1001

May I take the liberty to introduce myself as; Mr. Yeng Zang, Bank Manager of a reputable bank in Taipei, Taiwan and I have an urgent and very confidential proposal for your review and consideration. Just before the last financial quarter of banking operations, I was able to discover a certain Fixed Deposit for twelve calendar months made by a certain foreign individual, valued at a sum that is quite impressive. I made several frantic efforts and investigations and discovered that the depositor died in an automobile accident and he died without appointing a successor, all attempts to trace any of his relatives was fruitless as he did not declare any next of kin or relations in all his banking mandates, including official documents and deposit paperwork in my bank.

This sum and the interest has being rolled over with the principal sum at the end of each year at the rate of 19% per annum which comes to a colossal sum. The need for foreign assistance becomes crucial as a next of kin to the depositor is earnestly being searched for, as I cannot acquire the funds in my name. I have carefully developed a foolproof, legal and totally risk free transaction through which the money will be transferred to your nominated bank account within a very short time after due documentation and authentication process if you are willing to participate.

The strategy is to use my position and influence as the Branch Manager to present you as a next of Kin and beneficiary of the money as I shall arrange all documentation to support this claim and I shall grant approval for the transfer of the funds into your nominated Bank account.

The required assistance is perfected to be 100% risk free and I want to assure you that I have concluded all local modalities for the successful completion of this transaction, and I am sure the funds can arrive your nominated Bank account within 7 - 10 working days following our agreement to carry out this transaction, the money will be paid to you by any means of your choice for us to share at a ration we shall both agree on.

Please reply immediately via the private email address above and endeavour to give me a private telephone/fax number (stating country and city codes) through which I can communicate with you in confidence as the need for secrecy is highly important to this transaction.

I expect your urgent response; no matter your decisions to enable me conclude on what next to do. Please pardon my discretion; I hope to be more detailed as we progress.

With regards,

Mr. Yeng Zang

Taipei, Taiwan.

Dear Sir

I contact you on a most confidential and important matter that can be of immense benefit for both of us. I can trust you will keep a proposal of this kind as a secret and not divulge it to anyone else.

I am the head of Microsoft, a computer software company based in Redmond, Washington State, USA. This company began in 1978 as a small concern run by a group of talented computer programmers, including myself. It has grown by the steady and thoughtful acquisition of other software companies, the suppression of other clearly inadequate operating systems, and my caring leadership role of the Internet, with the development of our superior fault-free web browser, Internet Explorer and email program Outlook Express.

Unfortunately, at times, that progress has been impeded by an unwarranted interference of the US Federal Goverment in the fair trading of our company, and caused by litigation against us, leveling idiotic charges of breaking inane antitrust laws, and merely because Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer are the most loved programs available to anyone around the World today.

The company has had to suffer cruel attacks, unfair taunts, cynical knocking and negative ridicule by the appearance of anti-Microsoft websites like at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~lbrash/msjokes/ run by a certain Larry Brash, who is patently an insane idiot and a satanic communist.

Yes, we have had the occasional problem. In 1996, we once developed Windows "Diana", which initially looked quite attractive, but drained a lot of resources, and crashed really badly. Then, next, we announced the unfortunate software glitch aboard the Kursk. We intentionally did not include the correct torpedo guidance drivers in that Russian version of Windows, as the captain had attempted to load an illegal version of Microsoft Excel.

On the positive side, Microsoft has taken an audacious initiative and developed a range of different colors for the Blue Screen of Death with unique and imaginative error messages, and it has made the dancing paperclip even more helpful than previously.

You may have noticed that this organisation is loved for its philanthropic activity. Microsoft is keen to donate and share our sizeable financial profits with anyone of similar ideas. You can easily initiate this and then achieve riches in an instant. Once you register as a charity, then I can divert $40,000,000 into your account. You can take $10,000,000, and credit me $30,000,000, and then I can avoid extra taxation (again). See - easy!

Contact me.

Thank you

yours sincerely

Bill Gates III

1002

From Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:

Posh!

This is livin', this is style, this is elegance by the mile.
Oh, the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me
First cabin and captain's table regal company.
Whenever I'm bored I travel abroad, but ever so properly,
Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh.

The hands that hold the sceptres, every head that holds a crown,
They'll always give their all for me, they'll never let me down.
I'm on my way to far away - tah tah and toodle-oo!
And fare thee well, and Bon Voyage, arrivederci too!

Oh, the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me,
First cabin and captain's table regal company.
Pardon the dust of the upper crust - fetch us a cup of tea,
Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh.

In every foreign strand I land, the royal trumpets toot me,
The royal welcome mat is out, they twenty-one gun salute me.
But monarchies are constantly commanding me to call,
Last month I missed the Mufti but you can't oblige them all.

Oh the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me
Oh rumpety tumpety diddy diddy dee dee dee dee dee.
Oh the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me,
First cabin and captain's table regal company.

