Scammers Of The World, Die Already!

Some links before we get started with today's nonsense (yes, it's nonsense, and we here at Kendall Central are proud to admit it). Yesterday having had been a Sunday,we had a Snippet Sunday post. Shelly had a continuation of her Silly Santa series. And Lynn featured raccoons at her blog.

Now then, we were mentioning nonsense?

They certainly never do stop. The email messages from the wife/ daughter/ personal masseuse/ dominatrix/ confessor of the late president/ general/ minister of torture/ overthrown banking official of whatever backwater country we might not pay attention to turns up in many an email junk folder, all searching for that elusive sucker who'll actually buy that a total stranger wants to give them millions of dollars. Their grammar and punctuation is creative. Their inability to take a hint and leave us alone is astonishing. And they never go away. What follows is one sent to my junk email folders some days ago.

My Dear,

I am contacting for your assistance to stand as next of kin to my late client.My late client Estate is valued at $9.5 million U.S dollars.He died with his family and nobody is here to claim this money.I want you because you have the same last name with my client and you also come from the same country.I know that you are not related,but as a lawyer I know what to do so that this money can be approved and paid to you so that we can share it.

Please treat this business with utmost confidentiality and send me the following information to me to enable me give you more details regarding the claim.

(1) Your Full names:
(2) Your Age:
(3) Your Private E-mail:
(4) Private phone number
(5) A copy of your identification

I look forward hearing from you as soon as possible If you are willing to proceed with me, contact me through my private email  for more information.

Respectfully,

Barrister Hillary Shedrack
Advocates and Solicitors

Well, we have ourselves the standard punctuation, spacing, and capitalization issues of the standard Internet Scammer (homo spammeritis annoyingus). Hillary, or whatever her real name happens to be, is dangling 9.5 million in American dollars (she even emphasizes it by putting in both the word dollars and the $) in front of us. At least she capitalizes U.S., though she fails to put the second period behind that S (Hillary, you really need to brush up on your grammar. I find it hard to believe you're an actual attorney, and by hard to believe, I mean I know you're a scamming scammer of the infernal order of scamming scammers and not a real attorney, so stop trying to scam me). She also notes in an odd way that "he died with his family". Does that mean they all died in a horrible way at the same time? Was it death by volcano? Death by fire ants? Death by flesh eating virus? Death by incompetent Italian former cruise ship Captain Schettino? 

She also notes that her late client happened to share my last name and come from the same country, though we're not related. Wow. I hate to tell you this, Hill? Can I call you Hill? No? Well, I'm going to anyway. My actual surname- the one that I'm not publicly using- is, well, rather uncommon. And I can tell you that everyone in this country with that surname is, in fact, related. So that's another hole in your little fantasy tale about a rich guy with my surname that I'm not related to. 

Nice try, Hill, but you'll have to find someone who's actually gullible enough to believe a worthless waste of space, oh, sorry, I've misspoken. A worthless waste of oxygen like you. Do the world a favour (and you can pass this on to your fellow internet scammers) and stop wasting oxygen. The world would be a better place without con artists like you in it.

We'd have less need for facepalm moments.

Does Anyone Know When This Volcano Finally Erupts?

Some business to see to before we get started today. Check out what Norma has to say about Miley Cyrus and other self indulgences. Now, today we've got ourselves a movie to be reviewed. Spoiler alert: the volcano wins. Take that, ancient Romans!

Pompeii is the latest film from director Paul W.S Anderson (those endless and pointless Resident Evil films), featuring a volcano daring to get in the way of a love story in the ancient Roman world. Oh, and there are some actors in the whole thing too. It just came out in theatres last weekend. Whether or not you go to see it depends on if you feel like sitting through undeveloped characters and a cast trying their best despite the hack who's directing them, all for a reasonably decent final act.

