Aaron Avoids a Scam

While checking my beloved Hotmail account this morning, I found a message asking for my urgent help in securing $5.5 million from a protected account in “one of the leading bank.”

I quickly recognized it as a scam, of course, but it got me wondering what kind of people fall for the ol’ “send me money and I’ll send you more money” trick. If you’re checking an e-mail, you’re already online and about three seconds from a Google search to check the validity of said proposition. Click here for the flop. 

Anyway, here’s the e-mail, with my immediate thoughts interjected in RED. 

Dearest One (Dearest one? My grandma doesn’t send me e-mails, you sandbagger. Game over.)

I know this mail will come to you as a surprise (Have you ever seen a junkmail folder? No one with Internet access should be surprised by anything.) since we have not had previous correspondence, please bear with me. I will really like to have a good relationship with you, and I have a special reason why I decided to contact you (Wait, what kind of scam is this?).

 I am Miss Miriam Kolo 18 years old (Consenting age!) girl from Cote d Ivoire (Idaho? Oh, nope, that’s the Ivory Coast. You can type the ENTIRE message in English, except your location. Way to banish my skepticism), the only daughter of Late Mr Robert Kolo (If that’s supposed to ring a bell, it doesn’t. At least convince me your dad’s someone important, like Tony Blair or Prince).

 I am constrained (“to hold back by or as if by force” ... what?) to contact you because of the maltreatment I am receiving from my Uncles (Okay, Cinderella. DELETE). They planned to take away all my late father’s treasury (Diamonds? Gold? Emeralds? Rubies?) and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved Parents (They both died? How? Don’t short me on the details. Murder, housefire, snowmobiling accident, kidnapping gone wrong, kegger gone wrong, what? Apparently I, random stranger in Western Washington, am your only hope, and you’re not even going to give me the inside scoop of your parents’ demise? You deserve to be constrained and maltreatmented by your Uncles).

Meanwhile I wanted to escape to anywhere i can have a good life but he hides away my international passport and other valuable travelling documents (Who hides your passport? Uncle Jerk? Call the police, idiot). Luckily he did not discover where I kept my fathers File which contains important documents (Oh yes, the important documents! Deeds! Bonds! Lists of overseas bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes! Why didn’t you say so earlier?).

So I decided to run to an orphanage camp (You’re 18, fictional girl. The orphanage helps CHILDREN) where I am presenty hiding under Reform Church of GOD Abidjan Cote DIovoire (I have no idea what this means, nor do I wish to find out) where my late father deposited some amount of money in a bank (How much change are we talking here? Enough to, I don’t know, buy a passport?). I wish to contact you personally for a long term business relationship and investment assistance in anywhere in the world (Well, I did have that $5 I won at the track I was going to spend on a burrito, but this sounds like more of a sure thing. Where do I sign?).

My late father deposited the sum of US$ 5.5 million (Five million Five Hundred united state dollars) in one of the leading bank with my name as the next of kin (Wouldn’t your late father’s brothers, ahem, your captivating uncles, also be able to get their hands on this?).

However, I shall forward to you with the necessary documents on confirmation of your acceptance to assist me for the transfer of the money to your account, and investment of the fund. As you will help me in an investment, and I will like to complete my studies, as I was formerly a medical student, when the crisis started (And the only way to do this is with $5.5 million? Is this school on the moon?).

If you are willing to help me in this kindly get back to me as soon as possible (in the words of a 14-year-old girl on Myspace, “ROFLOL”).

You can call me  on  +22508995621 (I wanted to call and follow up on this, but 1) my phone has no ‘+’ key, and 2) the number has 11 digits and I’m not sure how I’d explain that when the phone bill comes next month). I am waiting for your urgent and positive response (Positive in the medical sense?). Please do keep this only to your self please (Yeah... sorry about that) I plead you not to disclose it till I come over to your country after the transfer.I am willing to offer you 20% of the total sum as compensation of your effort and 5% for any other expence you made after a successful transfer (25 percent of $5.5 million = $1,375,000... not bad for five minutes’ work). Call me on +22508995621

Thank you and God bless (No, God bless YOU, “dearest”)

Miriam

Aaron Gives Back

A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience with Career Day at Centralia College, during which I enlisted the help of two high school kids (my brother’s friends) to act as fake sources in the fake story I asked my fake journalist charges to write. 

The deal, I originally told them, was that I’d buy them burritos from Tacos El Rey in exchange for the two hours they’d spend “working” at Career Day. 

