Best Lil' Whore House Online

*Blogger's note: this is from February of 2007, but worthy of a repost now, with a tad of updating*

Sitting at the computer the other night, I was knawing on a bagel and looking into email. Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee at the time, too.

The particular email account of note here is not usually filled with meaningful, useful email. It's usually replete with Nigerian email scams; faux financing offers (probably phishing scams); offers for cut-rate Viagra and once-used toilet paper, cheap. That kinda stuff.

But occasionally, I get emails herein that are intended for a real person. Too bad I'm not one in this account, but I digress. For example, I recently got a donation request from the RNC regarding a "new agenda" via this account; I can only imagine what Michael Duncan (RNC chairman at that time) will think when he gets a reply from Ukulele Ungabunga, but that's for another time.

On this particular occasion, I got two emails that were, how we say, different. The first was from -- surprise, surprise -- AARP. It wasn't enough that they'd sent me snail mail urgings to partake of their organization a couple weeks ago; they're even seeking me -- or someone -- out via email.

They so do want to suck up every dues-paying possibility as soon as possible, don't they?

Then came the other email, from a Noelle Skaggs (jhallhlew@participate.com); with such an email address, I figured it to be a follow-on to the AARP solicitation. In fact, I was sure it was, until I read the email title: I want to be your whore, Cowfethers.

Took me a minute to remove the bits of bagel that suddenly found their way forcefully into my sinus passages. After which it occurred to me that someone shoulda told me that this was an AARP perk; I'd of played at being 50 twenty years ago.

Alas, this email wasn't related to the AARP one.

The email went on with a paragraph of the following gibberish: There was a dark spot at the deserts edge in the indicated direction, and when they approached this Jason saw that it was an outcropping of rock that had been built up with a wall of bricks and boulders to a uniform height. A good number of men could be concealed behind that wall, and he was not going to risk his precious slaves or even more precious skin anywhere near it. At his shout the line halted and sank down on the sand while he stalked a few meters in front, settling his club in his hand and suspiciously examining the structure.

Then, it got back to the header theme (pun still intended): BEST WHORES IN YOUR LOCAL AREA! MEET OUR GIRLS IN YOUR HOTEL, HOME OR OFFICE. PURE PLEASURE OR RELAXATION, OUR CHARMING LADIES ARE ONLY TOO WILLING TO PLEASE! Find one of these amazing escorts *TOING* in your area now, for a truly unforgetable evening.

http://www.datindrama.com/

LMAO...

Maybe AARP should consider making this a perk?

Eh...maybe not. I mean, Betty White didn't mind getting tackled and muddied for a Snickers, but this might be beyond the pail for her and Abe Vigoda (unless with each other).

I did send back what I considered to be something of an inspired response, but the email 'bounced', as frequently happens with such an escort...er...email address, not that I would know about that. The gist of my wasted reply was:

why shore, sweetums, yall git yore painted and prissied self over hyar, an' wunst ah gits mah teeth ta adhyar to mah gums, change mah Deee-pends and git all lathered up, whoooooo weee, ah kin git widda program. Don't fergit the Geritol an' Viagra now, yhear?

I gave my street address as that of the Colorado Democratic Party HQ in Denver ;-) I know they're big supporters of women's issues and AARP, after all...

In Blogland, They MIGHT Hear You Scream

*Blogwriter's 1st note: that's not ME using that language; Blogwriter's 2nd note: this is a repost from '07, about a scammer that I toyed with to the point I hope he imploded*

And one of my ex-scammers is.

I have proof that in Blogland, they CAN hear you scream. Especially when (a) I'm the cause and (b) I publish it.

Perhaps some of you remember my good scamming friend*, Bruno Weka. Bruno and I had a short run of correspondence, until he told me in no uncertain terms that "I no like this joke" (see He No Like This Joke).

Well ever since then, I have used his name and email address with a goodly number of more recent scammers, along with making good use of the Houston information and phone number he tried to foist off on me. More than a few scammers have written and asked me -- after trying to call U. R. Phulovit on that phone number -- "why are you rude to me on phone?".

Boids of a feathah don't always flock so well togethah, it seems, especially when stepping on each others' assumed turf. Better still, when they're hepped in that by yours truly.

Now, many of these scammers use an email address until it no longer serves them a useful purpose, then they shut it down or just abandon it; it eventually fills up and starts rejecting further email messages. I have quite a few email addresses I recently culled from my scammer collection for this reason.

So far, that hadn't been the case with good ol' Bruno, though I expected it to, any day.

At any rate, I got yet another scam offer from Wilson Lamar, for an inheritance of some dead relative of his via Sierra Leone (no relation to the Italian spagetti western movie guru); I sent him off a quick, "shoo fly shoo" reply, which I also copied to good ol' Bruno:

Dear Hedy Lamar,

Or is that Hedley? Never mind...Harvey Korman got to it, first.

No, Hedy, I'm not the least bit surprised to hear from you. Bruno Weka (and his email address) advised me that you might be contacting me shortly, and asked that I cooperate not with you at all. He says you're a degenerate doorknob sucker of dubious antecedence and that you screw gophers.

So unless Bruno Weka advises me otherwise, I will not cooperate with you.

U. R. Phulovit 1-713-***-**** (the Houston phone number that Bruno tried to scam me with)

Perhaps I'd get feedback from Hedy...er...Hedley, or perhaps not. Meantime and instead, I got an unexpected bonus: this anguished and totally pissed off email from hisself, Bruno Weka:

WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN NOT TO LET ME BE....IT IS A CRIME TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE....PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! STOP WITH ME!!!! I WARN YOU NEVER AGAIN!!!!

Do you detect a certain degree of upset hyar? I am sure that the soothing reply I sent him....wasn't:

Bruno:

Nope. You started it. I'm going to finish it, on my time and my terms. Your fellow scammers will not think much of you when I am done. Granted, they probably didn't think about you at all beforehand...but you made the choice to change all that. I'm just helping it along. Mwhahahahaha.

U. R. Phulovit

Within the hour, came yet another email scam letter, this one from Issa Mohammed (issa_mohammed004@yahoo.fr), offering to give me the business over some 'lost treasure' located in a South African bank ("X" marks the mugu). So just to show Bruno there were no hard feelings or anything akin, I chose to take a mild, conciliatory approach to involving him with Issa Mohammed:

Dear Youssa Mohammineggs,

I am soooooo sorry, but I cannot help you give me the business. You see, my business associate, Bruno Weka (his email addy inserted hyar) says he knows you, and knows you are a goat-poking, egg-sucking elephant butt, who molests hamsters and has illicit sex with flea-infested duckbilled platypi.

I watered that down so's not to offend you too much, because Bruno was much more brutal in his assessment of you, Youssa. He says he's travelling to your neck of the woods next month, and doubts you'll want to meet him, since he called you a skank-assed, yellow-striped, Islamic fundamentalist turd ball of dubious antecedence and camel drool.

Bottom line here, Youssa Mohammineggs, Bruno Weka says you're a really baaaaaaaaaad person, and I should have nothing to do with anyone as infidelish and lowlife as you.

Again, I cleaned that up from what he REALLY SAID. He doesn't like you much.

So I don't, neither. Neener neener boo-boo.

U. R. Phulovit

Of no surprise, I got no reply from Youssa Mohammineggs. But if I look waaaaaaaaaaaay off to the east-southeast, beyond the horizon and much of the 'Pond'...I think I can see steam rising from good ol' Bruno. This email supports that (cleaned up a little from it's original content):

U MOTHERF***ER I WARN YOU TO STOP!

I know, I know...sticks and stones. Eh:

Keep your mother off the streets, and I won't have that problem.

I can only hope that caused him to vaporlock***.

Whaddaya think, readers? Does Bruno deserve to have me "give him a break"?

To vote now, call 1-800-YesBrno for yes, cut him a break; to vote no, call 1-800-NoChanc.**

* I suspect I'm kidding hyar

** I really am kidding hyar....vote in comments if you wanna, but Gawd knows who you'll be calling on those made-up numbers...

*** it may have; his email went phfffft not long after this, and not another one in almost three years since.

Ancestral Ge(n)eology

In a recent Facebook comment, Seymour -- my delusional pet rock ("am NOT!") -- made the claim that he was once a part of the walls of Troy, the city that centerpieced Homer's ancient epic, Iliad.

And I don't mean the Homer depicted on the right.

So, I decided to have Seymour explain how he -- a measly pet rock the size of a grapefruit ("am NOT...measly!") -- managed to get from the walls of Troy, over a thousand years before the Christian Era was born, to a humble apartment in the Green Mountain portion of Lakewood, Colorado, more than 3,000 years later.

This oughta be...something. Take it away, Seymour.

Thank you for that underwhelming intro. Don't quit your day job *BONK*..ow.

Yes, I was once part of the walls of Troy, back in what you all refer to as approximately 1600 or 1400 or 1200, something like that, BC (Before Colorado). I just made that up...*BONK*..ow..

Anyway, I was there as Helen was fought over by Paris Hilton, Ajax and other cleaners, and the funny-helmeted dudes that eventually invented tampons, condoms, whatever it was. One or the other. It was so long ago. Anyway, after the Trojan Whore was wheeled inside the city and seduced the Troyites, departing soldiers took souvenirs from the walls...I wound up as ballast in a pentekonter -- a Greek ship with enough oars to look like a caterpillar -- that was wrecked and washed ashore near somewhere Mediterraneanesque, laying about on a beach filled with my geologic brethren, for what seemed like forever.

It sucked.

But it was a busy place, what with invading armies going east and west like daily commuters going to work on Monday, all grumpy and hurried, sometimes coming back with more booty than from a post-Christmas sale. Those musta been some Walmarts back then.

At some point, I got picked up by a soldier who I would later understand to be from Sparta, and I was used to *BONK* a Persian Immortal on the head during the Battle of Thermopylae, in 480 BC. It was a sucky journey, being bounced around in a pouch with a bunch of my kind, only to get used as a projectile to *BONK* people. But I digress.

Anyway, I got picked up by another Persian, and used again as a hand-throwd projectile at the Battle of Salamis, when the Persians got sent packing by effete-looking Athenians who actually routed the more numerous Persians because of all the garlic they ate, and the gas they let. I didn't like it there much. Kinda like around here now *BONK*...ow...okay, back to my story.

