tolfalas

A friend once observed that there’s a big bad world ‘out there’ and much of it seems to be emailing her – and there’s no denying that spam is a nuisance.

More recently I’ve noticed an increasing number of spams that use social engineering to try and get you to open their spam. They purport to be from Amazon, DHL, an airline or whatever – all inviting you to confirm or query a transaction by opening a zip file.

A zip file that contains some very unpleasant malware – it infects your PC and hold you to ransom to buy a particular ‘cure’ – and the online forums that propose alternate ‘cures’ simply compound the infection.

I know of three people who have fallen foul of this ‘Ransomware’ two had to completely rebuild their computers while a third spent a whole day wrestling with the infection before finally beating it – and he’s a serious geek!

So, while the whole spam, social engineering and malware issue is far from funny, I received an email this morning that caused me to laugh out loud – something that happens a lot less frequently than messenger and text messages would have you believe.

Basically, I received an email – supposedly from Amazon.com – however the spammers have mixed things up. The text of the email reads :

Dear taxpayer,

The Federal income tax is a progressive tax, meaning that the more you earn, the higher your tax rate. Your tax rate depends not just upon your taxable income, but also upon your filing status (single, married filing jointly, etc.).

You’re in a higher tax bracket because:

- your annual income for the last tax year has increased.

Please review your annual tax report immediately at:

(Please find attached file – tax report.zip)

So, Amazon is sending me tax advice now? I don’t think so!

Incidentally, and at the risk of being labelled a geek, SPAM originally had nothing to do with Monty Python. It’s an acronym for Sequentially Processed Automated Mail – okay so I worked in the IT department of a bank for fifteen years – Bank Statements were probably the first SPAM and probably about as popular as the current junk spam.

I don’t recall mentioning it here before, but over the last couple of years I’ve been writing reviews for The Brewclub, an American beer website.

Here in the UK we’re lucky enough to not only have some of the finest brewers and ales in the world, but we are also able to get beers from almost everywhere else. Over the last couple of years not only have I tasted excellent British beers, but also beers from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

But today the Scottish brewer ‘Brewdog’ announced a brew that I think I’ll pass on – “The End of History”.

They’ve declared that this is the last of their super strength beers – it’s brewed (and ice ‘distilled’) to 55% ABV (that’s eleven times the strength of premium lager), only twelve bottles have been made, and each bottle is ‘wrapped’ in a specially stuffed stoat or grey squirrel – and you’ll see from the picture that I’m not kidding.

One can only hope that the brew is more tasteful than the packaging.

Previously I’ve enjoyed Brewdog’s Tokyo Extra Stout brewed to 18.2% ABV, their Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32% ABV) I enjoyed less.

This, to me is an ale too far, and I’ll pass.

Update – clearly there are people ‘out there’ with more money than taste… this very limited edition was sold out within 24 hours.

I have commented in the past about devouring books on my train journeys to and from town, and some of the writers I enjoy.

While scouring the book shops, or the ‘three for a fiver’ bookstall in Chelmsford Market I’ll look out for Lee Child, Robert Crais and Michael Connelly books. I usually buy the Stephen King books when they come out.

Crais and Connelly are, by all accounts, friends and their characters inhabit the same Los Angeles.

It amused me a couple of years ago when each referenced the others main protaganists in a novel – Robert Crais’s character ‘Elvis Cole’ was spotted lurking at a police station in Connelly’s “Lost Light” while Connelly’s detective ‘Harry Bosch’ was referenced in Crais’s “The Last Detective”.

Little flourishes like that are all too rare, and for the ‘constant reader’ as Stephen King describes us, it might cause a knowing smile.

I was accordingly quite astonished when Stephen King, in his latest novel “The Dome”, referenced Lee Child’s character ‘Jack Reacher’ as “The toughest goddam Army cop that ever served.”

I have the latest Jack reacher novel on my ‘to read’ pile, while Stephen King seems to have tamed his personal demons and with ‘The Dome’ is back on form.

I have a hundred or so pages of ‘The Dome’ left to read and, like King’s best works, I’m almost reluctant to see it through to the denoument… it’s not going to be pretty.

I don’t consider myself to be particularly naïve or innocent, but I confess that this lunchtime, I was shocked.

Let’s do some background… there is a bunch of commuters on my train every morning, they travel from somewhere beyond my stop and are comfortably ensconced by the time the commuters from my stop scramble onto the train to grab a seat. This group travel together every day and still find enough to engage themselves in conversation throughout the fifty minute journey. Every day. I have been known to resort to the iPod to drown out their prattle.

Today, I was enjoying a drink at lunchtime with a friend in the ‘Hung Drawn and Quartered’ pub near Tower Hill when one of this aforementioned group of commuters came in.

She’s mid forties I guess, I didn’t recognise him.

They sat at a table and started to review the menu before heading downstairs to the basement toilets.

“Big mistake,” I observed to my friend, “this place is filling up, they’re likely to lose that table.”

Which indeed they did.

Not that they were bothered at losing the table. I didn’t see whether he came back upstairs first, but she reappeared some twenty minutes later, wearing sunglasses, and immediately left the pub.

I suspect he came first.

Well I waited by the phone last night, but the new Prime Minister – David Cameron - never rang.

Ah well, maybe next time.

Seriously, when David Cameron announced, about a year ago, that he was opening the candidates list for prospective MPs, I applied.

The application form ran to eight pages and included the question “Is there anything in your past that could cause embarrassment to the Party if it became known publicly.”

This, for a role where literally hundreds of MPs have been found to have been exploiting their expenses for years!

Oh, and THREE personal references, at least one from a Conservative Party official.

Needless to say, I didn’t get through to the candidate list. I didn’t fit any of their preferred demographics – white, heterosexual, middle class, suburban male – I needn’t have wasted my stamp.

Nevertheless I still have political aspirations, I still aspire to serve my local residents at Chelmsford Borough Council as well as on my local Town council.

And while I wish David Cameron and Nick Clegg all the best for the mountain they’re about to climb, that phone call would have been nice!