They HATE When This Happens



Sad, isn't it?

Equally so, for the scammer that sent my character this email:


With due respect, I observe every protocols and pay all due compliments.I am interested in establishing and operating a very viable business as a means of investment abroad. I do not know too well on how this is done in your country, so I 

will need you to help me in this regard. My prefer is any good profit yielding business and I would appreciate any viable ideas you could come up with. I will also 

 

need you to help me look for properties like homes and lands for sale as I am proposing to invest the sum of Twenty Million United States Dollars ($20,000,000.0USD) 

for this. I do not know if you can handle this and will be of help to me.

For a brief on my personality; my name is Mr.Bishop Speed, a South African based in Turkey Istanbul I am a retired Business man, formally into oil and Gold. I am 62 

years of age, married with a wife and 4 lovely kids.I dropped my Shipping business because it wasn't producing profitable income. I have had so much problems with the 

TURKISH Authority just because I am foreigner I believe. coupled with the corruption rate and recent terrorist activity in the country.Hence my need for this business 

preposition and to acquire these properties is very urgent as I am planning to move out of this country with my family down to your country. I want you to also help in 

finding a good home where my family and I will live in. (Mini Estate)Please I expect your good and prompt reply so that we can proceed swiftly.

I will need your phone and fax numbers for easier communication with you.

Please if you are not interested kindly delete the message.

Waiting your swift response

Warm Regards,

Mr.Bishop Speed 

 

 

Having just watched a Star Trek TOS episode -- my pet rock loves Star Trek TOS -- it occurred to me to have my character work a little of that in.  And a little Star Wars...and a little of whatever else came to mind:

 

 

With a lack of respect that's SOP in this phart of the world, I observe every protocols and usually misinterpret them exceptionally badly.  I am interested in establishing formal diplomatic relations with Aminiar 7, even thought they have been at war with nearby Vendekar for 300 years.  Granted, we here wonder WTF is worth warring over for 300 years, but after seeing the women on Aminiar 7 and the women on Vendekar -- Aminiar 7 got the Melania Trump look-alikes, while Vendekar got all the leftard-looking sea cows like Rosie O'Douchecanoe and Whoopi "Stay Outta My Batcave", along with all the really bad news sources like cnn and ms13nbc  -- it becomes sorta unnerstandable kinda why there's perpetual war there.

Hellary musta lost an election there, too.  I wonder if Russian bots knew where Vendekar was.

I do not know too well on how this is done in your country, because I watch cnn for past solar week and see nothing useful to learn from, so I  will need you to help me in this regard.  My prefer is any good opportunity to have sex with ocelot; I see stuffed version and think it very much like sock puppet badgers on my home planet of Hallucinogen 3, which I had to leave suddenly because some black clad dude wearing a loud CPAP blew it up with a big moon-looking spacecraft that was no moon.

Granted, he got his from his punk kid later, but I digress.

I will also need you to help me look up the word "twat waffle", because I cannot find it in the Random Over Intergalactic Dictionary for the Fainting Hearts.  If I didn't say that right, stew you...I think my spell pecker twerks like yours.

For a brief on my personality; my name is Mr.Bishop Speed, from the left-leaning planet Hallucinogen 3, currently playing a South African based in Turkey Istanbul which was once Constantinople and before that Byzantium and before that a rocky plain near water that dinosaurs crapped on without the benefit of toilet paper.  Don't know how they managed.

I am formally into kinky sex with sock puppet ocelots, I am 62  years of age, married to a Yugo tail pipe and have the genital burn marks to prove it.  I dropped my Shipping business because it wasn't producing profitable income:  when one considers the distance between Hallucinogen 3 and Aminiar 7 -- the Enterprise won't get there for a couple hundred years yet -- it became clear that I wasn't going to get there either, so Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock will have to settle the shit between Aminiar 7 and Vendekar their way.

I have had so much problems with the TURKISH Authority just because I am foreigner with ocelot sock puppet sex fetish and have the breath of genital warts, coupled with the corruption rate and recent terrorist activity that Occutard Antifa is waging on my home planet, it's a wonder if Lena Dunham get anyone interested in her genital void that runs from her ears to south.  Hence my need for this business preposition and to acquire dangling partinipples or whatever those things are that will allow me to move out of this hallucination and into one more like Taylor Swift, even if her t-shirts are fifty dollars and postage stamps are fifty cents. 

I want you to also help in finding a good therapist, because my last one ran screaming from the session when I told him I voted for Trump.

Please I expect your good and prompt reply so that we can proceed swiftly.

 

Please if you are not interested, kindly send this message to any planet you may or may not be in touch with.  Someone will want into this sh*t, I'm sure. 

