Dear Skunky -- IV

I suppose y'all are wondering why I would start a Dear Skunky post with the particular photos to the right?

First off, there's the uncanny resemblance between Yasir Arafat -- when his snake-like self was still wasting otherwise breathable air on this hyar planet -- and Achmed the Dead Terrorist, a laugh-worthy product of accomplished and hilarious ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, that's worth noting.

Second off, because Dear Skunky got an email plea for assistance (I solicit for your help!!!) from none other than the widow of Yasir Arafat herself, Madam Suha Arafat.

This letter is one for the ages:


Dear friend,


I am MRS. SUHA ARAFAT, the wife of late YASSER ARAFAT, the Palestinian leader who died on November 11, 2004 in Paris. Since his death and even prior to the announcment, I have been thrown into a state of antagonism, confusion, humiliation, frustation and hopelessness (what, she's living in Californlornia?... but I digress and she goes on) by the present leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the new Prime Minister. I have been subjected to physical and psychological torture (I thought that only happened at Club Gitmo, according to CNN?) as a widow so traumitized. I have lost confidence with everybody in the country and for this reason I and my only daughter have had to flee to Tunisia to live.

She goes on to whine about her sucky life in Tunisia, until this little snippet: But I am so glad for Libya's leader, Moammar Gadhafi who has came to my aid, providing me with a luxury $1.5 million dollar condo on the island of Malta. But this is not why I write to you with a heart full of pains and sorrow from my home in Valletta, Malta. I write to you to ask most merciful Allah for his help and support at this time.

While the sh...er...dung gets deeper, she gets to the dirty rat killing: I would want you to treat this email with high level of confidentiality without disclosing the content of this email to anyone (*Doh!*). I want you to realize that all eyes of the Palestinians officials are on me because of some undisclosed banks account an funds deposits of my late husband and all were made on my name (so, Yasir wasn't a river to his people, eh, and she goes on). I therefore wish to solicit your strictest confidence and consent to use you to retrieve all these deposits from the various deposit companies. I shall front you as my trustee and receivership beneficiary for all the deposits (sure you will).


The usual drivel about my needing to be physically present at the various deposit companies for document authentication and such -- all of which are located in Europe, primarily in the Netherlands -- followed, along with this little 'carrot': the values of these deposits are close to $800 millions. If you are willing to assist for our mutual benefit I shall give to you 40% of the funds for your help and this must be in written agreement enforceable in any court of law should in case of default by either of us.

"enforeable in any court of law"...LMAO. Finally, she finishes with an absolutely absurd flourish: I plead for your acceptance of my offer without minding the atrocities my husband has committed in the past during his lifetime. I want you to consider this a business deal between you and me, for the benefit of me and my economically suffering daughter, who cries at night because she is hungered. Please, I beg of you to help me in my most desperate hour of need for this.

I guess that $1.5 million dollar condo doesn't come with maid and food service, eh? How absolutely thoughtless of Moammar. Where are Walter Coppage and Sally Struthers when Mrs. Arafat's starving daughter needs 'em? Obviously off ignoring the true needy in the world, since Madam A is turning to me. Dear Skunky.

Well, since 40% of $800 million is the most I've ever been offered in exchange for giving me the business, Dear Skunky was not about to let this one go by unanswered. Actually, I sent her two answers: one from an alternate email account (the gist of which is not publishable here, since I replied at language minimums not usually employed on this blog), and the one you're about to read. If it's succor in the form of a sucker she seeks, I figger to give her some of what she sought, after giving her unbridled sh** from the other addy:

My Dear Mrs. Araflat and fauxsuffering waif:

First off, may I withhold my condolences on the death of your lower-than-snake-spit husband, who is probably burning in Hell and being chased through the fire by his 72 butt-kicking Virginians, 'cuz Yasir was too stupid to realize what he'd gotten hisself into when he chose 'terrorist' over 'banker or lawyer' on his high school career development test. Sucks to be him, but you already knew that hereto'04.

