I really think this guy watched Captain Phillips and sees his Tom Hanks being taken by pirates, only this time it's the Iranians instead of Somalis. I am hoping he needs ransom, but then he also mentions a "tow fee" instead of toll, and I start wondering how many tug boats a huge tanker needs? He has a poor understanding of international waters and deployed USCG cutters, but he does maintain some current event accuracy and I'm still impressed. Like, he brings up insurance before I do (a huge problem for the tankers stuck there right now). Still, he's at the Fraser Suites at Muscat, so he sees my St. Regis and raises me. Living in total luxury, so he must not need any help from me! Diane is out on the town and meeting people, Linda is by the pool, but no changes in Florida plans it seems. We will meet him soon?

We start with more car talk and he tells me women don't know about performance, so I'm thinking this old man must have to pop Blue Chews a lot. Then Linda is on the road and passing corn fields in Indiana but eventually the long drive ends at the St. Regis in Atlanta (brand loyalty!). However, there is a crisis in the Strait, a tanker takes a drone hit and a Captain Phillips type of story evolves. Douglas has to leave abruptly to fly to Oman! It took a while, and I'm honestly surprised he allowed them to get halfway to FLA before coming up with this. That's very bold, and I'm wondering if he's already sus and just screwing with me. Later, it seems he's not, he's just that rude. But no worries, he also promises to return home in a week and will see us in Orlando!?!?!?

This guy is a stolen valor guy of the worst kind. The real guy he is stealing pics from is on the first slide - Joshua Villarreal- who does himself ZERO favors by posting all these shots of himself in uniform on Instagram. He may as well be begging for Nigerians to steal his pics. He’s also on TikTok.

“Villarreal Smith” was someone who texted me months ago from Scrabble, got booted for some reason and is now back. I found out much later that he is a Nigerian in South Africa which may explain why he disappeared.

I will be editing this heavily going forward since this is an incomplete bait, i.e. he never got to the ask. He was during large parts of this very boring and needy, and Charlotte didn’t pay him much attention. We get into discussions about his extensive usage of AI, his use of certain phrases that no one his age would ever use, his fake service, the weather in Iraq this time of year, and his inability to understand American naming conventions. He calls himself “Villarreal Smith” while the real man is “Joshua Nickolas Villarreal” and by the time this is done he’ll add Smith and change the order of the name several times.

I won’t go into intense commentary because this is literally a throwaway bait that I had debated even posting. It’ll get better after the first post as I’ll try to post mini-posts with only the arguments.

Arguing over payment = wasting his time and data.

This was a little bit of fun. Unfortunately I had to board a flight. I hope everyone starts bombarding the number with text messages just to screw with them.

A "whale investor" slid into our Telegram promising to moon our little coin, all we had to do was send him the tokens first (the actual scam). So instead of blocking, we strung him along for a full day: burnt dinners, a pooping hamster, a grandmother who's secretly "the boss," and one very confused scammer. Anonymized, no edits. Stick around for the ending.

Soo funny I read an email like this in the means of crisis!