The evolution of the Nigerian email scams

Times are tough for the Nigerian email fraud industry. Hit rates are down as the world gets wise to there little games. I hear the Xmas parties at Nigerians biggest email fraud companies were a little less flashy last year. Gone were the gold leaf painted dancing elephants. The swimming pool of jelly that the children could dive into and grab Bratz dolls and Teenage mutant ninja turtles. With business drying up they have had to come up with new ways to trick greedy westerners into parting with their cash. The email I got last night must be the result of one of the company’s late night brain storming sessions.
For a start the email came from Mike Ego. I’m guessing the Nigerian research shows this is the perfect western name. The subject was ‘I am very Happy’
Now you tell me what western guy or gal wouldn’t open an email with the title ‘I am very happy’ especially when it comes from a guy called Mike Ego. If you met a guy called Mike Ego you would remember. SO, it stands to reason that if you cant recall a guy called Mike Ego that is because you were pissed when you met him. And that means you were having a great time. So Mike is therefore, by association, a great guy.
So far so good and Billy Boowimbewewa or whoever came up this strategy is to be congratulated.
When you get into the email it mentions money and a partner in Hong Kong. Nothing at all about dodgy old Nigeria. Hong Kong. That is full of hard working Asians. They’re too busy making money to waste time scamming westerners right? That’s Billy Boo’s theory. Up till this point Billy is looking at Nigerian Email fraudster of the year at the Nigerian Email fraud Awards or the NEFA’s but then you read the person you have to contact. Jhon Uba. I think they meant John. Honest typo happens all the time. But UBA? I smell a Nigerian. And that is why Billy will probably be busted back down to the mailroom. And I don’t mean email I mean dirty old snail mail. Tough break kid. You almost had me.
It is back to the drawing board for the scamsters in Nigeria and I cant wait to see what they come up with. I got an email about the NEFA’s and I sent my money to book my airfares, ticket to the ceremony and hotel. Apparently there was a mix up with the booking and I over paid but a nice Mr Woolawoo contacted me and said he will sort everything for me. All I had to do was send him a fax with my bank account details and my signature so he can refund the money for me. Those Nigerians are always so eager to help.

Dear friend,
I am very happy to inform you about my success in getting those funds
transferred under the cooperation of a new partner from Hong Kong.
Now, I want you to contact my secretary on the information below NAME;
Mr JHON UBA EMAIL; johnuba01@yahoo.se

Ask him to send you the total sum of $1,500,000.00 in cashier cheque
which i kept for your compensation. contact my secetary immediately and he will send the amount to you without delay. let me know immediately you receieve it si that we can share joy after all the suffering at that time.

Regards.
Mr MIKE EGO

Stiller and Segal.

Why do Ben Stiller and Steven Segal play the same roles in every movie they do? Wouldn’t that get a little boring? I thought actors become actors to play different roles.

I’m gonna write a movie about an ex Special Forces commando who has retired to enjoy the quiet life. He is a gentle giant and acts like he wouldn’t hurt a fly but isn’t afraid to walk into a bar full of good old boys playing pool and tell them to stop hassling the drunken kid with the limp and the stutter.
When the peace and quiet of the town is threatened by the baddie with the big house on the hill who has lots of armed men who drive round in pick ups, the ex commando has to take action. This action involves teaming up with the local Dentist. A young nerdy but strangely endearing big city boy who moved to the town to find Miss right and turns out to be as awkward with an M16 as he is with the ladies. After spending the whole movie following the commando around complaining about how he should be doing root canals rather than blowing up old gold mines that are full of stolen missiles that are going to be sold to terrorists, he actually has to dig deep within himself, shoot a baddie and save the commando and in doing so he and the audience realise he can be a tough guy. He also ends up scoring the town hot chick that was shacked up with the town baddie.

So after I write this movie I am gonna send it to Steven and Ben’s ‘people’. I’ll probably call it ‘Under Siege and under anesthetic’.
The trailer will probably go something like this….
“One man had spent his life staring into the jaws of death. The other just stares at jaws. These unlikely misfits must team up to save and town and in the process discover that friendship can spring from the most unlikely places.
Introducing this years hottest action duo……….”

I bet ya Segal and Stiller jump at this movie. And if they don’t I reckon I can make it by editing scenes from all their other movies anyway.

Whatever happened to the man from Atlantis?