From there, I got used again as ballast in a Greek trieme, and wound up getting rowed all over the ocean in that region, again for what seemed like ages. The ships then rather sucked, and frequently got wrecked in storms, when they weren't full of what them folks called "commerce": corn and livestock, crappin' all over everything, including me. But I always wound up on wrecks that beached, so some other yutz could come along and load me up as another friggin' piece of ballast in another trieme, only to get all sea sick and get wrecked again. If these people didn't know how to row a boat ashore, why didn't they just buy a car?

Seymour, there were no cars then.

Simpletons. Anyway, somehow I wound up on a beach near where a new city was being built on an old city, or something like that. What had been a place called Byzantium, now was being renamed Constantinople, and I was, again, part of a city wall. Ancients had no appreciation for my finer qualities, but then again, some current people don't, either...*BONK*..ow.

Anyway, I was stuck in the walls of this Constantinople place for, to you all, hundreds of years; to me, it felt like...hundreds of years. Of course, I'm billions of years old, so it's all Greek to me, nyuk nyuk..*BONK*...ow...one day, these people called Turkish Mollusks, or something with an "m", came along, smelling of camels and cous cous, and had this new invention called a "cannon". Until then, nothing anyone had tried had breached the walls of Constantinople. Of course not, because of me.

Then that damned cannon punched all kinds of holes in the walls -- I think they were using regifted fruitcakes as ammunition, the WMD of their day -- and the Turkeys flocked in, overrunning and sacking Constantinople. It blew goats, I'm here to say. And so did those Turkeys, but there's no accounting for taste in some cultures, and I digress some more.

And so, once again, I wound up as a friggin' piece of ballast in a newer-fangled ship, but not one propelled by oars as much....this one had a giant table cloth that helped it move with the wind, and I eventually wound up shipwrecked in a place called New Carthage, in a land called Spain, where they spoke funnier than I was accustomed to. I tried to ask them why they couldn't sail any better than they rowed, but either they didn't pay me any mind, or didn't understand what I was saying. At any rate, I wound up as MORE BALLAST (no imagination at work here, y'know?), aboard a ship that was called the Santa Claus...or maybe it was the Santa Flush...er....well, it was something funny-sounding, with a captain and crew looking for a "new world". And in what their calendars called 1492, we found a "new world" on some island with a lot of trees, naked locals, and absolutely NO amenities.

All together now..."it sucked".

Some local souvenir hunter then heisted me from the ship, and I wound up as a beach ornament for a while, which was okay, other than when hurricanes went through. Then -- you'll never guess this -- I wound up as BALLAST AGAIN. Great Geologic Constipation, Batman! Had these people no imagination? I wound up in another place where, again, people talked funny, and wore iron suits over pantyhose, and looked like escapees from a bad Shakespeare play that was panned by Simon Cowell or something. Minerals like gold and silver -- both highly overrated, I'm telling you -- were coveted by them, while me?

Pfftt...consigned to ballast. Where were lawyers of geologic rights when I needed one?

By one way or another, I eventually wound up in what passed for a grog and gift shop in a disease-ridden place with no good take-out food delivery service whatsoever, just cannon balls and all kinds of shooting going on, and armies marching one way and running another. I think the place was called San Jacinto or such. There I sat, through pestilence and being covered with dust, until some rather peculiar chap bought me -- people were gullible in gift shops then, too -- and took me to and up a river, to a place he called St. Louis, after something he called the Texas Revolution. From there, I wound up rather happily being a "pet rock" to a very kindly 5 year old girl and her family. SHE I liked. Her name was Tamra, and I think she's a distant ancestor of another Tamra who's one of my current-day favoritest people, but I digress...anyway, they took me overland in a conestoga wagon, to places they said would be the "new promise land".

What the promise was, I don't know: but one stormy day, the wagon got overturned crossing a river during a buffalo attack or Indian stampede or prairie chicken hazing...whatever it was, it was something like a current-day mosh pit -- and I got spilled out, and wound up in a stream, watching fish make faces at me. I never saw my friend Tamra or the family again, and I was bummed.

All together now..."it sucked".

Eventually, things built up around the stream I was being gradually sedimented in, and somehow I got plucked from the stream one day, apparently for the prized duty of being a landscaping rock, at the base of a rain gutter.

Me...with MY HISTORY. To be designated MERE LANDSCAPING?? To meet an end like that??! Phfffffft!

Finally...to one spring day in what you all call the year 2000, this exceptionally peculiar fellow plucks me from the landscaping, and thankfully DOESN'T use me as ballast in a ship or put me on display in a gift shop. Oh nooooo...this yutz USES ME AS A DOOR STOP!

Yeah, Skunk...I'm talking to YOU! A DOOR STOP!!! I WANT THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW YOU USED ME AS A DOOR STOP!!!

Uh huh...and where have you been SINCE, Seymour?

Well, okay...you didn't put me back out in the rain gutter. You let me watch TV. You let me share some (not enough) of your Chinese delivery and pizza. You even let that sweet Amy Chavez take me to Japan and Ohio, and might send me to Texas or North Carolina. BUT...

Yes?

BUT...you disrespect me by making me shovel snow, and throwing me in a snowbank, and diluting my authentic song lyrics, and *BONK*ing me when I don't deserve it, and make fun of me during meteor showers....

While Seymour digresses with his diatribe of my apparent and many transgressions, you all now know Seymour's claimed ancestral ge(n)ology, in his own words.

From Troy to Green Mountain, in 3000 years? What do YOU think? *BONK*..ow...give me that, Seymour...

Seymour Writes Agin

Yawp...Seymour "writes" agin, and this time, his lyrics were...uh...from opportunistically bad, to downright "risque".

Apparently, my pet rock so enjoyed the simplicity of the Phfft Song from the old Hee Haw series, he's trying to draft additional lyrics to it that would make Archie Campbell...blush.

They apparently made Pat Robertson *wince*.

I came home from an unexpected day of work this past week, and sure enough, sitting next to my computer -- Seymour knows where I tend to gravitate to (mornings, coffee pot; afternoons, computer) -- was a barely-legible scrawl of new lyrics for the Phfft Song, with an eagerly-expectant rock sitting on the coffee table, wearing a "well...WELL?" look.

After a quick perusal, my 'Simon Scowell' was in full bloom:

Seymour, you're not posting this on my blog.

"What's wrong with it?"

It's too explicit for a sort of family-friendly blog.

"Is NOT!"

See, Seymour tried to combine the tune and flow of the Phfft Song with some of the more bawdy poetry from the There Was a Girl From Nantucket series.

"Did no...er...uh, okay, so I did".

I watered it down a tad, while Seymour *rolled* his eyes, ala FoN* style.

So, for your...uh..."entertainment", here's Seymour "Writes" Agin (sung to the tune of the Phfft Song, if you have no shame or nothin' better to do):

*opening gee-tar rift thang*

There wunce was a rockkkk, I think from Nan-tucket

who did somethin' bad, these ly-rics sug-gest...

but Skunk wouldn't let me say just what it was..

I could-n't use words like ****, **** or breast...

What kind of fun, can a rock have,

writing these ly-rics, gnarly and cheap?

I searched my words over and thought I'd found con-tent,

Skunk proofed them over and PHFFFFT, they wuz bleeped...

Seymour's got a better chance to get a shot on Dr. Demento, than American Idol.

"Do NOT!"

Think not? Here's more of Seymour's lyrical skills in action: another blogger I regularly peruse -- The Dental Maven -- had a column about celebrity Jessica Simpson, going public on some TV rag about her total lack of dental (and possibly other) hygiene. Seymour, ever quick to seize on someone else's musical talent, was quick to start drafting out the following, to 30-plus year old Ricky Springfield hit:

I wish that I had Jessie's smell..

I wanna have me Jessie's smell..

where can I find an odor like that..

like Jessie's smell...

Seymour...that...was bloody awful.

"Was NOT!"

And you know that old kids' favorites aren't immune from the parody pen of Seymour...("is NOT!"), he heard one by the Irish Rovers, The Unicorn. I managed to derail this one after he got this far widdit (I believe he was having problems interpreting the Irish brogue):

You'll see green escalators, and long streaked grease.

Some tubular candles and some tramp-o-lines.

Some mats and flats and el-e-gants, but sure as you're bored,

you're never gonna see no

pter-a-ducktyls....

*Sigh*...Excuse Editor (on Facebook), help needed h'yar.

"Is NOT!"

*one of my readers, Monica, knows that *eye roll* well, from her daughter, aka FoN (Force of Nature)

Into the Jaws of the Unknown Problem

Absurd knows no bounds. 'Specially in my career field.

Take one day not so unrecent (see what I just kinda did there?): a radio call to respond to a hotel room on an "unknown problem".

You could start by analyzing what constitutes an "unknown problem": if it's unknown, how does one know it's a problem? Do we ever get calls to respond to an unknown solution? And if we do, will we recognize it for what it isn't, to find the utility in what it is?

But I digress.

As I neared the location to which my presence had been requested, I could hear a 'buzz' of voices. And faintly...eerily...something that sounded almost akin to background noise. No...it was background music. Music that sounded vaguely familiar. Low...ominous. The closer I got, the more I heard.

The *TOING* of familiarity hit me as I arrived on scene at The Room. Therein I beheld a housekeeper. Her supervisor. A seemingly bemused-looking engineer. And one of my officers who had preceeded me on the call. The call that brought me to respond to an unknown problem.

All the while, that familiar music was playing ever louder...ever faster...building to a crescendo of a climax.

"What's the unknown problem?" I asked in that southern drawl I like to fake that I have, when sounding folksy is particularly non sequitur to the issue, whatever it is.

"It's there!" my officer muttered, gesturing toward the bathroom.

At the commode.

The music rises, like a leviathan from the depths, faster and faster as it nears the surface...

I looked, with a curious lack of trepidation, into the depths of from whenst or wherest everyone seemed to think the aquatic Apocalypse was about to rise in righteous fury from.

The background music was reaching a fever pitched crescendo. And there, I saw...IT:

....

....

....

And there, confronted by IT, someone behind me asked in a manner that was totally serious:

"What do we DO about it?"

