cops show up. Muhahahahahahaha!!!

Candidate No. 2: “Day Laborers- Awesome!”

That’s funny shit. Take the naysayers shit with a grain of salt. They’re the ones who one time will say “they’re trying to make a living” but out of the other side of their mouth complain that the wetbacks are taking American jobs.

One time my friend and I picked up 13 of those spics, and put them in a pickup truck. We started driving like assholes, taking turns too hard, speed-stopping, hitting speed bumps at 50mph. We gave the last one left in the truck who didn’t fall out or bail because he was scared $100 for playing.

And finally, Candidate No. 3: “Re: Day Laborers”

Awesome post!

Fuck these illegals, I say. Me and my boys sometimes just beat up a couple, just for shits and giggles.

I can recommend them as great stress-bags. They NEVER go to the cops.

* To be fair, these comments are not representative of all Craigslisters. “At least they’re out ATTEMPTING to earn a buck instead of riding around in Daddy’s pick up truck all day long,” observes one.

In case you missed the previous winner, here’s a fresh immigration-debate post from the “rants & raves” section of Craigslist. It was posted earlier today under the heading “whre to find illegals”.

There are 1040 wal-marts in the US. there are probably a million illegals working or shopping at them each day. Drive cattle cars up, barricade the doors and load up the illegals.

You don’t have to be wasted away, it seems, to ride the booze bus to Buffett. On Craigslist, the D.C. Boomerang Nightlife Party Bus is pimping a trip to the Jimmy Buffett concert on June 28 at the Nissan Pavilion.

Instantly, I had visions of canned island beats pumping from competing ghetto blasters, drunk old people dancing in the aisle, puke on the floor. Something to look forward to, in short. It’s probably fun, after all, to be 55, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, slamming tropical coolers on a concert bus with fellow divorcees. Not something for now, surely, but maybe for later.

Wrong. Apparently the son of a son of a sailor live isn’t just an old man’s party. I scrolled down and looked at the advertisement. And there it was, a picture of a group of youngsters—dudes on the left, chicks on the right, a couple with leis around their necks.

I quickly found two more youth Buffett ads. The first was for two couples, “experienced parrot heads,” ages 24 to 29, looking to buy spots on a Buffett party bus.

The second was a group of young professionals in the same age range advertising the seven spots left on their 55-seat party bus. “The best part… you are allowed to drink on the bus AND there is a bathroom on board,” it read.

Well, I guess it’s good to start now. With my luck, Buffett won’t be around when that starts sounding like fun.

Posted to the “rants & raves” section of Craigslist earlier today:

I picked up some illegals outside the Herndon 7-11 in my pickup truck. I told them I had work for them to do. I brought them about 20 miles west of Leesburg(to t he middle of no where). Told them to get out the work was here.

Then I drove away. It then started to rain really hard.

I got the idea from a video I saw. I believe the link was here where a guy picked up some illegals and brought them to immigration.

Call it virtual shoeleather. For local reporters, it seems craigslist.org, the coffin nail of newspaper classified sections, is fertile ground for finding sources. In a May 26 post, Washington Post staff writer Ernesto Londoño asks the bike-riding folk of D.C. for their rip-off tales to help with a bike-theft story he’s working on:

I recently joined the growing ranks of D.C. residents who’ve had their bike stolen. During the course of filing a police report and shopping for a new bike, I heard tons of crazy stories about the underground world of stolen bikes in town. I also heard about the amazing lengths some people have gone to in the pursuit of their stolen bikes. So I decided to write a story about it. I want to hear more stories. The wackier the better. E-mail me yours: londonoe@washpost.com

Surely Londoño received tons more stories. But it looks like he also may have piqued the interest of a copycat. On May 31, this post popped up in the bikes-for-sale category:

Have you had a bike stolen? Did you recover it? If so, shoot me an e-mail. I’m a freelance journalist researching a story about what happens to stolen bikes. All I would need from you is a brief interview.
Thanks so much.

On May 27, another reporter posted, this time in the items wanted section:

Hello, I got a job as a reporter in Prince Georges County, Maryland and I am looking for story ideas, could some one please give me some ideas?

How about one about the underground world of stolen bikes?