Help Us, Vin Diesel, You're Our Only Hope
Seattlest was living in a house with several other people a few years back. The thing about living in group houses with X number of people is that fully X-1 people at any given time are really cool and all those people get along. For some reason, it takes forever to find that 1 person to make the perfect X, after which you threaten and forbid anyone from moving out.
This was not one of those times.
Back around the middle Aughts, our fourth was a Craigslist Winner (CW). You know how it is sometimes, all of the gainfully employed people who answer your ad just don't quite mesh with the flatmates. So you take a chance on the between-jobs person because you all get along fairly well, they pick up your pop culture references, and they look like they practice good hygiene. Fast forward: person gets a job, third day in they are telling us about it.
CW: It's only my first week there, but the boss took us all out on Lake Washington on his boat...Seattlest: (thought bubble) this scene smells familiar... Giovanni Ribisi, Ben...
CW: The funny thing is that it was all guys...
Seattlest: *nod* mmm hmm ...Affleck, Vin Dies-- so where is this place anyway?CW: The office is in some building out at Shilshole...
Seattlest: Oh yeah? No signage? yeah, yeah, way out there on Long Island... You know, it--
CW: We call up people on the phones all day
Seattlest: ?? !! ?!? ?? ...JT Marlin...
CW: I know what it sounds like, we joke about it at the office
Seattlest: !! !!! ! @%$ !! *()%&* !!!
CW: (dreamily) but it makes me feel good that we are helping people, most of them first-time buyers, to own a home!
Seattlest: (sips more gin) As long as the Feds don't come busting down *our* door, whatever.
This is how it starts, friends, dot-com bubbles, sub-prime lending, the next big scam. Some douchehound with a wad of cash gets a non-descript office space, replete with doors on sawhorses for desks, a tangle of phone lines, and boring heteronormative pornography in the bathrooms; he then hires a bunch of other douchehounds. Next thing you know, we're all shovelling dog crap off the sidewalk to burn for heat in our fireplaces.
As it turned out, we eventually tossed Craigslist Winner out for malfeasance. Imagine that! We don't know where he is today but we suspect he broke into our garage a few years ago. Ah well, we hope he's getting Justice... just like we really hope that the fuckers who got indicted today (as Seattlest Katelyn reported earlier) are the same douchehounds who were running that scheme years ago.
At this point, all that we can do is turn our supplications to Vin Diesel who, having been granted clemency by the all-merciful, greased-back, operating Thetan head of Giovanni Ribisi, has seen the light of Righteousness and has the resolve to steer us through this. Mr Diesel, please we beseech you! Drive a muscle car through some brick walls, do a cute children's dance, shave your head with a knife and bearing grease! Anything, just do something!
