Turns out I won a bunch of money. Oh, and I'm a clone.

First off, let me just say this: it's raining!!!! Yipee!!!!!

Okay. Now that that's out of the way, on with the point of this post.

(That was a bit of subliminal hinting, because there really isn't much of a point, but if I say there is, you'll believe it, right?)

So I get this cute little piece of spam in my college email inbox the other day. I usually ignore the spam, delete the spam, and wish the spam a happy journey when the system gets around to flushing them away, but this time... this time I decided to read the email. You know, just in case I actually did win a million dollars without really trying.

Hey, it could happen.

It's all about believing.

And I, if anything, am a believer.

I couldn't leave her if I tried. Just me and the Monkees.

Wasn't Davy just the dreamiest? *sigh*

Okay, back on point... (*hint hint*)

Turns out, according to the spam friendly award notification, I've won an award. If I didn't figure that out by the subject line ("AWARD NOTIFICATION, FINAL NOTICE"), they made sure I saw it immediately in the body of the email.

FROM: THE DESK OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
MR.PAUL MARK.(ACADEMIC AWARD PROMOTION)
PRIZE AWARD DEPT.

ATTN: WINNER.

RE: AWARD NOTIFICATION, FINAL NOTICE.

We are pleased to inform you, that as a result of our RECENT AWARD PROMOTION DRAWS HELD 2006...

The bolded words were bolded by me. The annoying ALL CAPS is their doing.

So yea me, I won an award! And its worth, get this:

(FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS)

I didn't have to fill out a form or write an essay or anything. Best. Contest. EVER!

Their program just randomly selected email addresses:

from all search engines and web sites,from Asia, Australia, NewZealand, Europe, North and South America, Middle East and Africa, as part of our International Promotions Program.

I don't know how my college email address landed in a search engine or a website since I never give it out and only use it to check for school work and campus crime alerts and roommate wanted ads and last quarter's text book sales. Oh, and award spams. Maybe my college email address is listed on the college website somewhere? Hmm... maybe. Or maybe this program of MR.PAUL MARK's is super psychic and knew my email wanted to be out there, running rampant on websites and whatnot, if only it didn't have a boring, unfun, unattentive master who played with her other emails more, neglecting its poor little college email butt.

Good thing MR.PAUL MARK was around to give my email addy a lil' lovin'. Because dude, I won 500 G's!

Woot-asaurus-rex!

I'd also like to give a big shout out to the sponsors of the AWARD. The "eminent personalities like the Sultan of Brunei Igwe of ibo's and oba of yoruba other corporate organizations". Yeah, you peeps know who you are, even though I don't. Though I think Ibo's And Oba sounds like a great folks-y funk rock band name. No?

The next part of the email states the following, and since its freaking all capped again, it must be important for me to take note of:

THIS IS TO IMPROVE THE LEVEL OF EDUCATION WORLDWIDE AND ALSO HELP THE DISABLED IN UNIVERSITIES AND TO ENCOURAGE THE USE OF INTERNET AND COMPUTERS WORLDWIDE.

Is MR.PAUL MARK calling me disabled? No really, I think he is. I think I'm winning this award because the level of my education needs to be improved (which, okay, I guess could be useful) and because I'm disabled and need help (which, uh, ouch!).

And, obviously, I don't spend enough time on the internet. Which is so true. I think $500,000 will help increase my internet time substantially. This MR.PAUL MARK dude really knows how to make a girl's day.

All I have to do to claim my AWARD is contact my claims agent, my "accredited" (read: "we legit, biotches!"), who, I kid you not, is named: Rev (Dr) Martin Johnson. I mean really, can you get any more legit than a Rev (Dr)? Seriously. Can you? Maybe if he had "Former President" in his title. Or "Former Oprah Book of the Month Club Author". Then he'd really sound accredited.

I really want to call the number they list. But not like, from my phone or anything where they can charge a buttload for the call, not that I believe MR.PAUL MARK or the Rev (Dr) Martin Johnson would do anything like that. I'm just cautious. And curious.

After the phone number and the email addresses there's a list of information I need to be able to supply.

1. Name in full
   
2. Address
   
3. Nationality
   
4. Age
   
5. Occupation
   
6. Phone/Fax
   
7. Batch Number
   
8. Serial Number

My eyes flitted over the list quickly, looking for the catch (sorry Paul and Martin, I'm just paranoid like that) and stopped at "Serial Number". A-ha! I thought. That must mean they want my ssn, the bastards! I knew it!

Then my eyes traveled up a bit and saw the phrase "Batch Number". And I thought, What the fuck? Do they think I grew in the lab in a little petri dish? I mean really, I'm not that disabled. Sheesh.

The rest of the email is written in bad grammar and is really hard to understand. But it appears to be mainly legal mumbo jumbo about percentage fees I have to pay out of my winnings because my winnings are currently being insured for some reason or another. That's just swell.

And, upon further inspection of the email, (as I wrote this up, not because I was wondering if I should call the number now or when I get home, really!) I found the batch number and serial number the email was talking about. Darn, guess I'm not a clone after all. Turns out my prize is connected to some batch drawing, with serial numbers and reference numbers and ticket numbers and holy cow could they make that any more complicated? Each number series looks like a swiss bank account security code. Like I can keep all those numbers straight! Pffffft!

Guess I won't be contacting my special accredited claims agent Rev (Dr) Martin Johnson after all. If only they'd made it as easy as winning the damn thing in the first place. Hellooo-ooo, I'm DISABLED, remember?