The best of Craigslist

Background: The Black Market Wholesaler is selling his old MacBook after acquiring a new one from Victoria. For character, I have left Shelly's typos intact.

From: "Shelly" shelly.XXXXX@gmail.com
Date: February 25, 2008 11:08:45 PM EST
To: "B. M. W." no.remorse@gmail.com
Subject: Re: White Macbook with all WHITE accessories - $1200

Thanks for emailing me with the amount you are asking for the unit. I
would like to come IN PERSON and pickup the unit in CASH for my Son
schooling in a college but can only be done if you are nearby
Anchorage area in Alaska because i work at an ORPHANAGE (assuming
she capitalized this for effect) (AlaskaChildren's Services) home helping
children whose parents are not there for them.

If it happens you are not near Anchorage area, it's advisable i mail
you a normal momey order via my United States Postal Service (USPS)
account since they offer protection between the seller and buyer
inorder not to get ripped off. This order will arrive at your
residence OR mail box. Right after payment has been received, i can
then go ahead and make arrangement on how to get the unit shipped
directly to my Son using my personal fedex account # so it can be
charged.

If you're willing to accept my form of payment, will have you provide
me your full name and mailing addres if possible your phone # just to
know where money order will arrive after receiving the payment
notification email confirm payment made on your auction. Will look
forward to your mailing informations inorder to finalize on payment
immediately. Thanks.

I will make an offer of $1,250.00 just for correct packaging material
such as crumpled paper, bubble wrap and/or styrofoam "peanuts" arround
the unit just to avoid shifting after it's in transit to it's
destination. My advise for you as a seller is to delete the posting
off craigslist so as not to allow other buyer to bid on it.

Shelly emails again:

Since we're far from the each other , it's advisable i make
arrangement on how to send you a money order which will arrive in the
mail through my post office account then once payment has been
received by the USPS , i will then mail out the package over to my Son
using my FedEx account account without you paying for any shipping
cost.
Before payment can be made , you will have to provide me your full
name and mailing address where payment will arrive after the
transaction has been sucessfully approved by the postal service.
If you wish to compromise with this payment method , kindly get back
to me with all what i requested above inorder to finalize payment
immediately and as well explain the process on how you will receive
payment via my Post Office account.
N.B (no bullshit?)
I am located in the Anchorage area, ALASKA, so i can't come in person
to pickup the unit but arrange on how it will be shipped to me using
my fedex account #, so no shipping fee will be paid by you. Hope to
hear from you soon.

Like the clever wholesaler he is, BMW responds:

From: "B. M. W." no.remorse@gmail.com
Date: February 26, 2008 7:45:39 AM EST
To: "Shelly" shelly.XXXXX@gmail.com
Subject: Re: White Macbook with all WHITE accessories - $1200

Shelly, I will only feel comfortable shipping the computer if you have a Paypal account through which to transfer the funds. Paypal transactions are protected on both sides, so we are both secure.

Shelly is prepared, however:

I can no longer make use of paypal due to their error in payment.You can get to understand ths better by visiting the URL below :
www.paypalsucks.com
So can only send you a postal money order via my United States Postal Service account since they as well offers protection of both the buyer and seller.
Kindly get back to me with your full name and mailing address if this works for you.I await your mail to know what next.

THIS is how scam artists should be dealt with:

Ok, Shelly.

Here is the deal: Please send me a valid bank account number as well as your social security number so that I can verify your identity. After I have this information, I will accept payment through whatever means you want, but I am requiring an additional $500 surcharge for putting up with your shit. I will also accept your son--as collateral.

PS: I have forwarded your email to the IRS and Homeland Security - stop trying to scam people.

PPS: I am the deposed king of Nigeria. If you send me a small check, I can get you millions of computers from the royal treasurer.

I have a feeling Shelly will turn down the offer.

I called this months ago: "Wheelchair suicide bomber kills senior Iraqi policeman"

So that's what those weird IP addresses (http://187.420.jihad.09) were all about--terrorists were googling for original suicide bombing ideas and stumbled across my post "I wonder how many people this will offend." If you forgot, here it is.

evvie: "A suicide bomber on bicycle killed at least 29 Iraqi police recruits."
erin: on bicycle????
evvie: yes
evvie: osama is sitting there like cmon seriously guys? at least steal a car or something

On October 30th, Evan and I predicted that a suicide attack would soon be executed (no pun intended) on a Razor scooter or a a wagon, or an oil cart. Or a camel.

