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Samuel

August 17th, 2007 at 02:49pm

Enjoy your trip

Good morning Lawsie,

Just a quick note to wish you all the best for your trip to Hamilton Island.

I hope your week over there is a wonderful week.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

1 comment August 17th, 2007 at 11:54am

Finally Simon Replies

Last month I wrote about the peculiar spammers who were sending out spam which claimed to be from a bored female who wanted to chat with someone.

I decided to reply to a female by the name of “Simon” to try and work out why the spammers had bothered to send out these emails which seemed rather pointless due to the fact that there wasn’t any obvious opportunity for them to make money from the emails.

Well, after nearly a month, Simon has finally replied, but with a different name:

From: Margarita <ritulia@freemailserve.biz>
To: Samuel Gordon-Stewart <smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 14, 2007 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: Hello Simon

Hi my new friend
Im glad to see that you have decided to reply,I see it is very short letter.
It is all right because you are astonished to get my letter.
I want you to know that I have only good intentions and I have not any secrets.
The thing is that I will work in your country for three months or so and
I would like to meet a nice man to fall in love or just be closest friends.
I don’t want to live in Russia because I have not any chances here,
it is hardly possible to explain from first time but I want you to know my plans.
I will work in any shop, bar or restaurant the agency that i am going through will suggest me some locations.
It will be my choice in the end as to what option to go for.
So I will have a simple work till I improve my English. And I can choose any
town of your area,agency will only help me to get a visa and all travel documents + some suggested placed to work in.
My best friend last year met the man from the USA when she worked there for three months, too.
She had two jobs. From morning till 4 pm she worked in amusement park and after it she worked as a waitress in some bar till midnight.
She was very tired of course but made very good money there.
It is special programm for young people who wants to work abroad and I think it is the right way for me ,
I am lost here,and I think that I look pretty enough to find a better place .I want to repeat the same way,it is
only my chance to meet a nice man.I want to work in USA or in Europe or any
nice country. I am full of plans and different dreams and I want to share my
life with good man because I’m also full of love and tenderness,I know that
I am not so beautiful like Hollywood Princess but I do hope to meet my Prince and
I am sure he will be not be disappoined to meet me in the real life! This is why I am going to go through the same way.
Well,I will close this letter and I do hope to get your reply.
I will leave russia in two weeks or so (I can’t tell you everything exactly
right now) and I would like tobe sure that I have the man who waits for me there. I will work all day and I want to find a man to spend all free time
together to get to know each other better.if you have any interest to meet me I will be more than happy to meet you too.
I will tell you all details about me and my life if you like my pictures and
want to meet me! please send picture of you too!!!
I write to you with my new mailbox ritulia@freemailserve.biz, please write
letters now only on this mailbox.
I will wait your next letter.
Kiss you , Margarita (this is my name)!

Following this Margarita remembered to send through some photos. I won’t publish them here as I don’t know where they were stolen from, but they are fairly modest photos of a mildly attractive female who doesn’t look even remotely Russian.

I waited a couple days before replying, but I have now replied.

From: Samuel Gordon-Stewart <smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com>
To: Margarita <ritulia@freemailserve.biz>
Date: Aug 17, 2007 4:06 AM
Subject: Re: Hello Simon

Hello my dear Margarita,

What a lovely name you have. I must say that it is much better than the name you originally emailed me with…out of interest why did you call yourself Simon? Was it to protect your identity? If so I think that is most marvellous and clever of you.

I must say that your plans do sound most interesting, and I’m sure that you will be a most welcome addition to this wonderful country that I live in, Australia.

Right now it is raining but it will be sunny again soon. The sound of the rain on the roof is most delightful, and I’m sure that we will be able to share many nights listening to the rain on the roof.

We also have wonderful radio stations in this country, and I’m sure that you will enjoy listening to wonderful people on the radio with me.

As requested I have attached a picture of me. I hope that it satisfies you. It was done before I started to wear glasses, but I’m sure you will like it anyway.

I most eagerly look forward to hearing from you again.

Regards,
Samuel (This is my name…isn’t it interesting that we have different names? It surely proves that we are destined to be together!)

I think I’ve worked out the scam. The next step this spammer will take will be to get my financial assistance in travelling from Russia to Australia.

