419 Scam Letter

Here is a odd thing we received in the mail during the week, and its probably the first one of these I've seen written rather than as a E Mail.
I'll print it in full here with certain bits amended to protect my privacy, you'll also get an inkling of what type of letter this is and the level of English this guy has.

從桌上的泰徳陳*6

xu4494@yahoo.com

Dear Potential Scammee*.

My name is Heng Xu, I am a** contacting you in relations to the late Kobe Bryant***, I worked for  him as his private investment manager, and in the few years prior to his death invested substantially in various opportunities.

After a few years of profit making, he instruted that all the money be collected together into a single bank account, and I arranged with a specialist bank here in China to secure the money in a single account, shortly after he died* I assumed his relatives has since made claims, only to get a phone call from the bank a few weeks ago that Charles funds remains unclaimed, and the money would go to the Government if nobody claims it.

The bank used international people finders**** to locate any relative of Charles but they failed to locate any, hence I have taken the initiative to make enquires myself, in the process I have been provided your details, I propose that we don't allow this money go to the Government and work together to legally secure this money in full compliance with the laws of China.

Kindly write back to me on the estate of late Mr. Bryant, kindly keep this communication confidential due to its sensitivity***** as we do not want this inheritance to fall into the wrong hands,

Heng Xu.

* Did call me by my real name but I thought this would be much more funnier as I clocked what the bastard was up to.

** I am a contacting. The first grammar slip up.  People who write these sort of letters do not have English as a first language (though judging by the state of peoples English around here neither do we English anymore).  .

*** Not my relatives real name, he was never a basketball star, and he definitely scraped the info off  Facebook as its the only place I've shared this info (a photo my cousin asked for), and the biggest flag for me, as the person in question died in WW2. Reread the letter with that info in mind and it becomes much more obvious he is a spammy cunt of the highest magnitude.

**** International People Finders. Just googled and these sorts of people do exist but surely is this something a legitimate bank would do. Not sure what the laws are in China for tracking down a young guy who died fighting the Hun in WW2, and never ever went to China especially to do business.

***** Yeah like you would keep quiet about this, potential money coming in you would shout from the rooftops, unless you were a total imbecile and they wanted to keep you quiet.  In stark contrast I cashed in an ISA this year and the letter they sent was much more professional, more business
like and actually had a proper address not some random Chinese and a fucking Hotmail account.

****** Don't know if the address is live or not as I'm not going to reply, if anyone wants to send unsolicited pictures of dogs or spam through sock puppet accounts the address is xu4494 at yahoo dot com with dot and at replaced with actual punctuation.  More worrying I never got a hit off the Chinese when I googled it. I did type this in via a combination of sljfaqs. kanji look up site and cojaks hanzi site and posted the result in  Firefox's search bar but never got a single hit that matched them all.

Anyway the short answer is this, if you ever get a letter in the post that sounds too good to be true, it is. If it sounds like any of these letters, its fake..

The river of Poppies.

This is just a short lived thing up town out by the Tower of London, remembering all those that have fallen in battle in world conflicts.  Covering the moat area outside the Tower and various areas including spilling down the wall at one point its a poignant reflection on war and loss.  We were going to write about something else (an update on some old topics) but thought you would like this trip out instead.

First of all the Oyster card I had was plain out refused as it was blocked and didn't realise until I went in to Woolwich, luckily I was only going to use it for one trip before getting a travelcard for the rest of  my journey, which is a bastard but can't be helped. Next up we shared a train with a pop eyed spaniel like a full brown King Charles which was cute and set us up for the rest of the trip as it was full of dogs.  More spaniels down by the river, small schanuzers, big labs, dogs being carried, dogs on boats and a Fred Basset (incidentally I actually laughed at a Fred Basset strip this week, something to do with accidentally tossing the salad leading to much hilarity which is normally alien in his button down mundane world.)

I didn't think much of the river of poppies it was really crowded and there wasn't much space to take photos. A much better idea is taking a photo from a height such as from the park above the main areas, trust me it'll look better and you won't be crushed to death by 6 billion tourists.  The other reason I was down there is that we have a giant wooden hippo moored up at St Katharine's docks.  Its by a dutch artist and is very nice, its called Hipopo Thames and reminds me of the little guy from Liquid Kids or  a massive Kinder Happy Hippo.  Want to know how awesome he looks well check it out here.  Apparently the guy behind it has also made a giant rubber duck which I really must google.

Beach Boys.

A heads up for those of you who like this sort of thing before I start on the main topic, but Q magazine has an 8 page interview with Aphex Twin. Its rather nice and covers an awful lot of ground, it also counters out the fact that the rest of the magazine is utter shite.