As the music reached it's thunderous climax.....*FLUSH*

The four-inch-long dead goldfish was no longer a threat to humanity.

As the background music now faded, sounding like a cat chasing a mouse across a piano keyboard, and with a laconic "unknowd problem solve-d", I left the others to ponder what they had just witnessed, while imagining the image of Chief Brody, somewhere, yelling, "that's IT? THAT'S all it took? We didn't need a bigger boat?"

Not this time, Chief.

Who said that protecting and serving can't be absurdly fun, sometimes?

What...We've Got Hyar Is...Part II

In Part I, I introduced you to Balentina (from left to right, her sister and her, or so she says), who is coming to America for a new life.

With me. Or so she says/scams.

According to the stuff she conveyed to me, Ms. Balentina lived in some small little village in central Russia, about 900 miles E/SE of Moscow (or so she says). And that the one great hurdle in her coming to meet me here, was getting from that small village in central Russia, to Moscow (or so she says).

Well, after my last slightly snide reply -- again, with a total lack of comprehension of what I said therein -- it becomes evident that she has apparently cleared that hurdle with comparative ease, as she replies to me again. From Moscow (or so she says):

Hello my darling (awwww, shucks...now I'm darling....*eye roll*)!!!

It is me again. I cannot believe I am in Moscow already (neither do I, but I digress and she goes on). It was a wonderful flight for me and everything go well. You know even though Moscow is capital of our big country, it is just like some country (uh, what she said). Different people, like and the prices are very very high. People are very rude and angry (sounds more like Newark, NJ, to me). When I get off plane and was wait for baggage a policeman come up me and ask me to show passport. They are all crazy here because of terrorism. It humiliating to me. Then I take bus from airport for over 1 hour, but I see many good places in Moscow this way.

She rambles on about how big, expensive and crowded Moscow is, then gets to her accommodations: I found a place to stay. I rent a room from an old woman. She is about 70 years. She say her husband die 2 years ago and she has two grown up children but they already married and don't come to visit much so she is alone and she give me cheap rent to stay with her which make me happy. She is very nice woman!! She say I must be careful about travel and with you, but I say to her I know you are nice man, and my cellmate (I think she meant soulmate, or perhaps a Freudian slip thang, but eh...). She say I should still be careful when I meet you, but if you are what I am sure, she think it be okay for me (thanks, Granny...may a weasel pee in your borsch).

After a bit more of that hokum-ski, she gets down to the nitty-borschski: now, I need for you to tell me which airport I fly to meet you. I wish to come soon, because I am becoming to feel very love about about you (time for a panic *TOING*), and I must have to be with you to feel and make this love come true. I know you are my man that I have dream of (a few ex-girl friends are gagging just now, and she goes on) and I cannot wait to start with making you happy I am coming (I will resist a really tacky comment there).

Then comes that seminal moment, that point in these deals that John Wayne's character in True Grit described as "getting down to the rat killing", and the moment I've known was coming at some point in this bullshevik: I do need to ask for you some help. I am not with enough money to have all I need for ticket to USA. If I tell you where to send, would you make my love yours with money to complete my ticket? I need only $300 to make you mine (*TOING TOING TOING TOING*). I am so near to make you now, please don't disapoint me.

She goes on to tell me how to send it, using something I've never heard of -- e-gold -- and finishes with darling, don't let me down and tell me again your airport I fly to! With loves and kisses soon!!!

I said it afore, and I'll say it agin: bullshevik. Like another scamstress of Boris 'n Natashaville, it's the old "$300 ploy". At any rate, it's time to do some more English comprehension testing with MissDancy54:

Conditionally Dearest Balentina of dubious antecedence and geographical locality,

You know, that old woman you're renting from is probably rather smart about ways of the world, even if she screws small animals using implements and visual aids. You need to be cautious, a small town babe in a big, bad city, where sheep roundups aren't much different than cattle calls at the Chicken Ranch. I'm so glad you think I'm a good man; I rather think I play one on TV, even though I really don't, because I don't have an agent. As for you making me your dream, this I can do as well, long as your dream is being eaten by a T-rex in a cheap B movie. If I were you, I'd have to get smaller shoes and I'd kind of set the bar a bit higher. But that's only if I were you, and obviously I'm not, because I'm here responding to your effort to give me the business-ski, Moscow-style.

Granted, you really don't know if I'm just an ogre that flatulates, eats weed rats, and has the kind of breath that peels bark off of trees. But you don't care since you love me, and as we all know, love conquers all, especially when you have the baddest divorce attorney in town! Badda boom badda bing, fuggetabouit! Fact of the matter is, I am really nothing more than a rather horny leech, and you gonna be one fine notch on my bedpost upon arrival, babycakes. Yowza and hooha! Don't worry, I'll teach you the meaning of both of those, mama-babuska.

Now, as to the money...all I need to send you is a measly $300? Well shucks, Ma'am, if I'd knowd I could get had for such a paltry sum, I coulda quit wasting time and just go ahaid and got it done. I've gotten laid for much more, spent over a longer period of time! I have that much left over from my Monopoly game, I'm sure. I mean, I am your dream of dreams, right?

I never heard of this e-gold stuff, but what's a little unfamiliarity, what with all the unfamiliarity we're operating on already, my Steppes Muffin? So the sooner I git 'er done, the sooner you'll be in my body odor radius, and that's when we'll get down to the pokin' and the proddin', my little gulag blossom!

Lemme see what I can work up hyar, so's you can git to givin' me this hyar business of yours.

Of course, nuthin' got sent via e-gold or whatever it was. And perhaps it was that what got the scales to start falling from her eyes. OR, mayhaps I think I finally managed to say a thing or two that caused her to leave the script just a tad, and start to wonder about my sincerity:

I not understood your word. What is divorce you talk? Why you make fun of me and say gulag? My darling, I need from you money to make dream come. Do you still want me come? Please to don't make fun of me. My feelings are sensitive yes? These things you say make me concern. Please send money soon so we can continue to my meet you. This is must for me to have.

Okay, it appears I finally kind of got her attention, but didn't as yet dissuade her from her objective of $300. So now, I decide to REALLY get her attention with what is probably an international violation of..er...something or other. Then again, with all the international violations taking place from Nigeria and elsewhere, what's one more between a scammer and her baiter:

Comrade Balentina Manyiowa:

I am Colonel Ivanov Vishinsky Absolut, of the State Secret Police, Moscow District. I have been monitoring your ILLEGAL COMMUNICATIONS with a suspected agent of the Western intelligence organization, U.N.C.L.E. You will CEASE AT ONCE ALL FURTHER COMMUNICATION WITH THIS PERSON, or you will FACE ARREST BY THE STATE! This is NON-NEGOTIABLE!

Dasvadanya,

Colonel Ivanov Vishinsky Absolut,
Moscow District
State Secret Police
"Book Em, Danofski!"

Now, do I really think that she believed that last email? Nawp, shore don't. But what I do believe is, she -- or her 'handler' -- figured out she wasn't going to get her $300. And I reckon that based on her silence, which has lasted now nearly a month.

Too bad, too. I was looking forward to her coming. Really.

Well okay...I would have settled for her breathing hard. Really. At my age, you take what you can git.

What...We've Got Hyar Is...

*This is a scambait from 2007, that began with my playing around with a 'free' online dating site...I have since received other scambaits from various 'Russian bride wannabes' using the very same photos. But eh...familiarity breeds you-know-what*

...failure, to communicate".

So said Strother Martin's character in the movie Cool Hand Luke. I've used that line before in my dealings with online scammers.

It fits again.

Being a bachelor, I have some latitude far as online or any other kind of dating goes. Fortunately, most women who think they know me tend to regard me as the guy their mamas warned them about. When I was younger, I wished a few mamas hadn't been so dadgum right so dadgum quick; nowadays, I don't care as much but I digress.

Anyway, I throwd up another profile for fun and curiosity on one of those 'free' online dating sites; I haven't had any good laugh-at-myself routines for at least a week. At any rate, the site was 'free', until you want to reply to someone's expressed interest...then you have to pay for at least a month's access. Not a bad racket they got goin' there.

But the person contacting me in this case got around that -- and the site censors/moderators -- by posting her off-site email address in the body of her profile (which the site said was verboten, and in this case, the moderators/censors obviously missed).

She claimed to be in Wisconsin, 55, and a life-long resident of the cheesehead state. Her email address didn't sound any bit ominous, either: missdancy54@yahoo.com. One possible 'flag' to the profile was that at the bottom of it was written as an afterthought, "this is not really my account". Ooookay. Taking a "what the skunkfeathers" attitude, and feeling safety in distance, I stuck my toe in the cyber water:

Ma'am,

I got your email interest contact, and noted that it really isn't your account, but since you expressed interest in contacting me, I am responding. Are you actually in Wisconsin, or elsewhere? And what about my profile prompted your email?

I wasn't sure if that'd get a reply or not, but in my life, almost any reply draws...something:

Hello!!! Have good day. I hope you remember me because I have writ you recently (uh, no she ain't, but she goes on) and you answered me (uh, no I ain't, but she goes on). I sorry I not use right place, but I am from Russia (*TOING*) and I am busy organzie all my travels. This is first time I try communicate with man in virtual space and I am not good intenet user but I think I meet good man in here.

I stifle a *snort* while allowing an *Oy vay*, and she goes on some:

I travel to USA because in Russia here no opportunities for young woman like me to get head (I didn't misconstrue that...did I? And she goes on) it is hard possible to explain in a few words, but in USA I can get job babysitting or personal trainer, and I need a man to be with and be safe with, I think (NOW activists are going stark raving nuts over that 'un, and she goes on). You should also know that in Russia men drink too much and are violetn with women, and I wish not live like that. I read you and think you really nice (awwwww) and maybe you might like me if we meet, yes (follow the 'awwww' with a suitable expletive)? My name is Balentina, and I am 29, not 55. I sorry I say that, you know we must do things to get where we want, yes?

Bill Clinton would have loved to have had her for an intern.

After some other small drivel, she finishes with I do not want be lonely in evenings and I want to know for sure if somebody waits for someone me! It is just a woman's wish! I come to USA and maybe you meet and like me, yes? Who knows??!!! We can live together a few months, and maybe you keep my heart for you? I will write more soon!

