Stranger Things

I spent a few moments contemplating and debating the possibility of renting my place out for the DNC since I will be out of town anyways. I checked the listings on craigslist and found pretty much exactly what I expected. There are a bevy of places offered for the low, low price of $1000+ per night. Some are really nice houses with more amenities than you could possibly imagine. One of my favorites was the rental that included use of the property owner's Range Rover.

I put up a pretty bare bones listing, 2br, 1ba, walking distance to transit, blah, blah, blah $350/night, blah, blah. Within 20 minutes I got a response, but not one that I was expecting:

Hi –

I'm a reporter with The Wall Street Journal looking into a story on the rental market in Denver during the upcoming DNC.

I saw your ad on Craigslist. Would you be interested in speaking with me for the article? I am interested in speaking with people who have raised their rates because there is so much demand and I’m curious to know what interest you’re getting.

If you’re interested, please send me a note back or call. If not, that's fine and I apologize for disturbing you and I won't email you again unless I hear back from you.

Best,
Christina Lewis
The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10281

As a daily reader of the WSJ, I recognized the name and nothing in the email reeked of the usual craigslist scams. There was no request for free use of the house or the "I am interested in your _______ (fill in item) and can pay only in Gambian Dalasi, but will first require that you send a deposit to XYZ, blah, blah, blah" rigamarole. We'll see what happens, correspondence has occurred. If applicable, I will update my listing to "as featured in the Wall Street Journal" . . . any takers? So far I have had no response to the ad and I think there is a glut of housing on the rental market for the DNC.

Also in the category of strange, over the last couple of days, woot.com has had one of the more worthless woot-offs running. Checking back for new items was more of a waste of time than usual, that is until the end of the woot-off when the items took a turn for the extremely odd. I found this description especially amusing and wrong, so very wrong. This one is quite . . . well . . . you make the call.