To: sale-958016510@craigslist.org
Subject: For trade or sale: 1997 Suzuki Bandit 1200 (naked) - $2400 (Greensboro)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:45:46 -0500
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.930.3)

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

I have a g5 power mac that is well worth over $3987.32. It has a 2.3
ghz dual processor, 2 gb of ram, 250gb hard drive, os x leopard
10.5.6, 20" apple cinema hd display.It has logic pro 7 fully
functional and working, ilife 08 and microsoft office 2008. All
aluminum body and upgradable to 16 gb of ram and 1 terabyte of hard
drive (1000 gb) I'm looking to trade
let me know thank

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Neglecting the sheer oddity of even offering a PC in a trade for a motorbike when the ad leaves no doubt about what I’m willing to trade for (specific motorcycles), the Power Mac described is about 2-3 years old, and most of us know just how well computers hold their value against time as Moore’s law marches on.  Perhaps the Mac cost $4,000 brand new, but even if it did it’s worth a fraction of that now.  Upon consulting a friend and eBay, I’d expect a 2.3 GHz G5 Power Mac + cinema display to fetch a little upwards of $1,000 today (and personally I wouldn’t pay that much for three year old hardware).  Just for kicks, let’s see kind of Mac I could get through retail channels for the asking price of my bike…

Dual 2.8 GHz quad-core Xeon Mac Pro

Wow, that’s quite a lot of Mac! Oh craigslist, you’re incorrigible!

I had a rather funny experience recently with my turbocharged vehicle being accidentally filled with 87 octane gas, due to a miscommunication on my part (for those of you who don’t know, this is rather a bad idea; the engine really needs to run on 91 octane).  I thought I’d share the story, but being the pretentious jerk I am, I wrote the narrative in a slightly more tongue-in-cheek fashion than the infantile construction “LOL a family member filled up my car with 87 octane WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?!?!11 :S”.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the previous sentence, replete with excessive emoticons to provide cues as to precisely how the reader is supposed to feel at a given point in the text, is written roughly at the common level of literacy on this particular import car forum.  I merely intended to post a humorous retelling of my experience, not even trying to be particularly funny.  The reactions elicited left me dumbfounded and rather amused.

I was going to write a post-by-post commentary on the thread, but honestly the hilarity writes itself.  Between the people who completely misread my post, to the people who obviously didn’t read it at all, to the people at a paroxysm of righteous glee at their chance to correct me for a factual mistake I didn’t make, to the people who simply can’t seem to make sense of any sort of sarcasm or satire which is above third grade reading level, there are several good chuckles.

Here’s the thread, and here are image captures of the thread I made: page 1, page 2.  I do find it a rather sad commentary on society that it took anywhere from eight to sixteen replies to my post before anyone seemed to actually read and comprehend it (I’m not sure about the eigthth, but the sixteenth guy IMed me to express his bemusement at the others’ inability to get the joke).