In Raytown, Craigslist ads become obscure art (Update)
Update: Two more Things of Steven were posted over the weekend: a Super Nintendo with games and an invisible pony and a “1:1 Scale Replica of IKEA ‘Expedit’ Shelving Unit.” And the scribe behind Things of Steven sent me an email early Saturday morning. He fulfilled my request that he write a sales pitch for a waterbed. Enjoy.
“‘That’s one damn dead waterbed,’ she sighed listlessly, regretfully, earnestly, terribly. Her lips were slow but her heart was thumping so fast, like a million tiny pigeons stuck between the carburetor and the hood of a racecar screaming through space heading straight into the sun, a sun composed of ten thousand suns all bigger than itself, all crammed into one and they can NOT stay in there, just like the tears that for so long had fallen inside her, filling her with tears, so that whenever she would move her hand across the desk, or whenever she would turn her head (that voice again?), she could feel the tears in her arms, her neck, making her movements heavy, fluid, slow, like a waterbed.”
Original post: For a change, the most intriguing posts on the Kansas City Craigslist site aren’t in the “missed connections” or on a personals page. No, a Raytown resident trying unload a crappy bookcase and a coffee table has turned the “For sale/wanted” page the most interesting and the strangest.
The two posts – which are more than 500 words each – are titled “THINGS OF STEVEN – Coffee Table of Prosperity – $10” and “THINGS OF STEVEN – Mildly Depressed Bookcase – $20.” And they are worth reading. The intro for the coffee table post is a 175-word sentence that begins:
“I, your humble yet illustrious reporter, lifelong servant to the will of the public, champion of the people, awarded ‘Best Pecs’ by Boy Frenzy magazine five times from 2002-2009, emissary of goodwill, and of course, loyal confidante of Steven – a gentleman who, I am sure, needs no introduction, whose distinction is without peer, of whose benevolence the cup of humanity runneth over…”
