Tetherd Cow Ahead

Spam Observations #44

My newest best buddy, Burgi Nitzmann, wrote to me this morning. I reproduce his letter here in full, because, well, it’s just so damn… entertaining.

Hi, how’s your work doing? The answer is quite clear. You’re sleepy, man, I can tell! But take a deep breath, lot’s of people have the similar problems. Do you know that it’s an epidemy already, the third of male mankind is in trouble. Ask yourself why? What would you expect with a life tempo like that? YOU ARE TO EARN THE MONEY. It’s all your headache. I’d be tired too.

Add here, ecology, groceries. What’s the total? No sexual capacity. You’re now experiencing your sexual engine failure. No wonder your better half is gone, your girlfriend is on her way to pack up her stuff and hop off.

But guess what? I’m ready to give you a helpful hand. Be your self medicator, feel different, feel you CRAVE and YOU ARE ABLE . And WE’LL BOLSTER. And I’ll bet it works.

I’m sure you know full well about VI@grA. You think that it’s costly. Then I’ve got SOME good news for you! Check out the prices, the prices are agreeably nice!

$1.53!!

Conveniently chip ha?! It’s real, there’s just no need to overpay for the license which drugs stores simply do have to pay for the right to sell it out.

Be strait up, buy strait ahead. And have a nice one!

If Burgi ever decides to forego his contribution to the epidemy of chip internet scamming, he’s definitely got a career in standup at least. Add here, ecology, groceries, his offer of a helpful hand and his penchant FOR illogical capitalization and bad spelling, and he could quite probably get a job in government with very little extra effort. He’d be right at home with a bunch of illiterate wankers.

Carpe diem Acowlytes! Let’s Bolster!

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PS – I bring to your attention that the counter on the right that is marking out my Internet Fortune will shortly go past 100 billion dollars. w00t!

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You know those letters you get from Nigeria promising to send you untold wealth from someone’s forgotten fortune? Well today I got a real genuine one. No, seriously, I did. Really. I swear. Look – I’ll show you:

OFFICE OF THE SENATE HOUSE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN PAYMENT(RESOLUTION PANEL ON CONTRACT PAYMENT)

IKOYI-LAGOS NIGERIA

Our Ref: FGN /SNT/STB Your Ref

ATTN: Beneficiary ,

We, the entire members of the Federal House of Senate, on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigerian Government,

The entire members! See! This is not just some johnny-come-lately spammer! This is a letter from the entire members of the Nigerian Government!

On going through files yesterday, we discovered that your file was dumped untreated,

Dumped untreated! Chucked in the charity bin like an old coat! Thrown casually aside like a shunned lover! Binned like a used polystyrene cup!

How could they, the bastards!!?

so at this juncture, we apologize

Oh. Shucks. That’s OK then.

for the delay of your payment and please stop communicating with any office now and attention to the appointed office below for you to receive your payment.

Now you lost me there.

Your new Payment Reference No.-35460021, Allocation No: 674632 Password No :
339331 , Pin Code No: 55674 and your Certificate of Merit Payment No :
103 , Released Code No: 0763; Immediate Telex confirmation No: -1114433
; Secret Code No: XXTN013 ,Having received these vital payment number ,
therefore You are qualified now to received and confirm Your payment
with the Federal Government of Nigeria immediately within 24hrs .

Ooooooh! All those numbers. No-one could just make those things up! You’d have to be, like, a super-uber-mastermind to getaway with those kinds of hijinks!

A Payment Reference, an Allocation Number, a Pin Code, a Certificate of Merit Payment Number (wha?), a Released Code (huh?), an Immediate Telex Confirmation Number (smokin’ – I’ve always wanted one of those) and a Secret Code Number!!!! How spiffingly Famous Five! Let’s have lashings of ginger beer!

NOTE : We have mounted our security network to monitor every in-coming call , if we still find out that you are still dealing with all those fraudsters that have been frustrating , I shall stop and cancel your payment immediately.

But. But. But. I haven’t been dealing with those fraudsters! I haven’t. I swear! Don’t cancel my payment!

Er… just out of curiosity, how much am I going to get? I know that those other fraudsters (I’ve heard. I haven’t been dealing with them) offer LOTS of money. Like millions of dollars. So I note that even though you’re happy to bandy lots of numbers about when it comes to Secret Codes and Certificate of Merit Payment identifications, you seem to have neglected to mention any actual figures when it comes to dollars owed, Mr Representative of Nigerian Government Members.

See? This is why I think this is a genuine offer. Only a government bureaucracy could be dumb enough to omit the most significant part of a transaction.

Spam Observations #43

My newest friend Mr Xiong wrote to me today asking:

From: aktgk@mindlessspam.com
Subject: Want to shave a few pounds?

I’m unable to tell whether this is weight loss spam or porn spam. Mr Xiong please take your disturbing offers elsewhere.

