Warning: "SNOWBALLS" is a scam.

Entry #752
Wednesday, May 19, 2010

How to explain this. I'm offloading most of my record collection. I used to have around 30,000 records, but I got it down to like 10,000. Then a sewer problem flooded the basement in our new (at the time) rental house, trashing half my collection (the discovery of which I can only describe as one of the saddest and most disappointing moments of my life).

So I'm left with less than 5,000 records. And now I'm moving into a condo that's smaller than the basement in which I currently store my records. So I figure I need to offload about 80-90% of them and keep the *really good ones*. I've got a post on craigslist asking people to come over and dig through them, everything $1 or less. Years back I was more actively buying and selling records, and I decided to go through my email and grab contact info for record-interested folks from back then. All that mail is under a folder called "sale" which includes all kinds of random for sale or free stuff I posted to craigslist.

And it also included this post I made on January 7, 2004, which was flagged for removal the following day, and provided me a good laugh over six years later when I discovered it again.

Subject: Warning: "SNOWBALLS" is a scam.

Don't be duped by the person selling snowballs!

I was out in the snow yesterday and found it of sub-par packing quality, quite powdery stuff. My attempts to roll my baseball-sized snowballs into something more substantial -- the thorax of a snowman -- were all for naught.

I emailed this poster asking if they could do a snowball any larger than a softball, something that would work as a snowman thorax. She responded affirmatively, stating that her morning-long snowball packing had instilled in her a mastery of powder that few in this snow-unknowing city will ever attain. She said the thorax would cost me seventy-five cents -- a fine deal I thought.

When I arrived at her home, I could see she had been busy making snowballs all day long. Nearly half of the yard was free of snow, green grass staining the cloth of winter. On the south side of the lawn stood a snowman of about four feet, an instant qualification of the poster's purported snow skills.

After an awed aback, I walked toward the house, my heart racing, thinking of such a marvelous snowman in my own yard.

All of the sudden, THWACK! I felt the cold hard sting of snow in my right ear. A scream rang out, first one, then another, then a chorus.

"I got him in the ear!"

"Intruder!"

"Destroy the enemy!"

The wonder of the snowman had made me oblivious to the snow fortress on the north side of the lawn. From behind the two-and-a-half foot tall wall a gaggle of three-and-a-half foot tall monsters shrieked horribly and pelted me with baseball- to softball-sized snowballs -- those same snowballs, I assume, that they were supposedly selling on craigslist.

I nearly fell to the ground, balancing myself by putting my hand to the icy grass. I didn't feel many of the snowballs after the first one. The freezing sting in my ear was so excruciating it drowned the pain of the subsequent wailings.

"Die intruder from the north!"

"Free snowballs, stupid!"

"Throw the pee snowball, Danny!"

I'm guessing the little bastards hit me a few dozen times before I regained enough composure to stand and run away from the winter-wonderland-cum-killing-zone. I could feel the tears welling in my eyes, my ear both ice cold and burning hot, a screachy ringing noise filling my head.

Once I was out of firing range, I stopped running and glanced back toward the house. The little heathens were all laughing and pointing at me, having a great time at my expense. As I continued moving away from them, a girl in bright red rubber boots shouted at me, "don't you just love craigslist?!"

So don't buy their snowballs, it's a scam!

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