Good Day,
Let me start by introducing myself, I am MR BEN.H, CREDIT ACCOUNTS OFFICER EQUITABLE PCI BANK. I am writing you this letter based on the latest development at my bank, which I will like to bring to your personal edification. I am writing you this letter with so much joy and excitement even though my heart goes out to the very powerful and distinguished gentleman who I was fortunate to have worked for and extremely privileged to have known for numerous years. I am a top official in charge of client accounts in EQUITABLE PCI BANK inside Zimbabwe.
In 2005, my client was going through a horrendous divorce in the United States Of America and Was on the verge of losing most of his estate to his vicious and diabolical wife. As a result of this alarming predicament, my client came to me with a very brilliant idea. He transferred some funds, five hundred dollars($500) to a pavement by the side of a road in Hackney, East London. Due to his untimely death in early January 2006, the funds have been sitting on the pavement for a matter of hours before I could find them lying in the street on my way home from the pub. My client did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit.
Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I would like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to our client so that you will be able to receive his funds. I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we can come out successful. I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to my client.
There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. The allocation of our money will be as follows: 20%($100) to you for your part in this, 75% for me and my partners and 5% for any unforeseeable expenses we may incur. I think this is extremely fair, as you have nothing to lose but just a little time, while on the other hand I am staking my flawless reputation among other things. And besides 100 Zimbabwean dollars is no pocket change. Once you are approved, the entire transaction should take no longer than twelve business days after which we will go about our daily business, but just one hundred dollars richer.
As you can see this is easier than taking candy from a baby, but mind you, trust is something that is developed over time and that is something that we do not have. So I have to let you know that it will highly unfeasible to try to run away with the money because even though only you can transfer money in and out of your account, the transfer can only be authorized by my department of which i happen to be the head. The money will be transferred from my bank to an account you will provide. So please, there should be no room for greed because one hundred dollars can quench even the most insatiable desire for the almighty dollar.
As you can see this is easier than taking candy from a baby, but mind you, trust is something that is developed over time and that is something that we do not have. So I have to let you know that it will highly unfeasible to try to run away with the money because even though only you can transfer money in and out of your account, the transfer can only be authorized by my department of which i happen to be the head. The money will be transferred from my bank to an account you will provide. So please, there should be no room for greed because one hundred dollars can quench even the most insatiable desire for the almighty dollar.
Again, I will be in charge of everything else. I will assume all responsibilities for this endeavor so you don’t have to worry about any legal ramifications, just what you will do with all that money.
Your urgent response is highly anticipated so please email me for more details on this transaction as soon as possible. This should be kept very secret and confidential. I believe you know.
kind Regards,
Mr. Ben.H
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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I guess the curvy scimitar-bayonet thing is meant to imply they’re Islamic or something
Monday 9 January 2006
Long-time readers how my workplace swung into action a mere three months after the London tube bombings to make the building terrorist-proof, by sticking up signs in the lifts. In the same spirit of tireless vigilance, I have finally gotten around to taking a photograph of the sign for your ‘enjoyment.’
Judging from the terrorist’s appearance, London is in imminent threat from the Chicos Liberation Front.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Starting the year as we mean to go on
Monday 2 January 2006
Continuing on from last year, let’s get 2006 rolling with another photo of this website’s patron saint:
This is the Jeremy Bentham pub in Bloomsbury. Just behind him, further down the street, is the building that houses his notorious Auto-Icon. On the street corner is a large plaque set into the pub wall, telling passersby the Bentham story, much of which seems to have been cribbed from for the Wikipedia article about him, particularly the guff about his stuffed corpse being dragged out only for special university occasions. A stroll one block over will verify that the man is on permanent display.
This is the Jeremy Bentham pub in Bloomsbury. Just behind him, further down the street, is the building that houses his notorious Auto-Icon. On the street corner is a large plaque set into the pub wall, telling passersby the Bentham story, much of which seems to have been cribbed from for the Wikipedia article about him, particularly the guff about his stuffed corpse being dragged out only for special university occasions. A stroll one block over will verify that the man is on permanent display.
Haven’t drunk in here yet, but the pub reviews I just looked up for the above link says they sometimes stock a cask of Orkney Dark Island, one of the world’s greatest beers. Must investigate.
Filed under: London, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Filler by Proxy XXVII: Welcome to the 21st Century; I challenge you to a loins-off.
