One of my Facebook friends says he replies to spam emails with this:

Thanks for contacting me! I think preying on the weak of mind is a zesty enterprise! How about this. YOU give me $1000, then, later, I will give YOU $1,000,000!!! All I need is your SS#, DOB, name, and…. well, $1000. Also: I am the King of Spain. I PLAN TO MURDER YOU SOON. Please take advantage of this opportunity, as it will not be available for long! I really hope to hear from you! Please keep this between you and I, as hope to complete this transaction in confidence. I think you are good looking. I am a Prince in Africa. I WANT TO EAT YOUR TESTICLES. I want to make you rich, however, I also want to tickle you into submission. DO YOU LIKE CEREAL? I think that puns are the highest form of humor! I am looking forward to hearing from you. If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may have an enlarged prostate, which could require lengthy surgical procedures! Painful and bloody surgery could cost you thousands of dollars, as this opportunity will assure you $999,000! It will also assure you a serious ball-licking, as well as a healthy prostate and murder! I hope you have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow, as I plan to have a squirrel throwing contest with your mother, in which the top-prize is the peanut you use for a brain. Toodles. Hope all is well. You are a salad bar!

Of course - responding to spam emails is a bad idea because it confirms for the spammer that your address is valid and current. Maybe you could set up a dummy email account just for this purpose (Gmail allows you to send from multiple addresses).

That’s right. I don’t need to hang out with any of you losers anymore. I’m fucking rich, motherfuckers! Bring on the gold digging sluts and yes men. And celebrities! They love to hang out with rich people. I’m gonna rock the ganj with Jack Black and Jack White - like a black and white cookie of stoner friendship!

It’s a true rags to riches story. Life on easy street, baby! Some dude named Peter emailed me today offering me one million, four hundred twenty five thousand fucking dollars. And All I have to do is let him deposit a bunch of his money in my bank account. His stupid dad was assassinated or something. I didn’t really read the whole thing. All I know is I’ve got the kind of cash that makes chicks forget all sexual inhibitions.

from: peter akanga (peterakanga0@yahoo.fr)
reply-to: peterazanga@yahoo.fr
date: Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:16 PM
subject: THANKS FROM PETER

Dear,

I know that my message will come to you as a surprise since I don’t know you in person or met with you before, but I am of the believe that you would be obliged to come to my assistance after hearing about my situation.I was, until recently, a Medical student of the University of Abidjan, Ivory Coast West Africa.

I am the only child of late Mr Frederick Azanga. My father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant based in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast. He was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discuss on a business last year.

When my mother died on the October 1989, my father took me so special because I am motherless. Before the death of my father last year, in a private hospital here in Abidjan. He secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has a sum of US$ 9,500,000 left in account in a bank here in Abidjan, that he used my name for the next of kin in deposit of the fund. He also explained to me that it is because of this wealth that he was poisoned by his business associates.

1) I am honourably seeking your assistance to provide a bank account where this money will be transferred to.
2) You will serve as the guardian of this funds since I am a boy of 20 years.
3) You will make arrangement for me to come over to your country after the money has been transferred to you.I have plans to do investment in your country, like real estate and
industrial production.This is my reason for writing to you. Please if you are willing to assist me please indicate your interest.

I am willing to offer you 15% of the total sum as compensation for your effort/input after this successful transfer of this fund to your nominated account overseas.
Finally if you have any question as regards this transaction, so that I will send you documents of this fund. Note that the confidentiality of this transaction would be highly appreciated in replying soonest.
Thanks and best regards.

Peter Azanga
Email address azangapeter1@yahoo.fr

Hmmm… I wonder why this dude references three different email addresses. And why is his name spelled differently throughout? And how did he get my contact info? Uh oh…

Shit. I just read the last couple of lines. He wants me to keep this shit confidential. Fuck. I really screwed up this time. I probably ruined it by posting this on the glorious interwebs.

Okay. I take back everything I said before. I’ll let you be my friends again.

Thanks to all of you who made it out to The Fire to see The Codes‘ first Philly gig in like 6 months. We took a little break to write new material and spend more time jerking off (solo - not as a group). And we rearranged our lineup: we have a new bass player, I’m playing drums now, and Rennie’s on guitar. Ian’s still Ian. Well sort of. Ian’s hormone therapy is finally starting to kick in and his sexual reassignment surgery is scheduled for this summer. So he’s still Ian at least for the next few months.