Once the day actually rolled around, however, one of them decided he wanted a different deal: my help writing a speech in his campaign for ASB president. 

I’d done a little speech-writing in college; the lone candidate I helped won his election in a landslide, thanks in no small part to his enthralling speech. I’m not, however, counting the election during which one of my friends unscrupulously signed me up to run for VP (my speech consisted of imploring other students not to vote for me; 10 percent of them did anyway). 

Anyway, I told now-ASB President Cory Olson I’d write a blog about his speech if he won; he was introduced by a friend wearing a suit and a Guy Fawkes mask.  

Also, if anyone else out there (this means you, Dino Rossi, or even you, John McCain) needs a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger of a speech, I can quote you a price.

Oh, and here’s the speech: 

“I stand before you, my fellow Adna High School students, not as a candidate for ASB president, but as simple storyteller. 

Seventeen years ago, in a cave deep in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, Hephaestus the God of Fire sired a child with Britain’s first female consulate. The result was a 12 lb., 9 oz. monster with hair the color of saltwater and a natural scent that made roses envious. 

By the age of two the boy was solving long division problems by drawing figures in the dirt with a bull’s horn and had mastered basic English grammar.  

By age three he spoke fluent German, Russian and Latin and alternated his days between wrestling wildebeests and composing verses of poetry. 

At age five he quit the mountain life, tossed his mother into a ravine and headed for adventure in St. Petersburg, Russia. Within weeks he climbed to the top of the Soviet underworld, but quickly grew bored with the Communist red tape and headed for a British preparatory school. 

At prep school the boy, now eight, anchored the school polo team and was named to the All-Province cricket team. He was invited to try out for the 2000 Olympic national soccer team but declined, opting instead to play the title role in a London production of Don Giovanni. 

In his 10th year the boy finally made his way across the Big Pond to New York, where he managed the Mets for a season and, during the off-season, won a fistfight with former Knick Patrick Ewing. He appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, where he played piano, and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he juggled Siamese cats. 

After the Big Apple experience, during which he also lost a close Mayoral race to Rudy Giuliani, he took on an air of charity. He single-handedly built 16 homes for Habitat for Humanity and donated his entire book collection, all 142,000 titles, to the Alex VanTuyl Memorial Library at Washington State University. He was shot down not once, not twice but three times while flying supplies in to Honduran refugees. 

During his early teenage years the boy won a Grammy for his tuba ensemble, “Love in the Sixth Sense,” and appeared in four episodes of One Tree Hill. He was drafted in the second round by the Atlanta Falcons, but skipped training camp to win the Boston Marathon. He co-wrote the script for Gladiator and produced the first Good Charlotte CD, barely missed the cut for Real World Las Vegas and subsisted solely on deviled eggs for the entire month of April. 

At 14 he sold the plans for the first hybrid car to the Toyota company, becoming a millionaire overnight. Sure he’d never need his wisdom again, he left it in California and moved to Southwest Washington. 

The talent-less wonder enrolled in the local high school, where he achieved below-average grades and failed to make a single varsity athletic squad. His only accomplishments were holding down a job as a manure spreader and reading the daily bulletin aloud each morning, all while waiting for an opportunity to return to greatness.  

That boy’s name was Cory Olson. Give me your vote and let the adventure continue.” 

Aaron Goes Biblical

I’m all for gender-specific attire. That being said, I’m a little upset that my belief in dresses and halter-tops existing exclusively for the ladies was upheld, to an obnoxious extent, by the Milwaukee-based radio network Voice of Christian Youth America.  

Here’s what happened: a grade school (preschool to 5th grade) held Wacky Week, an annual tradition where kids pick themed days and dress up all crazy-like. They vote on what days they want, and kids are welcome to dress up appropriately on that day, not at all unlike Homecoming Week (except there’s probably no sheriff’s deputy reminding kids not to drive drunk on Friday afternoon before the Wacky Dance). 

Anyway, the VCY-A interrupted their regularly scheduled programing (on nine stations) to announce that the inclusion of an opposite-sex day during Wacky Week was utterly inappropriate. The VCY-A jockeys, it can be assumed, have never left the comfort of the station or typed “Lady Chablis” into the search bar on Google Images. 

The VCY-A’s program director, Jim “Laughter Be Damned” Schneider, had this to say, before signing off his radio show to end his day by decrying Santa Clause, melting snowmen and smashing sand castles: 

“Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary school students is a great error.”