My blog has been awash with Comment spam over the last few weeks, and now a new and very annoying trend has emerged with a kind of spam that hijacks the Trackback and Ping functionality of WordPress to make hooks into the spammers’ cruddy sites. It is possible that I will need to completely disable Trackbacks to get rid of this problem and to those of you who like to use this feature I apologize.

Another kind of Comment spam is becoming more prevalent as well: that of the individually hand-entered ‘comment’ that is in fact a link to a spam site or a riff on the ‘Nigerian Unclaimed Fortune’ scam. This means that poor saps are sitting somewhere trawling through blogs entering this data personally. Grim. And now they’ve started with just plain ‘begging’ letters.

At the end of one of my previous Peter Popoff posts, NIMLY had this to say:

Kindly present my prayers to the Lord, as follows, please. (a) I am a deacon (officer) and would like to win souls for God, through performing of miracles, signs and wonders in Jesus Name. (b) My wife would be pleased to have children though doctors said is impossible. (c) our financial situation is very bad and we have much loans to refund every month. (d) we are unable to complete a house project since some years now.(e)I want fultime job at my place of work and good salary, also, work for my wife, who is presently jobless.(f) I have eye and heart problems. My postal adress is – 62 rue A. CAMUS, 68200 MULHOUSE, FRANCE

When I received this comment I was preparing to give NIMLY a good ol’ Cow-style roasting and then it occurred to me that I could check and see if the address he gave was real.

It is. NIMLY lives here:

It is the work of moments to establish that Mulhouse, with its acres of condominiums, is a high immigration/low income city in France, and somehow, suddenly NIMLY became a very real person and I felt overwhelmingly saddened.

Not because I think for a moment that NIMLY is feeble with eye and heart problems, or indeed that he is a Deacon, but because I think that it is very likely that NIMLY is in fact very poor and in need of a fulltime job.

Additionally, NIMLY is plainly not very bright (and certainly not internet-savvy) because he has given out his address for the world to see.

I hate spammers, as you know, but I feel quite sorry for NIMLY. He’s trying on a scam for which he’s hardly equipped in a medium which he really doesn’t understand. NIMLY, if you’re tuning in again, take some advice – forget this caper. You’re not cut out for it and it is likely to turn out badly for you.

OK, so I didn’t actually drink the Miracle Spring Water, so much, but it has been about five days. I opened the letter…

Oh beat me senseless with a salmon – TWO MORE FOOLSCAP PAGES of nutty rambling. I can’t begin to describe to you the effect that this has on my brain. And to think I found the Special One Drop Liquid challenging…

Now Prophet Pete is asking me for money (hands up who is surprised?).

I am asking you to plant a HOLY CONSECRATED SEED for a Great Harvest Offering of $17.00. No I don’t want you to send $37 or $77…

Oh silly me. When he said ‘$17.00’ I immediately thought “Oh, surely Prophet Pete you mean $77!”

No. SEND EXACTLY $17.00. Because 1 is the number of the Father… and 7 is the Father’s number of perfection.

Of course! It’s SO obvious! But… erm.. then why not $71.00??

Prophet Pete goes on to predict some remarkable events for my life, including something MIRACULOUS happening on July 7th, possibly the thing he saw in a ‘vision’ revealed to him by God:

I saw a total stranger giving you a beautiful box. When you opened it, joy overwhelmed you when you saw it was filled with money.

Personally, I’m thinking that if a total stranger gave me a box full of money, the expression you might see on my face would more likely be suspicion. Nevertheless, since I’ve been pre-warned by Prophet Popoff, I’m standing by to be overjoyed on July 7. You can be sure I’ll report the events of the day here on The Cow.

Around about this time in the letters, Prophet Pete ratchets up his monetary request from $17 to $27 but neglects to say what the number ‘2’ represents in this case. Maybe 2 is the number of The Holy Ghost, who has been conspicuously absent since the promise of His Instructions in Envelope #1. Or was it Envelope #2. Christ, it’s all so COMPLICATED.

Then, Prophet Pete tells me:

I am going to give you a “Bag”.* In this bag there is some prayer-blessed Dead Sea Salt, this Dead Sea Salt is in and of itself very special.

I know that you are at the moment tormented by an important and serious problem. That is why you must open the bag and use the secret anointed Dead Sea Salt exactly as I direct.

I’ve rummaged through all the papers and I can’t find the “Bag” with the Dead Sea Salt so I guess I don’t get that unless I send off my $17/$27 and empty Miracle Spring Water vial, which is a shame. I’d really like a “Bag” of Dead Sea Salt, but somehow I suspect my $17 would only buy me a 0.17c “Bag” of Saxa.

