I do NOT understand

There are several things in this world that I do NOT understand.

Trigonometry

Graffiti

Virus and Worm and Spyware and other evil stuff creators

The appeal of the Real Housewives of anyplace.

And the thing that I really, really do NOT understand? Scam artists.

Seriously - those people make me seriously question what level of hell I think they should be in. And I am a pacifist. But people who prey on their fellow man are a low level of life form. I would eat a stinkbug before I would purposely cheat someone out of money. That is how much I do not understand how people can do things like selling bogus cars (boats, parts, hats...you get the point) over the internet.

Been looking for a vehicle for a friend. A couple of weeks ago I almost walked into a scam myself! These people are extremely clever. It's a lot slicker than the Nigerian multi-millionaire who want to give to you my friend the amounts of... I was lucky enough to have bells go off in my head before I got anybody else excited about the super-fantastic deal I found.

Something just said... Google, Chris...Google.

It was almost a whispering wind.

I think that Google may have implanted some sort of subliminal messages in their products. I love Google. I want to sell my soul to Google.

Oh, wait...where was I?

Oh yeah - so thank God for my friend's internal bells and whistles going off when he found a super-fantastic deal of his own. He was the wisdom to email me. And I Googled this text from the email that came back to his inquiry via web form: I'm a pilot on cargo flights, my wife broke up with me recently because I'm always away from home. We just sold our house and split the money. This is the last thing I need to sell and split the money with her. Because I'm away most of the time I will not be able to deal in person, but I've already arranged the shipping and the title transfer anywhere in the US. I will pay the shipping fees. If you are still interested please email me back so I can explain how we can do this without me being present.

And there were probably hundreds of instances of the exact same phrase

on forums where people got scammed. Or were reporting potential scams. I only looked at a couple - but the same story crops up over and over. Hard working folks who were in a bind thought they found a great solution - like fate was briefly smiling upon them. And then they LOST AGAIN!! Because somebody out there doesn't want to go get a real job. They are evil.

And you know who the real loser in all of this is? Some day there is going to be a real cargo pilot whose wife breaks up with him because he is always away from home. And he is going to need to sell his vehicle fast. And he will be willing to part with it at a huge sacrifice and even pay to ship it to you. And nobody will believe him.

That is just sad.

Sigh.