Spam Observations #46

Ah, dear Cowmrades. This morning, quite out of the blue I had an email from the lovely Mrs Shirley Oswald, who, as I’m sure you can’t fail to know, is the Presidential Library & Museum Former Director International Online Lottery Co-coordinator.*

Attention: Dear Prominent User Of The Internet

– she begins, momentarily staying my hand from punching the ‘Junk’ button. ‘Cause the Internet is BIG, right, and being a prominent user is important, surely!

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and your family? I hope
this mail meets you in a perfect condition.

Well, Shirl, there was a little rain damage and some teeth marks, but it’s mostly perfectly readable if somewhat grammatically innovative.

This is from a total cash prize of US$600,000.00 dollars, given to the first FIFTY (50) people who will be compensated in this world internet programs. All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web site Through computer draw system and extracted from over 700.000 companies we are using this opportunity to thank you for using the internet daily.

Sadly, Mrs O, that paragraph is completely incomprehensible in a linguistic sense, but ignoring the sentence structure and just trying to extract some approximate meaning from the words themselves indicates to me that you’re offering me some money for merely using the internet on a daily basis. How novel! And furthermore, how entirely stupid!

Due to your effort, using internet programs indoor and in your office, We want to compensate you…

Ah, Shirley, I see! You have made the mistake of thinking I use Microsoft products! No, no, no Mrs O! I’m a loyal Mac user! I don’t need any compensation for using my internet programs, they work fine! In fact, mostly I even enjoy using them! And it matters not a jot whether I use them indoor or in my open-air office among the lantana and serrated tussock (my goodness, how did you know that?). That being said, I can entirely understand your error in thinking I might be an unfortunate PC user, and how a kind-hearted person such as yourself, backed by the generosity and philanthropy of the Presidential Library & Museum, might be overcome with grief and remorse for those sad and disadvantaged persons who have been driven to the edge of madness by attempting to get Vista to do anything useful. I doff my hat to your magnanimous and empathetic spirit!

…and show our gratitude to you with the sum of $500,000.00 United States Of America Dollars

Now hang on a tic, Mrs O, you lost me there. Wasn’t that a TOTAL cash prize of $600,000 divided among 50 lucky Prominent Users of the Internet? By my reckoning that’s $12,000 per credulous chump lucky winner. Where did the $500k come into the picture? That figurin’ is more confusing than The Monty Hall Problem.

Please I will like you to accept this token with good faith as this is from the bottom of my heart.

Dear Mrs Oswald, there’s nothing I’d like better than to accept your ‘bottom-of-your-heart’ offer of 500,000 US dollars, only, something tells me that if I showed even the slightest interest in your proposal, I’d find you reaching your hand over your kindly, bespectacled, grandmotherly visage and tearing your face off Mission-Impossible-style to reveal a swarthy, unshaven, cigar-chomping spammer.

Call me cynical, but that’s what becomes of being a Prominent User of the Internet.

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*I’ve never encountered a co-coordinator before, but guess this is entirely possible, if, for instance, there are two coordinators working together. Although I’m not convinced that the extra ‘co’ is entirely necessary even in that circumstance.

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