"He reads the letter."

"How they are paid in gold!"

Things I saw in the mail this evening:

An envelope with a Malaga postmark and an eye-catching stamp. It is addressed to me; my name appears as it would in a public directory. [SURNAME] [INITIAL OF FIRST NAME] -- not a good sign.

Inside, a piece of orange paper, run through an ink jet printer and attached to a form with fields left blank for personal financial information. Multiple blurry logos! Lots of italics! Underlined sentences! ALL CAPS AND MANY MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!

Due to mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award from public notice until your claim has ben processed and money remitted to your account as this is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unwarranted taking advantage of this program by participants.[...]We hope your lucky name will draw a bigger cash prize in the next year program.

Awesome! I won the FOREIGN LOTTERY!!!!!!

Hustlers who are willing to spend money on paper, printer ink, postage and fancy envelopes must really be convinced that their shuffle is going to work, like their deal is somehow more legit than an Inbox full of e-mail from Nigeria, just because they're sending out hard copy. Well, at least they're convinced that they'll recoup their investment. Maybe there wasn't any investment at all; maybe they stole all their supplies and everything is profit.

Anyway, the envelope was pretty cool.

TRACK LISTING: Steely Dan, "The Royal Scam"