Anderson starts out the story years before the infamous disaster in which Vesuvius erupted, destroying the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79AD. In Britain, a young Celt boy named Milo is taken by slave traders after his family and tribe have been wiped out by a Roman force led by Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Years later, the boy is a gladiator (Kit Harrington), one of several such slaves on his way to Pompeii when by chance their party crosses paths with Cassia (Emily Browning) and her servant girl Ariadne (Jessica Lucas). Milo commits an act of quick mercy on a fallen horse, and Cassia is drawn to him. As fate would have it (or as the committee of writers deemed it essential as a plot device), she's returning to Pompeii herself. She's the daughter of the city's ruler, Severus (Jared Harris) and his wife Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss), back from time in Rome.

Milo seems fated to die in the gladiatorial ring. There's a rivalry with a fellow gladiator, Atticus (Adewale Akkinuoye-Agbaje) that gradually changes to mutual respect. He has a way with horses, and an awareness that not all is right in the earth around the great mountain. And he has a thing for Cassia (well, we can't blame him for that, can we?) and she feels much the same. Still, as a slave, there's that gulf of rank and place in society between them. And there's another problem. Corvus, now a Roman Senator, turns up, with his own plans for the city. He also intends to have Cassia for his bride, and won't put up with any upstart gladiator slaves with chiseled abs competing for the object of his affections. Needless to say, Corvus is a particularly nasty villain as villains go. Oh, and there's the whole problem with that mountain just waiting to go off.

There's an assembly line of writers and producers involved in this. That's usually not a good sign. The story sets this fictional story against a real life disaster of antiquity. It comes to us from Janet Batchler, Lee Batchler, and Michael Robert Johnson. The Batchlers, a married couple, were among the screenwriters for Batman Forever (a warning sign if ever there was one). Johnson's previous credit was as a screenwriter for Guy Ritchie's first Sherlock Holmes. Their story is, well, derivative of earlier films- Spartacus, Gladiator, and Titanic are all clearly on display here in many ways. The characters feel undeveloped, and that's not really the fault of the cast... it feels more like the writers, particularly given such nefarious credentials.

Anderson as a director is certainly not of much help either. Look at his resume. Aside from six Resident Evil films, this is the same person who brought such cinematic lowlights as Mortal Kombat, Alien versus Predator, and the most recent version of The Three Musketeers to the screen. An auteur, he is not. Instead he likes blowing things up on a big scale, and at least he gets to do that here. The special effects team working for him renders their work well, giving us the requisite earthquakes, tsunamis, ash clouds, and violent destruction of an ancient Roman city as we'd expect. If only they had a better director to work for. Aside from the derivative story, the director's the weakness of the film. He persists in the use of 3D for this film, so expect volcanic fire to be hurling out of the screen right at you.

And frankly, the cast deserves better than to have undeveloped characters and a poor director at the helm. There are good actors here. Jessica Lucas is sympathetic as Ariadne, though it took me a bit of time to figure out where I'd seen her before: another disaster film, Cloverfield. Adewale Akkinuoye-Agbaje is a good character actor, from Lost and The Bourne Identity. He last appeared as a villain in Thor: The Dark World, and plays Atticus as a strong and honourable man. Jared Harris is likable enough as Severus (no, not Severus Snape). He's previously appeared as Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows and as General Grant in Lincoln, and he's a good character actor. It's been awhile since we've seen Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix trilogy), but she's quite welcome as Cassia's mother, though she might seem too young for the part.

Kiefer Sutherland (24) gets to have fun as the villain Corvus, an utterly nasty and ill tempered Roman. You get the sense as an actor he's enjoying himself chewing the scenery and being as thoroughly despicable as he can playing the character. Emily Browning has an eclectic resume as an actress. Looking through her background, I was surprised that she had the wisdom to turn down playing Bella Swan in those wretched Twilight films; her work varies between indie roles and some horror work. She plays Cassia as well as the story will allow (it's not her fault the characters are undeveloped). She's essentially playing Kate Winslet's Rose in this particular disaster... which leads us to the Jack Dawson of this story. Kit Harrington comes to us from Game of Thrones, so he's in his element. He has to look the part of a gladiator, which he does, though if you're looking for a gladiator like Kirk Douglas or Russell Crowe, you'll have to look elsewhere, because Harrington's not in that league. At least unlike Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrington doesn't bug the hell out of me. Browning and Harrington don't have a lot of chemistry, but again... I'm blaming the writers for that instead of the actors. 