Well, they stole my fucking idea. Some handicap-impersonating douche is (not anymore, I guess) in Iraq preying on trusting Iraqi officials to let him talk to the assistant police chief alone. Not only can Arabs not fly without being interrogated, handicaps will now be lumped into the profiling process as a result of yesterday's bombing. Bet the bomber didn't even think about what his actions would mean for handicaps all over the world. Now I'm going to have to think twice about holding the door for the girl on crutches.

Let's avoid the obvious shock as to WHY an assistant police chief would meet with a civilian (whether he'd met him before or not) in a city ridden with suicide bombing attacks. Instead, focus on the fact that the bomber CLEARLY plagiarized my idea. Need to get this blog copyrighted.

The Truth

(Mom: if you're reading this, this is how it really happened.)

It all started at our neighbor Paul's bulk garbage pile. Yes, that's right. Foraging for cool stuff to use for our "secret club," my brothers, twins circa four years old in 1996, and me, eight-ish, inspected our mystery neighbor's useless crap. (Mystery neighbor was enigmatic because to this day, NO ONE in my family knows what he did for a living, despite the fact that we all spied on him. Unfortunately, his blinds were usually closed). Good and buried under crates of junk was our shining prize: a computer. Looking back, this computer probably couldn't have even done division; it was one of those desktops that had the processor built into the monitor. But we didn't care. We could use it. For club records, taking over satellites, that sort of thing.

We carried it back to our treetop fortress. Now, I use the term "treetop fortress" quite liberally; in reality, it was a rope
tied with a half hitch onto a thick tree branch that led to... nothing.We just hung out in a tree. BUT, we did hang out in a tree with a computer monitor (which was not secured whatsoever). We decided that if we were going to hack the planet, we'd need our keyboard and mouse up there as well. Boss handed them to me, I tied the cords to a thinner tree branch—after all, every one knows that trees transmit input signals better through electrostatic conduction.

Before continuing, it is important to note that in a family with six (or possibly seven, I can’t remember if Kaggle was born yet or not) children aged between 2 and 10, there are bound to be conflicts. For us kids, these conflicts got so intense that we would even resort to the feudal system; the older kids chose sides, and made the younger ones lesser nobles (if they previously did something nice for the elder) or serfs (obligating them to do the elder's bidding in the near future). Either way, sides were chosen on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And Chief and Boss were almost always split up.

Another sidebar: Being the oldest male, I was the martial law among my siblings. I took karate for a few years (because Dad thought it’d be a good way to deal with my aggression), until I wrote the letters F-u-K on the bare sheetrock wall in the stairwell in 5 different places. Needless to say, after that incident my karate days were over—I was banned from using karate on my siblings as well.

Anyway, once we had established our lair, it was now time to choose our allegiances. To us, what that meant was, "who are we going to exclude from our fun today?" Earlier in the week, Chief blamed our mutual idea to ride down the stairs in a laundry bucket on me. Since I could no longer use force to show him the error of his ways, I had
asked Boss to push him down the stairs. That day, he did my bidding; thus, he was to be chosen for the secret club on the day that we found the computer.

Boss climbed up, and Chief whined like a little bitch. He was right to be angry—first he told the truth to Mom and got pushed down the stairs, then he was excluded from the club. Well, guess what, Chief? Life isn't fair, you fucking rat bastard.

So with the lowest branch at six feet above the ground and our rope pulled up, he had no way of getting into our treetop fortress. Chief didn't leave though; he kept moping and whining at the base of the tree like a little dog. I turned and yelled for him to get away, he was "stoopid" and we didn't want "stoopid" people in our club. In the course of belittling him, the computer's keyboard slid off my lap and swung down under the branch that it was tied to, hanging by its cord. It dangled about a foot above Chief's head. Now was his chance! He could climb up the keyboard into the tree and get into the club!

He grabbed for the keyboard and missed. Frantic, I tried to pull the hardware up by its cord, but I was too late. His second effort was successful - he latched onto the keyboard and pulled as hard as he could. He was practically hanging on it, like a nervous kid on a rope swing for the first time.