Saturday 10 December 2005
Still waiting on that personal jetpack for the commute to and from my perspex geodesic dome, but in the meantime we can give sullen, grudgeful thanks for the few, glistening gems of Future Shock that are tossed our way. First, coloured bubbles! I cannot understand why I am so excited about this. It’s like cold fusion turned out to be real, only more fun.
Second, Neil Diamond has a MySpace page. Anyone unwilling to at least cut this guy an inch of slack has a heart of stone. The fine blog Heart on a Stick has collected the best of the many, many accolades the man has received in his short stay on the website, and in doing so has taken the pulse of a modern, media-savvy society when common toilers such as you and I are suddenly confronted by the presence of a genuine, undeniable star. WARNING: it’s a bit bandwidth-intensive, but worth the effort.
Filed under: Filler By Proxy, Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
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SA Icon update, 2005
Wednesday 30 November 2005
Back in February I reviewed several of South Australia’s official “heritage icons”, strongly suggesting without actually coming out and admitting that I was born and raised in Adelaide. At the very least, this confession would have shed additional light on a substantial number of these icons being things I’d never heard of.
I’d almost forgotten this article until yesterday when I received an email about it from a gentleman who particularly wanted to talk about stobie poles. He’s a big fan of the pole, calling it “SA’s greatest ever invention, ever”, thus beating out stalwarts such as the rotary clothesline and the stump-jump fucking plough. In fact, he likes them perhaps a little too much, referring to them as “J.C. Poles” – after their inventor, J(ames) C(yril) Stobie, but still. It’d be a tough ask nailing anything, let alone the messiah, to one of those beasts.
If you haven’t encountered a stobie pole, they look like this:
Two fine specimens of the pole, enhancing a street in the leafy suburb of Glenunga. I got this off the web – there are other fine photos around, but this one captures the essence of the pole itself, as encountered at street level, including the mysterious, ubiquitous green triangle. Note also the idiomatic brush fence in the background. Sorry about the kids ruining the shot.
My email correspondent lists his favourite pastime as “Stobie Pole Spotting” – which, if I still lived in Adelaide, I would heartily endorse, being a hobby requiring the Absolute Zero of effort and exertion in a city where the things are as ubiquitous as bags of rubbish in the streets of London. Sadly, his return address doesn’t work, so it looks like his kind offer to “share further Stobie Stories” won’t pan out.
To be fair, I once was sufficiently nerdy to mutter darkly about stobie poles popping up in the background of location shots in Shine, a movie purportedly set in Perth. This annoyed my date, mainly because I was distracting her from proper appreciation of Noah Taylor’s bum. All in all, not a successful date movie.
There seems to be a wideheld perception that stobie poles are a particularly lethal form of roadside furniture, possibly because of their brutalist construction and aspect. The Emergency Medial Journal has published D.G.E. Caldicott and N.Edwards’ article “Traumatic brain injury after a motor vehicle accident: Fact or ‘fantasy’?”, which assigns a prominent role and evocative photo to the stobie pole.
Figure 1: A stobie pole. Essentially two metal girders on either side of a concrete core, they were designed to support lines of electricity and communication to remote and rural southern Australia. Their longevity is inversely proportional to their contribution to road safety.
The authors omit two salient points from this passage: the driver in this case study was up to his eyeballs in GHB, and that ramming your car into a stobie pole surely can’t be any more dangerous than wrapping your vehicle around a tall wooden pole 8 inches in diameter and firmly set into a block of concrete. However, stobie poles do buckle in dramatic fashion after a car has smashed into them, and are often left in that state for years after as a dual testament to the pole’s durability and the driver’s fallibility.
See? Plenty of give in the buggers!
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I was reminded to check up on which of South Australia’s many heritage icons got the nod of official recognition for this year. The results are disappointing. The citation for ‘The Secret Ballot’ begins “The secret ballot as such was not invented in South Australia”, which gives you the overall flavour of barrel-scrapings for the 2005 crop (how can a ballot be an icon?) The only thing they get right is (finally!) giving it up for Menz Fruchocs, a confectionery I am now going to be craving well into new year.
Far superior to the National Trust’s heritage icons site, albeit still in its infancy, is the Encyclopaedia of South Australian Culture. I had no idea until today that “early minute” was a term peculiar to Adelaide – it’s a phrase I still use from time to time, never suspecting until now that no-one has a clue of what I’m talking about. As I’m writing this I’m saying “early minute” out loud to my companion, a native of Melbourne, across the table, and she’s staring back across the table, sadly shaking her head with utter incomprehension.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Masons in Distress!