The cast and the core story deserves better than the director and writers give them. I wonder what this film would have done in the hands of better creators. The film is uplifted somewhat by a good last act in which the volcano decides to finally get serious, kick butt, and take names. If you can hold out for that (and you don't have nightmares about dying horribly in a volcanic cataclysm), it's worth checking this one out. Just as long as you don't expect a directorial masterpiece, because Anderson's not capable of that.

It's Just Been One Of Those Years

Something I've had in mind for quite awhile.... say hello to a real first class sleazeball...

 

“Friends, Romans, countrymen... lend me your ears. And I would appreciate it if you’d lend me the occasional bodily fluid sample I can switch over for one of my own if I ever get myself into a jam with the law again. That seems to happen a lot to me these days.

It has been a difficult year for Berlusconi Nation. 2013 will go down as an annus horribilus for your glorious Silvio. Hmmm... saying annus reminds me of the backside of that Moroccan stripper from the other night. Let me tell you, she had a backside that looked exquisite... and well, one thing led to another, and hey, I’m Italian. You can’t blame me for me being myself.

Like I was saying, it’s been a difficult year. I mean, getting convicted of tax fraud by the courts is ridiculous. Here I thought I had bribed all the right judges. They dare to sentence me? Well, the lawyers are still working on appeals, because even community service is unacceptable to a man of my position. I’ve got things to do. Money to make. A political movement to manipulate. Girls fifty years younger than I am to take to bed. Hey, don’t blame me for that... I’m Italian. What’s the problem with sleeping with girls who were babies when I was blowing fifty candles off my birthday cake?

If that wasn’t bad enough, some little loophole says I can’t serve in any public office for the next six years. So the Senate goes and expels me. Me, of all people. I’m bigger than any of them, and those little people have the audacity to expel Silvio The Great? How dare they?

I know what the press must think, hearing me talk about little people. I mean, sure, I’m five foot five at best... with maybe a couple of inches if I wear lifts in my shoes, but hey, size isn’t that important... at least not height. Size of another part of the body is important, and I assure you, the size of Silvio The Magnificent’s genitals is impressive indeed, even if I need a bit of help from Viagra these days. I’d show myself off, but we all know what happened to that American politician with the unfortunate name when he decided to keep sending pictures of his junk to strange women.

That’s not my point! My point is the Senate has no right to ban someone as stellar and accomplished as Silvio The Magnificent from their ranks. The courts have no rights to find me guilty of anything. I am in every way their superior. None of them have any right to judge anything I do. For I am Silvio, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!

You don’t suppose saying something like that is a sign of hubris, do you?

What I’m saying is that Forza Italia as a movement and an ideal cannot be dismissed. And I, as its head, will not be dismissed. I’m going to carry on. I have big plans, after all. Somehow the idea of Emperor Silvio seems to appeal to me. And I’m not getting any younger, so I’ve got to step up those plans as fast as I can.

You know, a man of my prestige, integrity, power, and responsibility needs to unwind every once in awhile. That’s why having my way with however many young girls at my bunga bunga parties has always been so crucial for my success. It helps me unwind. And they get to go home saying they had sex with the most important man in Italy. Well, maybe they should be a bit more discreet in what they say, but I digress. My point is that a man of my years and my position in life needs to be serviced by women fifty or so years younger than him. It keeps me feeling well. And so what if some people find that a problem? Who cares? I’m Italian. It’s to be expected of someone like me to go around doing something like that. If you’ve got a problem with that, it says more about you than it does about me that I’m boinking someone young enough to be my granddaughter.

