Tag: lottery

7 Reasons To Hug A Left-Hander Tomorrow

As I am sure all left-handers’ the world over are aware, tomorrow is ‘International Left-Handers’ Day’. Awesome. In my opinion not enough body parts get the recognition they deserve. Personally I would like there to be an ‘International Third Nipple Day’. Just so I can see which of my friends I need to start avoiding more often. But that’s for another day. Today is all about left-handedness and why we should show love to those of that unfortunate disposition tomorrow.

"Cheer up Monty, you didn't mean to drop that bread roll"

1. Death. On average, right-handed people live nine years longer than lefties.* Nine years! That’s a lot. I am sure we all have friends who are left-handed so tomorrow I suggest we whip round to their place and give them the news. Then it would be nice to give them a hug. Just to, you know, show them that you should be in the will.

2. Evil. This isn’t an easy thing to say, but you need to be told the truth. Left-handed people are in league with the devil. They dabble in witchcraft and sit on the panel of Loose Women. I’m not making this up. I read in in The Telegraph. The thing is, it’s not their fault. They were just born like that. Which is why we have to hug them. Just to, you know, see if they have a tail protruding from their anus.

3. Stationery. If having a short life-expectancy and being an incarnation of the devil wasn’t enough, the left-handed among us have long suffered at the hands of the right-handed. Quite literally. Ever tried using a pair of scissors with your left-hand? Painful isn’t it? Give a lefty a hug. Just to, you know, prevent them from seeing you laugh your head off at their misfortune.

4. Bias. Have you ever noticed that when it comes to money matters, your left-handed friend’s seem far better off than you? This has nothing to do with skill or talent. It is because when it comes to finance everything is strongly weighted in their favour. One typical example is the National Lottery logo. It comprises a left hand. Not a more commonplace right-hand, but a left-hand. So, tomorrow, go and give your left-handed chums a hug. Just so, you know, you can swipe their wallet from their back pocket and check the evening’s lottery numbers.

5. Intelligence. Apparently, left-handers are able to use parts of the brain to more effect than us normal folk. As such they are far more intelligent. So it’s useful to have a left-hander as a friend. A real close friend. A friend you you would hug at the next opportunity. Just so, you know, you can look over their shoulder at the answers to the pub quiz.

6. Effort. Have you ever seen a left-hander write? They make one heck of a mess. As soon as they write something they smudge it with the rest of their clumsy hand. So not only do they have to start their literary works all over again, but they also have to go and wash their ink dyed palms. It takes time and money being a left-hander. Time to write letters over and over again and money on more paper, more ink and more soap. It’s a tough life. So give one a hug, Just to, you know, prevent then shaking your hand with their inky paws.

7. Thievery. Have you ever been sat in a restaurant, enjoying a lovely meal and even lovelier chat, only for the person sitting on your right to spoil the whole mood by stealing your wine or bread roll? You’re nodding your head. This doesn’t surprise us. You may not have known this at the time, but the thief on your right was left-handed. While it is natural to the rest of us to pick up bread rolls with our right hand, it is natural for left-handers to use their left. As such they end up fatter and more drunk than their right-handed counterparts. It’s not their fault though. It’s the way they are wired. So give them a hug. Just so, you know, they’ll find it much harder to steal the mint than accompanies your post-dinner coffee.

*Left-handers I mean, not left-wingers. I think Maggie Thatcher and Bruce Forsyth have proved that righties comfortably outlive lefties by approximately two-hundred years.

August 12, 2011
7 Reasons You Need To Improve Your Scamming Technique

I never once felt sorry for Bernadette. I probably should have done. After all, her Dad had just died in a plane crash leaving Bernadette to live with her evil mother. A mother she then ran away from and found safety in a run down orphanage. An orphanage without running water, electricity and warm bedding. In fact the only thing that kept the likes of Bernadette going was the super-fast BT Broadband connection. The truth is though, I didn’t care about any of this. I was much more interested in the money. Bernadette was offering me a lot of it. Millions of pounds worth. That was a lot of tea bags. Which is why I gave her my bank details. That was two years ago. He’s still borrowing my money now. That’s right, ‘he’. Bernadette turned out to be a bloke called Alfonso. I am now partly responsible for Nigeria’s heroin addiction and at least thirty-five murders. The only way I can get out of this mess is by winning the lottery. That way I can pay Alfonso the £1 Million he is now demanding and I get to keep my fingers. No wonder I got very excited the other day when this email arrived in the 7Reasons inbox:

Your Email ID won!
EuroMillion Lottery Intl. Program
FOREIGN SERVICE SECTION BARCELONA.
REFERENCE NUMBER: SOXW/HAWIR
BATCH NUMBER: 2011/149 /BMQ

OFFICIAL WINNING NOTIFICATION.

We are pleased to inform you of the released results of the EuroMillions Corporations Sweepstakes Promotion in conjunction with foundations for the promotion of software products organized for Software users.

This Program was held on 16th February , 2011, in Barcelona- Spain. Wherein your email address emerged as one of the online Winning emails in the 1st category and therefore attracted a cash award of EUR1,500,000.00 (One Million Five Hundred Thousand Euros) and an Apple laptop. Your laptop, certificate of winnings and your cheque of (EUR1 500,000.00 Euros) will be sent to your contact address in your location.

Please take note, lucky winners will pay for their courier services delivery. EuroMillions corporations only provides lucky winners with a laptop and the sum of (EUR1 500,000.00 Euros) only. To file for claims of the release of your winnings, Contact the Customer Service Officer with the information below:

1.FULL NAMES:
2.ADDRESS:
3.SEX:
4.AGE:
5.MARITAL STATUS:
6.OCCUPATION:
7.TELEPHONE NUMBER:
8.COUNTRY
9)BATCH NUMBER
10) REFERENCE NUMBER

Email: [email protected]
Tel: +34 634 105 921
Contact Person: Manuel Borreria [CSO]

This Email Lottery is sponsored by Software development firms a Software Engineering Resource Consortium Companies. This internet E-mail draw is held periodically and is organized to encourage the use of the Internet products and promote computer literacy worldwide.

Congratulations!!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eva Lopez
Online Coordinator

For thirty seconds I got very excited and flexed my fingers in delight. But then I read it again and I realised a few things. This email was a scam! A scam! And it was so easy to spot. Here’s why the scammers drastically need to improve their technique:

1. The Prize. I have won €1,500,000 and an Apple laptop. Obviously Mrs Eva Lopez is trying to stand out from the crowd here. She is trying to differentiate herself from her rivals by offering an incentive to claim the €1,500,000. In an already saturated market place it is a nice idea, but she lets herself down on the terminology. There is no such thing as an Apple laptop. It’s called a MacBook or a MacBook Pro. An understandable, but ultimately telling mistake.

2. The Address. Barcelona. That is far too nice a place to have your winnings sent from. Look at the base of any cereal packet and I guarantee you that the address you have to write to claim your prize is an industrial estate in Uckfield, East Sussex. That’s the way these things work. The scammers have failed by trying to be too exotic.

3. The Reference Number. SOXW/HAWIR. I’m not falling for that. This has quite clearly been copied from Mrs Eva Lopez’s to-do list, ‘Sort Out Xanthium Watering/Help A Witch In Rio’. It’s nothing short of laziness.

4. Courier Services. That’s right, I – the winner may I remind you – has to pay to get the money from somewhere in Barcelona to my lounge. This would never happen in the Lotto. If you win the Lotto Myleene Klass knocks on your door with a massive novelty sized cheque, a bottle of cheap fizz and a camera crew. It might be tacky, but it’s genuine.

5. Personal. The details they request are really rather prying. Take the third request for example, ‘sex’. What do I put here? ‘If I’ve been a good boy I earn the right to have a discussion about the possibility at a later date’? This is private information that should not be shared with anyone else. And quite frankly I don’t think my sexual prowess should stand in the way of €1,500,000. It never has before so why should Lopez think differently?

6. The Aim. As you will note from the bottom of this email, the mission behind the E-Mail Lottery is to promote computer literacy. While this is to be applauded surely Lopez would be better off sending the email to someone who doesn’t really know about computers and thus more susceptible to falling victim to scam emails. That way they may actually try and claim their winnings. Obvious really.

