Hello,
I seek your assistance in retrieving $50 million (U.S. dollars) left behind by a deceased customer of my bank. Reply for detailed information.
Regards, Philip
Dear Philip,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. Seriously. Wholly a pleasure, because the fee you’re paying for my part in this business transaction will have me set for the rest of my days.
Yes, my fellow Arkansans, through fortuitous serendipity and karmic lagniappeitude, my ship has finally come in.
I stand humbly before you as proof that if you practice clean living, think pure thoughts, have few needs and simple wants, the universe will bless you with your just desserts.
Longtime Head Cat readers go way back to 1979 for my first Voices Page article, and 1980 for the inception of this weekly column. I haven’t mentioned it in recent decades, but those early readers might recall that I write gratis these weekly pearls of wisdom, sapient observations on the passing scene and paternal solicitude for my fellow Arkansans.
I write them, as the lawyers say, “pro bono publico,” in the original Latin sense of the term - for the public good.
On April 1, I marked the 33rd anniversary of this column and in all those years, the newspaper has never paid me one dime for it.
Back in the beginning, the initial excuse offered by then-Managing Editor John R. Starr was that if he paid me, he’d have to pay all the paper’s other animal columnists and there simply weren’t any funds (there was a newspaper war on) in the austere budget for that.
That somehow made sense to me. I was young and full of incipient puissance - the most pernicious and persistent form of puissance. No matter, the opportunity to pen a weekly column (complete with logo) was more than enough to offset a lack of compensatory remuneration.
It took me eight years to realize that the paper had no other animal columnists. By then, a precedent had been established and Starr only chuckled anytime the subject was broached.
All of that is moot now, in the original Middle High German sense of the word “muoze,” because I shall shortly be flush with dough. Rolling in it. Snub-the-Alotian-Club invite rich. I’ll be able to retire.
Sorry, my loyal readers, as soon as the check clears, I’m outta here. I’ll be having the last laugh, Bob Starr. Chuckle on this turn of events.
And it’s all thanks to my new best friend, Philip, and the great good fortune I had because he stumbled upon an old Otus the Head Cat column in a Democrat-Gazette left at the duty-free shop near the Air Botswana counter at Lusaka International Airport, Zambia.
From that column, Philip informs me, he obtained my e-mail address and sent me the message you see above. Imagine - of all the hundreds of thousands of passengers who pass each year through LAI, some Otus fan left my column where Philip could find it and ask for my help.
Being inherently and famously altruistic, I hastened to aid Philip even before I learned there would be a sort of “finder’s fee” involved. Once I replied to Philip, he quickly e-mailed back.
“I am very sincerely interested in your convivial partnership in business dealing. This business proposal I wish to intimate you with is of mutual benefit, and its success is entirely based on mutual trust, cooperation, and a high level of confidentiality as regard this transaction.
“All other necessary information will be sent to you on your acceptance to champion this transaction with me to transfer the funds into your private/company account.”
Then there was some legal mumbo jumbo about a deceased Zambian customer and arcane regulations about transferring funds “outside the shores of Zambia.”
I thought that odd, since Zambia is landlocked and has no shores, but I moved on.
The important information was that Philip said, “On actualisation, the fund will be disbursed as stated below - 20 percent of the fund will be for you as beneficiary; 80 percent of the fund will be for us.”
All I had to do was wire $1,511.47 to Philip to set up the account on his end. Do the math; any day now, my 20 percent of $50 million will be arriving. That’s a cool $10 million coming my way. When it clears, my friends, I’ll pen my final column.
Until next time, Kalaka says if you want the amount to sound like a lot more, it’s 53,685,510,280.78 in Zambian kwachas (as of the Thursday exchange rate).
Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail: [email protected]
HomeStyle, Pages 34 on 05/04/2013