I will say that the photo she sent -- allegedly of her and her sister -- was intriguing. IF it was of her and her sister (photo will be posted on the next, concluding installment).

But I no think so. Having dealt with a few of the Russian bride-wannabe scammers before (see some columns earlier this year), I suspected that this was one more of the same. Still, I decided I didn't want to string this one along, so my reply was in my mind, short and succinct:

Balentina,

Okay, so you're from Russia, and not Wisconsin. Same diff in the winter, but I digress. That's a very nice photo you sent me of two rather charming women. Do you know them? Beauty like that can carry one far over here, sure enough. But not with me, when it involves the distances you've cited here: I do not get involved in long distance relationships, Balentina, and since I am almost twice your professed age, I am not up to playing Whose Your Daddy Knows Best with you. I suggest you keep looking around the online dating site, and find someone closer to your age to try your hand with. Best wishes.

I thought my reply was pretty clear, didn't you? Apparently, Balentina missed at least part of it, like about all of it:

Hello!!! I hope soon I will be able to come to your area by my birthday and we will meet each other!!! I not sure why I pick you but I feel something special about you (I didn't tell her anything about my three concussions, so that ain't it, and she goes on)! I sorry my profile not accurate, the one I post as joke, I just want to try my English well enough to see if I good at it (you're better writing it than reading it, apparently, and she goes on) to be correspondent with you.

She went on to tell me her full name (Balentina Manyiowa), that she is 167 cm tall, 51 kg in weight (the photo suggests reasonable proportions), and she is so proportioned because I take care of my body I do aerobics three days a time as profession here. I hope you like my photos and they not tire you look at? And she talked about life in Russia it is very cruel life in this place I live, and finally that she is working on getting her travel papers from Russia to the USA as soon for me possible, I can't wait meet you and begin I hope my new life!!!

She finishes by asking me to send her "many photo of you" so that she'll know me at the airport (*TOING*), and if I am "lover of strong drink?".

Oooooooookay...y'wanna play, eh? Let's test her English comprehension, as well as what her end-game really is:

Balentina,

Your English is passable, and your aerobics status makes it clear you can certainly do well with head over here. Now, it seems that my second reply to you was lost in trans-Ukraine (see what I just did there?), so I think to allow this to go where you intend it for now.

As for those photos you're sending, why, I'm not tiring of them at all. That's one fine looking woman there. Personally, I lean toward lean over heavy, though the term 'fat' can be somewhat subjective: Twiggy would call you 'fat'. Fat Albert would call you a 'hey hey hey...wisp'. OSHA wouldn't be likely to put a back-up alarm on your backside, from what I'm seeing. But OSHA has some weird standards, sometimes. Freedom does that to some people.

You seem pretty determined to come to America and meet me. Well, Balentina, I suppose I should warn you that your eagerness to meet someone you've only communicated poorly with over three emails might be a bit premature, especially a guy who uses Vaseline and cattle prods to elicit an answer to that seminal sexual question, "who's your Comrade?".

But if coming is what you want, coming I guess ain't such a bad objective to have in the right venues. And speaking to your question of strong drink, I will say that this is definitely possible under such circumstances as barlighting and testosteronal desperation demands that sensory ugly detection be muted in order to score. More or less.

In Part II, I will learn that my last reply repelled her not, as her next response to me is from Moscow, in preparation for her trip to America...and me.

She thinks. But she don' know me vewy well. Or any of my online guises...

Take Me Out Of The Ballgame..

MLB "spring training" is underway. A fitting time for me to reminisce about my own memories of the sport, and my utter ineptness thereof.

Another blogger I visit -- Hale McKay -- sometime back posted some jokes about baseball. The very first one resonated immediately: about how little Billy raced home and told his mom that he'd helped score the winning run in the ballgame that afternoon. And how had he done that, she asked?

"I dropped the ball". DOH!

Sounds like me.

Baseball was never my sport. As a kid that got signed up for Little League, I didn't last one season of it. Among other inabilities (eye-hand coordination, ball-bat coordination, throw-aim coordination, flyball-glove coordination), I had this inexplicable fear of a baseball, zeroing right in on my head.

A couple of times of which, it did.

In elementary/jr high/high school softball, I gradually rounded into a manageably inept player who learned to improve eye-hand, bat-ball and flyball-glove coordination. The throw-aim coordination wasn't following along at the same pace, but showed some sign of promise that I could deliver the ball to within feet of the target.

The fear of the ball coming at the head remained. Which I can't explain, since hitting me in the head -- as three concussions have proven -- doesn't amount to much. Common sense doesn't manage to penetrate there at times either, but I digress.

Anyway, the Billy story brought back an old softball memory, one that I can now laugh about, since the other party to the story has, I am comfortably certain, no idea where I am anymore.

Into adulthood, I found myself getting roped into playing rec-league slow-pitch softball. Eh. I'd finally managed to find enough assorted levels of coordination to manage this, and found a fielding position that thoroughly fit me: right field. It was an easy choice, since no one else on the team wanted it ("too boring", I was told). But for me, it was perfect: a grounder that got past the infield was no problem; a fly ball, if hit deep enough, gave me time enough to work out the coordinates, windage, elevation, projected rate of drift, deceleration and drop, for me to make a half-dozen adjustments to same, and make a catch, while the crowd took bets on whether I would or not.

My teammates told me that the odds were running 8-5 against. Wiseasses.

One thing I had developed over the years -- and can't explain why -- was a cannon-arm for throwing the ball back in. But the throw-aim coordination was a tad bit dubious as yet.

At a corporate job during the latter 1980s, I was part of a group that challenged a mixed team of sheriff's deputies from our local county, to a slow-pitch softball game. On the night of the big event, the two teams appeared to be pretty evenly-matched, and the score went to and fro.

Up to then, I'd had a good night: not one ball that left the infield had done so to right field. I was pretty complacent, having had a good 3-for-4 at the plate, with 3 runs scored and 3 RBI. Then, late in the 6th inning, the deputies managed to tie us up, and with two outs, the hitter punched a ball into, until then, virgin right field.

Oh sh**.

While trying to compute the longitude and latitude of the inbounder, I recognized that it was going to drop in front of me for a base hit; so did the baserunner, who poured on the coals in a bid for a double. When I got to the ball, he was about 2/3s of the way to second base; I came up quickly and fired a rocket from about 60 feet away to the second baseman.

With that cannon-arm of mine, I threw the baserunner out. Literally. With a badly-timed revisitation of that dubious throw-aim coordination of mine, I put the ball squarely behind the baserunner's right ear, dumping him to the dirt short of second base. Fell like a sack of wet compost, he did.

For the next few minutes, the very shaky, white-faced baserunner kept insisting that one finger was three. He was helped off, and a pinch runner substituted for him. One that went onto score the winning run.

All because I threw the wrong kind of "out".

Yep...me and Billy got something in common. We won a game. For the opposing team.

Come July, it'll have been 21 years since that "argument for Alzheimers" game. I don't play softball any more. And I don't worry about being pulled over by that particular deputy, one dark and sinister night in a rural part of the county any more. I trust to the rocket I delivered, to have provided him just enough memory lapse ;-)

Phfft!

Since my pet rock Seymour has become friends with an assortment of writers on Facebook, he is determined to write something to make himself famous.

I came home from work, and Seymour had a set of "new, never before seed or hear-d" lyrics written out on a sheet of paper, awaiting my review. A quick perusal of what he'd jotted down was vaguely familiar to me; the more I looked, the more I recalled, until a *TOING* in my memory banks took me back to the late 1960s, and a country-western television answer to Laugh-In: Hee Haw.

More specificially, a comedy song routine that was a regular on the show.

"Was NOT!"

Here's what Seymour wrote and claims is "never before seed or hear-d lyrics":

*Guitar strumming*

You had si-x kids, and I had e-leven

and we had eight more, just bloomin' like flowers...

I wish you'd come back

and help me my darlin'...

your kids and my kids are beatin' up ours...

Where, oh where, are you to-night?

Why did you leav-e me here all alone?

I searched the world over and thought I'd found true love,

you met a-nother and

PHFFT! you wuz gone...

It was the PHFFT! Song, made famous by Archie Campbell and Gordie Tapp (on the particular song Seymour tried to pirate, Campbell's partner was Conway Twitty).

"Did NOT!"

So I let Seymour see the YouTube skit (which still makes me laugh).

"Oh...".

Oh, indeed.

So I told him that while he could probably get by with using the tune, or something close akin to it, he'd have to completely revise his lyrics. Silly little things like copyright infringement, plagiarism, and that kinda thing.

Seymour's dusty version of "Phfft!" convinced me that another "(lack of) creativity crisis" was over.

Never underestimate a pet rock determined to write parody, even though he doesn't think so.

"Am NOT!"

Two AMs later, as I stumbled to the coffee pot, thereon I was greeted with a piece of paper with the following scrawled on it:

*guitar-sounding stuff*

Your goat had six kids, and mine had a do-zen,

we set-tled on goats, as better than ducks...

I wish you'd come baack,

and help with the milkin'

changing these lyrics, just in a word sucks...

Where, dag-nab-it are ewe, ewe goat?

Why did ewe go on the lamb, one night?

I grazed the world over and thought I'd found pasture,

you rammed with a-nother and

PHFFT ewe ain't right...

"Well? Well??"

It's 3:30am, I have a pesky pet rock at my elbow, gibberish for lyrics, I'm without caffeine, and I'm speechless.

Anyone got Weird Al Yankovic's number? He and Seymour have something in common.

"Do NOT!"

From the "Best Of" The 419 Files: Fowl Play (2003)

*Sometimes, a scambait begins with you knowing where the scammer's going, but you're not sure where or how far you're going to be able to lead them afoul of their plans. In this one, the picture at the right will give you an idea where this one wound up. And all thanks to a late typo, one that they -- the scammers -- never recovered from. My opportunistic bad.

This was my favorite scambait from 2003, and until The Papal Chase, my favorite overall. I'm condensing it a bit down from when it was on my old website; may you enjoy it as I did*.

When you receive a scam email, you never really know the twists and turns it may take, once the scammers are engaged. This one took a twist that was foreseen by neither the 419ers, or yours truly.

But it was a hoot, at least to me, how it played every step of the lay. You'll see what I just did there toward the end.