All of a sudden, the cord started to lengthen. The tan sheathing had separated from the wires where they met the keyboard. Quicker than I could react, the wires snapped and the keyboard dropped like a stack of bricks. Chief was immediately under it. The corner of the keyboard clocked him in the back of the head - I blinked once and he was on the ground, screaming in pain and clutching his bleeding skull. I couldn't see the gash, but I knew it was bad. Real bad. He was at the pitch that you only use when see lots of blood on your hands and can't see the damage, but it hurts like hell.

Instinctively, we bolted for the back door. He knew that Mom was inside, and so did we. Not even considering our fates as instigators, Boss and I followed Chief inside to our loving, enduring nurse of a mother. But today was Sunday, and on Sundays Mom slept all day because she worked the night shift the night before.

Waking Mom up to a bleeding four-year-old a full five hours before she wanted to get up was like punching a sleeping dragon in the ear, dumping ice water all over him, then calling his sister a nappy-headed ho. Furious doesn't describe my mom at that point in time; she was more along the lines of that "question mark territory," like when people respond to a 10-scale question with "I'm a 12!" That's where my mom was on the 10-scale of anger—my best guess is genocidal.

As soon as she saw blood, Boss and I were Mom-arm-barred into a wall. Chief tried to run behind her, but the fact that her fist clutched his arm during her adrenaline-fueled sprint to the kitchen made him look like a rag doll being dragged behind a wagon.

Boss and I sat at the kitchen table as she cleaned Chief's gash. And oh, what a gash it was! Chief, it's a good thing you have a fat fucking head, otherwise that San Andreas fault on the back of your dome might have cracked your big dumb skull open.

There's one thing that's very important to note about our mother. At this point, she had been called in to the emergency room in the middle of the night for years to see car accident victims on her table, which has made her harder than a coffin nail. This might as well be a skinned knee, compared with what she's fixed before. But being cool under pressure was not good in this case. It just meant that while her hands were cleaning the gaping hole in the back of Chief's head, she could look at Boss and I and scream for 10 minutes solid without looking back at Chief

When she was done with us almost an hour later, I wasn't even angry with Chief anymore. She screamed at us so much, I even thought that the entire thing was my fault. It was like Gestapo coercion, mind-fuck stuff—where the interrogator forces false confessions and makes the innocent absolutely certain that they are guilty, all through words. Yeah, it really does work, especially on eight-year-olds.

Long story short, mom procured a body staple gun from the hospital and stapled the back of Chief's head shut without anesthesia. Read it over for effect if you have to.

Chief had a concussion. For those who don't know the medical side of that, it means that you get to miss school for however long you want, and people bring you really cool gifts because they feel bad for you. Like the 12-inch-tall Mr. Freeze action figure that Dad got Chief from Canal Street. Leave it to Chief to milk people for everything they're worth. Fucking con man.

No, I'm not bitter. ^^

[Alternate ending—the editor remembers Mom being at work, and surprisingly, she was not shocked when Dad called on the way to the hospital to tell her that her son had a concussion, which was actually a smarter decision on his part, since he couldn’t get reamed out while she was at work.]

I've been tagged

In keeping with Alejandra's theme, I'm gonna give you some tidbits. However, nothing in my life is sacred to begin with.

1. I don't know what a "meme" is. I Wikipedia-ed it, but I'm still confused. Scientifically, it's something that's known for being able to be successfully reproduced. Culturally, I think it's equivalent to a chain letter. As far as memes go, I've never done one, with the exception of emails from my friends that are like, "121 Questions--" I've always jumped on those in favor of doing anything work-related.

2. I sometimes have the urge to steal things. Like when I'm in Sephora, and I see that Vincent Longo concealer is $21.50, I really feel like taking it out of the box and putting it in my purse. And lipstick for almost 30 bucks. And then when I go to buy clothes, a sweater from J. Crew for a hundred bucks and poof! Before I know it, I've overdrafted again.

3. I have/had PTSD. I've been seeing a therapist for about three years now and when we first started, I couldn't even talk about what it was like to lose my dad. I couldn't even mention "September 11th" for fear that the onslaught of images that phrase triggered would come flying at me without relief. Since then, I'm proud to say I have coping strategies. I make lists for everything (and sometimes send them to friends, asking them to help me figure out concerns I have). I analyze a problem the way one would an essay: there's a thesis, and I parse it out in a Word document until I have some options that will help resolve it. A few weeks ago, after about a year of consistently shorter sessions, during which I've learned to meditate and calm myself without Ativan, my therapist mentioned that we should talk about ending soon. It kind of frightens me, but makes me feel good at the same time.