Ah, yes, Biblical values. You remember the Bible, right? Water into wine, everyone wore togas, “Thou Shalt Not” and the like? I must be late for my flight, because I missed the connection here, Jimmy.

Thinking I may be off, I checked the Internet for further information and found www.christianbiblerefernce.com, which clears the issue up: the Old Testament (Deuteronomy) says men should not dress as women, and vice versa.

“You win this round, Jim,” I thought, but looked the passage up (I keep a Bible in my desk just for these occasions) and noticed this: Deut. 22:10 says you can’t plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together; Deut. 22:11 says you can’t wear clothes made of wool and linen together; and Deut. 22:12 says “You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.”

Translated to 2008, I’d guess this means you can’t mow with a John Deere and bale with a New Holland, or mix Abercrombie with Ralph Lauren. And you’d better get those tassles hooked up or the Brimstone Boys are coming after you.   

Interestingly enough, the very same page of the Bible has a paragraph on dealing with misbehaving kids: stubborn and rebellious children, it says, shall be stoned to death by the men of the town... after, of course, the parents drag their son into town and announce, “He is a glutton and a drunkard!” 

I’ll let you make the joke about what would have happened to a teenaged Aaron in Deuteronomy times.

The fact is, the VCY-A is way out of line in causing an uproar over something so outdated, especially when it’s an annual event at most high schools. During Adna High School’s homecoming week, about 10 years ago, I was sitting in the gym before school when a kid from my class poked his head through the door and shouted for my attention. 

“Hey, what dress-up day is it?” he asked, sporting a full week’s growth on his chin. 

“Opposite sex day, I think,” I answered. 

He breathed a sigh of relief before strutting across the court in a short maroon velvet dress and high heels, his hairy legs and chest clearly visible from the low neckline and short hem.

I’m sure the VCY-A would have been proud. 

Whatever Happened to Derek Khorsand?

Catching Up With the Khorsand

Last week I wrote a story about Pe Ell’s Knowledge Bowl team taking the state title again (which, hailing from Adna, is like someone telling my grandpa that the Germans are colonizing the moon).

While working on the story one of the editors asked about the first PL Knowledge Bowl team to take the honor (in 2006). I reminded him that they were led by Derek Khorsand, the valedictorian and track star who’s hobbies included reading and power-lifting. 

“What’s he up to now?” the editor pondered. I decided I’d check it out. 

Here’s some background: Khorsand kept an extremely busy, and balanced, schedule in high school. In Knowledge Bowl circles he was somewhat of a legend for answering questions before the moderator finished reading. The stocky Khorsand, with a near-shaved head and goatee, looked more like the stereotypical “jock” than a “nerd.”

He was also on the district’s construction bond committee, served as ASB president, and ran with the 4x100 team that picked up the gold medal at the state track meet. Knowledge Bowl coach and high school math teacher Alex Rajala called him a “Renaissance man,” with no reference made to Danny DeVito’s horrible 1994 movie. 

What’s he up to now? I shot him an e-mail (“If I have to write a blog about how you quit UW and joined a cult or something I’m not going to be happy”) last week and, a few days later, heard back.

After high school he enrolled at the University of Washington, where he’s a sophomore Honors student keeping busy with his neurobiology major (which, I think, is brain science). One of his lab classes in the Genome Sciences Department is researching Parkinson’s Disease. 

Khorsand the Scientist also looks out for his fellow human being, volunteering at the UW Medical Center in the neurosurgery clinic and with the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service program, and he’s a member of the Faculty Licensing Advisory Committee, which is trying to get UW involved in a sweatshop-free clothing line. 

He’s also the undergraduate member of the Faculty Research Advisory Board, where he works with deans and department heads discussing UW’s involvement in scientific research. He’s like a cross between Bruce Banner and Bruce Jenner. 

And, never one to leave his fellow students without proper representation, he’s an ASB senator and Honors Program Peer Mentor. 

For the summer, however, he said he’ll just kick back and enjoy life on the Chehalis River, drinking sweet tea and driving tractor to pass the time. ... Okay, you got me. He’s applying for a summer undergraduate research program with NASA, and volunteer work with SEA-MAR medical clinics and the UW Bookstore Board of Trustees. 

What’s he do to pass the time?

“When I’m not doing this stuff, I’m probably in the library or the weight room,” he said.  

Of course. Where else would a Renaissance man be?