When I'm at the helm the world's my realm and I do it stylishly,
Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H,
P-O-S-H, P-O-S-H... posh!

Posh Spice

If you have got no talent...ahh, this is the life!
- Become a Man Utd footballer's trophy wife!
Release banal records, pose hard, and pout,
Then let what little chest you've got hang out.

I'm HRH Princess Victoria, I'm top totty!
I buy Gucci leather handbags in the Via Condotti.
The Argos shop catalogue to hell be damned -
My Louis Vuitton luggage is monogrammed!

Almost every day I spend shopping;
Love, every so often, transatlantic-hopping,
To help David escape that constant media pressure,
Then home to my classy gaff in Cheshire.

I stroll down the palatial marbled halls,
With handsome David, the perfect husband. ('Goldenballs').
I'll show you the very pretty family castle,
(Don't step on the England captain's metatarsal!).

Tell you what I really really want:
My first Number One record. (I have got some front!)
Why's a Caesarian birth preferable? I'll tell you why:
I'm too posh to push that hard, am I!

Every night (pre-recorded) I'd mime Romeo to sleep,
Home with HRH Prince David - his intellect's pretty deep! From time to time we have both appeared in 'Hello',
A love of materialism both happy to show.

We both have staff to help, Elton he's my best friend.
On my fantastic P.R. firm I have to totally depend.
To what other path, then, could I perhaps aspire?
Heh! Not half bad for a slapper from Hertfordshire!

1003

KERCHOO WAGGLES is not only an anagram of GOOGLEWHACKERS, but is itself a googlewhack. (It's an imperfect whack, as 'kerchoo' is not recognised by Google as a dictionary word, but it's in one of my wordlists.)

1004

Fermat's Last Theorem...

In Simon Singh's book "Fermat's Last Theorem" the story of Andrew Wiles is laid out, who solved one of the oldest maths problems with a lot of struggling... The following line-by-line anagram tries to re-tell the (hi)story:

Answers overwhelmed Fermat (details lost!)
Andrew heard of lost terms, saves time well.
He started small sweet dreams, evil for now,
"Renew worst told medieval maths, fearless!"
He derived 'almost' flawless answer to term.
After twelve month less moral was desired,
he saw editor's small draft melt, even *worse*:
A smart theorist removed flawedness well.
Old matters answered. Fame shows till ever.
Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's Last Theorem.

1005

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

You hear them shout at you
A ditty by Mey Kraus

You hear them shout at you, their outcry vicious;
Guide dreadful thoughts into your poor young mind
About unlikely routes and gloomy issues -
Your failure, and the failure of your kind:

No man can stay on Verity's faint margin,
And know without a need for guiding books
Just when to be one valiant knight and charge in,
And when to be one cunning, furtive rook;

None can employ skill to reach their true mission -
Instead, they flaunt tricks for their livelihood,
And as for putting faith in intuition,
It seems that no one ever could or would;

No one will break an ominous group-duty
By having one key round of 'yea or nay';
And nobody can manifest true beauty,
But do without that option anyway;

No one can pay the dead with shock and sorrow
But end up as a crutch and not a load;
And none will lay out programs for tomorrow -
Instead, they'll be afraid of what dawn bodes;

No man will own a dry wit or discretion,
Yet choose to cloak them with a goofy guile;
No bloke can wear a furious expression
But fix that fury with one tiny smile;

No man will solve the feud of warring factions
Yet be uninterested in taking lead;
No man can back bright words with thoughtful actions -
And if no man, then surely not a kid.

You hear them croak their doleful points each season,
Their wretched voices growing ever strong.
They say a lot of things, those men of reason.
Stand up, my boy. It's time to prove them wrong.

1006

AUSTRALIA

A nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.

They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.

Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: 'we live' but 'we survive',
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second-hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.

AUSTRALIA

In decades past her emblem was sterility,
Both of the wretched soil and of the soul:
When it came to refinement, our nation's role
Seemed to typify the zenith of hostility,

With the utmost disdain for manners and a dearth
Of sketching, performers and poetry;
No need for such mammoth frivolity
In the dogged fight against a barren earth,

And the hellish conditions which endlessly loomed,
Harsh as the men who fought to resist.
Drought, erosion, salinity still persist -
However, the other desert seems now to have bloomed.

For the nation's psyche has been infiltrated,
Emerging into a healthy multicultural hive,
Where cosmopolitan style and drive
Make each metropolis so very sophisticated,

Invested with blessings beyond dispute:
Literature, verse, all manner of clever artifice,
A stunning harbourside operatic edifice,
Homegrown films and thespians of worldwide repute.

Yet there are some like me who understand
That this is but a veneer of esprit,
Hastily transplanted from across the sea
Where the pillars of culture weren't built upon sand;

Our slavish adherence to each new fad
Inexorably brings us ever nearer
To subjugating the horseman, bushranger and shearer -
Thus losing what little soul we had...