Waiting your swift response 

Mr.Bishop Speed

mr.bishopspeed@yahoo.co.uk  

"Be vewy vewy quiet...I'm butt boinking stuffed ocewots...ahahahahaha"  

 

The good Bishop of Speed apparently decided that those were the droids he was looking for, too.  And was too embarrassed by his failure, to reply.

And I so looked forward to a dialogue.

"Did NOT!  PHFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!"

Star Bleck?

*Author's note: this was originally run in '06, and thanks to a comparable subject post by a fellow blogger, I'm dredging it up with some 2010 updates. None of which changes the conclusion I reached then, and hold today. More on that herein*

Memories. Sometimes, they come back.

In a Stephen King anthology, there was a short story entitled Sometimes They Come Back. In that case, it was and wasn't a good thing for the fictional lead character of the tale. In my case, trust me: it isn't good. Memories that came back in the early morning hours. Memories that have a paper and audio trail.

When I first wrote this piece, I blamed MissCellania. For the 2010 update, I blame Shrinky.

Well okay, not really in either case. But in '06, the former's most recent Star Trek post -- when read at about 2:20am on Thursday morning -- reminded me of a long time ago, in a very rudimentary basement studio far far away*, and the thrice-conducted exercise in "too much time on their hands they could've been constructive with, but chose not to be" that would/will never be allowed to see the light of entertainment day.
Had it been otherwise, we would have been the William Hungs of our generation. And one of those within a millennium of recorded history is more than enough.

As for 2010, visit Shrinky's blog on her current post (11/14/10), and the rest is easily figgered out.

These photos (among a few others) are of the long-defunct Sickbay Productions, UnInc. recording studio, set up in the basement of one of my then coworker's rented home. Done up in a distinctly sci-fi motif, and using the latest (sort of) in patchwork equipment bought from Radio Shack or begged, borrowed and purchased from gar(b)age sales (back in the late 70s, mind you), my partner in audio crime set up a recording studio.

Whilst he undertook the technical end, I undertook the writing end: three scripts, all with parody as the objective and science fiction as the theme. At the time -- 1979-1982 -- there was no shortage of examples to parody: Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica. Star Wars. We hit all three. It was a time before the "three strikes and out" rule.

Too bad, but only if anyone ever gets their hands on the scripts or, worse, the audios**. More on that in a mo'.

Once a script was done, he and I would undertake to collect and arrange the sound effects, music, etc. All lifted from sources, as much as thrice-removed from the original versions. What we couldn't find, we made up. Badly.

Then, after working a night shift at our primary livelihood (which those of us involved all did at the time), we would gather in the basement studio and spend the better part of a day swilling coffee, noshing on cheap donuts, and recording our parody. We had no editors, save for us. We had no producers, save for us. We had no director, save for us. We were five or six idio..dedicated, committed*** folks, doing the voices for up to 15 parts.

Badly.

We created three audio tapes, plus one outtakes/blooper tape. The total hours spent, per recording, we once estimated at about 60-80 man hours, from start to finish. And if you were to ask "why?", my answer would vary from then to now:

Then: "because it's fun".

Today: "I musta drank a fifth before I pled the Fifth..."

These "things" -- the scripts and audio recordings -- have remained hidden away in my paper archives for the better part of 28-31 years. As I drug them out, triggered by the latest 2006 and 2010 posts on memories, I was quick to remember, in a brief re-read of one of them, why they remain buried in my archives: they suck. Worse than Survivor. Worse than a cosmic black hole. Worse than Keith Olbermann.

Yeah, they're THAT BAD. Truly.

The sound quality is atrocious; at times, the sound effects overwhelm the speaking parts. At other times, we should have been so lucky. Our script reading was about as convincing as being told by a politician that raising our taxes to provide everyone with a socialized porcupine enema is in our collective best interest. The scripts themselves...ewwww. The shortest was 26 typed pages; the longest, 37. What I thought was funny 28-31 years ago, is beyond embarrassing today. For instance, this following exchange between Capt. Quirk and Mr. Snott:

Quirk: Bridge to Engineering...

Snott: Engineerin'...Snott here...

Quirk: Mr. Snott, stand by your warped drive from some possible high speed maneuvers...

Snott: They work much better when ah'm at the controls, Captain...

Quirk: *sigh* You know what I mean, Snotty...

Snott: Aye sir, bu' ah can't be sure the engines will perform as they shoold sir...

Quirk: Again? What this time?

Snott: Well sir, runnin' at warped seven from the XR-1B system ta here critically drained the dysentery crystals, an' rechargin' the matter-don'tmatter pods ain't workin' as it shoold to...we could rupture the nuclear intake reactor valve on the number four coupling junction of the cross cable shunt inversion control circuit, iffen we put it into warped drive too quickly, sir...

