The Nigerian Scam Lives

So, this text is taken verbatim from an email I recently received. (Which was filtered as SPAM, of course.) It's part of what's come to be known as "The Nigerian Scam", apparently because many such scams like this originate in that country. Something to do with rather vague laws and lax, easily-bribed law enforcement.

Anyway, I find it fun sometimes to read an email such as this and have a good laugh. I particularly enjoy the kooky English names, the slightly incoherent grammatical constructions, and the misspellings. (This one, for example, frequently has "is" in place of "his.")

GREETINGS!!!

Compliments of the day!

I and my younger sister write to seek for your assistance; we got your contact

from a noble gentleman that came to our refugee camp who came to give a seminar

about AIDS whom we confronted that we are looking for a God-fearing person that

is when your data was given to us.

I want to introduce myself to you. My name is Gift Zaki and my younger sister

Sarah Zaki a Liberian, my consignment contains More than 18 million United

States dollars and some quantity of gold and Diamond, which I cannot be specify.

The consignments are presently in the State.. The consignment gets to the State

through the help of a Governmental U.N diplomat Dr.DAVID LEE. The fact is that

(DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE is supposed to have delivered this consignment to a man

called Mr. Womack Hardee in the State.

The week (DIP)Dr.DAVID LEE is suppose to deliver the consignment to him, when he

got to the State after clearing the consignment from the Airport, he call Mr.

Womack Hardee to tell him the description to is house for the delivery, but is

wife answered the call and told (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE that her husband Mr.Womack

Hardee hard a fatal car accident which lead to his death some few hours.

Mr.Womack Hardee has already paid the demurrages from the security company,

he paid for Bullion van that took the consignment to the airport and he paid for

custom check report he also assisted us in getting the Necessary Document

covering the Consignment and Also for the DRUG / ANTI TERRORIST CERTIFICATE,

which is so expensive that he spent 25 thousand dollars to acquire it, but

unfortunately he died in a car accident, that was why (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE has to

deposit the consignment with a warehouse over there in State and called us to

informed us about what is happening.

Please I and my little sister seek for your help to Contact the Diplomat so that

he can be able to deliver the Consignment to you. I do want you to instruct him

that you have discuses this with us, and you want him to the delivery of your

children consignment to you on time now.you can contact (DIP)Dr.DAVID LEE on

this email address(drdavidlee01@yahoo.com.hk ) and here is also his phone

number, ( 903-375-3093 )

Please, Contact (DIP) Dr.DAVID LEE on time and update me through mail. I await

your urgent response.

Thanks and God bless you

Gift/Sarah Zaki

Passing Thoughts on Eliot - the Unreal Cities

Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

~T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)

I'll probably be accused of being too much of a literalist, but here goes anyway.

I think Eliot's assessment of the "unreal" cities is wrong. Or, at least, only half right.

The unreality he describes is perhaps best understood not as a quality of the cities themselves, but as indicative of one man's perception of them and relationship to them. In other words, the description of such cities as unreal reflects a desensitized form of detachment; what we see when reading the poem is the speaker's own delusional sense of his place in the world. Calling these cities "unreal" is a type of cultural hundred-yard-stare.

The speaker is shell-shocked -- and never sets foot in a trench.

So, how did he get that way? And why did (and DOES) the image resonate so strongly with so many people?

It would be easy at this point to impute to the poem some of the disarray of Eliot's own personal life in the period during which The Waste Land was composed. In fact, it is quite tempting. (See, for example, "Preludes", one of my personal favorites, as well as "Rhapsody on a Windy Night.")

But I'm digressing. I wanted to talk about cities. The cities are real -- as real as your body, as real as the mind that thinks deep, profound, privileged, fashionably nihilistic, avant-garde thoughts. (Eliot and I are much alike: we've both been well-cared-for.)

And the cities have a feel -- not just the spatial, or the locative, but the rhythmic and organic. Something like a kaleidoscope: a set of constants, which refract into 1,000,000 different patterns. A Greek Chorus of individual lives, moving like blood through the veins. Ballet? Modern Dance? Too-apt metaphors. Alive, and you're a part of it.

I don't know that any of this has a thing to do with Eliot. Except maybe to tell him "lighten up on London!" I've never been. But I'd like to go see it.