Beach Boys for BBC.

Something horrible appeared in the week on BBC and its not Linda's rape to the cat and budgie theme on Eastenders, (Listen here and then listen in the background as Deano comes out of the door its faint but its there) but the horror of a big budget BBC trailer for an old Beach Boys song.

I don't know if you've seen it live on the BBC or just the viral video on Youtube and other places but really is staggeringly awful.  Its a cover of the old Beach Boys song God Only Knows, by a shed load of artists including Pharrell Get Lucky Williams, Lorde as Sephiroth and Brian Wilson himself being menaced by a tiger whilst playing the piano, and One Direction, One Fucking Direction.

For me the pivotal moment, where it all turned to shit came when Emeli Sande started singing, that's when I really decided that this could fuck right off, and it duly increased when Gilles Peterson started to DJ with gold discs (should have got the Scratch Perverts in) and there is Paloma Faith and her leftish mug floating about in a hot air balloon.  And because its the BBC there is no end in sight from this being used in every ad break either in its entirety or in truncated forms, such as Florence from Florence and the Machine poncing about the undergrowth or Sam Sparro singing wistfully in a bedsit.

After all that you'll need something to take the edge off of the whole thing and I suggest you either catch up on IPlayer (or more likely torrent the whole episodes) of the Horizon cat watch 2014 special, a 3 part look at cat behaviour with Liz Bonin.  No really, even though the net is awash with cat clips, this is a full on scientific look complete with moggy cam and a breath taking X ray sequence in which you can see just how agile a cat is when landing on its feet.

Set in Brighton and at a farm location it is a collaboration of 100 cats and their owners detailing their lives and covers, communication, territorial disputes and how behaviours are taught from parent to kitten.  Its a good watch especially if you are a massive cat fan like me.

Another thing that isn't really appreciated here and I've always maintained it, is that certain behaviours scale up, so things that your humble domestic tibbet on your lap does to the massive tiger or lion out on the plains and forests is totally the same. Also it gives me the chance to show odd hunting behaviour like in this clip of Saphie taking on a toy rat, from episode 2, which is the nearest thing to a full on headrush a cat can get.

Green Coke and bad Crisps

Was going to do a whole lot about a few junk tours I did including finally getting to Upminster but it was a total disappointment, the best thing there was Crazy Beat Records which I got a few nice things.  In fact apart from seeing a Kingfisher fly past down at the river today, the most fun I've had is finding that my local corner shop does Coke Life aka green Coke.

I've seen this about including some billboard ads, but never to actually buy in the regular can size.  Its unique selling point is that half of the sugar in it is replaced with Stevia sweetener instead of the aspartame based nonsense that is in Diet Coke.  So in the week we had the chance to get a can as it was available in our local corner shop.

My first impressions is this, its halfway to becoming Coke Zero, there is still some soul in there but something has gone very very wrong.  If you didn't know I absolutely despise Coke Zero or ball less soulless Coke as I call it. Its nowhere near as bad as that but its halfway there.  On my official chart of Coke, I rank it as this.
Vanilla Coke>Coke>Coke Life>Cherry Coke>Diet Coke>Coke Zero.

Walkers are doing their do us a flavour promotions again which is their excuse for unleashing more rancid flavours onto the world, link above if you must vote on something.
So far we have:
Hot dog and Ketchup,
Chip Shop Chicken Curry,
Cheesy Beans On Toast.
Pulled Pork in a sticky BBQ sauce
Ranch Raccoon
Sizzling Steak Fajita
Human Flesh

I've had most except Cheesy Beans as I've never liked Baked Beans in any incarnation let alone in crisp form. At the moment its neck and neck to find the worst of the bunch but so far its Rancid Raccoon by a long, long margin, coupling a strange initial taste that turns into something much, much viler. Its my stand out worst crisp ever.  Hot dog and Ketchup is probably next as it tastes of just ketchup and nothing else.
Bearable are Steak Fajita and Chip Shop Curry, the latter tasting exactly like the McCoys range of crisps but not ridged at all.  Steak Fajita I've had before or at least its flavour in other crisps so its not a shock.
Heads and Shoulders above the lot is Pulled Pork, seemingly named by Beavis and Butthead and is rather good, but then again I'm a sucker for bacon flavoured crisps so that it'll be nice is a no brainer.

I'd like to think that they'll retire these but its not as if they'll promote these to a full time flavour, who remembers the last lot of crisps they did, chances are if your out and about and see them on offer stay the hell away unless its the pulled pork ones.

Edit for completion sake we did have the cheesy beans flavour and they weren't bad a bit tomatoey and slightly cheesy, in fact just what you would expect really.