But as I read your ingenuine effort to give me the business -- and 40% of $800 dubious million is quite an effort -- I see through the heartache of having to live in exile on an island named loosely after a flavored dairy confection, in a luxury condo, and have your little waif suffer the pangs of indigestion from substandard cous-cous from Achmed's Bar and Grille. Moammar -- bless his play-both-sides-of-the-road reptilian self -- didn't provide in all that luxury some additional stipend for protection, maid service, and a chef?

How positively untoward of him. Personally, I think you should retain a good attorney -- Ramsey Clark, Bill Clinton or even Mike Nifong would be up your alley -- and sue Moammar for failure to properly provide all the luxuries you need to make ends meet on such an idyllic, pricey island as Malted. I mean, you are all in favor of "court enforceable contracts" now, right?

Of course you are.

Granted, Bill Clinton and Mike Nifong were both disbarred in this country; but that wouldn't matter in Malta, I'm sure. Both have the legal expertise you'd need with Moammar. But that's up to you.

In the shorter run, I do have some advice for you, Mrs. Widowed Araflat with the fauxsuffering waif. And unlike an attorney of dubious antecedence or vacuous word definitions about words like what "is" is, I offer this advice to you for the princely sum of absolutely free, because I so feel for your situation, and wish to give you back a portion of what you tried to give me.

1. After years of kissing a face that looked like the back end of a water buffalo, were I you, I'd get a plastic surgeon to do you an overhaul, so folks don't know you, and you can have those lips surgically removed, disinfected, replaced, and sewn back on. Make sure your attorney adds that to Moammar's bill.

2. Change your name to Happy Succor. Not only would the PLO have no idea who that is and thus leave you alone, a future James Bond movie might feature you as the female lead, long as you did #1 along with #2. That'd keep your daughter fed and exposed to a life like those lived by Britany Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Going to bed hungry would then be the least of her worries.

3. Instead of whining about your diminished lifestyle, take up a part-time job. With the aforementioned steps #1 and #2 firmly in place, I reckon your name will place high in the annals and urinals of the Malta Home Guard barracks. No boring Saturday nights for you.

4. Get rid of that ridiculous photo of you lip-locking with Hillary Clinton; besides having the surgical procedure remove that stigma, you have a reputation to rebuild.

5. And quit making frivolous references to a diety who'd one day require your daughter to strap on a satchel charge and go perform the ultimate blowjob amongst a passle of infidels. Take up Scientology, instead. South Park might dedicate an entire episode to you. Now THAT's entertainment.

So, Madam Araflat, this is the free advice that Dear Skunky offers you, to make your desperate housewidow life a much different situation entirely. You might even get a visit from Jessica Simpson. And I will be more than happy to be available to schedule any number of initial and follow-up visits and sessions for you, to keep you on the path to redemption.

Write me anytime, Madam. I promise you the same consideration as herein.

Sincerely,
Dear Skunky
Member of the "Ding Dong, Yassir's Dead" Club

There's been no booking of any follow-up sessions by Madam Araflat or her representative as yet. Perhaps her bookings with the Home Guard are keeping her daughter's cous-cous ration up to snuff, yes?

Dear Skunky -- III

Helping scammers get over delusions -- one delusion at a time -- this is the calling that Dear Skunky lives for.

That, along with a little sex, football, and good Chinese delivery. Not necessarily in that order, though it should be.


But back to the higher calling: I received the following from gudt Komrade Mrs. Larisa Sosnitskaya, personal secretary to some Slavic schmuck of dubious antecedence and current gulag address, as I was able to easily infer from her effort to give me the business-ski:


Important business proposal


Dear Friend,


My name is Mrs. Larisa Sosnitskaya, personal secretary to Mr. Boris Mikhail Khordorkovsky, the arrested Chairman/ceo of Yukos oil and bank Menatep SPB Russia, who is presently in jail. I have the documents of a large amount of funds which he handed over to me before he detained and has been sentenced to jail for not paying taxes and financing political parties (the union of right forces, lead by Mr. Boris Nemtsov and Yabloko, a liberal/social democratic party led by Gregor Yavlinsky) opposed to the government of Mr. Vladimir Putin, the president thereby leading to the freezing his assets and finances (and anything else in Siberia this time of year, eh? My bad for the aside, and she continues-ski).