For starters, my character -- the urbane, low-key Dr. Ben Dover, pHd -- is cyberly contacted by the one and probably only Mrs. Glendoven Van Labram (you can see where I took the cue for my name from), a poor, destitute widow, living in some degree of poverty and oppression in South Africa. Her late spouse, before his untimely demise aboard a plane, train, automobile or ostrich spinal stretcher, had secured a multi-million dollar supply of precious gems with a security company in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Holland). And I -- a foreign national -- could engineer the liberation of this stash, for the benefit of her and her litter (which was never mentioned again after the first email).

And for my time and trouble? I'd rate 30% of the total sum (one that is never mentioned, so I guess they didn't lie when they offered me 30% of nothing).

I was directed to respond with my acceptance to both her, and her attorney, to proceed, her attorney being one Joseph A. McCarthy of McCarthy & Company, Johannesburg, SA.

My reply is in keeping with my standard tactic of test the scammer's comprehension skills early, and often:

This is indeed distressing news, your plight as outlined in your missive. I do not know how you came upon my email address, but this is of no matter; being a good Samsonite of the Old Order, I am bound and oblivious to lend assistance to all windows and oprahs encountered, howsoever flatulent their plea.

As it so happens, I am a widower myself: my spouse of 20 years, Svetlana Beeyotch Schiesse Dover, passed away five years ago from terminal demeaning crotch crickets, and I have remained a promiscuous bachelor ever since (she was quite an ironbox). She left me quite an inheritance, so I want for nothing as I live an austere life as a research project manager at a facility in the splendour of tiny Liechtenstein.

As you wish, I will direct all future correspondence to your well-noted attorney in your effort to give me the business, and work my own unique brand of same through his auspices.

Noting well your desire for secrecy, I will require you and your attorney to limit your correspondence on this matter to this email address, and this one only; it is password protected and encrypted for maximum freshness. Do not try to telephone, as my company records all calls made and received. My born-on-dating is 12-31-55; I enclose a photo of me after a cosmetic surgical operation to minimize the aging process, and while it sorta didn't work (I use a picture, for the first time, of dead comedian Pat Paulsen), it keeps me viable with the Liechtensteinian ladies.

I shall await your next.

A few days later, Mrs. Glendoven's attorney makes his opening gambit:

My name is Joseph McCarthy, Esq., managing partner of McCarthy & Company, Johannesburg, South Africa. We are lawyers to Mrs. Lab Van Glendoven. She has given us instructions to write you with detailed information your require in this business. Her life story is heart broken, she lost all what she work for with her late husband to Zimbabwean government and land reform of Robert Mugabe. Now she has been able to put herself together. We have her mandate to work with you on the gem deposit her late husband make with security company in Europe. The sum and content has been mislead to the security company for confidentiality, but you will be compensated with 30% of the total which is millions, I am assure to you.

He went onto tell me how I'd need to travel to Amsterdam, meet with officials at the Global Diplomatic Security Services repository there, and give them documents that McCarthy would arrange for me. He concluded with I am waiting for your respose as soon as possible to finalize proceedings. Book your flight, confirm and send to us, then call me at (a phone number with what appeared to be a South African country code).

Well, ol' Ben Dover has an immediate response alright:

Bannister, I thank you for your promptness of response and your sense of urgency. What with your sense of decency in helping a poor, destitute widow give to me the business, I can say that it is a conditional pleasure to make your acquaintance in this venue. Before we proceed, however, I refer you to my response to Mrs. Glendoven; I am a resident of Liechtenstein, and do not possess a current passport for travel. Indeed, I have had no need to travel anywhere in years. So your choice of Amsterdam, for me to travel to, is unacceptable.

What IS acceptable is for you to arrange the security company to deliver the consignment to me: in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. You make that arrangement, and I will sweeten the pot for you: I will insist on no more than a 10% fee for my efforts to help the widow Glendoven, and the 20% giveback on my part will be awarded as follows: 10% for you, for your efforts on her behalf, and the other 10% back to the widow, for to help her and her brood with resettlement costs and what not. Frankly, I would think you would be more attuned to her needs; but I realize that you are an attorney, and are not thus wired that way.

At any rate, those are my terms, sir. Please re-review my first with the widow, then get back to me with your legal addendums therefromwith, so that we may jointly work to relieve the suffering of the widow. This is, after all, why we are joined in this circumcision.

I didn't really think I could get these clowns to agree to my change of venue, though it was worth a try; but here was where McCarthy saw an opportunity to introduce a third party into the mix:

I have read and understanded all that you have said, Dover. Since you cannot go to Amsterdam, I suggest that the consignment be shipped to you through an agent in London. He is Mr. Williams Anderson. His email address is ......... and his address is...... contact him now for shipment procedures and other requirements. Let me know concluded arrangements.

I have a humor columnist friend who's dying to participate in this shenanigan, so I try to introduce him as my own third party for the proceedings:

I thank you for your prompt reply. It is good that you understand my circumcisions, and well that you are flexible. It is particularly fortuitious that you have an agent in London; for I also have a contact there who has been invaluable to me in handling my UK-based affairs, both with the ladies and business. I will notify him to, at once, contact your Williams Anderson as directed. I see expedience in serving the widow Glendoven's needs.

Mr. McCarthy was NOT the least bit enthused about my third party, as it turned out:

Thank you for your mail. well i must sincerely tell you that this business is strictly confidential as indidcated by my client in her proposal to you. This means that htis business does not need any third party involved.

Oh YEAH?

I have well read your reply, sir, and I must note that YOU have already introduced a third party, a person utterly unknown to me. So what is this throwing "confidentiality" in my face and denying me a third party, when you have just thrown your own third party into the mix? You, sir, are directed to get back to me on this vital question, and justify the appearance of hypocrisy here. I am no fool with whom rules can be changed on a whim.

It takes a few days, but I finally get back a most snarky reply from the Bannister:

Mr. Anderson is not a third party to this business. He is an accessory to it. If your are not in position to assist the widow, confirm interest in your next mail. good day.

Oh YEAH??

Listen, bub: I so totally do not get your sudden need to spit hares and become truculent. I find your arrogance annoying. I have made it clear that I wish to aid the widow. This has been made as clear to you. How DARE you write back now with your highfalutin verbal debauchery, and challenge my intentions. I repeat: it was YOU who introduced a third party to this proceeding; Mr. Andersons William would be a bug on the windshield, had I been able to go to Amsterdam. Don't get uppity with me, bucko, or you will find yourself explaining to the widow Glendoven why YOU drove ME from helping her at her time of need!

What say you NOW? Go ahead...make my email.

As usual, a testy reply brings on something of a 'retreat':

you are taking this matter too personal. I didnt mean to insult your person. Anway, if I do, forget me please. I am committed to ensuring the widow get her money through you. It was widow that insist you not contact anyone in London to work on this deal. Pelase bear with her. Are you ready to contact Mr. Ansderson? Please do this now.

Oh sure...blame the widow here. I assure you that I am still most annoyed with you, sir. But, in the interests of what is best for the widow's ulteriors here, I will proceed with your third, at the expense of my own. Twit.

So I go ahead and send an introductory email to Mr. Andersons Williams (purposely screwing up the name). What I get back in the next three days, are two successive emails from Mr. Anderson that are blank of any text; the third comes incomplete:

sir: the mesgae tyuped for you was not correct paste. sory for that. here is the full text of mesag. the cost of shipment, claranece and handling charges would be 1,250 pounds stirlings. sned the moneys to me via western union money transfer using the following inforsmations:

Williams Amderson, 48 Regent Street, London SW4. send payment slip to email address an let me have corrent adres for shipment.

What an absolute moron. Just my type as it's time to play, "Piss Off Da Moo-ron":

Mr. Amderson Williams: I hope to f***ing tell you it wasn't correctly pasted. Perhaps YOU've been sniffing the paste. You send me two totally blank emails, and then this incomplete piece of CRAP that I wouldn't wipe your ass with. YOU are the trusted third party to Mr. McCarthy? You are a six-fingered jackass!

I demand that you REREAD THE MESSAGE YOU SENT ME, CORRECT THE OMISSIONS THEREIN, AND RESEND ME THE FULL, CORRECT MESSAGE AT ONCE! Get with the program, Amsted.

Game on:

Mester, no need for insult. the mesage i send and I sended against is same massg is a complete one. go through it once mor and comply with it.

If the insult fits, wear it, Amstel. I see it's the same friggin' message, with yet another friggin' flaw: what about the TEST QUESTION/ANSWER I'm supposed to use on the Western Union, you hammerboned suck egg mule???

While Amderman Willpont ponders that, I send this vent off to McCarthy:

What the f***, Bannister. Your London free-basing third party is totally blowing goats here:

-- he sends me incomplete emails, written by a first grader

-- no wait, a first grader would have done better

This is who you depend on to help the widow Glendoven? I don't trust this buffoon. I don't LIKE this buffoon. I won't DEAL with this buffoon. See what I just did there? I FIRED your buffoon from this deal! I will work directly with YOU, Bannister. Not that nipplehead in London!

LOL...McCarthy is pissed again:

You compalin every little thing. I get same message as ou did from Mr. Anderson. He apologise I think that was enough remosre one should expect from him. I don't have anybody to ship the consignemet except him. I have absolut confidence in him. If you have deep sense of purpose to help the widow, you work with Anderson now. Send him the money he asked for.

Oh YEAH???

Your response is infuriating. Your London free-basing buffoon is unfit to wipe a monkey's ass. Do you want my help for the widow or not? If you do, then GET ANOTHER ASSISTANT! ANYBODY! A F***ING DOOR KNOB WOULD BE BETTER! ANYONE!

McCarthy is still pissed at me, but apparently concerned about losing me at this juncture:

You are at it again. Are we fighting? AM VERY SORRY FOR MAIL. There is okay now? Are you ready to comply with payment? Remeber it is 1,250 pound starling to be sent (THE typo...one that gives me a *TOING*) If you not wish to send money to Mr. Anderson direct, you may send it to my chamber for further remittance to him. You may send it to my secretary name, Martins S. Adamu. I will forward it. Okay?

A "1,250 pound starling"? LMAO...oh, the ideer that just popped into my haid...lemme see if I can keep this ball in play:

WE are not fighting; WE are trying to help the widow Glendoven. But this hammerbonehead of yours in London is f***ing incompetent, period.

