The Diceman Cometh

 

I just had a somewhat disturbing dream. I literally dreampt up a scam by some enterprising crooks who cased places for stuff they wanted to steal. 

Often times in higher levels of crime there is a 'faceman' whose job is setting up the scenario for the actual crime. In this dream he was called The Diceman.

Dressed in a flashy, slighty campy, black and white suit with matching hat (to make his face less distinguishable to security cameras) this guy would show up at 'random' doors, present himself as 'The Diceman', and 'award' the household with 'free tickets' to a major sporting or entertainment event. He would say that he "rolled the dice on your street and your number came up!" If your street addresses typically had four numbers, he would pull four dice out of his pocket, and say, "I rolled the dice and your number: 2389, came up!" (He had those 10 sided dice)

He would present several official-looking tickets to a certain high profile event on a certain date at a certain time, and say they came complete with complimentary refreshments for all for the night, "Parking and alcoholic beverages excepted; you have to pay for your own for those..." to give it some semblance of not being 'too good to be true'. 

A quick thinker and talker and very upbeat, likeable and sociable, he'd have answers off the cuff to get their confidence; the 'conman' of the scheme. For example: "Why free tickets?"

"To boost flagging ticket sales. They send me out to give out free tickets to draw people in to show them the value of this form of entertainment so they and their friends and family might purchase tickets in the future".

To leave, he'd simply excuse himself saying he had other tickets to award that day or evening and he had to get going. And that would be it. Everybody's happy. Especially him.

Now, he and his faceless cohorts, know that, most likely, on a certain night at a certain time, you and your household are at a certain place, far away from home, so they can clean your place out unfettered by folks that don't want their stuff stolen. Slick, huh? For the cost of a cheesy suit and fake tickets anyone can print, he has assured his organization you won't be where they don't want you to be, but his partners in crime are. 

By the time you found out at the distant venue your tickets aren't worth the paper they're printed on, those upper lowlifes are at least half done cleaning out your place. They know their window of opportunity, and are practised and efficient enough to work well inside of it. 

You're not happy at the venue. You're really not happy when you get home.

I don't have a criminal mind. The last thing I'd be doing with my time is scheming up ways to scam people. I do have a very active dream life, which apparently is the hallmark of an intelligent mind (bizarrely enough), and this is just product of the random stuff it spews at me when I finally do actually get to fall asleep.