After searching through the books of your country?s chambers of commerce and industries here in Russia I am contacting you to assist me to re-profile this fund and equally invest this fund in your country. the total amount of these funds to be re-profiled is forty six million dollars and you will be getting 20% for your assistance (awwwww, shucks....I'm flattered as possum borsch..).


I shall furnish you with necessary information and my identifications as soon I receive your acceptance which should be sent to my email box: mlariskaya65@yahoo.pl


Guess it was growing up at the time I did, and reading all these Boris names from Russia, that somehow got me to thinking about one of the 'dynamic duos' of my youth, who successfully combatted the 'Evil Empire' with all the dumb, stumbling luck of Inspector....Chief Inspector Clouseau. And that would have been none other than those intellectual midgets of the animated screen, Rocky and Bullwinkle.


Needless to say, the tone of Dear Skunky on this one was set therefrom:


My Dear Mrs. Sosnitwitkayaborisbadenovski,


I have read your offer to give me the business with great interest, with an eye toward careful analysis of your childhood and the obvious trauma you exude therefrom. And I find that I believe I can help you in ways you'd not remotely considered heretofore or an hour either side of it.

You see, I have another friend who, like you, believes that she too worked as a secretary for a once world-renown duo of animated malevolent antecedence. She referred to them affectionately as "Dahlingk and Fearless Leader", and was constantly trying to help them lure a pair of happy-go-lucky Western capitalists of equally animated antecedence into some of the most nefarious pitfalls that a western "Moose and Squirrel" could possibly have befall them within a 30 minute time-slot, despite having to share time with Sherman and Peabody, and Fractured Fairy Tales. But since "Moose and Squirrel" were graduates of Whatsamatta U -- despite their almost falling into the various and sundry pitfalls strewn in their path by Boris & Co. -- they always managed to be one step ahead of the the KGB's animated finest.

I finally convinced her -- after a trip to the taxidermist -- that Rocky and Bullwinkle were in the Animation Cemetery for Cartoon Characters, and that Boris and her own personal alter igor, Natasha, had been imprisoned for life on a gulag for the crime of "being bested by Western Capitalist Animated Animals".

She's okay now, and works as a scatologist for Lawrence Delivermore Waste Treatment & Fertilizer in Wang Ho, Texas.

I have another friend who, after being hit in the head with a disorderly conduit, believed himself to be Sir Osiss of DaLivah, and directly related to the Duke Duke Duke of Earle. When I began counseling him, he had a throne installed in his water closet, a royal sceptre replacing the toilet paper dispenser roller, referred to his pet fish as "my royal subjugateds", and regularly "executed" various and sundry vegetables with his culinary guillotine for the least transgression of veganism, a heathen practice in his royal estimation.

He's okay now, and the throne has been donated to Crapper House, an in/out treatment center for bowel infractions.

So, my dear Larisa with a last name replete with irritable vowel syndrome, I know that I can help you get over this delusion that you were once a secretary to a mythical Commie oil kingpin, now playing Misty for Bubbaski in Lefortovo Prison. Yes, I can do this, Larisa, because (a) it's what I do, (b) you have a pretty-sounding name, despite the fact you're probably 400 lbs and pull the communal plow on your collective farmski, and (c) it is most obvious to me that your poorly-written, badly thought-up, plagiarized scam letter is indicative of your borsch-for-brains approach to this kind of thing, which literally screams for help.

When can I schedule you for your first appointment?

Sincerely and dasvadanya,
Dear Skunky
Online Scambaiting Advice Columnist

Sadly, Larisa chose not to avail herself of the competent and calming ministrations of Dear Skunky. She's probably still trying to figure out who the hecky darn pooski Fearless Leader is.

Dear Skunky - II

Meet Mariam. Mariam Abacha. Whether or not it's the Mariam Abacha, is anyones' guess.

It's one of over a dozen Mariam Abachas that have contacted me over the years, and none of which look quite the same.

