Hey there, fellow travelers!  It’s 4:30am on a Tuesday morning, and I’m still awake after my closing shift at work.  I should be fully wound down by now, but the brain, it doesn’t work the way you want it to (paraphrasing the song I’ve been obsessed with for a couple days now, “Maps” by The Front Bottoms – thank you, Insound, for those digital mixtapes that help me pretend to still have my pulse on what the kids are hip to these days, now that I’m like old enough to be their dad, so I can play this stuff on my radio show).  And now that I’ve written an introductory paragraph that has nothing to do with the post it is prefacing, let’s get to it, shall we?

So, one downside to posting these OK Cupid correspondences, is that the website itself is fluid, and the content is ever-changing, and ultimately, membership is not static.  Unlike the millions of abandoned Myspace profiles cluttering up the service roads on the information superhighway, many OKC profiles get deleted or are de-activated once a member either finds happiness (however briefly, the cynic in me wants to iterate) or gets creeped out by the amount of inappropriate come-ons sallied forth by shirtless men in boxers with barely enough writing skill to finish a sentence without abbreviating the word “you,” and decides it is time to try and meet people the old-fashioned way — by getting liquored up and going home with the first guy at the bar who treats her like her daddy would (I make no judgments, I just observe and report).  Of course, there are those of you who would argue that they deleted their profiles because I sent them a message.  But is it really arguing if the other person kind of agrees to the possibility of the other party being correct?  Nevertheless, some of these women I’ve made attempts to commune with have erased all traces of their OK Cupid lives from cyberspace, leading to nothing but broken links and depriving us of a “Broken Flowers” denouement (not that I could act well enough about my own life to compare to Sir Bill Murray in that fine film (I know he isn’t British, but he should be knighted anyway).  Sadly, the exchange that follows (and it actually was an exchange, not even initiated by me, as hard as that is to believe) falls into that category.

So, as 5am wheels around and I have listened to a CD of b-sides and rarities by the Cowboy Junkies, followed up with a collection of songs by the Walker Brothers of dubious legitimacy on a European label, I give you a glimpse into the fun that was had once upon a time, when mystery match was still a feature of OK Cupid, which still had subject lines for messages, and our nation still had an innocence about us that has since been shed like  last year’s bathing suit fashions (even I have no clue what I mean by that).  To try and make it easier to follow, I’ve indented my replies to she who no longer has an account.

mystery match? What is this?
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apparently it’s some crazy game ok cupid likes to play. it takes random words from a profile and says “message person x because he likes something you mentioned in your profile.” the funny thing is someone wrote me because it told her I liked ice skating, when in actuality, my profile mentions that i’m afraid to ice skate because I know that I will fall, and I’m scared that someone will skate over my hands and I’ll have to have a hook for a hand.

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aaaw that’s funny!

P.S. You’re adorable, even though you wrote a flippin’ novel for your profile.

U’m yeah, that’s snarky, right?

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that might be the best reply I’ve ever seen. snarky and accurate. ha ha.

thanks! I keep going through my profile to edit it and then I give up. I know that I tend to zone out when I see profiles that long, and yet there’s mine. If I spent as much time writing my book as I did writing all that malarkey, my book would be published by now.

your eyes really are striking, and if one can see that through low res photos, they must be something in real life.

I love this paragraph, and the Steve Martin paraphrasing. His books are awesome.

“Writing, words, kissing, what makes a good story, time travel, and moments of delusions, amongst valid moments of inspiration…ha!”

I’m constantly sifting through my life to sort out what makes a good story. For better or worse, it’s mostly a good story. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so much…

Oh and I’m Jake, btw. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.