4. I only began learning geography as an incentive to beat my boyfriend on Facebook's World Traveler IQ Challenge. I used to cram for map tests at the last minute all through grade school and high school and forget the countries an hour after the test. However, I currently hold the first place title in my group of friends for Africa. Suck it, Mauritania!

5. I will put books like Ulysses and Moby Dick on my "have read" list, even though I've only read the first few chapters. I know the first six chapters of Ulysses like the back of my hand. And I know Molly's soliloquoy at the end. And in Moby Dick, I know the Whiteness of the Whale and the first chapter. Some day I'll get around to reading the rest of the book.

Family talk

In the spirit of Sixes & Sevens column on Velvet's blog (which, for the moment, is d-e-d dead) I've decided to feature Family C-U-Next-Tuesdays, or Family CUNTs for short. Stay tuned for Evan's take, tomorrow.

How to scam a moron out of a perfectly fine computer

Maybe I shouldn't be the one to give this lecture, as I've previously owned and subsequently spilled liquid on three laptops before getting my MacBook. But, since I have the iSkin silicone keyboard protector, I'm gonna go ahead and judge all you idiots who type with a drink next to your computer.

This past weekend, my boyfriend stumbled upon a Facebook post by a Georgetown student who was selling her MacBook. He didn't need a computer, but my brother Chief has a collection in his bedroom that has brought out the entrepreneur in him; he recently rented his boss a laptop for her business trip, and has since broadened his clientele base so as not to exclude his fellow classmates.

With Chief in mind, my man and I headed to Georgetown's main campus, wondering why Victoria was selling her MacBook. Maybe her parents decided that since she was such a perfect spoiled angel, they should continue the trend they'd begun in childhood of buying her a new toy for absolutely no reason, so they bought her a new computer. Wrong. Victoria was being rewarded for fucking up. Not only did she spill on her laptop, but she didn't even need to sell it. The only reason why she was giving it up for $600 was because the left and right arrow keys would no longer work, as well as the Shift + R function, due to a mishap with coffee during a study session. Besides the fact that there are TWO shift keys on a MacBook keyboard, and that no one ever uses their arrow keys, no logical reason existed as to why Victoria should sell her laptop, other than for us to exploit her lack of intellect.

Fast forward to my brother Chief's bedroom. I was afraid that once we got home, my boyfriend would take apart the computer and fix it, and then would realize, the same way Chief did, that most people were stupid and didn't know that they could fix computer problems themselves instead of paying $500 to Comp USA. I was afraid that he would realize this, and then hunt Craigslist for spare parts and keyboards, filling up the desk with 19 monitors. Our apartment would remain at 105 degrees at all times because of the numerous computers running, and he'd soon be able to type 135 words per minute with 100% accuracy! From then on, he'd be known as E's Boyfriend, the Libido Crusher.

When we saw the computer, he noticed the cracked plastic on the edge of the hand-rest--the same design flaw Apple had recently repaired on his own MacBook. Thoughts fled past his eyes, invisible to the vapid and materialistic Victoria, reading: I can fix this computer!

First question: "Did you bring it into the Apple store?"
Victoria: "Yeah, but since I spilled on it, they said they wouldn't touch it." As a three-time reigning champion of the "How to Ruin a Computer" awards, I possess the inside knowledge that laptops don't take kindly to Cosmopolitans, Cabernets, or Bacardi & Sprites. I barely managed to withold my surprise when I heard that Victoria made the tactical error of telling the Genius Bar that the malfunction involved liquid.

Second question (after we gave her the $600): "Did you know that if you bring it into the Apple store, they'd probably fix the crack AND replace the keyboard?"
Victoria: "I did not. BUT it was Christmas, and my parents were kind. I'm kind of spoiled."

I had sunglasses on, so she couldn't see me roll my eyes at that obvious statement.

There was something like a twinkle in my boyfriend's eye when he turned to me, a secret shared between us that said "I've now brought it to her attention that I'm about to scam her out of $600 bucks." Not like she needed the money--she was only a junior, and even if she graduated in a year, her trust fund probably matures when she's twenty-five, giving her another three years to freeload at her parents' house before dipping into her own pocket.

Third question: "What kind of child-spoiling parents wouldn't buy Apple Care?"
Victoria: "I don't ask questions; I'm just a dumb bitch."

The dumb bitch somehow managed to switch out the memory, and what used to be a 2gb laptop was now sadly a 1gb. Not like I understand what that means.