But that's understandable: Mariam's life is a bitch. Ever since her lower-than-snake-spit husband, despotic General Sani Abacha, was killed in 1998 (accidentally, assassinated, bitten on the dork by a python while taking a leak, or whatever), the Nigerian Government has made her life, and those of her varying in name and numbers rugrats, hecky darn poo.

Witness her own account in somebody's own words:

URGENT ASSISTANT NEEDED

Dear Freind,

It is with heart full of hope that I write to seek your help in the context below, I am Mr.s Mariam Abacha the wife of the former Nigerian head of state late General Sani Abacha, whose sudden death occurred on 8th June 1998. I have no doubt about your capacity and goodwill to assist me in receiving into your custody (for safe keep) the sum of US $10 Million United States Dollars, willed and deposited in my favor by my late husband. This money is currently kept in Finance & Securities Company in Europe. As it is legally required the administration of my late husband property is under the authority of the family Lawyer.

However (there is ALWAYS a 'However', and she goes on) the new democratic government has on assumption of office set up a panel of Enquirer to probe the financial activities of my late husband with a decision to freeze all his Assets respectively. The investigation team has submitted their report; presently some cash and assets have been frozen and seized. Fortunately, our family lawyer had secretly protected the personal will of my husband from the notice of Investigators and have strictly adviced me that the willed money be urgently moved into an overseas account of trusted foreign friend (*TOING*) without delay, for security reason.

The government had earlier placed foreign travel embargo on all our family member and seized all known local and international business outlets belonging to my late husband. The situation has been so terrible that we are virtually living on the assistance of Well Wishers. In view of this plight therefore, I expect you to be trustworthy and kind enough to respond to this call I hereby agree to compensate your sincere and candid effort in this regard with 10% of the fund when finally received by you. Our attorney has perfected arrangments with the securities and finacne firm to effect complete dislodgment of this money to you within a week of the receipt of your response. They have equally guaranteed 100% risk-free and smooth transfer to you if you so request (why wouldn't one so request?). Please send down the following. Information as you responds to this SOS message:

1. Your private telephone number and fax number for prompt accessed include your mobile phone number also

2. Your full name and address

As I look forward to your response, may you remain blessed abundantly.

Mrs. Mariam Abacha (Widow)

Now, I don't mind that I first heard from Mariam Abacha in 2000. And in '01...'02...'03...multiple times in '04, when in one week I heard from her twice -- from different email addresses -- and initiated a little Mariam vs Mariam email war that lasted for about 10 days (LOL). And I heard from her in '05...'06...and early in '07.

The amounts of money were always different. So were the number of rugrats she had. So were the photos she sent me. So were the lawyers she employed. And the locations where the money was being held. And the contact email addresses.

But that's understandable, when you read her tear-jerker of a story. It should work as well as Hillary's tear-up did in New Hampster.

Except for the fact that, generally speaking, I'm a mean-spirited, greedy conservative, who doesn't give a rats' anything about a downtrodden scammer.

But that doesn't matter when I don the persona of Dear Skunky; thus personafided, I am a much different person. I lose the partisan labels and cynicism; I am the antonym of compassion and caring*.

It was with all that in mind that I undertook to send her a reply that was sure to bring her succor in her hour of need**:

Dear Mariam Abunchofya,

Mercy sakes, woman, it's been ten years, and it STILL sucks to be you? Your bannister, Idris Abdulabunga has his work cut out for him, shore 'nuff. Especially since he ain't really a lawyer; I understand he manually inseminates merekats for the Animal Planet Channel. Hope he practices safe insemination. Those merekats are mean as a dachsund.

Anyway, and lucky for you, Mariam, that you wrote to my good and deceased friend Curly Howard (the email header on this account is still to J. C. Howard, Deceased). Through a large (we tried a medium and it was too small or he was too big...nyuk nyuk nyuk *BONK*), I keep in touch with Curly, and his wit and wisdom serves me well in my online advice column. And since you contacted him, he has soitenly referred you over to me.