Quirk: in all my years of command, it's a wonder we're not dead...

Spark: Logically speaking, that is indeed a wonder, Captain...

Quirk: Mr. Spark, don't you have something...ANYTHING somewhere to be analyzing?

Without waiting for Mr. Spark's answer, 'Nuff said.

Three scripts abominate the screen play history: Star Bleck and the episode entitled Oops; Battlestar Gassitacktica and The Gadoofay Incident; and, of course, Scarred Wars. And three audio tapes, plus the aforementioned blooper tape (the latter of which, in 2010, cannot be found...'prolly 'cuz of the philosophy that "careful what you look for...you might find it", so I ain't).

Thankfully, I don't have the Return of the Mushroom Men script I co-wrote in high school; my then-English teacher has that, and Gawd alone knows why she wanted it. Perhaps to hide it, and conceal the fact she ever knew or attempted to teach me, but I digress.

All of which should go where a few men have gone since the original Star Trek series aired, and Ralph Kramden threatened to send Alice: bang zooom to the moon. 'Cept the Moon ain't far enough away (some schlep Chinese or Russian might find the crap in the next decade). Nor could I, in 2006, afford to pay for the space on the rocket that's sending the original Mr. Scott's ashes into orbit this summer, so they can deservedly burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Thus, the tapes and scripts will return to my buried archives, wherein I will include a note: upon my demise these "things" are to be cremated with me.

It's bad enough I've admitted to their existence.

Aye, laddie.

* well, only a few miles SE of here...

** actually, when the last casette player has gone the way of cave etchings, we'll be safe from any potential leak of those casettes...

*** or should have been...

Sorry, Wrong Planet...

Even a brilliant mind can seem like it's "jumped the shark" sometimes. Or not.

The eccentric, mega-IQ mind of Stephen Hawking has a Discovery Channel piece upcoming, wherein he postulates that, contrary to years of effort and various and assorted attempts, it is a very bad idea for us to reach out across the cosmos, in search of intelligent life.

Hawking may be too late to dissuade one American city and county on the subject, but we'll return to that momentarily.

His argument seems to suggest that such a search may well result in "be careful what you wish for", and that some forms of life out there, somewhere, might be even more predatory and conquest-oriented, than we as a species have been. Which could result in the ultimate of "hostile takeover" attempts, as have been depicted in sci-fi books and films for years.

I don't know how long it'll take The Daily Kos, HuffPo, Moron.Org, et al, to brand Hawking "anti-immigrant" and a "racist", but let's take a look at this from a more..uh...me-style.

Man has had a fascination with the notion that there must be intelligent life out there, beyond our simple Solar System (anyone watching our Congress of late, knows intelligent life can't be found there). And from Man's first visit to the Moon, there have been various and sundry efforts to reach out and touch an extraterrestrial. In 1972 and '73, Pioneers 10 and 11 were launched into the cosmos, destination....infinity. Aboard both, were symbols indicating our human community, and our approximate cosmic address. In 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were dispatched on a similar mission, bearing Earthly recordings of different sounds and ideas, to deliver to whom/whatsoever ultimately might find and collect them, at some point in the endless Sea of Deep Space & Time.

The short speech on one of the recordings by Jimmy Carter, it is hoped, won't be held against us. This might be the reason for Hawking's trepidation, but I digress.

In 2008, NASA 'beamed' a song by the Beatles -- Across The Universe -- as a message, in the direction of the star Polaris (aka, The North Star), to anyone/thing living in the cosmic vicinity thereof. Taking into account such things as physics, the speed of light, government regulation, ASCAP and union rules, it is estimated that the message will arrive in the Polaris neighborhood about the year 2439.

Perhaps Admiral James T. Kirk can do a time warp after the message is received, to tell us how it went over: as a "message of peace", or as an inciting-of-violence obscenity in Romulan, which folks in the future will no doubt wish to thank us for, by sending us a futuristic "Phfffffft!".

Of course, sound waves have been leaving the good ol' Earth for millenia. Granted, up until the advent of radio, any transmissions from Earth that might be eventually picked up by any kind of life form, would be primitive, or across various spectrums of stuff I don't know squat about. Say, when the volcanic island Krakatoa exploded in 1883, what some cosmic listening post in deep space might eventually here would be.....*boom*. How they might interpret that, well:

Alien 1: "Rack ack ack rack...*boom*?"

Alien 2: "Rack rack ACK rack ACK, *boom*!"

Together: "Rack ack ack ack ack ack...!"