I know, I know... I’ve seen the looks a lot of world leaders have on their faces when I’ve been around them at big summits. It’s as if they’re thinking, oh, God, not him again. Well, that’s not what they’re thinking. They’re thinking, what I wouldn’t give to be just like him. Yes, they’re envious of me. Well, aside from Angela Merkel. I swear... the woman has no sense of humour whatsoever.

So what if I like to have a good time? So what if I have my bunga bunga parties and have my way with whatever nubile young thing that crosses my path? What were you expecting? I’m Italian. It’s a thing I do.

Well, the year is almost at a close. 2014 will be a brighter year for Silvio The Magnificent. I am that much closer to overturning convictions and having that Senate ban undone. It just requires the right amount of bribes or blackmail. While I’m at it, I’m getting together with Francesco Schettino, who’s been having some problems with the law himself. We’re going out on tour to speak to the people. We’re calling it the What’s The Problem With That? We’re Italian tour. Catchy, don’t you think?

And I’ll be having lots of fun along the way all through 2014 even while getting all this other stuff done. Tweaking the nose of the Senate. Giving the courts the finger. Basking in the adulation of my people. Causing Angela Merkel to roll her eyes. Because, hey, I’m Silvio Berlusconi, true emperor of the next Roman empire... and I need to unwind after a long day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m celebrating New Year’s with a bunga bunga party. Five ravishing young ladies named Francesca, Giulietta, Rosa, Evangelista, and Concetta are waiting for me at home, and we’re going to spend all week getting it on. I’m going to need a lot of Viagra.

What’s the problem with that? I’m Italian!"

The Hell With Women And Children First! Get Out Of My Way!

"You get back on board! That is an order! There is nothing else for you to consider. You have sounded the “Abandon Ship.” Now I am giving the orders. Get back on board. Is that clear? Don’t you hear me?" ~ Gregorio De Falco, Italian Coast Guard, 13th January, 2012

"I am so totally screwed." ~ personal thoughts of Captain Francesco "I Didn't Mean To Fall Into The Lifeboat" Schettino, 13th January, 2012.

Last week, salvage teams finally managed to right the wreck of the Costa Concordia off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio. I have written of this before (just click on Italy or maritime disasters in the tags below). The damage that has been done to the submerged ship after all that time in the water is painfully obvious. The ship is being prepped to withstand another winter before it can be moved away to be dismantled.

Captain Francesco "Please Stop Making Fun Of My Cowardice" Schettino is currently standing trial for the events of that night, in which he courageously and selflessly (this being Opposite Day) cast himself overboard in a lifeboat long before most of the cruise liner's crew and passengers even got off, and then got his manhood ripped apart by a very annoyed Coast Guard officer (I'd still like to buy De Falco a beer.) Rumour has it Schettino asked to go aboard and get his wallet.

Thirty two people died that night. And Costa and its parent company Carnival Cruises have done everything possible to shield themselves and deflect blame.

At the time of the disaster, editorial cartoonists employed the story in various ways in their work. Last week, a couple of Canadian artists did the same in papers here, in regards to the incompetent alcoholic rage machine Mayor Rob Ford and to our nefarious Senate, which has been having problems of its own in the last few months...

I'm sure the people of Giglio would love to see this entire chapter put behind them once and for all, to be rid of that ship entirely. I'm sure Francesco "I Was Not Distracted That Night" Schettino wishes he had been doing anything else that night instead of entertaining a lady friend, showing off, being reckless with a very big ship... whatever you want to call it.

Francesco, Francesco, you've gone down in history. Your face belongs in the Oxford Dictionary. Alongside the definition for incompetence or stupidity.

Maybe we can make a new word to define catastrophic screwups. 

