Dear Skunky -- VII

Dear Skunky didn't really outdo hisself on this latest scam bait with two individuals of dubious antecedence; but I certainly pissed them off to no end.

James Kanga -- an alleged bank representative in South Africa, with a UK email address (jameskanga@yahoo.co.uk) and his odious colleague, Barrister Mukwenza Wilson (mukwenza.wilson_attorney@earthlink.net) -- sent out one of those offers to give me the business with an offer to stand in as a 'next of kin' for someone who'd left $9.4 million in Kanga's bank (Standard Bank, South Africa) before dying in some kind of incident in 2000 (probably trampled by AlGore's lawyers, looking for hanging chads that generate human-caused global warming). Responding to their gambit as Jerome C. Howard, I noted that their dead client immediately became Robert Johnson Howard (no relation to the clan from Rock Ridge in the movie Blazing Saddles, me thinks), and the game was on. After multiple email exchanges that finally led to the "rat killing" -- my having to pay legal and processing fees of $14,261 -- I, or rather Curly, prepared and sent to them what it was they were asking for (see Euro pictured above).

Upon receiving it, Mukca-ca became pouty and sullen, refusing to communicate further, even after Curly suggested that he print up extras, and get his wife a meerkat coat and matching tampons. That left Kanga, who couldn't let it go without at least one effort to "right the ship" and continue "the way forward", as it were:

Howard,

i dont understand this childish jest of you. this is not laugh matter you are not dead or you cannot communicate with us so stop this. My attorney pay much money and put much value time to preparing legal documents for serious business and you jest him and upset his business effort much if you are serious you must send the money as agreed soonest and no more jest your insult not funny. the way forward is open when you pay fees but it must be soonest.

Scales fall from some eyes faster than others, so it became time for Dear Skunky to step in, and help Kanga better grasp what Mukca-ca was now aware of:

My good and chicanerous James Kanga and Mukcaca Wilson,

Gentlemen, I do not believe that either of you have appreciated the time, the effort, and the dedication to the business you tried to give me, that I have genuinely and sincerely reciprocated with. I mean, this is no easy feat for a guy -- many years at peace and comfortably disintegrating in the biological sense -- to perform all the feats necessary that you have proscribed I do. When all of this is taken in the proper context, I think you will find that I have done remarkably well, and will alter your last stated opinions of my having treated your efforts as "childish jest and wasting of value time", or however you badly wrote it. Let me be precise in my effort to bring clarity to your minds:

1. I am, in fact, Jerome C. "Curly" Howard, late of the comedy team The Three Stooges. I died in 1952. How you came to contact me is via the wonders of the astral bridge, and extant technology that continues to improve the reach between the physical and astral planes. It's called Instrumental Transcommunication, or ITC for you acronym lovers out there, but I kind of digress.

2. Bearing in the mind the aformentioned fact that I am dead as a recording contract for William Hung of American Idull fame, I wish for you to appreciate the efforts it took me to do the records search that I executed, to come up with the money that you required. Unfortunately, this record search would necessarily come acropper, as records I'd had reposed to a place of security back in 1952, have been rather out of my control for the past 56 years, so the question of cashing in any life insurance policies was, how to put it delicately, soitenly oudda what's left of my hands...see what I just did there? nyuk nyuk nyuk.

3. So, using the ol' bean in an entrepreneurial sense -- it's deteriorated some, too -- I reckoned that if I couldn't get the cash via traditional means, I could improvise. So I did. Now I want you to appreciate the effort here: procuring the tool and die equipment, spending the hours of laborious crafting and customizing a mold, countless test printings and adjustments, until I came up with the poifect mold of a Euro bill, customized and denominized to your almost exact fiducial requirements. I mean, I couldn't be exact: who'd believe a Euro for $14,261? Not even the dumbest Frenchman alive would have bought that, though John Kerry might of, but he ain't really French, he just acts like it. So I made it rounded off at $14,500, to give it that authentic look and touch. As for the artwork thereon, you must admit that it fits your modus operandi to a tee, and symbolizes so well your efforts to give me the business, and where those efforts were destined to wind up from the beginning.

4. All you had to do was print two copies, meld them together on a quality two-sided color copier, and present them at any bank in France. The North Koreans do it with US dollars and Euros, all the time. And if those mental munchkins can get away widdit....horsefeathers....y'all soitenly can!

5. Oh, I know what you're thinking: "if the North Koreans jumped off a cliff, or counterfeited nukes, would you do it, too?". Well, yes, if that's what your scam had called for....but it didn't, so you got what you were deserving of. If you'd asked for nukes, I suppose I coulda found made some up, just for you lads.

Now, I realize this is all new and a bit upsetting to you, Kanga, but the sulking of your dubious bannister is recognition that he, moreso than you, gets it: you tried to pull one over on a foreign dupe, and instead, you've been had by a DEAD GUY. DEAD, DEAD, D-A-I-D GUY. And I'll bet he gets what you have yet to grasp as well: YOUR EFFORT TO SCAM A DEAD GUY THAT WENT PHFFFFT, IS GOING TO BE POSTED ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB, SO THE WHOLE WOILD KNOWS YOU'VE BEEN SCAMBAITED BY A DEAD, D-A-I-D GUY! Nyuk nyuk nyuk! Even Moe is smiling at that one...*eye poke* Ow!

Any time, Kanga. It's soitently been a slice! Now if you'll excuse me, Moe needs to straighten another chisel on my head..*whang* Ow!

Toodles,
Jerome "Curly" Howard
1903-1952
The Three Stooges

And widdat, I'm sorry to say, communications with Mr. Kanga ceased, suggesting that Kanga "gets it" now. Nyuk nyuk nyuk...