Wednesday 23 November 2005
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They’re big and salty and brown
Monday 21 November 2005
Despite living in London for, oh, months now, I am still prepared to be amazed on my trips to the local supermarket. My enthusiasm at finding Sudafed freely available has been slightly tempered by the checkout chicks’ ruthless vigilance in preventing you from buying more than 2 packets of paracetamol at the same time – regardless of how big the packets are. I haven’t found out yet whether paracetamol can supposedly get you wasted, be used to make bombs, or contain dangerous amounts of lead.
Sometimes, I am certain the British are doing this stuff on purpose. By ‘this stuff’ I mean selling products like:
Mr Brain’s pork faggots – two steaming balls for your enjoyment. I had to take them home with me. It was only after eating them (not bad, in a comfort-food kind of way) that I remembered: I’d heard of these things before. Nearly three years ago they had been a minor meme around the world when the company (I’d like to think personally announced by Young Mr Brain himself) crowned an unfortunate household from Wolverhampton Britain’s Faggot Family.
The Doody family
CAN’T… BREATHE….
from Wolverhampton has been crowned The Faggot Family in a national competition, and to kick off their reign they will launch National Faggot Week.The Doody family were chosen to front the campaign after impressing judges at the Savoy Hotel in London in November.
“The great British faggot is full of flavour and a great belly warmer at this time of year.”Faggot facts:Faggots were called “savoury ducks” in the Middle Ages
… and they still are in certain nightclubs around Soho. Mr Brain used to have a website but it seems to have disappeared – perhaps it was taken down by outraged but misguided Daily Mail readers. A slightly damaged archived version survives, featuring tasty news items such as “Faggot Family go Public.”
I wonder where they are now?
Filed under: London, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Death of a Salesman: Blog Draws Blood!
Wednesday 16 November 2005
Nothing of substance fit to post today. Alas! My dad just wrote in to say that reading my blog is the only way he has of keeping tabs on what I’m up to these days. Hi dad! I’m feeling a bit fluey today, so not much writing going on. Oh, and I left Melbourne and moved to London a few months back, so don’t send a card with a $10 note in it to the old address this christmas.
Just last week I posted about the Kia car salesman’s blog, but now the thing’s gone! Either my linking to him drove his traffic through the roof and his service was cut off, or else he won third prize in last month’s sales contest. And had something else cut off.
Like you care. Enjoy the cached version on Google while you can.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Filler by Proxy XXIV: Please help this man sell a cheap Korean car
Monday 7 November 2005
The great thing about the internet is that it can put you in touch with people from all walks of life (except for the three-quarters of the world’s population who don’t have internet access): lives of excitement, adventure and heroism. And if you get tired of that, you can also keep tabs on the day-to-day life of a Kia salesman in London:
Sunday, 9 October 2005Its the end of a hard Sunday in the showroom, tiring with loads of customers and just the two of us. Still have sold a mid-range Sedona at a good price to a nice Irish couple so all is not lost!Mood: caffeinatedMonday, 10 October 2005Monday… the dawn of a new week. Two test drives today. Why are Asian people such good and tough negotiators? Do they go to a special school or something? Involved the boss to try and put a blinding deal together on a Rio (which he did) and managed to get them more money for their PX than they thought and they STILL walked!
Mood: energeticFriday, 14 October 2005well looks like I cant keep this a daily thing so will write as often as possible. Got rapped on the knuckles by the boss again today … sigh. Loadsa new kias to sell by end of month…. Any ideas?!
Mood: luckySaturday, 15 October 2005Mitch & Murray sent down some guy for a pep talk today. Something about how we can’t play the man’s game because we can’t close the leads, and how we need brass balls to always be closing or something.Mood: zesty
Sadly, there’s no obvious information about who this man is or where you can buy a Picanto from him. He signs his first post ‘Malcolm’, but I like to think of him as Wendell Maas*. I’m waiting for him to begin a post with “Today was another defeat.”
In the meantime, checking his site for updates is as much fun as playing The Sims, only with the added advantage of not having to stand over him pushing buttons to make sure he remembers to take his daily half-hour crap. And if he doesn’t, there’s no way I’m test-driving one of his second-hand Sportages.
* Definitely Mucho, not Wayne Hoover.
