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