"Hey, I totally Schettionoed my testimony in court."

"Have I mentioned how badly I Schettinoed things with the in-laws?"

"What do you mean, my tax audit got Schettinoed?"

So You Want To Screw Up Crisis Management, Huh?

A week and a half ago, the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec suffered a tragedy, as an unmanned train towing cars of fuel descended into the heart of town past one in the morning, derailing, setting off explosions that tore through buildings, took lives, and shattered the lives of so many residents. In a town of six thousand people, fifty are dead or missing and presumed dead- nearly one percent of the population. This is a town where everyone knows at least someone who has died.

 Some may have been vaporized by the blast, and so no remains will ever be found. A local bar, the Musi-Cafe, seems to have been ground zero for casualties, filled with customers and employees that night, most of whom were killed in the explosion. Other buildings, including homes and businesses, were destroyed or damaged. The building housing the town's library and archives was destroyed. Fuel spills have contaminated the area. Firefighters from other parts of the province and over from the Maine side of the border joined the fight to put down the inferno. At one point that night, the fires were so intense that Lac-Megantic could be seen from space. NASA took pics before and during that night, and you can see the difference below.

People have been slowly returning to homes, but their lives are changed forever. Many families have lost loved ones. Their town has been torn apart. I've never been to the area myself, but it seems that it was known as a lovely area to visit. Local First Nations tribes knew the lake well, spending thousands of years living in the area. Continental Army soldiers came through on the march to Quebec City during the American Revolution, led by a general by the name of Benedict Arnold. White settlement really started up in the mid-nineteenth century, with the railroad being a key in establishing the town.

And now this happens. The investigation continues on site, with police, firefighters, and other officials working on the scene, looking for other remains. The core of the town remains sealed off, for the moment, a blackened scar. There are inconsistencies as to what happened; we know the engineer- the only crew member on the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Rail (MMA) train that night- shut down operations and went to a hotel for the night, to get some sleep for the night before handing over responsibility for the train to another engineer. We know there was a fire in one of the locomotives shortly after, one that was put out by local firemen soon thereafter. What we don't know is if at that point, someone secured the air brakes on the locomotive, or kept one of the locomotives running, a critical requirement for a train that's sitting idle for the night.

Whichever way it went, the train started moving on its own, unhindered by brakes, hurtling downhill towards Lac-Megantic. In the heart of the town, the derailment happened- the locomotives just kept going- and the explosion took so many lives. Questions are being asked. People are wounded. And people are angry. There might never be closure. 

It is a story that's certainly drawn the attention of my country's editorial cartoonists, who are examining the fire, the response, the questions over lax safety regulations (our federal government thinks it's perfectly acceptable to cut inspection standards, and let the industry police itself)....

It doesn't help when the chairman of the company that owns the MMA takes the handbook for company crisis management, throws it out the window, and proceeds to make a mess of things. Edward Burkhardt and his company Rail World Inc. own the short line that is the MMA, and from the beginning, he made one mistake after another. It took him over four days before he actually turned up in Lac-Megantic. He spent his time on the phone giving interviews and speculating, claiming that he could do better from his offices in Chicago in speaking with insurers and the media. His company issued contradictory statements first in English, then in badly translated French. He speculated on the cause of the derailment, what went wrong, blaming vandals or the local firefighters, contradicting himself at every turn. His failure to come to the site quickly came across as uncommunicative, in fact as distant and remote. He employed completely inappropriate humour in remarks to the press, suggesting that he hoped no one would shoot him when he turned up, since he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest.

Burkhardt finally turned up in Lac-Megantic a week ago, giving a rambling press conference through the streets. Some of the locals saw him, and jeered, expressing their antagonism. He said he understood the extreme anger against his company from the local residents. He pinned the blame for the brakes not being secured on the engineer- despite the facts not yet being known- effectively throwing the engineer to the wolves. Burkhardt said the company would rebuild through town, that they'd be there for the long term. He turned the conversation more on himself, remarking on how he felt awful, how his net worth was a lot less now than it had been a week ago. Anyone who consults on crisis management will tell you that in this situation, if you're a company head, you don't make it about yourself. Those remarks, along with the joke about the bulletproof vest, was about him making it all about himself.  