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Breaking news: a small yet significant victory in the war on terrorism
Tuesday 25 October 2005
I came into work this morning to find a new sign in the lift warning us to be on the lookout for terrorists. I searched everywhere, but I’m quite sure I was the only passenger.
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Faith in humanity restored etc until the next time I board a train
Saturday 15 October 2005
Firstly, I’m On Your Computer is back on your computer. Hard-hitting journalism that hits you like it’s Anthony Mundine and you’re the type of schlub who gets picked to fight him, which you probably are unless you’re good with your hands and somewhat alert.
Secondly, I got a phone call from my bank yesterday, saying that someone had returned a bank statement they’d mailed me so they thought they’d better check if I’d changed my address. This makes me the first person to have had a company pay the slightest bit of attention to their returned mail since the era depicted on British Sunday-night TV serials, when the world was populated entirely by nice white people who all lived in little villages and knew each other by name and the postman would stop by your house for a cup of milky tea. This was back before immigration and the polio vaccine ruined everything forever, when people felt truly comfortable and relaxed – right up until they realised it was time to stock up on sex toys again.
So I was grateful, but I couldn’t help get the impression that they were reproaching me in some way for not caring about them quite as much as they appeared to care about me. This was probably just guilt on my part, having churlishly assumed at first that they were trying to sell me something. Worse still, it happened to be one of the rare occasions where, instead of simply hanging up, I feigned suffering Tourette’s syndrome (“If you hang up I can sue you for discrimination CUNT!”).
On further reflection, it wasn’t so much guilt as resentment. It’s all very nice having them call up for useful stuff but I’d really rather them be a proper faceless consortium and leave me alone.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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We’ll always have Jeremy Bentham to kick around
Wednesday 21 September 2005
Apart from the lovely and talented Julie Dawn Kemp, the tireless champion of filler on this website is the Great Utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham. Despite his many achievements, his greatest legacy remains in supplying cheap gags with middlebrow pretensions to erudition to unimaginative pseuds like me.
Now that a new semester has begun, I paid a return visit to his modest abode to convince myself that Wikipedia is wrong and he is in fact on permanent display, and not just wheeled out for special occasions when conferences are held. Because the real journalists have fled the internets I felt I had to step in and put the hard questions to the Big Stiff:
Me: Hello? Coo-ee!
Bentham: Stop tapping on my glass! I’m not a bloody goldfish.
Me: Sorry. I guess you have people coming up and bothering you all the time.
Bentham: (sighs) No.
Me: So, were you affected by the bombs going off down the street back in July?
Bentham: That was a bomb? They told me someone upstairs had dropped a particularly heavy difference engine.
Me: I guess they didn’t want you to panic and…
Bentham: Lose my head. Very fucking funny. First time I’ve heard that gag – today. Security! Evict this jackanape and wheel me over to the Natural History wing!
Me: Doesn’t look like anyone’s coming. I thought you Victorians were more well-spoken than that, you know, “Good DAY Sir!!”
Bentham: I’m not a Victorian! I’m a William…ian… Whatever.
Me: What sort of positive example do you think you have set to the youth of today by sitting in a rosewood portaloo for the last 170 years?
Bentham: I’d like to think I’ve played my small part in keeping the “Great” in Great Britain.
Me: Did you know they’ve named a pub after you around the corner?
Bentham: Yes. I’d love to visit it someday – I could murder a pint.
Me: A common complaint among the enbalmed. You don’t get about much, do you? When was the last time you travelled?
Bentham: Last year. A new cleaning woman started and she wanted to vacuum under me. They haven’t even oiled my casters for years. The squeaking nearly drove me potty.
Me: You know, putting yourself on public display all these years, your invention of the panopticon, do you regard yourself as the inspiration for Big Brother? It’s a TV show where…
Bentham: I’ve seen Big Brother. A repulsive display by depraved lowlife.
Me: I guessed you wouldn’t be impressed.
Bentham: I was over the moon when Makosi got the arse. Girlfriend had no business being horrible to Kemal like that.
Me: Well, I think we’ve trawled all the most obvious jokes now, and I feel a bit dirty having looked up a Big Brother forum to put in that tidbit of gossip, so I’ll finish now and thank you for your time.
Bentham: You still here? Security! etc.