But...you offer me an alternative, and I will accept that alternative. I will await updated wiring information, and will prepare to wire you a 1,250 pound starling ASAP.

In the meantime, I decide to further screw with the works, and send an appeal direct to the widow herself:

I write directly to you since you are the reason that we are met in this effort to give me the business. After an extended period of fruitless exchanges, I am of the opinion that your bannister is not worthy of your trust. He has tried to involve me with a thoroughly buffoonish third party in London, and now he wants to add a fourth party, probably of dubious antecedence and tail length. Meantime, he denied ME access to a valued assistant, who if I had been allowed his help, we could have had this deal done by now.

I appeal to you, Widow Glendoven, to let me work directly with you. We can achieve true expedience in this way. These are my thoughts; please to let me know yours. Preferably after spellcheck.

What I get back is a response from a very 'torn' widow, who now wants to involve a fifth party in the mix:

I do not know who to believe. My attorny complain to me about your object to Mr. Andersons in London. Now you want to work with me direct, it means another shipping agent would be involve. I did contact one, a Mr. Wilford Everest. Email him at .......... I wish you not to look at Martins Adamu as a third party, he remains crucal to getting shipment sent. We must make this work, my dear Ben Dover, otherwise you must go to Amsterdam personally to receive shipment. But I would like you to send the money to Mr. McCarthy's secretary, who is currently on leave in Nigeria (*TOING*), he is Nigerian (nooooo...how can THAT be?). Please work with this arrangement, my good friend. I know by your actions that your heart is with me, and inthis I trust you. Please you now trust in me.

I imagined the violin solo from Young Frankenstein at this point...and laughed. But I digress. To grease the skids abit, I send an agreeable response:

Ma'am, I accede to your pregnant request. I will now contact your chosen agent of note. I just hope he's better to work with than that nipplehead in London was.

Then I do nothing. Three days pass, and the widow can stand it no more:

I have not herd from you since your last. I hope all is well, if yes reply this email soonest and let me know where things stand.

After another day, I decide to go back to a 'direct action' plea:

I am nonplussed. I write to your latest contact, and his email address 'bounced' -- it didn't go through. Was he arranged for by McCarthy? Not that it matters at this point.

I want to send the 1,250 pound starling directly to you, Glendoven. In this way I will know that you, and only you, received what I intended right along. How you choose to handle it after I get it to you, is entirely up to you. What's more, in view of the difficulties we have endured, I will forego my commission on this deal; the entire amount is yours, to use for you and yours, as you imagined. So...tell me how to send to you directly the 1,250 pound starling, and I'll make this matter fly to a logical conclusion.

The widow apparently is not being allowed to freelance without her odious colleagues; nor is she able to keep them straight at this point, to my enjoyment:

this is not how it is supposed to work Ben...oh my. sned the money to my attorney's secretary in Nigera. His name is Wilford Everest (it was Martins Adamu..eh). He will get the moneys to London. Send the control number to my attorney direct, please. I am not able to do this myself, please.

Oh, hell...let's add to her 'distress..oh my':

I've had quite enough of dealing with McCarthy and the pack of buffoons he surrounds himself with. I want to send the 1,250 pound starling directly to you. Tell me where to send it to get it directly to you, Widow Glendoven. I will act promptly when you do.

Whoever is playing the Widow Glendoven is quite unstrung at my insistence of sending the money directly to her...what a dipwad. And note just how unstrung she's become:

AM SORRY TO TELL YOU BUT THERE IS NO ALTERNAT FOR ME. TO YOU LET KNOW THAT THEYA ARE THE ONLY THAT ICAN TRUTH FAS AS BUSINS GO. I DONT TO KNOW WHAT ESL IS DONE NOW. PLESE UNDERSAND ME. HELP ME BY USE WHAT I SAY BFOR.

I'm not quite ready to give up on this approach:

Now, widow, it's okay. Really. In fact, remembering that you are in Johannesburg, I have the answer to all of our problems. One question: can you get to your local Western Union office there?

The answer works:

I KNOW OF WETSIN UNION OFFICE HEREBY CLOSE. BUT HOW IS THIS HELP ME?

*Sigh*...well...time to try sending her what they asked for. Except for the fact that I can't find a 1,250 pound starling. So I find something that might work even bettah, and send it, along with my coup de main plan for collecting it:

Widow, now, take a Valium and don't worry. This is going to work so perfectly and easily, you'll wonder why we didn't think of it weeks ago. It so happens that I have a business relationship with someone in the Johannesburg Western Union office. He is a trusted colleague, and he will work with me to help you, as long as you follow the instructions I now give you.

1. You see a picture attached to this email (the one at the top of the column); print it out, because it is pivotal to the outcome. Also print these instructions, so you don't forget. Sequence is important.

2. Take this picture to your local WU; it's really best if you do it.

3. When you get to the clerk at the window, ask for "Foghorn Leghorn". That is not his real name, of course (I can't reveal that, to protect his position at WU), but he'll recognize that as a code word at once. If the clerk you contact looks at you strangely when you say "Foghorn Leghorn", you'll know you've contacted my colleague.

4. Show him the picture. My contact will look at it, then at you, and will ask "what's this?" This will assure you that you have the right clerk.

5. When he asks you "what's this?", you tell him "It's a 2003 Henway".

6. He'll then ask you "what's a 2003 Henway?"

7. You'll then answer "1,250 pounds".

8. He'll immediately pay you the 1,250 pounds.

Try it, Glendoven. I guarantee you of the results!

I waited with guarded anticipation for most of that day; then, I received two replies from Glendoven's email address, both with no text in the message. The next morning, I get a very terse email from Glendoven:

dover damm you! you mak me look idott!!! contat me not more!!!!

When I got done laughing my ample backside off, I, of course, understood the obvious frustration here. Thinking you were going to get a big payday, only to wind up with a henway, one that weighed more than it was worth. I much regret that there was no way to have a camcorder present, to see how this played out at WU, if it did, in fact, get that far.

But, in case it did (as judged from her email reply), *rimshot*

If I were Glendoven & Co., I'd cry "fowl play!" too.

A "Quadilogy"?

Give my pet rock, Seymour, his own Facebook page, and...*oy vey*.

I know some very gifted, prolific writers, both in blogs and via Facebook. With one notable exception, they're getting to know Seymour now, too. And giving him delusions of createur.

Well, after his gawdawful script for Night of the Tomatoes ("was NOT!"), Seymour got some encouragement to keep working up movie script ideas from a few of his new fans.

What I can't get his new 'fans' to understand is, Seymour doesn't create "new" ideas; he shamelessly "steals" ideas from established creators, and comes up with what are, in effect, parodies.

"Do NOT!"

A blog entry a few months back was a case in point: Seymour tried to convince me that he'd written a blockbuster song, sure to be a hit. After perusing it, I recognized the 'tune' in the lyrics, and saw that he'd done a parody on the Frankie Valli/Four Seasons hit, Big Girls Don't Cry.

Seymour just rewrote the lyrics, and tried to claim creation of a new hit song, Big Squirrels Don't Fly.

Seymour insists that he had his idea well ahead of Frankie Valli.

Now my rock -- after seeing the complete series of Indiana Jones movies -- thinks he's created a new, future iconic 'hit' character and script overviews for what he insists is a "quadilogy".

I'm done arguing; I'll let you, the readers, judge for yourself.

His first movie script is titled, Colorado Seymour & Reindeer Of The Lost Sleigh. In it, his lead 'character' -- Professor Seymour Quartz Granite, Jr -- is a pHd (I tried to tell him it's Ph.D, to no avail) and instructor at Red Rocks Community College near Golden, CO. By day, that is...but when a new geologic adventure offers up...he becomes Colorado Seymour, an adventuring geologist and acquirer of mythical antiquities...*ah hem*.

In one early draft of a scene, Colorado Seymour has penetrated a deep Andes region of somewhere in South America (sound familiar?), in search of the fabled Golden Honker of Proboscis, an ancient god of the local Wootwootanooky culture. Having managed to overcome heraculean obstacles to obtain the fabled golden snout ("is NOT!"), Colorado Seymour is pursued from the caverns by frenzied Wootwootanookies, throwing spears, arrows, blow darts, pies, Piper Cubs and other assorted stuff at him. At a nearby river, his partner -- Calamity Jane -- awaits at the float plane. When Colorado Seymour leaps for a vine to swing out to the plane, he misjudges, and goes through the engine manifold, blowing hot oil and fuel...all over the pursuing Wootwootanookies, turning them to Wootwootacasserole. And thus, they make their escape, while Calamity Jane *bonks* Colorado Seymour for having punched yet another hole in her plane.

"It's good stuff!"

Seymour, it's ridiculous, Airplaneesque parody.

"Is NOT!"

At any rate...his other three movie scripts to follow are titled Colorado Seymour & The Temple of Too Damn Many Pteryducktyls (about a lost civilization of oversized turkeyesque flying beasts that eat kids and rocks the size of Seymour); Colorado Seymour & The Last Croissant (about working with his estranged father, Professor Seymour Quartz Granite, Sr, in a quest for the Holy Cow, a religious artifact from the Indus Valley circa 5,000 BC); and last, perhaps even least ("is NOT!"), Colorado Seymour & The Kingdumb of the Pyrite Numbskull (a possible script idea includes the discovery of the ancient ancestral home of aliens purported to be related to present-day House Speaker Nancy 'Bela' Pelosi).

Seymour insists they'll all be picked up and brought to cinema by Spielberg and Lucas. I assure Seymour that once completed, and if sent to the duet of Spielberg/Lucas, they won't pick 'em up; one of their very lowly assistants will, and *plop* 'em right in the circular file.

"A circular file...that's where they're saved for later review?"

No, Seymour...that's where they're sent for paper recycling.

"Better NOT!"

Welcome to the world of writing, Seymour.

So what do YOU think: a Colorado Seymour quadilogy, or should Seymour go back to watching episodes of The Outer Limits?

