Congratulations on Evading Those Crafty Nigerians!

Almost a decade ago you were a prominent member of the Nigerian Secret Service, meaning you killed people with a machete but you did it in a quiet way so no one ever really knew exactly what you’d done or gotten away with. But after several new governments your land has been trying to track you down.

They want you to stand trial for war crimes, a preposterous claim since all your actions were mandatated by the government of the time and the few that weren’t were simply minor boo-boos, the result of miscommunication more than anything else.

But try telling that to a room full of rape victims and their families in the Hague. So you’ve been laying low in the last place anyone is ever likely to look: Tucson, Arizona. The only way the Nigerian government’s law enforcement bodies, with their shoestring budgets and resources stretched wafer thin, can expect to find you is by sending out mass emails claiming that people have won various prizes.

They then viciously beat these people until they determine that they are not you and let them go with their purses substantially lightened. It’s a subtle tactic, one you’ve been able to deal with for the most part.

But lately the Nigerians have been getting trickier and trickier. They’ve been watching the aliases you’re known to use and they’ve been plucking various realistic interests from them to seed their probing spam.

You’re so numb to it by now and so fucking lonely from living in Tucson that when you see a piece of mail that even vaguely relates to your life you’ll click it without thinking. Hence the fact that you’ll be drawn in by their latest mail “Fabulous aword, computer user!”

The fact that it referred to you as a computer user and that you were using a computer made it seem trustworthy, or prescient and therefore akin to some sort of god and worthy of your respect.

When you click it you’ll see that it asks for your bank account information so that it can arrange a meeting in a Dutch airport where you will then be transported to an area in Liberia where your “aword” for being a computer user will then be processed and completed in your presence, for maximum trustworthiness.

That’s when you’ll catch yourself. Amidst their promises of fabulous three million pound prizes you’ll notice a flaw: award isn’t spelled aword.

You’ll cluck your tongue and shake your finger at your adversaries, smiling at the game of cat and mouse that your life has become. You’ll give a brief salute to the men and women who have taken over your old job, that is to say the work of finding men like you.

Then you’ll log on to Lolcats and spend the next two hours staring at memes and sending people e-cards until your wife forces you to go for a walk in the searing Tucson heat.

Congratulations on Evading Those Crafty Nigerians!