By the same token, I know nothing more about deep space radio signals NASA has detected from distant quasars, that could be almost anything, from space noise, to alien programming ("At Xoeygeryg Spunkmeisen Gronificators, We Hold Your Loyalty In Our 27 Hands. Find Us For All Your Flatuminus Needs And Extenitalia. We're Prepostunationally Located In The Horsehead Nebula, For Easy Access! Mind Meld Today!").

With the advent of radio, and later TV, what human-caused signals may eventually reach intelligent life, well..."bang...ZOOM, Alice, to the MOON!"...."Who's on First? Yes, he is. So, Who's on First? You're right! I don't even know what I'm talking about!!!"....might have another race of beings wondering amongst themselves, their own equivalent of "WTF?".

Now, it's possible that advanced cultures in other areas of the cosmos have very delicate, powerful, and capable transceivers, to listen for things as subtle as...whale song. In Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, an alien race sends a probe to Earth, seeking to find out why, in the 23rd Century, they can no longer listen to George and Gracie whale-rap. This, of course, causes all sorts of havoc with human services and conditions -- the disruption of texting ability alone would cause the entire generation of teens to implode and bitch about having nothing to do -- and it takes a handful of humans, on another alien wessel, to go back in time to find the right species to respond to the alien probe. And having successfully done so, the probe does indeed, as Dr. McCoy ventured, get the answer it wants, so it can go do something else with itself.

And all's a happy ending, except for Admiral/Captain Kirk's latest girlfriend, who blows him off too, to go chase a pair of sea mammals 300 years after she wasn't supposed to be, anymore.

I'm sure the alien race that sent the probe, found this part totally non sequitur.

Of course, many have postulated about what a human/alien contact for the first time might be like: would it be more like ET, or like Mars Attacks! In the former case, a heart-warming universal enlightenment descends upon all the world. In the latter case, a bunch of until-now undetected Martians of dubious antecedence and odious intent, wreak all kinds of havoc on Earth -- other than performing the singular public service of hosing the Congress -- before being driven back to Mars by the songs of Slim Whitman.

Or maybe it would be somewhere in between, like in the first Outer Limits (TOS) episode (a personal favorite of my pet rock, Seymour), when an engineer who owns a radio station, makes contact with a race of beings totally unlike anything one would see today with modern CGI special effects. A gaffe on the part of another radio station employee winds up "sucking" the alien from his point of transmission, to Earth, where it doesn't go real good for a couple Earthlings, but ultimately the alien gets to make a James T. Kirk-like speech, warning of the ways of Man in the face of the unknown, before disappearing into the void like a hallucination of an honest politician.

I dunno....Hawking might be onto something here. Perhaps we, as "we" are collectively, aren't ready for contact with an alien intelligence. Perhaps we're already in contact, as aliens have infiltrated us, for study and analysis, to determine if we're worthy of future, more substantive contact. Or perhaps AlGore is the alien, sent to test human intelligence and gullibility; and those who bought into his AGW scam have so totally flunked, getting voted off an alien Cosmic Intelligence Idol show, without knowing they were auditioning.

Whatever the case, I'm not worried about the Beatles speaking for me to Polarisians; my chips will be cashed in long before 2439. And if something malevolent finds, and is offended by, Jimmy Carter's words on the Voyager, well...I'm not a registered Democrat, so no worries there.

In the case of a Mars Attacks! encounter, no worries there, either: I think I have a Slim Whitman album around here, somewhere. If not, I can substitute modern-day Bob Dylan or Ozzy Osbourne one; whale song would be easier to decipher, even for an alien.

Which I may have to do, thanks to a whacked-out ballot initiative that will be up to a vote of the City and County of Denver in 2010: whether to create a City & County Extraterrestrial Affairs Committee, or not. Whether the proponent of this ballot initiative, or those who signed onto it, are also medicinal marijuana prescription holders (which are currently spreading across the City & County like wildfire through a drought-infested forest), is not known.

But before the City & County votes to create this commission or not, perhaps every voter should be required to watch ET and Mars Attacks!, while sober and before voting, to get both up and downsides of the potential results.

At the very least, know that greeting a delegation of extraterrestrials with a release of peace doves, might go over like a fart in an avalanche zone.

Bottom line here: you might think the City and County of Denver is right; or, you might think that Stephen Hawking is right; or, you might wait to find out for yourself, when or if you are contacted by an extraterrestrial that doesn't present a green card, or demand your wallet.

If you find yourself in such a meeting, and it seems to be going well, you can always direct them to Denver; if not, you can try treating them like a wrong number, and respond with a no sprechen das Polarisian, boneless nachos, awpeterstain!

Or hope you have Slim Whitman on your iPod, blackberry, cell phone ring tone, etc...