Copyright law is the stupidest thing ever. You can't so much as post a picture of a chicken in an article you sell online without:

Asking the chicken's permission, asking the farmer who own's the chicken's permission, asking the owner of the windmill in the background's permission, asking the permission of the jet company that owns the jet that appears as a tiny speck in the background of the picture, etc., ad nauseum.

Maybe it's good I didn't become a lawyer after all. Although if there is a hell, there should be a separate lawyer hell, and copyright lawyers should be right at the bottom. There, they are made to take pictures of eachother to post in daily updated blogs, with proper permission obtained, of course.

The only real thing I can do with impunity is take pictures of myself. I should just take pictures of myself typing and be like "this is how you type up an essay!"

Lately I'm getting some practice writing freelance articles. I just did one entitled "How to Remove Popup Blockers for Free".

I imagine obviously some people aren't as familiar with computers as me, and to them sch an article will be of great help. But to me that is like writing an article called "How to Urinate in a Toilet Without Peeing Yourself". It seems so obvious it's hard to believe that you will actually sit down, close your eyes to think about it for a minute and then write something like

Step 1: Go to bathroom
Step 2: Remove pants carefully
Step 3: Sit down on toilet, taking care not to fall in.

And I'm supposed to add in things too, such as links to other helpful websites, (which in this case would surely be a link to a Mental Ward), keywords ('moron' is the first one that comes to mind, perhaps that is unkind of me) and Tips and Warnings

Tips and Warnings? What the heck do i write for tips and warnings regarding something so basic?

"Warning: Failing to urinate can have serious medical side effects."
"Tips: It is ok to quit peeing in case of a Ninja attack, but you should resume once they have been repelled."

One thing I do for a living while I'm not coming up with glorious one-liners for this blog, is edit student papers as a tutor. I work for a service, and not specific students as clients most of the time. This means that each student gets about 20 minutes. This is not a lot of time to read the essay, make suggestions, send it back to them, and talk about why their grammar makes me cry.

Ipso facto, students who tell me to "check everything" when I ask what they want me to look for in their essay that looks like a drunk hamster wrote it as a side effect from running across a keyboard, well- it is irritating.

Check everything? Really? Absolutely everything?

Careful now, wayward student. I'm planning on going to grad school for creative writing, you may not want to give me carte blanche to check everything I can think of.

It makes me want to check their paper from the perspective of a Japanese speaker, pointing out that the only words I recognized in their paper were "ninja" "samurai" and "no", this last being not used as a verb at all.

I would check for every single informal fallacy, and point out all of them in excruciating detail. I would point out to them that i checked their paper for heroic verse, and that the feet, meter, and rhyming scheme were all wrong, as well as a suspicious lack of an epic central hero, unless you count them on their daring adventures involving their class trip to a museum, which I don't. Unless they beheaded a tour guide, in which case, maybe.

From: Mr. Usman KARIM,
The Manager in Charge of
Auditing department of
Bank of Africa (B.O.A)

Hello Dear Friend,


This already looks good. I didn't realize I had any friends from Africa! It's a shame he forgot my name and had to write "Hello Dear Friend" instead, though. What gives Mr. KARIM? I'm starting to think we aren't friends after all.

This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as unserious could come into your mind but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.

Once I figure out what "unserious" means, I may certainly get that temptation, yes. Wow! A divine wish! Were you a banker for GOD? Way to go straight for the "I swear this isn't a scam" trick. And If I am suspicious of your motives, well you just dash them right away by demanding my humility. Well played, Sir.

Sometimes the urgency of a letter could determine the channel in which it is sent, this letter is very urgent and important and the fastest channel to reach you is via your email address. I got your contact through Burkina Faso Information Exchange I decided to contact you.

Since I imagine your about to tell me that your the esteemed banker for someone with a metric boatload of money, how clever of you to claim that the "urgency of a letter could determine the channel in which it is sent", explaining why this important message outlining the transfer of millions of dollars was handled as an EMAIL. What's wrong KARIM? Were things really so urgent that you couldn't spend 10 seconds making a phone call to, I don't know, say a BANK? Your only option was to troll the internet? You seemed to have enough time to look up addresses on the "Burkina Faso Information exchange". Funny, I don't remember registering with them. Man, I must've been so drunk.

I am seeking your humble assistance to provide either an existing bank account or set up a new Bank account to receive this fund, even an empty account can serve this purpose, or you help to seek an honest and, reliable businessman who can assist us.

You know Karim, you could just use the yellow pages. Just open it up to the "honorable businessmen" section. Wow, you sure do cut to the quick. Most people would wait a few more paragraphs before asking for bank account information. But I understand Karim, you just want to get that unpleasant business out of the way. I can even give you an empty account? You aren't going to wait until I put funds in it or try to steal my identity to get access to other accounts that do have money in them, are you KARIM? No, I apologize. That was suspicious of me. It's important that we trust each other this early in our business relationship.



Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that this transaction is being handled by me and my colleagues, who are also departmental heads in the same bank.

I am Mr. Usman KARIM, The Manager in charge of Auditing department of Bank of Africa (B.O.A) Ouagadougou Burkina Faso in West Africa , with due respect and Regard, I have decided to contact you on a business transaction that need your Urgent assistance and will be very beneficial to both of us at the end of the transaction.

Can you receive 19.5m, (Nineteen million five hundred thousand USD) on my behalf and you will be compensated with 30% of it, while 5% will be set aside to take care of expenses that may arise during the time of transfer, and 65% will be for me ?



Wow! Is it OK if I receive millions of dollars for having an empty bank account and essentially doing nothing? I don't know Mr. Usman. That's quite a tall order. There are an awful lot of numbers and symbols in that sentence. But, OK. I think I can manage it. Thank god you found someone of my particular subset of skills- that is, having an empty bank account and being able to sit around and collect money. I bet I was the only one in that category in the "Burkina Faso Information Exchange". I don't know KARIM. Maybe I should haggle for a higher rate.


***
OK I guess I should explain real quick in case your Sarcastometer(patent pending!) is broken.

I just got one of those "nigerian scam" emails in my junk box. So far I've only read the first line, I swear. but I can already tell that's what it is. The premise is that somehow someone needs to give you a lot of money for some reason that makes no sense, and all they need for this to happen is your bank account number. The reason it's called "nigerian" is that apparently a lot of them are from that region, and the English is always hilariously scrambled.

This one is kinda long though. If I'm still feeling funny enough next week, I may finish it off, because it does have some rather amusing logical problems later on.