Filed under: Stupidity by Ben.H
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Be afraid: Linda Perry is also involved somehow
Wednesday 21 September 2005
I know you look to me as an authority figure but I need your help on this one, particularly from those of you outside the UK. Is the inexplicable resurgence of media interest over here in Juliette Lewis a peculiarly British phenomenon, or some global conspiracy engineered by the Scientologists? She’s been popping up everywhere as some kind of rock chick, which is apparently what she wanted to do all along and so deliberately starred in unwatchable shite like The Other Sister so all those movie executives would finally stop pestering her with wheelbarrows full of drugsmoney.
So is this a PR snow job going on everywhere, or have we suddenly become Germany to her Hasselhoff?
It really is a pity they don’t have genuine A-list celebrities manning the tables outside Scientology centres at least once in a while, so we can see how well-adjusted you can become after paying $100,000 to learn that you have thousands of body thetans trapped inside you who were tricked into watching a 3-D movie by an alien galactic ruler named Xenu.
Take a FREE personality test and learn about the science of mental health (Reg. Trade Mark)! My results are not typical and may vary.
Take a FREE personality test and learn about the science of mental health (Reg. Trade Mark)! My results are not typical and may vary.
Also, ads for Narconon have suddenly appeared at tube stations lately. Coincidence?
Filed under: Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Not dead yet, but working on it
Monday 5 September 2005
People have traditionally characterised Britain as a slow, backward, inefficient country but I’ll have you know that it’s leapfrogged into the 21st century. British Telstra or whatever they’re called took a mere three weeks to activate ADSL on the bunker’s phone line, a response time that is staggeringly fast by OECD standards but even more amazing when you consider that I live several miles from the GPO!
Even more astonishing is their boast today that it will be only a matter of days before I receive the final bill for the discontinued phone service in the bunker I moved out of a month ago. Apparently it would have taken even less time to calculate the amount owing but someone kept opening the door on the computer, allowing the small, prehistoric bird working the treadmill inside to break the fourth wall and say “Wak! It’s a living.”
I don’t know if BT have been privatised or not so I don’t know which rant about bad service to pull out, so I’ll compromise and say that they’re owned by the Queen. And, as the movies have taught us, bad giant evil bad corporate behemoths are always run by just one evil person who personally carries out all the really evillest schemes. In other words, to make sure my phone line stays in working order I’ll end up having to punch it out with the Queen, until she plummets to her death from the top of the Jewel Tower, with her yelling and firing her gun straight up in the air all the way down. In slow motion.
This means I’ll have to also kill a lot of Beefeaters along the way, finishing with the really evil tough Beefeater: the one who looks all pissed off when he’s getting photographed with tourists because he thinks it’s beneath him and his job really is to stop the ballistas and arbalasts being stolen by Al’Qai al-qaed the Germans.
Just backing up a couple of paragraphs: why was all the machinery in The Flintstones powered by birds on treadmills? Given that they spent all their time trapped in confined spaces and pedalling things, wouldn’t lizards be more suitable? I’ve read some history and I know that birds were cumbersome and expensive back in those days! Perhaps The Flintstones were British. Sorry, are British.
Still, at least renovations of the bunker are progressing well.
Filed under: London, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Russell Crowe, please get your band back together
Friday 22 July 2005
The Apocalypse approaches. Steven Seagal, renaissance man, has released his first CD, titled (I am not making this up) “Songs From The Crystal Cave”.
The set, which features guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Lt. Stitchie*, and Lady Saw*, is already available in France and will be sold in Asia come September. The martial-arts master culls from a wide swath of musical influences on “Cave,” including blues, rock, pop, Jamaican dancehall and traditional Indian music.
All you music-lovers out there can curb your cravings until your very expensive imported disc arrives in the post by downloading MP3s from his website. You can also enjoy more photos of him playing a guitar than you can shake your dharma beads at.
You can buy the CD online though his website, along with his “Essential oils and his very own Energy Bar !” What, no pudding?
If you want an unbiased analysis of the Stevemeister’s warblings, head on over to his unofficial fansite, where you can also enjoy debates on “What Do You Think Is Seagal’s Best Direct-to-Video So Far?” and “YOUR selection for Steven Seagal’s best acting performance ( not fighting!)” with nominations such as this:
Seagal displayed pretty decent acting talents, particularly in the scene where he smashed things up in the science lab.
According to the Billboard article, a propos of apparently nothing:
Seagal has pledged $100,000 in order to diffuse a “high risk” Russian nuclear weapon.
I think he means ‘defuse’. Presumably by high risk it means that he has to cut the red wire with a pen knife seconds before it goes off, but not before having to punch out Morris Chestnut.
* No, me neither.