7. Repetition. I had the same email last November. Only a scammer would think that because they caught me out once they can do it again. Idiots.

February 17, 2011
7 Reasons I Don’t Care About Cheryl Bloody Cole

1. Thug. The nation loves Cheryl Cole, so we are told. Do we? I don’t. I’m quite sure that Sophie Amogbokpa doesn’t – that’s the toilet attendant and part-time law student that Cheryl Cole was convicted of assaulting in a nightclub toilet in 2003. The judge at the trial wasn’t particularly taken with her either, criticizing her for having “…showed no remorse whatsoever.” That’s at least three people who don’t love Cheryl Cole. I’m pretty sure my cat doesn’t like her either.

2. Heartbreak. We’ve spent the last two weeks reading about how heartbroken Cheryl Cole is over her husband’s dalliances and now newspapers are reporting that she has a new boyfriend. That’s not heartbreak, it’s not even heartslightlybent or heartatinyweenybitchipped. We can’t blame her for this though, we’ve got an insatiable media hungry for any new angle on this story – it’s selling a lot of newspapers, after all. Poor Cheryl is obviously being exploited by them. After all, if she knew that her every move was being scrutinized by the media, would she entertain a man in her hotel room until 4am? Of course not, unless she wanted to wring yet more publicity out of the story…oh, silly me.

3. America. After the Ashley Cole phone-text-photo story broke earlier this month, Cheryl Cole went off to America to spend some time away from the media spotlight, choosing as her destination the quiet, secluded backwater of Los Angeles. Purely coincidentally, this is where most US television executives are based. Did you know that Cheryl is being considered as a judge on the American X Factor, which Simon Cowell will be launching there next year? How propitious that she should find herself in a town full of television executives – who may not have heard of her previously – at the very moment she has an enormous press-pack following her every move.

4. Attractiveness. Another popular myth about Cheryl Cole is that everyone finds her attractive. This is not true, I don’t. I find her flawless face, small, perky nose and large, almond-shaped eyes a bit weird to be honest. She has the perfect, symmetrical, neotenous visage of a Disney character. Is this really something grown-ups find attractive? Not me. I don’t fancy Cheryl Cole and I don’t fancy Pocahontas. Nor do I lust after The Little Mermaid.

5. Ashley. Whatever you think of Ashley Cole and the way he conducts himself, it’s hard to fault him over the way he’s conducted himself since the story broke. He’s kept quiet about it. He’s just shut up and got on with trying to recover from his ankle injury in time for the World Cup. I’ll level with you, I can’t stand Ashley Cole. I think that the revelations that emerged a couple of years ago – that he cheated on his wife and paused during sex with a girl he’d met at a nightclub, so he could throw up on her bedroom floor, before resuming sex – show an appalling lack of respect for his wife, his marriage, women in general, and carpets. He is obviously a foul and abhorrent rotter. So when Ashley Cole is the one setting the example of how to behave decorously in the face of the media onslaught over the break-up, something is seriously wrong.

6. Cynicism. You can call me cynical but…actually, forget the but, you can call me cynical – I can live with that. I find the whole media obsession with the Coles a bore, and I find Cheryl’s manipulation of that interest exploitative and wholly self-serving. I may have a very cynical view of the whole thing, but it’s nothing when compared to the cynicism with which she is wringing every last bit of sympathy and publicity from the coverage.

7. Does anyone else care? Okay, I have just spent a good bit of time thinking about it, and a fair amount of time writing about it, but I don’t actually care about Cheryl Cole or Ashley Cole (except during England matches), I’m just annoyed by all of the media coverage that their break-up is generating. I’m sure that there are far more important events happening in the world than the break-up of a thug who can’t sing and a footballer who can’t keep his trousers on, I just don’t know what they are because the news agenda is dominated by this non-story. Perhaps something is happening in Haiti, the Falklands, Madeira, parliament, Afghanistan or Northern Ireland. Who knows?

Do you care about Cheryl and Ashley Cole’s break-up? If so, please tell me why via the comments section, as I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something I’m missing.

February 24, 2010