And in reading your latest effort to give the business, it is obvious that you need me, Mariam. Or at least this life-enhancing advice I'm about to give you, and FOR ABSOLUTELY FREE when purchasing something from QVC at regular price (limited time offer, not valid where QVC is an acronym that demeans certain sexual preferences, see your local EEOC for more details).

For starters, do you realize how counterfeited you are? Clones-a-dozen, woman, there are more Mariam Abachas online than there are maggots on a Mississippi roadkill in July. You should start by dying your hair -- or perhaps growing some -- getting rid of your five o'clock shadow, having a sex change, and coming out as Charles "The Stud" Wang. You'd definitely stand out that way, knowing that it's a man's world, at least in Nigeria, if not at Chappaqua, New York. But that's just one opinion and somewhat digressive.

If you are, in fact, the one and only Mariam Abacha, then my advice for you is more velvet-gloved brass knuckles: get over it, you whiny wench. The dumbass General's been deader than a can of corned beef for 10 years. Faux pining away with a badly-worn vibrator and really pithy story about his alleged wealth that was squeezed from oil, drugs, foreigners and wildebeest steak restaurants, is a stupid waste of time. It's time to pick yourself up by your booty straps -- even if it takes an industrial-strength forklift to get your lazy bum off the couch and away from countless re-runs of Rikki Lake -- and get back out in the world. Go back to school. Get a job. Service a military barracks on a Saturday night, like Jessica Simpson in Desperate Housewenches. Do something other than feel sorry for yourself, while looking for mugus to support your daily ten gallons of ice cream and cake frosting while you beach-whale it on an ever-flattening couch, watching trashy TV.

I mean, despite your exceptional dearth of potential, if your life is going to suck, you might as well charge $10-15 a head at the barracks. Suzanne Somers only had Three's Company; yours could have a couple hundred in it.

And let me not forget to bring up those totally useless urchins you and the corpsed General created after nights out with Red Eye Ripple and sex that even Larry Flynt wouldn't publish. Get 'em off their equally super-sized butts, and put 'em to doing something productive, though first get 'em neutered; they don't need to follow your sorry example and procreate to perpetuate it.

I realize that you might find some of these truisms a touch harsh and direct; but with a little honesty with yourself, Mariam, the first big step is pulling your head out of your ass. And it must be, at least on a temporary basis, if you're reading this. Granted, it might be a little bright at first, but the smell will marginally improve. And if you do choose to return to whenst you were inserted, you can at least apply a little Vaseline, first.

No, my good Mariam, no need to thank me for the truisms and kind, thoughtful compassion and advice I have rendered you this day. That's what ol' Dear Skunky is here for: like Dr. Phil, to say what needs to be said to those what need to hear it. Though, unlike Dr. Phil, I am not over-paid for what I do. But that's okay: I still have my hair, and he doesn't. None of which matters to you, I know.

BTW....since it has been ten years, come up with a better effort to give me the business next time, you silly bitch.

Sincerely....really...HONEST,

Dear Skunky

Online Scambaiting Advice Columnist

Since I got no reply, I'll gather that this particular Mariam Abacha has taken ol' Skunky to heart, and is out there, right now, improving her lot in life***.

* I'm sure you see what I just did there...

** Until her handler read the reply carefully, that is...

*** at the nearest military barracks...

Dear Skunky - I

You knew it was coming. I warned you it was coming. And now, the first-ever episode of Dear Skunky is hyar.

Woe is 2008.

As I've related, so many of the scam emails I receive come with titles like "Need Your Urgent Assistance" or "Please Help" and "Are You A Good Christian". If just one would come to me with the heading "Please Let Me Rip You Off", I might send the schmuck a few token dollars.

Well, it'd actually be bogus Euros, but the honesty would be refreshing.

Dear Skunky received two letters in one day: the first was from an oft-writing, long-suffering widow (not) of a nearly 10 years-dead general and despot from Nigeria. The other came from a memorial foundation, advising me that my email address had "won" a charity grant from this memorial foundation. The Princess Of Wales Memorial Foundation.