The new lineup really worked for us. The venue was packed and the booker seemed psyched. The audience was into it too - they even chanted for an encore (which we gladly delivered). I’m hoping this leads to gigs at bigger venues. We’re trying to play maybe every six weeks instead of a couple times every month. That should give us time to cut an album. Fuck, maybe we’ll even plan a tour.

Email us (thecodesmusic AT gmail DOT com) if you want to be included on our retarded spam email that we send every once in a while when we’re not feeling lazy. And tell all your friends to add us on MySpace. I mean it. This is mandatory. Or don’t. Whatever.

I just found out that the original twelve-step program is based on religion. The steps include stupid shit like turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, have God remove all these defects of character, and improve our conscious contact with God. What a pile of horseshit - well at least it’s horseshit for atheists like me.

So I wanted to create my own 12 step program for people who want to quit drinking or shooting up or whatever. But this shit ain’t easy. I’ve only gotten to step five so far and now I have writer’s block. Here’s what I have so far:

Step one: We can have lots of fun
Step two: Theres so much we can do
Step three: It’s just you and me
Step four: I can give you more
Step five: Don’t you know the time has arrived

Okay, that was a long way to go for a stupid gag. Fuck it.

Also - Travis’s roommate wants to know “What’s weirder: gay blacks or gay Asians?”

Listen, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but just a few years ago, no one knew about blogs or ‘bloggin’. When I started my site (on blogger in the beta stages of what has now become the true bane of my very soul), it was about entertaining my friends. My buds, who were just as bored at work as I was, joined me. We wrote to make each other laugh. I never really gave a fuck what readers (that’s you) cared or thought. We had a solid run. We started gaining readership and readers, who we abused regularly. We bought a domain, got new hosting software, and basically invented the “blogreview” (We nothing, it was all Maine.)

And things were good. We had 5 authors at our prime. 5 of my best friends. And they made me laugh daily, and in Elwood/Jason’s (not JJ, for the uninitiated) case, sometimes 50 times a day. Man, that guy posted a lot. Eventually, we had to stop doing the QW! site. Basically, someone lost a job over it, and was then threatened to be blackballed by certain government organizations. So, when we quit, some of us branched into other sites.

Fast forward a few years. Now, it seems that everyone and their brother (including fucking characters from tv shows) have a blog. I imagine these individuals rushing home to blog their thoughts (which are, at most times, neither interesting nor entertaining), and show the world “just how special I am”. I imagine them with smug little looks on their face as they spout out their “Mundane Ramblings On the Edge of Reality from a Crazy Girl/Guy On a Quest to Find Himself/Herself”. (Did I miss any shitty blog titles? Come the fuck on, people) I imagine them fastidiously clicking the “Get Mail” button to see if anyone commented on their funny post about how people in the coffee line are really dumb and how Sheila, the bitch at the office, pissed off the wrong person today! I imagine all of this with clarity, constantly reminding myself that the world is full of fucking retarded, trite, ignorant, callous and decidedly petty people. Am I dismayed at this revelation? Not quite. Do I liken the blogging world to an adult High School? Fucking Absolutely.

Which brings me to today, on one hand, I can name at least 8 ‘die-hard’ bloggers who have ‘quit’ blogging. Usually with some dramatic statement, indicating just how profound they really were. It is these people, who have renewed my dream of the End of Days. Am I a dick? Absolutely. But are you not entertained? Wait, let me put on my gladiator’s costume and scream that, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?!!?”

The thing I love about guys like JJ or Maine (from that QWMaine site) is that while they put a lot of effort into their “Insane Ponderings of A Girl in the City”, they take it with a grain of salt. They’re self-deprecating, and aware that their blog is just as stupid as any other, and not some Tome of Lore that will be mulled over by Bambridge Scholars.

But you see, that’s what seperates the cream from the whey, as it were. These guys are truly like that. When we get together, we might talk about some existential theory on the true meaning of life (thanks, MaryJane!), but at the end of the day we know we’re abso-fucking-lutely retarded and no one cares about what we think. Does it stop us from being ourselves? No. But we’re not going to be winning any Nobel Peace Prizes anytime soon, either.

“So, Ev”, you blithely ask, “What’s your fucking point?” My point is merely this: No one cares about you, your life, or your blog. The only readers you ever really had, were most likely friends of yours (or friends of friends). Anyone else, just came to your site to get traffic, or spam ads for penis enlargement, free prescription medications, or games of Texas Hold’em. To quote Tyler Durden: “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying matter as everything else. You are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” Get the fuck over yourself.

Incidently, if you now hate me and want to tell me off, please feel free to do so. Just don’t be surprised if I don’t care.