From the "Best Of" 419 Files: The Papal Chase (2004)

*Note: this 2004 epic -- one of my best scambait escapades, EVAH -- took place over 8 weeks, and involved all the blasphemy and nonsense I could muster, and still sustain a scambait to my utter delight, along with the angst of several scammers, and the probable "WTF?" of some train station and hotel employees in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It is presented now, in condensed form, for your amusement*

In late September, folks are starting to think about preparing for the coming holidays. But not me; I was preparing for, as it would turn out, a Keystone Kopsesque epic around a European standard, Amsterdam, Holland. All that was lacking was the appropriate 'chase' music.

It began on September 21, 2004, when my scam-magnet email account received an email from a Mrs. Tracy Hatch of Kuwait; before it was done, it would involve her "barrister" of note, Abudu Daladi, and one of several Amsterdam-based associates, improbably named Mark Antony.

Like the 1963 epic It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World -- that managed to find a role for just about anyone in Hollywood at the time -- perhaps even Cleopatra managed to finagle a role in it, too.

Witness the opening gambit from Mrs. Tracy Hatch of Kuwait:

Subj: God Blees You

I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Mr. Kazeem Hatch who worked with Kuwait Embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in 2001. We were married for eleven years without child (she was obviously too busy trying to screw other folks, but I digress). He died after a brief illness that last only four days. Before his death we were born again Christians. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $12.6 Million dollars with one Security Company in Europe. Presently this money is still with the Security Company.

Recently my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next three months due to cancer problem (probably from lack of use of certain parts, but I digress again). Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to church or better still a christian individual that will utilize this money the way am going to instruct herein.

She went on, and on, and on, to tell me that I was her chosen "christian", and that I was to contact her via email, if I accepted her offer.

So what was a God-fearing, Christian man of dubious sense of humor and the common sense of a toilet flush handle, to do? Oh sure: I could do the obvious (delete). OR...I could push the boundaries of blasphemy even further than Mrs. Tracy Hatch was trying to do, by responding as a man of the cloth.

Thus was born the Universal Church of Perpetual Holy Horkage, and the Reverend U. R. Phulovit, Pasture Thereof, located in the bucolic idyllicy of Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

I'm not sure they've ever forgiven me over in Liechtenstein, but I continue digression.

I reckoned my opening response to Mrs. Hatch and her associates would either signal "game on", or the sound of cyber crickets:

My wayward child,

May all that is bleesed, rain upon your parade in a gullywasher of faith! I have the honor and extreme flatulence to be Reverend U. R. Phulovit, pHd and Pasture of the Universal Church of the Perpetual Holy Horkage, and I am moved to my bowels by your treatise, Ma'am.

As you ponder your closing moments in the face of this cancer to your blighted soul, it is well that you seek for the betterment of life for those not sullied by your past; this is smiled upon by Him in all things. Yet, as you face the great precipice leading to eternal perdition and/or re-runs if so inclined, you are obligated my child, OBLIGATED to profess that which we all have, in our own little curds and wheys...our SINS! Now, Sister, NOW is the time to give over your soul to Him, and not to the heathens who tug and grope at your heart and genitilia.

As for the rest, I shall be more than happy...indeed, DUTIFULLY BLISSFUL, to be the agent in your giving me and others the business you seek to give in this time of nearness to subterranean living.

I shall await your response.

Many a times, such smartass responses resulted in nothing further; but on this occasion, bigger fools come to those who were originally intended to be taken as such:

Dear Rev. U. R. Phulovit, pHd,

Thank's for your email response and the content there in was well noted. Based on my mail to you my husband is dead and we don't have child. hence I have contacted you because they will use it for their own selfish interest and not mine for my wish is to use the momey for GOD's work and also to help poor childern. I thank God to meet with someone like you who is God fearing human being.

All I need from you now is cooperation because my present condition of health, you will contact my personal barrister to assist you in all necessary legal vital document that will prove you as the ture owner of this said fund but you need to promise me that you will not sit on this money when you receive it. You will use it accordingly in God's work as indicated in my mail. His name is Barrister Abudu Daladi (and she listed his email address). And she went on to ask of me my full name, address, and other contact information, as all good scammers get around to.

Okay, so my first round of blasphemy went over her head in a manner that Jeff Dunham and Peanut would have reveled in; so let's stick our toes a little deeper into the Holy Water:

Lord amighty, your spouse died based on your email to me? Sins and stale wafers above! Were this truly the case, I'd have to shave my head, don robes, eat broccoli and flatulate all things Gregorian with my monk friends at St. Accapella Mocha. But you say he died in 2001, so mote it be not.

As for helping childerns and other things of spelling anomalies, this is what I have committed my life to. I thank you for encrusting me with this business you wish to me with aplomb and circumcision. I shall not fail to live to your level of expectorants. As for the funds you wish encrusted, worry not: to sit upon them once received, I wouldn't dream of. Paper cuts in that region are a holy terror, and I'll assume you don't see what I just did there.

In answer to your request, I am Reverend U. R. Phulovit, pHd, pasture of the Universal Church of Perpetual Holy Horkage; my own little parish being located in the splendour of Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Long ago, I took upon myself a vow of poverty, seeking only the welfare and food stamps of His Kingdom. So avowed, I have forslaken many of the modern conveniences, including a telephone. But my parish elders -- blessed and pesky souls they are -- insisted that I maintain a modern modem line for a computer, so that they may stay in touch from the main diocese in Zurich, Switzerland.

Thus in this way, I can do His bidding on Ebay and His wishes, here and wherever poverty and chicanery is barney rife. So, dear Sistah, please have your bannister have speaks with me via this means. His Will be probated.

I also copied this email to her good bannister; and a couple days later, Bannister Abudu Daladi enters the fray:

Rev. U. R. Phulovit,

I am barrister Abudu Daladi, and as such am entrusted with the estate and affairs of Mrs. Tracy Hatch. She has informed me to deal with you in this matter, so I wish you to call me at this number (something with a Nigerian country code) I have trouble with your reply to Mrs. Hatch, and wisht to speak on the phone for you with clarifications.

A couple days later, I am more than happy to non-comply:

Bannister, Thanks to Him, I read well and grasp all of the finite details therein what you say and mean to convey. Am I given to understand, thanks to His having given me the necessary tools to do so, that you are well-read and educated? That you are God-fearing and churchly in all manures of the spirit? That you, like me, have the best interests of your client and soon-to-be cadaver, Mrs. Tracy Hatch, at the fore in your effort to help her give me the business? It is well that it is so; therefore, I bid you return to my previous email, wherein I was clear that mine is a humble ministry, and that I have forgone such luxuries as a telephone. I do have this modest computer -- provided by the church elders -- which allows me to reach out and touch those of my flock what need a touch. And it is in this manure, good bannister, that we are met, and shall deal.

I await your instructions and that voodoo that you do, so welllllllll, Bannister.

The bannister may have a problem with my verbiage, but he picks up on 'voodoo':

Thanks so much for your mail, before i got further i urge you open up what you mean by VOODOO? and also if you realy wish to actualise this transaction with me kindly send me your direct phone number, your mailing address and your full name. and also i don't seem to understand the contents of your mail, like i have intimated you without the phone number i can't go ahead. i await your swift response.

You note that his grammar, punctuation and spelling have deteriorated a tad; it usually takes longer. At any rate, I relent on the 'voodoo', but not the phone number:

Bannister, I do most sincerely regret, as He knows I would, any misunderstandings that aboriginated from the reference to 'voodoo': I am a man of the cloth, generally wool, but am alos something of a cruciverbalist, and poetic word play is my farte. I was rhyming your name. No offense taken.

Now, to the business for which we are met: I have made it clear that my oath of poverty prevents me from having a telephone. But in all things, He provides a way and a means: that way and means is that which we have thus far communicated with . Thus and so it shall remain, Bannister. Amen. Thus and so, a revisitation of my previous emails, will render you up the other informations you have overlooked, but are at your fingertips. We have all the communication equipment necessary for our to have good work come from this meeting; kindly make use of it.

But the bannister is insistent that I call him:

I cannot undersand you in mail, and do not undersand you not call me direct. it is must that we do so call me now.

Another few days of my I don't have a phone, we have computers, make it work, esteemed and sauteed sir, and his i cannot read your mails, you must call me to make this go ahead, the good reverend decides to sound out the cadaver-in-waiting:

My heart is heavy, heavy indeed: I find your bannister of choice is not dealing with me in sincerity. And he insists on the frivolous -- a phone call -- when I have laboriously explained the whyfer not of this, and the lack of necessity thereof. I fear that we waste time over telephony, whilst you slip precariously closer to the maws of formaldehyde.

I stand ready, child, to do well by you as He would have me do; but I cannot be twisted from the path of righteous cyberbosity, by a dissolute bannister of dubious antecedence. As Gorkus once said of Cain while he was able, "Badda boom badda bing, fuggeddaboutdit". I have faith that you will be helped in a manure He knows you befitting of, but I fear that this will not come to pass with the machinations of your current bannister. Convey to him to moderate, and work with me heah.

Several days go by, and perhaps I have overplayed my hand with the "badda booms"; but then comes this from the somewhat contrite bannister:

i have been explain by my client to cooperate and work to actulize this with you. I want still aphone call but it is for later. now i must insist that you read well and understand what is to be done to actualize this matter. you are require to travel to Amsterdam, where you will meet with officals and accept consignment for the accoutns being hold by a security company there. you will need to pay in advance a consignment fee of $10800 USD to have them deliver to you the consignment along side the 2 documents I shall send you in your name before we share the fund to enable my client to have her own part.

you must make travel plans in good time and let me know them. i still want you to call and discuss this before proceed. why you not do this? the consignment is a lager account and you must undersand this. i wait your response soonest.

Usually, when you get mad at a 419er, they back off of demands they're making. So the good Rev tries it with the phone thing:

If Mrs. Tracy Hatch communicated to you to cooperate with me in getting the greatest good done with expedience, then I am flummoxed over your insistence of a phone call. Good Him above, man, I am a man of infinite patience and spchincter control, but you are wearing me thing on a point of incontinence. Are you a moron by birth or choice?

As to Amsterdam: this was not an expected element in the effort. Nor was the sum of money you have mentioned, anticipated. But, due to the nature of our business, and in the interests of meeting that last request of our mutually-supported cadaver-in-waiting, I shall petition my church elders, giving them the details, and seeking their dispensation to proceed.

