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Have you ever wanted your own dinosaur and a man-servant? If you do, and you happen to own an extra house in Vancouver, today just might be your lucky day. A man in Vancouver is offering up his services as a pet dinosaur (the species is your choice) and a maid/nanny for one full year in exchange for his own Vancouver home at the end of his servitude. A few choice excerpts:
Do you own more than one property? Do you have so many rental homes with no mortgage payments, yet you still feel unfulfilled? Tired of your illegal tenants whining that there are rats in the walls? Have you always wanted your own dinosaur? Now is your chance my friend.
In exchange for one of your properties, I will be your personal dinosaur for one year. I will be at your beck and call, 24 hours a day, wearing a dinosaur costume. The type of dinosaur is negotiable. I can babysit your children (references upon request), scare the mailman, wash dishes, entertain and impress your guests, and much more.
Link Via Consumerist Image via TypeFiend [Flickr]
On the coolness scale, the Corvette station wagon lies between the Ferrari station wagon and the Ford Mustang station wagon. According to a Craigslist ad, which has several more pictures, this 1974 custom ‘vette is on sale for $4,995 in Conroe, Texas.
These aren’t your garden variety crooks. Oddee has a neat list of 8 bandits that elevate crime to an art form. For example, read about Anthony J. Curcio, the guy who hired decoys on Craigslist for a bank heist:
In an elaborate robbery scheme, a crook robbed an armored truck outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Wash., by hiring decoys through Craigslist to deter authorities. [...]
It appears to have unfolded this way, around 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, the robber, wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a blue shirt, and a respirator mask went over to a guard who was overseeing the unloading of cash to the bank from the truck. He sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.
But here’s the hilarious twist. The robber had previously put out a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers, promising wages of $28.50 per hour. Recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of America right around the time of the robbery–wearing yellow vests, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and preferably a blue shirt.
At least a dozen of them showed up after responding to the Craigslist ad. "I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys said. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.
This old car was bought sight unseen off Craigslist because it was cheap. I think someone many years ago tried to make this resemble another famous car. What do you think? -via Cynical-C
Steven Ortiz, a 17-year old boy, used Craigslist to trade his old cell phone for an iPod Touch. He traded that gadget for something better, which he then traded for something even better. After a total of fourteen trades, starting with a cell phone, he had a Porsche Boxster:
Steven started his lucrative journey when his friend gave him an old cell phone – the sort most people would throw away or shove into a junk drawer.
He traded that phone for a better phone, which he then traded for an i-Pod touch. He traded that for a series of dirt bikes, a MacBook Pro, and a 1987 Toyota 4Runner.
At the time, Steven was just 15 and unable to drive his new acquisition. So he quickly swapped it out for a souped-up off-road golf
cart, another more valuable dirt bike, a streetbike, then a series of cars ending with a 1975 Ford Bronco. He spent a few months enjoying each acquisition before determining he was looking for something else.It was that Bronco that got him the Porsche. Because some older Broncos are considered collectibles, Steven estimated his was worth $15,000.
He got offered all manner of trades – including a locksmith business – for the Bronco. The Porsche, worth about $9,000, was actually a trade down.
Link via Jalopnik | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user The Car Spy used under Creative Commons license
Missed connections, looking for marriage, let’s meet, in addition to rooms for rent, cars for sale, and job openings. Sounds like Craiglist, but these kinds of ads have been around in newspapers as long as there have been news papers. The New York Times has some examples from the 19th century.
If the young lady wearing the pink dress, spotted fur cape and muff, had light hair, light complexion and blue eyes, who was in company with a lady dressed in black, that I passed about 5 o’clock on Friday evening in South Seventh Street, between First and Second, Williamsburg, L.I., will address a line to Waldo, Williamsburg Post Office, she will make the acquaintance of a fine young man.
Jan. 19, 1862
I only wish we knew how successful these ads were. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(image credit: Flickr user “T”eresa)
Sophie Blackall is a Brooklyn-based artist who is fascinated by the Missed Connections postings on Craigslist. She finds them to be bite-sized insights into the human experience. Jenna Wortham writes in The New York Times:
Currently, Ms. Blackall is only putting her spin on listings from New York City, where she says “people are colliding with each other constantly, criss-crossing paths all day, every day and yet the interactions are so fleeting and transient. It’s really just an un-choreographed mess of colliding stories.” Eventually, she says, she might branch out to other cities. “It would be interesting to see how the listings differ in California, for example.”
Link via Fast Company | Artist’s Etsy Shop | New York Times Post
The Daily Telegraph has assembled what it considers to be the twenty strangest ads ever placed on Craigslist. These include a chair that Ralph Nader once (possibly) sat in, a drunk clown, and a woman who would like to rent out her bathroom. Here’s one for a vast collection of papal mitres — Pope hats:
“Because of this terrible economy, I’m having to shut down my business. I have OVER 1300 Pope hats (replicas) that I REALLY need to get rid of. The pope hats came from China and are a little too small for most adult heads and are also irritating to the skin, so you would need to have long hair or wear a smaller hat underneath (just like the REAL POPE). Dogs do not like to wear these pope hats, but maybe a large cat or maybe a nice dog would wear one.”
Image via flickr user Beechwood Photography used under creative commons license.