*TOING*

It was a slam-dunk as to who would get the first Dear Skunky reply. But first, the inaugural letter:

ATTN: Grant Recipent

This is to bring to your information that your email has been randomly selected and approved as a chairity (LMAO at that typo) grant beneficerary of PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL FOUNDATION (POWMF). You are award a grant sum of TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY FIVE THOUSAND GREAT BRITAIN POUNDS. For further instructions on how to put through claim you are to FORWARD a copy of this notification to our INTERNATIONAL GRANTS officer email address below as well as give him a call via phone number below:

MR. ANDREW CLAYTON

INTERNATIONAL GRANTS OFFICER

GRANT AWARD DEPARTMENT

PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

FOUNDATION BUILING

59 HOUGHTON STREET,

LONDON WC2A 2AE,

UNITED KINGDOM

TEL: 44 7024024362

FAx: 44 8712640769

email: princessofwalesm@yahoo.co.uk

Congratulation on behalf of all us of PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL FOUNDATION and it is our hope that you will appreicate our gesture and judiciously spend your grant.

Sincerely,

Miss Catrin Walters

PUBLIC RELATION OFFICER

GRANT AWARD DEPARTMENT

PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

FONDATION BUILDING

59 HOUGHTON STREET

LONDON, WC2A 2AE,

UNITED KINGDOM

I don't mind telling you that Dear Skunky pondered this one long and studiously, taking all of about five minutes to set to work on a suitable answer to this first acknowledged effort to give me the business in '08. May the first advice-response of the New Year measure up to your expectations, while providing them with equally useful information*:

Dear Mr. Clayton and Ms. Walters,

On behalf of myself, Dear Skunky, I am pleased to a banal degree with this bestowal you had laid on me like a fart in an elevator. I am so pleased, indeed, that I undertook to contact my 27th cousin, Princess Di's former royal spouse, the Prince of Wales (belugas, I think), to thank him for having made possibull this bestowal.

After the Duchess of Cornwall smashed every royal lamp in the Royal household and was royally sedated, my cousin most graciously wrote back via royal candlelight to thank me in vigorous royal fashion, complete with royal epithets, for unduly exciting Her Royal Sedatedness; and to inform his unroyal cousin that this particular memorial fund is like a flying pig, ice in Hell, or a Kumbaya songfest with infidels at an Al Qaida training camp.

Chuck's always had a rather dry sense of humour. It's a Brit thing. He even pointed out to me that the acronym for this fund -- POWMF -- was gleaned from a gangsta rap song, with the dead giveaway being it starts with the sound shooting a gun makes, and ends with MF.

Like I said, Chuck's always had a dry sense of humour. It's a Brit thing.

What you probably don't know is that I dated Princess Di briefly; but family protocol and Prince Doty came along, and upset the camel cart. Granted, I was better looking, but he had the nicer car, yacht, private jet and somewhat larger bank account. Okay, a friggin' WAY BIGGER bank account. But I digress.

Anyway, thank you for this kind offer. I am sure that in sending it, you would be most gratified if I were to seize upon it and help you help yourself to my limited assets. I would be happy to gratify you thus; but in the spirit of giving -- Christmas is, after all, but a few weeks behind us -- I would like to suggest a few improvements that you should incorporate to make this offer more palpitable for some other, more simple souls. How you can do this, I am here to tell you, is:

1. Change the foreign currency to dollars; it'll cost you less I'm told just now.

2. Include what constitutes a palatial triple-wide trailer in an upscale neighborhood of Monroe, Louisiana, and a year supply of hootch.

3. Include free passes to the WJC Presidential Library and Massage Parlor.

4. Print it all up on an 11x17" posterboard, making sure to colorfully illustrate it, since pictures speak so much louder than words in progressive-educated districts over hyar.

5. Take a copy, fold it length-wise, and shove it up your ass sideways.

6. For the full effect, do NOT use Vaseline, first.

This will prove, I am certain, a real eye-opener to you, in so far as letting you know that your effort to give me the business here has fallen an iota short of success. I will expect that future attempts, with this sage advice I have provided you, will show a marked improvement in the quality of your effort, if not in the results achieved.

