Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:

Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On Old long syne.

CHORUS:
On Old long syne my Jo,
On Old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,

On Old long syne.

– Traditional, as interpreted by Robert Burns
Vic was investigating the massive Somali fraud we imported more than a dozen years ago, Then he tripped across a piece that had the Gen Z folks agitated, which was a way to start the New Year’s “Missing Middle” stories about how they were going to afford things like housing, Someday.

There is an exciting new initiative that could free them while keeping the distributed layout of the two adjacent 14 Minute counties where the five generations and would not have to do part time living in sleeping bags in the Conference Room and dining in the 6th Floor Galley.

Arlington’s little Cape Cod houses have turned into million-dollar tiny mansions. There had to be an answer to the Missing Middle of affordable housing in Arlington and Fairfax Counties. We think we may have found it at Socotra House. It has cunningly been placed on the roof of the Costo Warehouse store over at Pentagon City and the one by Fair City Mall down by Route 50 where it plows across the County Line.

We don’t claim it is our idea. There was talk of putting 800 housing units atop a Cosco box in South LA. If we did the same thing here, we could easily plop 2,000 units onto the two warehouses right here, which could accommodate hundreds of happy families with really big downstairs pantries.

Some of the Zoomers are already talking about how to do some flexible floor-space to enable creative living for groups of singles or bi-and tri-stacked groups that could enable us to actually live in Arlington and Fairfax.

2026 is already starting with some real fireworks in our fifteen minute counties, and we may be able to shake some money off the second floor and buy some mix for Happy Hour on the Second Day of the year of the Fire Horse.

We may have to tell you about that matter from the Chinese Zodiac tomorrow if we can get all those Bunnies left over from 2025 out of the garage. Do you need anything to go with drinks or those Wyoming Pure rib-eyes we got from the meat producers out in Chugwater, WYO?

Happy New Year!
Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com