By now the phenomenon of the Nigerian email spammer is old hat, and those emails that make it through my filter typically go straight into the trash. I opened one this morning -- from Hong Kong rather than Nigeria as it turns out -- for giggles and was not disappointed. The attempt at affecting a business-like tone remnds me of the scene from "My Fair Lady" when Prof Higgins takes his protege to the Ascot Opening Day:

FROM: Mr.Patrick K. W. Chan
(Executive Director & Chief financial Officer)
Hang Seng Bank Limited
83 Des Voeux Road, Central
Hong Kong SAR

FOR YOUR ATTENTION

It is understandable that you might be a little
bit apprehensive because you do not know me but I
have a lucrative business proposal of mutual
interest to share with you. I got your reference in
my search for someone who suits my proposed
business relationship.

I am Mr. Patrick K. W. Chan Executive Director &
Chief financial Officer of Hang Seng Bank Ltd. I
have an obscured business suggestion for you. I
will need you to assist me in executing a business
project from Hong Kong to your country. It
involves the transfer of a large sum of money.
Everything concerning this transaction shall be legally
done without hitch. Please endeavour to observe
utmost discretion in all matters concerning this
issue.

Once the funds have been successfully transferred
into your account, we shall share in the ratio
to be agreed by both of us.

I will prefer you reach me on my private email
address below (patkwchan57@yahoo.com.hk) and
finally after that I shall furnish you with more
information’s about this operation.

Please if you are not interested delete this
email and do not hunt me because I am putting my
career and the life of my family at stake with this
venture. Although nothing ventured is nothing
gained.

Your earliest response to this letter will be
appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Mr. Patrick Chan

...them as knowed her would have done her in for a hatpin, let alone a hat!

They all thought she was dead, but my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat...Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon.

For those of you too young ever to have enjoyed My Fair Lady fer real, here's the scene in its entirety: [from http://plays.about.com/od/oneactplaysandscenes/a/pygmalion04.htm ]

"Comedic Female Scene from Shaw's "Pygmalion"
Eliza Doolittle Shines!
By Wade Bradford, About.com

George Bernard Shaw wrote many plays with amusing scenes, but this one from Pygmalion is one of his more hysterical -- if the performers are up to the task, that is.

In perhaps the funniest scene of the play, Liza has been trained how to speak the “Queen’s English.” Although she pronounces things perfectly, she still chooses “lower class” words. Here, she talks with two older women:

LIZA: (darkly) My aunt died of influenza: so they said.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: (clicks her tongue sympathetically)!!!

LIZA: (in the same tragic tone) But it's my belief they done the old woman in.

MRS. HIGGINS: (puzzled) Done her in?

LIZA: Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: (startled) Dear me!

LIZA: (piling up the indictment) What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: What does doing her in mean?

HIGGINS: (hastily) Oh, that's the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill them.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: (to Eliza, horrified) You surely don't believe that your aunt was killed?

LIZA: Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: But it can't have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her.

LIZA: Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: Do you mean that he drank?

LIZA: Drank! My word! Something chronic.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL: How dreadful for you!

LIZA: Not a bit. It never did him no harm what I could see. But then he did not keep it up regular. (Cheerfully) On the burst, as you might say, from time to time. And always more agreeable when he had a drop in. When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he'd drunk himself cheerful and loving-like. There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. (Now quite at her ease) You see, it's like this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he's sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy. (To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter) Here! what are you sniggering at?

Howya Alex

I'll tell ya, it's the last bloomen time I'll be endeveren ta invite ya fer ta share in me secret businness adventures. Just remember this, Buster - Him what spams, does. Him what cannot breaches confidinces.

Be seein ya

GT