Piecost.Net

Supposing Abbott & Costello had set their classic “Who’s On First?” routine to a format more easily consumable to the good people of London and Stratford-upon-Avon during the late 16th & early 17th centuries, what might that have looked like?

Well… this, probably.

Been getting into a bit of Victor Borge’s old stuff.  Well let’s face it, he ain’t making any new stuff.

What a talented & profoundly silly man.

When he first moved to America he couldn’t speak English – he learned it from watching movies.  Not a bad job, all things considered.

After getting sick of “advance fee scams” (where someone emails you offering free money, but some kind of up-front processing fee is always required, hence pivoting on your greed the scammers get money out of you), a chap by the unlikely name of Shiver Metimbers decided to fight back and play the scammers at their own game.  More often than not the email exchanges turned out to be hilarious, with scammers being prepared to say more or less ANYTHING in to encourage their target to send money.  Thinking it’d be unfair not to share, Mr Metimbers set up www.419eater.com (named for section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, as most of these scams originate from that country).

Metimbers & friends have taken scam-baiting to new levels, engaging in often long & complex exchanges with scammers and formulating bizarre storylines to keep them engaged, tantalising them with promises of cash, but ultimately just trying to use up as much of their time & resources as possible.  One of the devices often employed is to get the scammers to have photos taken of themselves with object or holding signs up (as a precautionary measure, because there’s so many scammers out there – you’ve got to make sure you’re talking to the person you believe you are).

There’s loads of excellent exchanges, such as one where the baiter convinces the scammer that it’s a fortunate coincidence that the scammer made contact with him, as he is looking into opening a factory in Nigeria to make pies out of hare meat (having superior yield to rabbit), and needs a business partner.  The scammer, desperate to screw his target out of money, agrees, and among all sorts of other ridiculous instructions, sends a photo of himself and a group of others holding up signs that say “I love eating hare pie”.

You get the idea (hopefully).  Anyway, far and away my favourite scam bait involves Metimbers convincing the scammer to send him a 10 inch tall wooden carving of Metimbers’ head (which he does), then convinces the him to send video of him reading from one of Metimbers’ TV company’s scripts (it all makes sense if you read it).  Brilliantly, the scammer engages a couple of actors and a premises and records the script sent – clearly without any idea of what it is – and then follows up with trying to claim expenses back, by which time the scammer’s well and truly been had.

So here’s the video that was sent across:

XD

(It’s probably worth noting, as it does on 419eater.com, that scambaiting can potentially be dangerous and nobody should enter into it without being fully aware of what they may be getting into.  More info on the site.)

Just for Sam’s benefit, here’s a bit of vintage SNL Celebrity Jeopardy.  “Nicolas Cage”, “Calista Flockhart” and “Sean Connery”.

Not recent, but totally excellent: The Swedish Chef (who, apparently in Sweden is known as The Norwegian Chef), Beaker, and Animal performing Bizet’s “Habanera“, from the opera, Carmen.