Sincerely,

Dear Skunky

Answering and belittling prayers of chicanerous bungholes like you, one email at a time

The funny thing about mail -- snail or email -- is that sometimes, folks tend to thank you for useful help and advice. Some folks don't. And some folks -- overcome by emotion at the caring, useful generosity I so willingly contributed -- are rendered speechless.

That last is apparently what happened with the inaugural episode of Dear Skunky. I got an email back from princessofwalesm@yahoo.co.uk, but it only said f**k u. Compared to the prior email, that looks pretty speechless to me.

* basically, they ain't gettin' squat

A Year of Change

Welcome to 2008. A year of change, a popular phrase in politics, if a bit void of explaining exactly what kind of change. Save for the poor feller pictured at the right, who obviously ain't got any after being shaken down by the DNC/RNC, and I don't necessarily digress.

2008 is a leap year. Hell gets the chance to freeze over on February 29th, global-warming hysteria aside. Technically, 2008 is an even year in the numeric sense, yet 2008 is sure to be an odd year, with over 10 months of it devoted to a presidential election and all the related video, radio, visual, audio and choreographed fluff BS that will fly prior to (and most likely, therefrom).

But don't worry about politicians eating up all the attention: attention-whore celebs will get their due as well.

For this blog, at least in the early going, it'll be a time for a new approach to my online scammers, on at least one front:

(1) To be sure, I'll continue to deal with a few who started with me just prior to the New Year, in the manure for which y'all know me to apply, and for which they are developing a smell for, since it reminds them of home. For now, I'll stick with the "J. C. Howard" persona on all such responses. Meaning that if I get any affirmative responses from the scammers, they'll be directed to send the support to J. C.'s current digs (pun intended).

Note to Home of Peace Memorial Park Cemetery and Crematorium, Los Angeles, CA: just treat it as junk mail, and whatever you do, DON'T cash the money orders or open the spit valves.

(2) 2008 shall be the inaugural year of Dear Skunky: A Scammer's Advice Columnist. When a scammer sends me a "woe is me" letter, I shall answer it in the best* traditions of Dear Abby, et al. Thoughtful analysis and caring, compassionate responses will be non gratis. Seeking investment advice? Dear Skunky will be right there with the kind of investment background that's allowed me to personally prosper**, and can work for any self-disrespecting scammer, too. Dying scammers who seek a "good, upright Christian person" to handle their "estate" for the benefit of widows and other arachnids? Dear Skunky will see to their 'final wishes' in a manure befitting them. Have a job 'offer' that needs a 'reliable' person in the US to handle customer 'purchases' for an overseas business with 'domestic' customers? Dear Skunky will be happy to give them some pearls*** of wisdom.

For any and all scammers -- new, used, refurbished and cloned -- who seek answers, Dear Skunky will come up widdem, no matter how pathetic.

Of course, there'll be some of the standard fare that Skunk comes up with, such as older favorites from his archives (personal misadventures and seemingly timeless ones on contemporary life), and occasional delves into things of today from a somewhat uniquely Skunkfeathers perspective. At least one or two of which will occasionally start a flame war in the comments.

As Time goes on, change is perpetual. Rivers change course; politicians, too. Weather is cyclical; so too, the media and what they grab hold of to sensationalize (aka, climate change, about every other generation or so).

So and thus, welcome to Skunkfeathers '08.

Oh and yes, I'm still running**** for President, as candidate for the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party. But that's on the other blog, not hyar. Now, you might think that all the contributions from the scammers would be of benefit to this other endeavor; wrong. Granted, it's not a bad notion; but in keeping with the espoused philosophy of the NBSR Party, all contributions from scammers will be gratefully left to collect and compound what it is that them kinda things do. It amounts to the same thing as most politicians are full of, anyway.

* if there's an antonym to the word 'best' -- see Bill Clinton about the meaning of your specific word definitions -- apply it hyar

** haven't got a quarter or a pisspot to my name; easier to avoid having it repossessed that way

*** not the kind that a decent or classy woman would wear; more like the kind she'd let sneak out of her panty hose in a crowded elevator, maybe...

**** in the parody tradition of the late, great comedian/presidential candidate Pat Paulsen