Bingo! :: One Little Duck, Round Two

Just received a response from Mr Brown regarding my promotion of his clients, the 666Ladies Bingo Bastards Emporium. Here it is:

Hello Stan,

I showed this post to my clients but unfortunately they feel it is too edgy and they don’t want it to appear on the site. I hope you can understand. I’m sorry for the time you spent and hope we’ll be able to do business in the future.

Best regards,

Thomas Brown
Senior Advertising Consultant
Topspot Promotions

'Too edgy.' I like that. I might use it as a testimonial. 'Bête de Jour :: too edgy.' However, I do feel kind of bad. Mr Brown actually seems like a decent sort after all. Still, having said that, a deal is a deal and I can't stand welshers. So I replied with this:

Hi Thomas

I'm sorry to hear that, I really am. However, having toiled quite considerably on the article, I feel it is only fair that I receive financial recompense to the value of $80, as previously agreed.

How do you usually prefer to make payment? I can send you details of my Paypal or my bank account. Which would you prefer?

Looking forward to hearing from you.


Stan

So. Now we wait. I hope this doesn't end up in court, but if I don't get my $80, I swear, I'll take them for every penny they've got.

Bingo? Let's Play!

So, a few days ago I was contacted by one Thomas Brown asking me if I’d be interested in placing a little text ad on my blog in exchange for wonga. Brown works for Topspot Promotions, which essentially, is a kind of perversely legitimate virus which spreads virtual cancer throughout the internet. However, as I’m on the verge of declaring myself bankrupt, I thought I might as well take my principles and general anti-capitalist, anti-marketing standpoint and shove them up my adolescent broke ass. So I wrote to Thomas, asking him what he had in mind. ‘Let's talk numbers,’ I said. ‘How much can you give me up front?’ Thomas replied, saying, ‘We are willing to pay you a one-time fee of $80 for writing a regular post (in the spirit of the rest of your blog’s posts) which will include a paragraph that will describe my client’s website and its services.’ Now, in this day and age, what with the pound lying in the gutter with its entrails hanging out and me in a really quite terrifying amount of debt, I thought, well, $80 is not to be sneezed at, especially if I could write the promotional post in the spirit of the rest of my blog. Thomas had obviously seen my blog and realised that my tone was a good fit with his client’s product. So I asked for more details. Thomas wrote back, explaining that his client was an online bingo company called 888ladies.com. Hmmm, I thought. Sounds right up my alley. Thomas continued…

‘The post of course should be about online bingo and should include, as mentioned, information about my client’s website an services. You can write the post as you want as long as it will be positive. I don’t want to limit you but of course that the longer the post will be it will be better. Once the post will be ready you can send it to me and I’ll show you where I want to place the links (from which words). I look forward to hearing your thoughts.’

So, even though I had a million other things to do – get a job, write a bestseller, get Paul McKenna to hypnotise me to stop smoking, get my ears syringed, get my piles waxed, honestly, the list really is endless – I decided to spend some time on my positive promotional bingo post. It took me bloody ages too, but I think in the end I got the tone right. This is what I sent...

Hi Thomas I have decided to take you up on your generous offer and so include below my first post for your perusal. I hope it’s not too irreverent… … Bingo! If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wondering what went wrong with your life. Here you are, rapidly approaching middle-age and what have you got to show for it? Stretchmarks, fat ears, unwaxed piles and a wasted life spent predominantly alone wanking into an old sock and wondering why no-one’s buying your really quite remarkable book. But fear not, for help is at hand in the form of a really quite excellent online bingo site called 888ladies.com. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Hello. What’s all this? Has Stan lost his blinking benkers? What’s all this about online bingo? Everyone knows it’s a mug’s game – essentially Stupid Tax for people who find lottery tickets just a little bit too challenging. Surely Stan – good old sensible cynical savvy old Stan – isn’t seriously suggesting I go to this swindler’s website and get shafted by the dregs of humanity?’ Well, hold on a minute – let’s not go jumping to conclusions. Let’s give these people a fair crack of the whip. Just because they prey on feeble-minded imbeciles, lonely retards and desperate addicts doesn’t mean they’re bad people. 

For the rest of this article, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you.  

Tatyana :: My Russian Doll

Tatyana got in contact a couple of weeks ago through Love and Friends. I was very excited because Tatyana was a) blood-pumpingly beautiful, and b) incredibly keen on me, particularly considering she’d never even seen so much as a photograph. In fact, it almost seemed too good to be true. Here is what she wrote:

Hello Dear Friend !!! I am very pleased, that you have decided to answer mine the letter. It means, which us will connect friendship. But I to think, which will be time of pass and we can answer on each other with mutual feelings of love. Yes??? Now I wish to inform you about me directly. My full name Tatyana. My name means "Womanly both soft. Lyrical both shy. Hot and indulgent. It externally careless, in complex situations it is unexpectedly independent. To make imagination before loss of feeling of the validity. This loved and love. Given birth mum."