There have been a ton of retro show re runs over the years, but I don’t ever recall seeing The Man From Atlanis. That was a cool show. Must have pissed him off that because of his webbed hands he could never wear gloves. Remember the episode where the Man from Atlantis was lying back in a lounger reading a magazine on the bottom of a pool? Genius. Straight after the show I went and chucked mums big metal framed lime plastic banana lounger in our pool, sunk it to the bottom and weighed myself in place with a couple of rocks. The old man hit the roof when he found out because the lounger scrapped the plaster and when I tried to read mums Woman’s Weekly it just fell to pieces and clogged the filter. Disaster.
Speaking of retro shows, remember episodes where characters from another show would make guest apperances? Mork from Mork and Mindy on Happy Days. That was weird. The sci fi thing was popular because the Flinstones and the Jetsons visited each other as well.
Speaking of the Flinstones. Do you think Fred could kick Hommer Simpsons arse? Easy I reckon. Plus he’d have Barney to back him up. Who would Hommer have? Ned? Maybe with Mo he would stand a chance but that Barney looks like a nuggety little dude. And hung like a stallion if the smile on Betty’s face was ever anything to go on. Starsky and Hutch meeting Bo and Luke Duke. That would have been a cool episode. If they had a fight I reckon Starsky and Hutch would kick the Dukes good old boy arses. Starsky and Hutch were from the mean streets, Bo and Luke were pussies. But there would never have been any problems. The cops from the big city would have played it really cool with the two cousins because they would have been too busy trying to get into Daisy Dukes pants. Not that there was a lot to get into eh.

Turkmenistan. Name change or sex change.

I had never really given a thought to Turkmenistan until last weekend when I met a guy form there. Then today in the paper I see the Prime Minister of Turkmenistan is in town on a visit. I see the signs, I get the hint. The universe is telling me ‘Peter, draw attention to the plight of the poor population of Turkmenistan. So here it is. I feel sorry for Turkmenistan. It reminds me of Alexis Arquette the not as famous sibling of Patrica, Rosanna and David. Did you even know that Patrica, Rosanna and David had another brother? Well they do and he’s a transvestite. And that’s the link with Turkmenistan. When you are surrounded by bigger more famous relations than you it is hard to stand out. There are just so many stans in the region. Afghanistan and Pakistan hog all the limelight. But Borat recently put Kazakhstan on the map and it just makes me feel sorry for the people of Turkmenistan. Even the front of their name is already being used by someone else. Apparently stan means state, but if I were the Prime Minister of Turkmenistan I would make some drastic changes.

Maybe not as drastic as Alexis. It is hard for a country to have a sex change. It would be really expensive and everyone at the United Nations would laugh and say mean things about them. And no one would want to sit next to Turkmenistan in the general assembly. Anyway, it didn’t out that well for Alexis. The most famous member of the Arquette family is probably David and that’s because he married Courtney Cox from Friends. A country like Turkmenistan probably doesn’t have the cash or the flash to marry a cast member of Friends, so perhaps the simplest solution is a name change. Cut that little thing right off and toss it away. (Which might be what Alexis did too.) Remove the stan. While they are at it they might want to loose the Turk bit as well. That aint working. Keep men, so there is a connection to the old name, but add woman to give it equality. Men and woman? Ok, it needs a bit of work, but that’s why you pay flash London branding agency loads of money. They’ll come up with a cool name and a logo. Then the hard work begins. Some poor sod will have to go around and write the new name on all the Turkmenistan souvenir tea towels, fridge magnets and oven mitts that are on sale at the airport. That is the main reason countries seldom do the name change thing. But in the case of Turkmenistan I think it is worth it.

6 degrees of separation.

It’s a small world. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t want to be in charge of mowing the lawns, but it is small. For instance, I met a guy whose girlfriend’s ex boyfriend went out with Amy Winehouse. Now my friends will able to say ‘My friend met a guy whose girlfriend’s ex boy friend went out with Amy Winehouse. This got me thinking about my other 6-degree stories.

Like my friend whose wife once went out with a guy who had gone out with the chick who was in The Style Council.

I also met a guy whose girlfriend stayed in the house that was the house of the ex girlfriend of Seal, and she got to sleep in his old bed.

I work with a girl who had a flat mate who took a course with a guy who worked in a furniture design company near where Brad and Angelina lived and one day they walked in.

I work with a bloke called Habib and his sister is married to a guy whose brother used to date the daughter of the wife of the current President of Lebanon, before she was his wife.