We brought it home and I watched in dismay as he took the computer apart, shouting with glee that the logic board was undamaged, which meant the keyboard should work fine if replaced. He cleaned up the coffee stains with a Q-tip (my suggestion) so that Apple wouldn't see the residue and renege.

72 hours after the acquisition of Victoria's laptop, during which I felt markedly more retarded, I received a phone call at 12pm today: "SUCCESS!"

Apple fixed the computer. The keyboard works, and my boyfriend is going to sell his old laptop and make a $200 profit.

Note: if you, too, are interested in how to scam innocent rich girls out of their parents' money, feel free to contact my boyfriend at No.Remorse@gmail.com. Please allow three to five business days for a response, as he is currently preoccupied with converting his white color scheme to a black one.

Real love, Fisher-Siegel style

Yesterday, I wore black in protest of the faux holiday. We hadn't made reservations anywhere until a week ago when my "date" decided we'd go to Perry's in Adams Morgan. I really wanted Cashion's, but Perry's has the best sushi in DC, and I've only had wonderful experiences there.

Yesterday was the first time I at the prix-fixe menu, talking it up to my office mate Xtophe. He'd made reservations for he and his girlfriend in Bethesda, but upon checking the restaurant's website, he learned they were closed for water damage. I urged him to make reservations at Perry's--they still had 7pm available on OpenTable.com. But Xtophe decided on El Mexicano, and in hindsight, I wish we had as well.




Birthday dinner at Perry's 06

I'd gotten my date a present a couple days ago, a salt pig from Williams Sonoma that we don't need but that he wanted, along with grey salt. It's got lower sodium than regular sea salt, but it's saltier so you don't have to use as much of it. When I got home from work I was asked to wait outside until he arrived. He came with an armful of long-stemmed roses (NOT RED--he has good taste), telling me that this was "Take Two." Take One had arrived earlier, a small arrangement of white roses from RedEnvelope.com. I loved them and the simplicity, but he noticed that the petals were already dying, so he arranged another bouquet (He got his money back this morning--didn't even have to return them!).

When we got to Perry's, the host nodded to a server: "Love Pit," he said. We took off our coats and handed them to a hostess, and when we turned to follow the server, s/he (I'll explain later) was nowhere to be found. Having sat almost exclusively in the Love Pit on prior dinners at Perry's (with the exception of my birthday dinner, which we celebrated on the roof deck), we headed past tables and chairs that had been brought in from the roof deck and ascended the few steps to one of the three tables behind the half wall of the elevated platform, an ideal observation deck. Nestled above a spread of close-set tables, intimate nook of the Love Pit's had previously lent the perfect opportunity for people watching. This time, however, the couple at the table next to us was loud enough to drown out any observation I could think to make (except about the girl next to us. she was one of those "i want this, but not that," ordering a Grey Goose martini with sweet vermouth and extra olives--six, to be precise).

The amuse-bouche was a nice touch: slices of avocado with spicy tomato sorbet, duck confit on a puff pastry with a blackberry, and lime shrimp ceviche that I didn't try but my date said was tasty.

For the first course, I had the goat cheese soufflé the size of a quarter on a plate too big for the table. It tasted like microwaved cream cheese with some mixed greens, so I traded the soufflé for of my date's cider-braised pork belly instead, which was flavorful, albeit fatty.

The server, who I've since decided is a "she" (smoke-cured voice, rotund and gender-neutral with close-cropped hair; I checked the hands for XX or XY detail and found a masculine watch and smooth hands), was pleasant enough. However, while I can forgive the fact that she gave me a cranberrytini instead of a pomegranatini, the slow-roasted duck was unimpressive, and the chocolate tarte was so bitter and grainy that I had to rely on the whipped cream to get it down (I usually won't eat whipped cream unless it's my own).

Things only got worse after dessert. The restaurant grew louder and our server forgot about us. For an HOUR. We ended our unromantic evening by tipping the valet five bucks to move the car up a whole seven feet and drove home to the pup--who was itching like crazy. We gave her a bath and dried her, and spent half the night with her scratching herself nonstop and the other half listening to her cry because her crate was too small for her to scratch herself.

We woke up tired this morning. He took the garbage out and I got ready for work. We wondered about love and love making, and proposals on Valentine's Day. I wondered where my passion went. And on the way to work, I remembered that it never really left, that it was just hibernating.