You Can't Fool A Minikinite

Gracious me! It looks like we’re going to have a green Christmas.

A lot of people in this part of the country are praying for snow so that we’ll have the traditional White Christmas. I say, if you want a White Christmas, then see the movie. I, for one, welcome the relatively novel sight of bare lawns on Christmas day. We’ll get plenty of the white stuff before winter is over, believe you me. And all those people who are whining for snow now will be griping in mid-January, “whatever happened to global warming?”

Oh little town of Minikin, 
Your roads are bare and dry. 
The snow’s not deep. 
“Son-of-a-(bleep)”, 
Snow-blower salesmen cry.

Yet in thy dark clouds cometh 
The ever-blasting snow. 
So never fear, 
When winter’s here 
We’ll see those blowers go. 

Since there is nothing new to relate on the snow-shoveling front, I thought I might send out a little caveat to my readers if they should ever try to sell anything on-line.

I recently attempted to sell my car through a couple of advertising sources on the internet. Unfortunately, the only responses I’ve had thus far are from people looking for me to virtually give it to them (as a Christmas present, I suppose). Otherwise, I’ve just received emails and phone calls from scam artists. One guy sent me the following email. The bracketed interjections are mine:

...my dad will like something like this, so for his birthday i am surprising him by buying this. (If I went through with this transaction, your dad wouldn’t be the only one getting a surprise)

I would have loved to come for the inspection myself but i am mostly away, am an engineer and i work offshore most of the time, needless to say, i wont be able to come myself. (I’m guessing that you are not a grammatical engineer. Since you work offshore, I'll assume that you're an oil-rig-double-dealing-flimflam-bunko-sham engineer)

However I have a private courier agent that will represent me and come for the pick up after the payment has been made, they will handle issue of my details, transferring the name of ownership and signing of all paperwork will be done by the courier agent. (Yeah, that sounds legit. Most used car deals for vehicles under $5,000 are usually handled this way. Alternatively, an Envoy Extraordinary or Minister Plenipotentiary can be hired to complete this type of sale).

As for the payment, i can only pay via the safest and secure way to pay online i.e PayPal here, as i do not have access to my bank account online, but i have it attached to my paypal account hence my insistence on using pay pal to pay. If you don't have a paypal account, you can easily set up one at www.paypal.com and sign up its very easy. (Actually, my good man, can you set it up for me? I’d be more than happy to give you my credit card information.)

I would have loved to talk to you on phone but i work mainly offshore and our satellite server has been down due to the bad weather which restrict our calls, please get back to me!! i appreciate your time. Thanks (Why do those damn offshore satellite servers never work in bad weather during an email scam?)


We may be just small town folk here, but we're not rubes. We're perspicacious, wary, intelligent, and well-spoken. There's an old saying in Minikin — I know it's in Antler River, probably in Minikin — that says, "Fool me once....  shame on...  shame on you....   " you can't fool a Minikinite, I mean Minikiner, uh Minikinian, that is to say a resident of Minikin.

Oh little on-line scam artist
How dumb do you think we are?
Get a real job,
You crooked slob
And buy my (bleepin') car.

Happy Holidays to everyone!