To that end, I wrote that email in such a way to make any sane person disinterested in being my partner. A spammer however won’t care how insane or ridiculous my message is, they will continue with their scam due to the fact that I am actually replying to them.

Would you like to know what picture I sent to Margarita? Well I took advantage of the fact that she said “picture” and not “photo”, and sent her the following picture of myself:

(Click to enlarge)

I cut the copyright line off the bottom of the image that I sent to Margarita, but I’m sure you would agree that any sane person would not reply to me again after seeing that picture attached to that kind of email.

I eagerly await the spammer’s reply.

Samuel

2 comments August 17th, 2007 at 11:22am

The Diagnosis?

It’s been a while since I’ve run any Friday Funnies, so I thank Jason for sending in some doctor jokes for your amusement.

A man goes to his doctor for a complete checkup. He hasn’t been feeling well and wants to find out if he’s ill. After the checkup the doctor comes out with the results of the examination.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. You’re dying and you don’t have much time,” the doctor says.
“Oh no, that’s terrible. How long have I got?” the man asks.
“10” says the doctor.
“10? 10 what? Months? Weeks? What?!” he asks desperately.
The doctor continues “9…8…7…”

A man walks into a doctor’s office. He has a cucumber up his nose, a carrot in his left ear and a banana in his right ear.
“What’s the matter with me?” he asks the doctor.
The doctor replies, “You’re not eating properly.”

A young woman went to her doctor complaining of pain.
“Where are you hurting?” asked the doctor.
“You have to help me, I hurt all over”, said the woman.
“What do you mean, all over?” asked the doctor, “be a little more specific.”
The woman touched her right knee with her index finger and yelled, “Ow, that hurts.” Then she touched her left cheek and again yelled, “Ouch! That hurts, too.” Then she touched her right earlobe, “Ow, even THAT hurts”, she cried.
The doctor checked her thoughtfully for a moment and told her his diagnosis, “You have a broken finger.”

Do you have something you would like to contribute to Friday Funnies? If so, email it to samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com. All contributions welcome!

Samuel

1 comment August 17th, 2007 at 09:36am

If Play School Produced Weather Reports

They would probably be very similar to Mark Carmody’s dreadful attempts at presenting the weather on ABC TV News in Canberra.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

By all accounts Mark Carmody was very good at presenting the gardening show on 666 ABC Canberra, but he is really quite dreadful when it comes to the weather…it really does come across as an audition for the book reading role on Play School. He talks down to the audience, and insists on cluttering the weather reports with useless information about which newspapers are produced in which towns, and what movie he was reminded of when he woke up this morning and looked out his window.

Mark has taken over as the weather presenter from John Ringwood. John retired on the same day as WIN Television’s newsreader Peter Leonard, and I commented in the linked article that:

Rumour has it that 2CN’s (666 ABC Canberra for those of you not familiar with the callsign) garden expert will take over as the weather presenter. That might sound odd, but considering that last night they presented a five minute editorial from federal political editor Jim Middleton as news, no change in that place would surprise me.

Clearly I was wrong because Mark Carmody retired in April last year and his return to the airwaves did surprise me. It would appear to have split the ABC audience as well, as his return has prompted a mixed reaction on the ABC Canberra guestbook.

I personally found John Ringwood’s style of presenting the weather with the facts, and only the facts, as quite mundane, however I liked it. When John read the weather, it was clear and concise. Unfortunately Mark Carmody is being given free reign over his script and is producing garbage. His interactions with Virginia Haussegger are forced and completely unnatural, his weather presentation is cluttered and unclear, and the ABC would have been much better off doing the same thing WIN Television have done…have the newsreader present the weather from the news desk. I’m certain that Virginia would do an excellent job presenting the weather.

And if they must have Mark Carmody on the air and can’t ship him off to the Play School set…well they could easily move him to Stateline and give him a two or three minute weekly gardening segment, similar to the one David Young presented on Ten Capital News before it was axed. I’m sure Mark’s scripts would work much better in that kind of segment.

Incidentally, in case you didn’t spot it towards the end of the video embedded above, take a look at the following image. Does anything strike you as odd?

On the left of screen is a 2CC microphone.

I suppose it’s not really odd, but it was rather amusing.

Samuel

4 comments August 17th, 2007 at 05:51am