And I once worked with another guy who used to know a guy who flatted with the dwarf who was the Ewok who jumped on the storm trooper who fell off the speeder in the chase scene on the Ewok planet in Return of the Jedi.

You just couldn’t get stories like this if you lived on a planet that was any bigger.

POST APPOCALYPTIC PRESSURE

People wonder why I moved to the Middle East. Well, there are 11 reasons but one the one I wanted to bang on about here is number 6. If WW 3 kicks off chances are this part of the world will get fried extra crispy crispy in the first few hours. That’s my hope anyway because I don’t want to live in a post apocalyptical world. I’ve seen the movies. I know how it pans out. The clothes you are wearing on the day the nukes hit are the last decent ones you’ll ever have. They just get dirtier and dirtier after that till they rot and fall off and after that you have to go round dressed in fur and animal skins.
The survivors always end up being ruled by a black lady with big hair or an ex school teacher who is like into peace and love and getting along or an angry man with a Mohawk who is into violence and shooting cross bows. The only people who have any petrol are the Mohawk man’s mates and all they drive are dune buggies and motorbikes all over the place looking for people to kill. As if that wasn’t bad enough there is no TV no Internet and very few Mc Donald’s outlets are likely to survive. Apart form the daily struggle of trying to find food. Protect your family from the bands of marauding Mohawk men you will constantly have to explain stuff about the old world to the children born after the apocalypse. There will be shit lying around everywhere and the kids will want answers. Daddy what is a microwave oven? What were mail order brides? What was liposuction? You’re gonna have to explain all that stuff while you sit around the crappy little fire you have built in the ruins of an old hardware store while you make a spear out of an old broom and a garden trowel. No thanks. Take me out in the first wave. When that nuclear blast washes through the city I wont be one of those loser trying to outrun it. They always get squashed by a car that the blast has blown through the air anyway. Or their skin gets melted off their face as they cower in a doorway.
I’m gonna be in my deckchair sunbathing on the top of my apartment building without sun block and drinking really expensive champagne with friends and family when this particular chapter of our history comes to a climax.

BOG BLOG The Toilet Paper Topic

In this consumer driven society where there is a constant need for bigger, better, newer.
SO WHY IS THERE ONLY ONE SIZE OF TOILET PAPER SEGMENT?
Around the world the standard length for a segment of toilet paper is about 11.5 cm.
No one ever only uses one segment do they? So why not make the segments twice as long? We are all time poor these days. With longer segments you would be able to pull less on the roll to get your required and desired amount. And while we’re on the subject (and lets face it, we probably wont get to talk toilet paper again today) why is there only one standard width of toilet paper?
The world is full of arseholes. They come in all shapes and sizes. Why not recognise that with a wider brand of toilet paper ‘For a more secure, efficient wipe’. I’m talking deluxe width, Handy Towel sized toilet paper. It’s just a thought.

There have been some advancements in toilet paper technology. The move from one ply to two-ply. After two the scientists said three could never be done. But, using technology from the space program they managed it and then went on to four.
We’ve got toilet paper with pictures on it and scented toilet paper. We know they have the technology to make longer, wider segments. So why have they remained the same? Did a consortium of the world’s most powerful toilet paper tycoon’s meet somewhere back when the business was first taking off and agree to standardise the size? If they did why hasn’t a rouge toilet paper entrepreneur broken the rules and gone out on his own. Or have they tried, Maybe it is like the water-powered engine. Invented, but ruthlessly suppressed by powerful men with an interest in hiding the invention from the public. What are the toilet paper tycoons trying to prevent exactly? A more comfortable satisfying wipe experience? Going in the other direction completely, I am sure that not everyone needs toilet paper as wide as it is now? Why don’t the titans of toilet paper also offer bog rolls with a smaller width. It would use less trees and appeal to the greeneys. And it would be a bit cheaper.
All I want to achieve here is stimulate some debate among the biggies in the bog roll business. I know a lot of them read visit this site, so if there are a few new ideas they can pick up and run with as a result of this bog blog then my job is done.

(sfx of a toilet flushing)

The Rolling Fossils

Researchers in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10 million year old ape. Something that old can normally only be identified by carbon dating. But htis time the experts had a little help. Close to the apes fossil they found a copy of a RolingStones record. Incredible. I didn't even know that they used to like the Rolling Stones in Ethiopia.