Sigh. I can’t go on. Truly, Cow fans, this is one remarkably exhausting pile of nonsense. I’d love to tell you about the ‘Silver and Gold BRACELET OF BLESSING’, the offer of Prophet Pete’s PRIVATE PHONE NUMBER and the direct revelations from the prophet AGABUS, but I can already sense you nodding off (like I did every time I looked at the pages of printing and scrawled annotations).

Eventually Prophet Peter Popoff bids farewell:

Egad. Today, Tomorrow and FOREVER. The very thought makes me nauseous. Forever is a really long time. I hate to think how many more pages of impenetrable claptrap he could churn out if he had FOREVER to do it.

I still intend to send off something to Peter Popoff in his reply-paid envelope, and I would love to hear any further suggestions of how we might bring the same kind of joy into his life that he has brought into ours.

In the meantime, it seem appropriate to see what The Spawn would make of Prophet Pete’s Wisdom.

Yes. As I thought.

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*Who knows why this is in quotes?

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Brothers and Sisters!

I can only think that another MIRACLE has occurred since last we spoke. At that time, as you will recall, I was about to open my SECRET envelope with MIRACLE WATER and HOLY GHOST INSTRUCTIONS but I have to confess that SATAN stayed my hand and I put off my task!

And then, AS IF HE COULD READ MY MIND I had another communique from Prophet Peter Popoff! Yes, when I arrived home this afternoon, there he was in my letter box again, this time with a portrait!

Prophet Pete is so committed to shoehorning a miracle into my life that in this new letter he has taken the time to personally underline and circle points of interest. Emphatically!

See? How much more emphatic could he get!?

And JESUS’ TEARS can this man churn it out! This letter is another two pages of densely packed waffle, only this time with lots of asterisks and underlines and annotations.

I can see his game now – he aims to confuse me into salvation! That’s a ploy I’ve never seen used before.

And this new letter has ANOTHER included envelope, with ANOTHER set of instructions.

I now have sitting on my desk five pages of writing, two sealed envelopes, one postage-paid return address envelope (oh, the joy!) and, the thing you’ve all been waiting for… the OPENED MIRACLE WATER ENVELOPE!

I’m almost wetting myself without the need for the miracle water!

I also have a further two pages of instructions. Holy crap. It’s clear, at least, that Prophet Pete’s efforts are going to be wasted on the illiterate.

Now this new instruction sheet is printed on bright pink paper, and also contains numerous highlighted points and underlinings. First of all there is a bullet-pointed list of things that I must do with the MIRACLE WATER.

Stick with me Cow Fans. I promise, it’s worth it. (Please note: all underlinings and emphasis are courtesy of Prophet Pete. I simply couldn’t have done any better).

Instruction #1:

Lay the large MIRACLE SPRING WATER vial next to your bed TONIGHT ONLY. I believe the angel of the Lord will trouble your water so that when you drink it – first thing in the morning when you wake up – there’s no telling what awesome power and anointing will be released. GET READY!

Now listen. The thought of the angel of the Lord troubling one’s water and causing the release of awesome power might have gone down OK in biblical times when they had easily hosed stone floors and lots of straw to soak stuff up. Nowadays it just sounds frightening and ultimately highly unsanitary.

Leaving that aside, hands up who would be prepared to drink water from a plastic vial sent to them in the post by an unknown person. Uh-huh. As I thought. (Put your hand down Jam, it is not at all like chugging Bawls).

Instruction #2

Claim the miracles you need (with prayer) and ask God to open the pathway to your very own MIRACLE DELIVERANCE… the pathway to your victory… through your RED SEA of need.

Don’t let your RED SEA of need interfere with your ability to make it through to Instruction #3:

Send me your prayer requests (on back) along with your best gift to God. When I get the empty container back with your name written on it I will know that you have obeyed God’s instructions and acted in obedience.

Cowerati, I know that the DIVINE ILLUMINATION of the Cow has already shone for you on the PATH AHEAD here and you can see where we’re going to go with this…

Yes. Prophet Peter Popoff is inviting us to send something back to him. And HE’S PAYING! (Sorry about the dribbling… opportunities like this just never hand themselves over all that often and I’m going dizzy with anticipation…)

Now. I have SO MUCH MORE of Peter Popoff’s revelatory message to pass on to you, but it’s simply TOO BIG A TOPIC for even my deftness and skill to condense into just this one further post. This has become a CATEGORY IN ITS OWN RIGHT, and deserves much greater consideration.

So, instead, just for the moment let us pause and ponder this latest opportunity to come our way. I’m turning it over to you, dear Cow Folk: what, do you think, should I send back to Prophet Pete in his reply-paid envelope?

Keep it decent, keep it small enough for a standard DL envelope and make it something you think Prophet Peter Popoff will appreciate.

There will be a prize.

(Further installments on the Letters of Peter will be forthcoming).

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*Title courtesy of Pil

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