To me 26 years. My Placed Birth May 1. On an Kozerog of the Zodiacs, I am left. And when your Day Birth??? I average growth, my growth 170 centimeters and my weight of 55 kg, I think, the rest to operate about me you can see all in my photo which I have sent you in this letter. For me the question is very important, whether my appearance of you liked??? In Russia there is such statement "Meet on clothes, and see off on opinion." :) Therefore I think, that the first impression is very important. Though for me occurrence does not play value. I examine, that the person should be beautiful from within and beautiful should be this heart. You agree with me, my dear Friend???

I live in Russia, in city, which Cheboksary addresses to. This city the purest city in republic Chuvashiya. My city - very beautiful city. At us a lot of interesting, though also city not such big. At us it is a lot of museums, parks, monuments, restaurants, cafe, clubs.

I work as the hairdresser and the stylist. I work at this job 3 years. And to me very much to like. I think, that my job is good business. To me there come many people: women and the man, also ask to make their beautiful. I try him to help. If you want, I can send you some photos of hairdresses by which I do.

Now it is a little about my family. I live one. My mum and daddy were lost in accident when I was still absolutely small. And I almost do not remember them. Me has brought up and my grandmother has brought up. But she too has died one year ago. It is hard, when you remain absolutely alone. But I have many friends and girlfriends who always support me. Probably, you will ask me, why I still unmarried and why I do not search for the friend and the future husband in Russia??? I shall answer you it simply. Because 3 long years, I cannot find anything here. And I have decided to try to find my love abroad. My girlfriend has advised me to address in the Internet. My girlfriend is already married. 2 years ago she has met on the Internet the future husband, and now they live happily.

My dear! I to think, that I can answer you to time in two days, but I can be and once a day. I shall try to answer you as it is possible - more frequently. As I very much wish to study you as soon as possible! You also want it??? My Fine The friend! On it I shall finish my letter to you. I shall wait with big impatience of your letter.

Your girlfriend Tatyana.

Now you may have heard similar words before. Tatyana may even have sent those very same words to you. The reason – and it breaks my heart to tell you this – is that Tatyana is a goddamned whore. Turns out she’s been feeding the same line to millions of blokes all over the world.

The horrible thing is, I really wanted to believe it. Part of me ached for Tatyana to be real.

OK, sod it, I should be honest: I actually started replying to Tatyana. My first thoughts were, this is obviously spam, maybe a bunch of Russian Mafia types sitting in an office in Tbilisi or Rotherhithe, stinking of sweat and cigarettes and semen, spending all day trying to trick poor desperate dating site saddoes into stumping up the flight money so Tatyana can come out to London, or Sheffield or Mumbai or Carcassone, and blow them. But then I thought, ‘Hold on a minute though, you never know. Life is full of very strange things. She might be real. There really is a genuine possibility that this beautiful woman, whose grasp of English isn’t strong enough to pull a hair from an old woman’s head, was so severely impressed by your scintillating - but probably for her quite difficult to understand - profile, that she simply had to declare herself your girlfriend instantly. Happens all the time.'

So I started replying to her email. And sincerely. Trying to be funny and sweet and all of the wonderful things that I really am. Then I did a search for ‘Kozerog’, figuring it was her star sign in Russian and I’d find out which one and pretend that my mother was also Kozerog, or some such delicious bagatelle. Then, in the course of my searching, I came across this, a website dedicated to Russian dating spam, and there she is two thirds of the way down. Tatyana. My girlfriend.

I was upset. Very upset. To be honest, I was momentarily destroyed by the ease with which one waves aside common sense when one is thinking with one’s dick, or one’s lonesome heart, or any other part of the body that isn’t one's brain.

So then I pulled myself together and wrote and sent the following reply:

Dear Tatyana

Yes! Da da da! My Fox-Coated Queen! My Gull-Eyed Wolf-Woman! My Kozerog Blood Orange! My Own One!

I have been waiting all of my life for a woman like you. No, not for a woman like you, but for you, Tatyana, and no other. Your words have touched me deeply. They have melted my heart like naked flames of sweat-drenched passion all over a chocolate moth. And all the while your silver-brown moon-foxed face gives me full throb, hard and wet, something akin to a cement mixer and a tropical dishwasher going at it like mechanical bullfrogs in full view of a thousand cock-fisted jackhammers. Christ, woman, do you know what you’ve done to me? You’ve given me hope again! You have brought music back into my life!

I trust at this least answers on you mutual feelings of love from my part. My Day Birth is December 14, making me also Kozerog! It’s in the stars! And you can bet your six pair of sweaty balls I absolutely adored your appearance! Not only do you float my boat, you sail it to the moon and back on a sea of writhing lesbians. Not only do I agree with you wholeheartedly that the person should be beautiful from within, but also, I totally very much wish to study you as soon as possible. I’m here, baby. Truth on the table, I’ve just recently been hurt – I guess you could say I got in too deep, too quick, then suddenly I was left danglin’, high and dry – it’s the same old story and I’m still sore like a open wound in a brine storm if you want the God’s honest. Or in a family bag of salt and vinegar crisps. Your choice. And I’m ready for more. Now tell me about your vagina in unnecessarily gruesome detail. Just to get the ball rolling like.

Your boyfriend,
Stan (It means “Unexpectedly gullible”.)

Tatyana replied saying she was more than happy to come to London and blow me, but she’d need help with the airfare first.

Bloody Tatyana. I really thought we coulda had something.

I even had a wank over her.