January 11, 2006
Urgent! Your Attention Needed!
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” like any other sentient beings, strongly dislike so called spam—the unwanted mass mailings that clutter our e-boxes. Whether it’s a message for penile enlargement or a message for penile enlargement, these e-mails can become downright irksome and repetitive.
To make matters worse, dear reader, they’re often so stupid. We mean, come on: If you earnestly buy stocks because of what you read in a spam mailing, you are officially an idiot. In fact, you are such a dolt that we hereby crown you an Official Idiot.
Nothing gets our dander up, however, quite like those deeply irritating e-epistles from some purportedly wealthy exiled potentate from Dubai. All this chucklehead needs, it seems, is our confidential banking information, and then he’ll happily fork over $18 million. Gosh, doesn’t that sound grand?
Naturally, such a ploy is manifestly absurd. Shouldn’t the “needing your confidential banking information” be a bit of a telltale sign of dubiousness? We’d surely think so. In addition, if so many people from Dubai have $18 million, why is their local economy in the crapper? It doesn’t make much sense.
After (literally) seconds of consternation brought on from the receipt of the umpteenth such e-letter, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” decided to do more than stew in our own collective and figurative juices. No simple stewing for us. Oh, no: We aimed to get even.
Accordingly, we wrote the following e-missive of our own, which we hope to send as replies to any address sending us this odious Dubai scam spam.
To: Odious Dubai Spam Scammers
From: The Crack Young Staff of THMQ
Re: Urgent! Your Attention Needed
We apologize if you were not expecting a message from us. We are in a very difficult situation right now, and we figured that you could offer us some help, and make a goodly amount of money in the process.
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” run a popular “weblog” on Al Gore’s World-Wide Web. Although we are loved and esteemed by literally dozens of readers worldwide, we are unfortunately having increasing problems regarding our personnel.
Recently, one of the junior editors on staff—let’s just call him “Chip”—has gone a bit batty. He’s flown into a rage about the strangest things: Regarding those who send Internet spam mail, for example. But you wouldn’t know anything about that.
Anyway, he has threatened to pilfer our treasured savings of $18 million. Apparently, he’s going to waste it all on some dubious business proposition from Dubai. We, then, require a safe place where we can store our “weblog’s” funds, so that “Chip” doesn’t get his hands on them. And we’d gladly pay you a handsome sum for your aid—say, $12 million.
All we require from you is your confidential banking identification: Passwords, credit card numbers, &c. Within a few days, we’ll transfer our funds to your account.
Thank you again for all of your concern and support. If we may say so, it’s very Christian of you.
Sincerely,
The Crack Young Staff of THMQ
Now, let’s see if we get any takers.