What he did not do, and what perhaps he should have, was to actually speak to locals, to go to the shelters where the displaced are staying. He did not face their anger head on. He did not let them rant at him. That might well have taken more bravery than he's capable of. Instead, he's looking more to the company's liability in this disaster, and to the bottom line that claims it's perfectly acceptable to cut corners and labour costs at the expense of safety. One crew member to man a train? Well, in his world view, two engineers would distract each other, and that would be more dangerous.

Sure. Right. Burkhardt has left Lac-Megantic after his awkward press scrum and a tense conversation with the police. The premier of Quebec is disgusted with him. Local police have been managing the crisis far better, all told, giving facts only when they have them, speaking in as calm and precise a manner as possible. Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche is by all indications doing the same, dealing only in facts, responding to the crisis in her community with tact, leadership, and compassion. 

Contrast that with Ed Burkhardt, who has come off increasingly like the former head of BP. You might recall that Tony Hayward was the chap who during the oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico complained that he only wanted his life back. Burkhardt has completely screwed up crisis management in this matter. If there's justice in this world, it's going to come back to bite him hard. He surely deserves it.

It occurred to me a few days back that he was reminding me of someone else. Not physically, of course; the two men look nothing alike. But both men have completely- and spectacularly- flubbed a crisis in the worst possible way. 

Edward Burkhardt is this year's Captain Francesco "I swear, I fell into the lifeboat" Schettino, who has been written about before in this blog.

I wonder if they're related...

Why Can't We Have A Pope Daffy?

"And in my first act as the successor to Saint Pete, the Fisherman, the proverbial Bishop of Rome.... by the way, what's a Bishop of Rome pull in a year? In my first act, I'll hereby declare that across the world, it'll be rabbit season every day of the year, or wabbit season, as Elmer would say. That'll teach Bugs a lesson or two. No more of that confusing me by yelling Duck Season! Wabbit Season! over and over again. You know, that really gets me annoyed. I'm yelling Wabbit Season, he yells, Duck Season, and I start off on Wabbit Season, and he keeps going on Duck Season, until inevitably I'm stumbling over my words and yelling, "Duck Season! Fire!!!!" ~ Pope Daffy, moments before the opening of Swiss Guard gunfire.

"You're despicable." ~ Pope Daffy, seconds after the opening of Swiss Guard gunfire

"Okay, how long can we goof off until we actually have to get around to electing a Pope? And wouldn't this conclave be so much easier if we just settled it with a few games of high stakes billiards?" ~ unnamed Cardinal, Vatican City, March 2013

After Benedict (otherwise known as Darth Palpatine) decided to call it a day, I did a blog on the turn of events, fully expecting there would be another one with the Conclave and the choosing of another Pope. And I assumed that I'd be doing a few thousand more hail marys for it. You might want to step back; you don't want to attract the lightning that'll probably be coming my way, do you?

The editorial cartoonists of the world have continued to have a field day since last we did one of these, playing around with Benedict himself, the bizarre nature of the Conclave, and the new Pope, Francis of Argentina. Strangely enough, the Pope I wrote into my manuscript turned out to be a South American too.

 

And so we have a new Pope. Who just happens to look like Paul Shaffer of the Letterman show. Or Woody Allen. Or Peter Sellers in Doctor Strangelove. Or Jonathan Pryce. You could set up a drinking game based on this: Who Does The Pope Look Like? Pour yourself a shot everytime a player names someone else Pope Francis looks like.

In closing, I'll leave you with some of the other also-rans for the papacy. We're lucky some of them missed getting the job. And by some, I mean most of them.