Seeking advice

I received this lucrative offer via email.

I'm all torn up.

What should I do?

Attn:Mine Daerest,I have registered your check to the Eko bank plc.But the manager of the Eko Bank told me that before the check will reach you that it will expire.So i told him to cash ($2.7Million), All the necessary arrangement of delivering the ($2.7Million is made and the package was deposited with SPEED TRUST COURIER COMPANY. This is there information incase you want to contact to delivery your package. Name: DR.ANDY LORD EMAIL:speedtrustcompanybenin38@yahoo.fr Send them your contacts information to enable them locate you immediately they arrived in your country with your BOX . Thisis what they need from you. 1.YOUR FULL NAME-------------- 2.YOUR HOME ADDRESS-------------- 3.YOUR CURRENT HOME TELEPHONE NUMBER------------ 4.YOUR CURRENT OFFICE TELEPHONE----------------- 5.YOUR OCUCCUPATION------------- 6.A COPY OF YOUR PICTURE--------------- Please make sure you send this needed info's to the Director general of SPEED TRUST Courier Company DR Andy Lord with the address given to you.Note:The SPEED TRUST COMPANY don't know the contents of the Box. I registered it as a Box of an Africa cloths. They don't know it's contents money. this is to avoid them delaying with the Box. I am waiting for your urgent response. Thanks and Remain Blessed. Mr.frank jim

Do these motherfuckers really think that people will fall for this shit?

Unfortunately enough people think that receiving an email from an African stranger is an easy way to make money. Strangely, these always turn out to be bogus, and greedy people often find themselves poorer for their naivete.

Read this to find out how dumb Aussies can be, especially older ones: Nigerian scammers fleece Aussies $36m/yr

a cut above or below

I subscribe to a blog/ezine called BMEzine because I like piercings and tattoos.

Body Modification is an interesting topic, and has a pretty extensive sub-culture around it. Like anything, there are extremes in this sub-culture.

There is the mild tattoo or piercing end, like tramp stamps, and tribal armbands, to larger piercings, nipples and large tattoos, through to genital piercing, scarification, branding, needle play (play piercing), saline injecting and suspension.

There is however, a much more extreme version of body modification which has fascinated me for a long time. The fascination I feel is similar to that very human need to look at a car accident, a dead animal or vomit and shit when we should really look away. I am talking about self (or assisted) mutilation (such as genital bisection) and self (or assisted) amputation.

Why do people do it? There couldn't possibly be one single explanation, and not all of them are scarred by abuse and drugs.

I'm not here to analyse what they do, cos I ain't no doctor, but my strong stomach sometimes threatens to turn when I look..... but I still look.

In my day..........

I’m a proud Gen-X kid. I grew up in the 80s, I have had lots of jobs and I had to work to get to where I am. Until recently, I felt quite good about what I have been able to achieve in my life.

Introduce Gen-Y to the workforce. Employers have no choice but to hire them, but how do you do it? I have always thought of first impressions as being extremely important, particularly regarding the pursuit of employment. When I interview or screen a candidate, their resume, cover letter or email, followed by the first interview should give an interviewer enough to make a decision. Second and third interviews are often a technicality.

A few years a go we used to have a problem in our Graduate recruitment program cutting down the number of suitable interviewees. Now we struggle to find a handful we want to interview.

Gen-Y presents a problem here. The resumes are not particularly good. They often interview like an American used car salesman (bravado but no substance) or arrogantly, like they already have the job, their emails and letters make them appear semi-literate, and more and more of them are being caught lying on resumes in order to inflate their experience.

Good taste in coffee hobbles American chain

Please join me in a minutes silence whilst we remember Starbucks in Australia.

In the last couple of weeks, anyone traveling down Collins Street, Bourke Street, and nearly every other street in Melbourne, will be met with the barren empty shell that was once the home of the sickly sweet cinnamon chai latte or frappaccino and numerous other coffee monstrosities.

Starbucks, the Dr. McFrankenstein of Coffee, whilst not completely gone, is in serious decline in Australia. And not before time, too.

I do feel for the 685 employees who lost their jobs in early August after the company closed 61 of its 84 Australian stores, but let’s face it; coffee making is an art that a great many Australians appreciate. Trying to pass the over sweetened, fast food, McCoffee concoctions as coffee, and charging so much for it, was never going to work. There are far too many exceptional “hole-in-the-wall” coffee places, especially in Melbourne, where coffee appreciators can be served a fine flat white or long black. You just don’t need the Starbucks sprinkly and syrupy “bells-and-whistles” when the coffee is of a good standard to begin with.

It seems that Starbucks is experiencing trouble at home too. In selected US stores (soon to go national) they are offering dramatic discounts for those who buy a “Grande” cold drink before 2pm as their second purchase in the day. Sales are down, so they are trying to encourage consumers back into the stores. Supplying more of their bad product at cheaper prices does not make the product better.

Stay tuned for the decline of other American retail colonialists.

Who will be next? Krispy Kreme, McDonalds, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut, unfortunately the list goes on.

vision

Is there anyone around today like William Blake, Oscar Wilde, H G Wells or W B Yeates?

You'd probably have to throw in Mary Shelly, Lord Byron, Mark Twain, C S Lewis, Arthur C Clarke, Aldous Huxley and a few others if we're talking about visionaries.

This is a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto V, 37-138, 1824-27 Pen and ink and water colour, City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham.

Who can we look to today for a glimps into mans future and his soul?

If Dan Brown is your answer, then we are in civilisational descent.

I can already feel my big toe turning into a thumb.

Radiohead - Ceremony (New Order cover)