Horny Thoughts

It’s funny how horns mean different things in different countries. In New Zealand if you beep your horn at another car it generally means ‘fuck you’. Sometimes it can mean ‘hi’ or ‘bye’. But 9 times out of 10 it means ‘fuck you’.
In Abu Dhabi there is a lot more horn action, but a lot less agro. The horn means many things in the UAE’s capital. ‘My taxi is empty, anyone want a ride?’ ‘How dare you slow down to turn into a side street’, ‘the light went green .0005 seconds ago get moving’. Horn use here isn’t personal. It’s simply a communication tool. Then you go to Cairo and horn use there is just out of control. I haven’t heard the Egyptian national anthem, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s played on car horns. It got me thinking about a way government’s could make more money. Horn credits. You get 1 minute’s worth of free horn time a year when you register your car and then you have to pay for extra. Obvioulsy people with novelty horns would get more credits as recognition for their efforts to do something a little different.

Lego and legging it.

So there I am in the lounge aged about 6, Lego all over the floor. And this was back in the day when Lego was just blocks. If you wanted to build a castle or space ship you had to build it out of blocks. Like actually think how to make it. Not like the lame, fully formed Lego they sell now where it is all done for you.

But that’s not what this rant is about.

So my box of Lego is all over the floor. The lounge looks like a bombsite. But I decide I want to go off and do some painting. Up I hop, but just as I am about to leave the room mum busts me with the old ‘Darling. If you’re finished with the Lego how about you tidy it away.’ And that was one of the things my mum taught me as a kid. Another thing she told me was that if I ate my crusts my hair would go curly. But that turned out to be bullshit. But the tidying up thing made sense.

If you make a mess you are only going to have to come back and tidy it up later, or live in the mess you’ve created and probably piss other people off at the same time. Either way you make trouble for yourself. So parents teach their kids to finish what they start or tidy up. Now the coalition of the willing didn’t heed this advice when they left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to invade Iraq. Pity, because now they have created two giant messes. It’s all too much for the Poms. They’re packing up and leaving Iraq. Job done. Well, not done actually. Things are a hell of a lot worse for the people in southeastern Iraq. The mission was to bring democracy and stability to them. They had Saddam and stability now they have democracy and chaos. Wonder which they prefer? The Poms will find it easier to bail on the Yanks now because they have a new PM. It’s like me tipping the Lego all over the floor then leaving it for my brother to play with. When it all gets too much he just walks out telling mum that he wasn’t really responsible for the mess because he didn’t make it. The yanks will pull the same stunt when the Democrats get their arses into the White Houser.

Of course what my brother and me really needed was an older stupider brother. One who would do whatever we said. That way when the Lego mess needed to be looked after we could have got him to come in a take care of it. Not tidy it up because he wouldn’t be clever enough to do that. Just kind of watch over it. Monitor the mess if you will. Me and brother didn’t have anyone like that. But the British and the US do. It’s called the United Nations.

A Naughty List

So a guy I worked with had this book. When I say ‘a guy I work with’ I actually mean that. I’m not going to go into the details of the book there are plenty of sites on the interweb you can go to for that kind of stuff. But the chapter headings made me laugh.

The Menthol Marinade
The Sicilian Corkscrew
The Cotton Spritzer
The Standing Wrap
Parad-ice
Walking The Wall
Mint Two-lip
The Steaming Diamond
The Dutch Drawbridge
Rescuing The Captain
The Tasmanian Jack-knife
Showergasm
Chinese Field Goal
Baby Elephant Trunks
The Indian Rocking Horse
The Venus Butterfly
Cyrano's Triangle
The Flickering Candle
Oriental Shoe Shine
The Double "V"
The Grapes Of Rapture

Say cheese kids.

So the naked baby from Nirvana’s Nevermind album is 17 now. His name is Elden and he lives in LA and works part time in a juice bar. Got me thinking about another person who was famous for being a naked kid in a photo. That poor girl during the Vietnam war who was snapped running down the road naked tyring to get away from the napalm. Imagine if they hooked up, became a celebrity couple and had babies. Man, they would be like THE celebrity couple. I bet their kid would get to play with Brad an Angelina’s kids. And I bet Annie Lebowitz would offer to take a photo of their kid in the nude for free. But it would be a tasteful nude. If they hooked up right now in LA they would totally eclipse Posh and Becks. It would be a match made in photographic heaven. I might ring that plonker from American Idol who manages Posh and Becks Simon whatshisname. If anyone can make it happen it's him.