Really, bannister, I hope you are not as obsessive over your mother, as you are telephony. You shouldn't be afreud to have that looked into.

Despite some insults and a really bad pun, I get back the answer I sorta kinda anticipated:

Thanks so much for your mail, wich you seem to insutl my person. well am not mad at you and will not be just for the sake of my profession have come across people like you from different part of world. i will say no more about phones so when will you be in Amsterdam to complete the transaction? soo as we can, ok.

He's come across people like me from different parts of the world? Gawd hep them other parts...but I reckon it's time to assuage the basta...bannister:

Forgive me, my son: I sometimes speak with unbridled passion, and He must at times remind me that my impassioned bridle is a bit abrupt and harsh. I am sorry you're a moron. I forgive you this flaw.

I have shared with my meager congregation, the fauxplight of your client, and their enthusiasm for my doing my best to see that she gets what she justly deserves, was genuinely underwhelming. This bodes well for the outcome, I feel.

I will be upcountry for a few days on a benevolence mission, bringing His Word to heathens in need of a few more Words, and less etchings. I shall communicate further upon my return, and when I hear from my church elders in Zurich.

Apparently, all is now forgiven in the flush of believing that I am hooked, lined, and sinkered:

Thanks for your email, you are welcome. I wish you good on your trip. In further to our transaction, I wish to know the date which you shall travel to Amsterdam to enable me to furnish you necessary detail. Please update me soonest on this. I am also in need of a copy of your passport and photo, for it is how I make the security company know that you are who I send.

At this point, I didn't have a 'bogus' passport to use; but thanks to another accomplished scambaiter with a sterling resume of humiliated scammers adorning his cybertrophy room, I procured a bogus UK passport (one that wouldn't stand scrutiny, if a scammer knew what to look for), showing me residing in Liechtenstein, with the photo of U. R. Phulovit being strangely akin to that of dead political comedian, Pat Paulsen.

After a week, allowing me time for my flockly visitudes, I replied to the bannister:

I am fine, and by His judgment, my trip was a success, having enlightened the flock and sent all heathens thereabouts in flight to less clement surroundings. Does me good, doing His work.

A passport, you say? Hmmmm...yes, I have one; no, I don't have it copied for sending from my computer. But He provides for those of faith; I shall put it in His hands to make the necessary become accomplished.

As for travel to Amsterdam, I am awaiting a decision from my church elders, who have now all the necessary facts to decide how and if I can proceed. I shall soon travel to Zurich on a periodic pilgrimmage of dioceseical proportion, and perhaps will then learn the breadth and scope of that which I can render under His guidance. If I am cleared to proceed, I will travel to Amsterdam by train -- like the American heathenette, Erica Jong, I fear flying -- and will provide you with information accordingly at that time.

To hear, one has only to listen; to accomplish, one has only to believe. I shall be in touch.

I waited a few days, and then sent this bone to the bannister:

I am pleased to advise you that my church elders have summoned me to Zurich; it is not likely that this summons means anything less than approval to proceed on behalf of the wishes of our cadaver-in-waiting. Oh, and Praise be unto Him, a flock member of my parish has a scanner, and has placed my passport into this computer, which I now send you.

This email results in a most appreciative response:

Thanks again, Rev, for your mail and zeal willingness to work in actualizing this transaction. Will you be able to travel to Amsterdam by November? Please advise me soonest, I haven't said all you must know to conclude. I await your swift response.

A weekend passes to gin up his anticipation, and then:

Praised be HIM! I return from Zurich with great news! I saved a bunch of money on my flock insurance by switching to Geico! What's more, the dioceses have approved both the expenditure necessary for your actualization, and my time off to make the sojourn to Amsterdam, to complete the process.

On this, I hadn't anticipated, but my elders insist, and I will as they so do: they insist that I deliver the payment you have advised -- $10,800, USD -- in cash, and in person, to the security company in Amsterdam, so that I may gauge his trustworthiness and man-of-Goddyness in person. To achieve this end for the mutual benefit of Mrs. Tracy Hatch, I am agreed, and put the rest in His hands.

I will email you soon my itinerary for travel.

So I spend a bit on the EuroRail website, researching train schedules, hotel accommodations, and whatever else I need to make my itinerary sound credible. Meantime, I get this:

Rev, this is good news! send me soonest your travel plans, and i will tell you the rest of that you must to know. i am confident of our mutual success for my client. she is pleased at your progress.

I reckon "she" is. So after putting together a credible itinerary, I pick the second week of November for to execute it. A day after sending it, I get this:

this is good, Rev, and will facilate the procedure. you will be met by a personal friend of mine and security company representative at the train station in Amsterdam. his name is Mark Antony, and he is their authorized representative to see to your needs and conduct all business to transfer of funds. please communicate with him at (yet another email address).

Time to play some more:

Bannister, it won't be YOU I am meeting in Amsterdam? Dear me, must we involve yet another party into this equation? I mean, well...if you say it necessary, then I leave it to Him to guide me. I shall copy this Mark Antony with this email, and await his response soonest.

Next day, I hear from Mr. Antony:

Mr. Mark Antony, Equity Finance and Securities BV: this is to acknowledge the receipt of your mail from our office. The charges of clearing your consignment is $10,800 USD to be brought and delivered in CASH. Therefore, you are expect to send us a copy of your international passport and bring with you documentation verifying you as designated consignee for shipment. Please also to send us a copy of your travel itinerary, so that our protocol officer can meet you at the station and conduct you to our offices. Awaiting your soonest response.

Up to now, no one has mentioned a "document" that I need to verify me as anything. A quick "huh? What document?" email to Bannister Daladi, results in me receiving one of the poorest-quality, 3rd hand documents I've ever seen in scambaiting. The copy I get has names crossed out and written over, like the consignment belonging to "Mrs. Susan Tracy", which is crossed out, and "Mrs. Tracy Hatch" is now written in....as is the amount of money due at consignment transfer. LMAO at these inept morons. But, the good Rev. U. R. Phulovit isn't going to mess with proceedings now; he notifies Antony as follows:

I am happy to have in my possession your response. The church elders will deliver to me the funds upon my arrival in Zurich early on November 15, and will escort me to the train. My travel and accommodation itinerary is as follows:

76ICE departs Zurich at 0802 arrives Frankfurt at 1153

126ICE departs Frankfurt at 1300 arrives Amsterdam at 1655

I am booked at the Hostel The Globe, Oudezijds Boorburgwal 3, Amsterdam Noord-holland

1012EH Netherlands for one night (November 15).

I return to Zurich via 125ICE and 77ICE accordingly, on November 16.

I am also attaching my passport and copy of document of verification. I shall be most inspired to meet your protocol official upon my arrival, and present the required documents and fees at that time. I am pleased that we are on the cusp of providing succor to a destitute widow of pre-cadaver status, and I thank you warmly for your part in the scheme of things.

After some back-n-forth chitchat, it is obvious that as November 15th draws near, the excitement and anticipation of the scammers is rising. Especially as I send them this in the very early hours of the 15th (timed to match the time zone differences of about 8 hours):

I am shortly off to Zurich. He smiles on those who go that extra mile for the benefit of others, and I know that His smile upon you is particularly obtuse at this juncture. You can be justly proud of that which you have arranged on behalf of Mrs. Tracy 'Susan Tracy' Hatch of Kuwait. I will look forward to my greeting in Amsterdam, and to feel as a fox amongst the hounds in my heart at the prospect. Please instruct your protocol official to have a sign with my name -- U. R. Phulovit -- so to ease my ability to find him upon my arrival. I shall be dressed as a man of the cloth ought to be.

None of my sarcasm registers, as I get an email from the bannister that, had I been truly duped, I wouldn't have read until my deluded return:

Thanks so much to you Rev. You are good man, and God almighty will bless you. Contact me when you return from Amsterdam, so we may arrange to meet to divide up the consignment, as agreed, so that my client's wishes can be met.

And this would be the last cordiality that would emanate from either the bannister, or Mr. Antony, as will be noted in the next emails, the first of which comes from Mr. Antony, followed by Bannister Daladi:

Attn: Rev. U. R. Phulovit pHd, Sequel to your mail of arrival information to our office, we made it a point to asign a protocol officer to receive you upon arrival at Central station, but he met an empty train that you were not on, and looked all over the station for you to no avail. he even wait for next train to clarify mistake, and you do not appear. He then sent staffi to your suppose hotel but yet you were no where be found, and he was not happy to be made fun of when he ask for you and you not registered. is your name real?

In view of the above, this indicated that you did not come at all. This is not funny matter, or one ot make joke of. We take you at your word. What is this now that happen? Respond soonest.

And..

YES TRUST AND HONESTY IS A THING OF THE MIND AND HAVE COME TO TRUST YOU WHY PLAYING ME?? BUT YOU MAKEING ME PEST OFF WHAT IS GOING ON??? WHERE ARE YOU KEEP ME POSTED????

Should I make up something elaborate to try to keep the game going? Eh...September 21 to November 16 is enough:

Mrs. Tracy-Susan Hatch-Tracy, Bannister Abudu "Voodoo" Daladi, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, et al:

Lady and gentlemen of dubious antecedence and intent: you are sooooooo right about trust and honesty. Too bad that you were badly lacking in both. But this is okay, since I follow a faith of forgiveness and forbearance, except when it comes to people like you, wherethen I follow a faith of piss off and annoy. It gives me immense pleasure, you telling me how your associates ran all over Amsterdam, looking for me. And your protocol officer, waiting at the train with a sign "U. R. Phulovit"....priceless. Especially since I had a man with a camcorder, following him all over (I didn't, but it was fun to let them think I did). Even HE was laughing aloud, which you probably mistook for water buffalo flatulence down by the water hole.

I do so appreciate you allowing me to waste about two months of your time. And that document full of strike-outs and cross-overs was almost as priceless! And this video of watching your lads, chasing their tails in Amsterdam...ah, does the heart good.

It has been a pleasure to have played you like a cheap game, folks.

Laughing in Liechtenstein,

Rev. U. R. Phulovit, pHd and Master of the Bait

I received one reply, and one only, from the email address formerly used by the Bannister, Abudu Daladi: you not laugh at us. you see.

Yeah, Bannister...I laugh. Now and forever more.

*2010 note: and still am ;-)*