Now That We're Still Here...

Okay.  We made it to 2013.

So since the Mayan calendar didn't get us, now it's the turn of the worst potus' in history and his hellthscare plan. 

The good news is, your Christmas gifts weren't wasted.  The bad news is, you'll have to file taxes for 2012.

Now that that's settled...sometimes, newspaper headlines wind up sounding more stupid than the story they announce.

And sometimes, the story winds up deserving the stupid headlines.

But I digress.

A pre-Mayan calendar scammer -- a Mr. Sebastian, allegedly with the IMF -- titled his email "VIEW EMAIL ATTACHMENT FOR MORE INFORMATION".  The attached email was a brief blurb, allegedly from the International Monetary Fund, concerning "my" part of $8.5 million USD, the effort by a Mrs. Virgie Brown to have me declared "dead" so she could have my "portion", and Mr. Sebastian's effort to determine if I, or Mrs. Virgie Brown, would "get my portion". 

In short, I had to let Mr. Sebastian know if I was dead or not.  Sounds pretty simple, huh?

Well...I decided that the headline and the story needed to digress, and radically so.  I kept a key element of Mr. Sebastian's theme in play -- whether the recipient was 'dead' or not -- but to him and 50+ of his friends and colleagues, that's where the resemblance of his email title and email content ran abruptly off the rails:

International Momentary Fungi (IMF)
54 abbis, route des Aca-ca
Case postale 1516
CH-1227 Geneva
Switzerland. 

ATTN: Benefil subscriber,

I do not write to dogs or cats; if you are a Benefil subscriber, please disregard this email.  Woof. 

Otherwise, I am Mr. Sebastian Lipshitz of IMF of the Head in the Office Switzerland.  Yes, someone has to be the head of the head.  How else do you think it gets cleaned?

I don't know how to break this to you, but someone must break something sometime, otherwise unbroken things don't get replaced, and nothing new gets built if nothing new gets old and breaks, do you follow my curly-cue logic?  Good, because neither do I. 

Your email appeared among those who will receive a part-proctological exam that has been approved already for months. You are requested to remove your head from your ass, to allow it to return to normal size, prior to this exam.  No, that's not all. 

We received an email from one Mrs. Virgie Brown who told us that she is your next of kin and that you died in a peculiar accident on Dancing With The Stars last week, when a choreographed dancing rhinoseros duet accidentally squashed you during their big finale, prior to their being voted off the show.  She has also submitted her video of the incident to assure us that, yes, you really were squarshed between two dancing rhinoceros during Dancing With The Stars.  We want to hear from you before we can completely accept her claim that you are dead or not.  Please email us either way, and assert that (1) you are alive and unflattened by the Dancing With The Stars episode or (2) that you are as dead as a can of corned beef and moreso flat, and in the case of (2) we require proof of flatness in the form of (3) an attached photo of you between the two rhinos or (4) a signed affidavit from the Dancing With The Stars judges that confirms your flattening, in which case of our receiving (4) or (3), we'll accept as fact that you are indeed (2), and will grant Mrs. Virgie Brown's claim as aforesubmitted. 

If you are still alive, kindly tell us, in 100 words or less -- preferably in Azerbijani, since we don't speak New York Italian -- what the fidooniak you were doing on a show as ridiculous as Dancing With The Stars, where you could conceivably wind up between two dancing rhinoceros, when everyone not under the influence of their local bar pharmacist can tell you that you should NEVER appear on a TV show wherein you can get caught in between two dancing rhinoceros, or any possible combination therelike.  Please include at the end of your 100 Azerbijanic words -- if you use New York Italian, you will be disqualified and registered as a cruciverbal offender for disorderly vowel movement -- the following information for our records:

1 Your full names
2 Your present contact address.
3 Your telephone & Fax numbers.
4 The last time you had sex with an inflatable sock puppet named Squiggy.

4a.  The justifiable reason for your answer to the previous question.
5 Your Private Email Address.

I will apologize to you on behalf of IMF (International Momentary Fungi) if your response satisfies all of the requested informations we requested, in Azerbijani.  If you try a fast one by substituting Bostonian Greek, we will send one of the dancing rhinoceros to sit on your favorite couch during an incontinence episode.  Not knowing what incontinence is, rhinos tend to not worry about it, and incontinent with frequency and volume.  Life preservers will not be provided.

Thanks,
Mr. Sebastian Lipshitz

Artificial dust mop inseminator

IMF

What comes as no great surprise, is that Mr. Sebastian didn't read much, or any, of my edit.  He took my response as if I was alive and willing to be duped.  And for that, he also took on the role -- I assume this, and you'll learn why shortly -- of banker Vuso Vuyi.  So, I was getting emails from both Sebastian and Vuyi, who always seemed to know what the other one was sending to my character, Ben Dover.

Responding as usual, I fulfilled all of their information demands (name, address, phone number, business, et al), and I even added in a photo ID that was just fuzzied up enough that they couldn't read it well enough to get any useful info off of it. 

The game, as it turned out, was whether they could get me to wire $790 via Western Union to them, or how long I could bait and string them along.

Twin points of contention quickly developed:  the fuzzied up ID that they couldn't read (and I insisted that was the best my scanner could do with it); and my character's refusal to call Vuyi on the phone in Benin (at least the number included the country calling code of 229, which is Benin); my character kept patiently, then impatiently telling Vuyi that I was "hearing impaired" and couldn't hear long distance telephone callers.   Vuyi and Sebastian both insisted that I had to call Vuyi, or "the wiring instructions to Western Union wouldn't be sent". 
This resulted in my character sending a paragraph-long all-caps tirade, which included referring to Mr. Sebastian as "a jackwagoned douche nozzle of dubious antecedence who was, through his asshole conduct, f***ing up the whole deal", and that I would only deal with Vuyi if he'd send me the wiring instructions with no further delay.

That's when I came to the conclusion that Mr. Sebastian and Vuso Vuyi were the same person:  both stopped communicating with me forthwith.

I guess the 'Mr. Sebastian' half's butt hurt trumped the 'Mr. Vuyi' half in getting me to wire money.

OR...as my pet rock, Seymour suggested...the Mayan calendar prediction got to Sebastian/Vuyi, and just hasn't gotten around to me yet.

Seymour better hope he's wrong on the latter, or no more chinese egg rolls for him.

"PHFFFFFT!!!"