Mentalechoes

Well today is Australia Day! Or a couple of hours over, and I’ve been celebrating with one of my best mates, Marko the mongo, at his place which is just up the road from me by about 10 minutes. I’ve known Marko since we were horny young bastard kids together of about 21 in Bris-vegas at the Griffith University in Queensland. Now, over two decades later (and a bit) we are still getting together, getting drunk, taking the piss out of everything in true Aussie style. Tonight it was in his fine 3-story home in Amsterdam South; though we’ve done this many times before in places that we’ve lived in together back in Brissy. Especially in the Milton Hilton, which still to this day is famous for the chicks, the bands, the weed, and the day about 30 of us were nearly busted by the cops for marijuana possesion because of the wrong address on some guys speeding ticket fine! Ahhh… those were the days my friends! :-))

I’d arranged with Mark to come over to his place after work and settle into an Australia Day afternoon with a lot of strong drinks and a good meal, followed by a movie. I decided to go home first and drop off my daypack which I didn’t need because it was full of crap, and a tin of lip balm to keep my lips feeling tender and soft. When I opened up the front door, on the stairwell there was an inconspicuous letter with my name on it. I opened it up as I was walking up the stairs, and the first paragraph made me miss a step and nearly fall down backwarks in shock. It read like this:

Your name is attached to ticket number (bunch of numbers) with serial number (a bunch of numbers) which consequently won the lottery in the third category. You are therefore approved for a lump sum payout of EUR$825,000.39c (eight hundred and twenty five thousand euro and thirty nine cents) in cash… blah blah blah

Holy fuckin jezuz… 800 fuckin grand! Lord mother mary and all that’s holy… that’s every single financial problem I’ve ever had solved in a heartbeat, and then some! I couldn’t even make it in the front door for about 2 minutes. I could only sit on the last step and read it again and again.

I can tell you now, that when you get a letter like this, there is a part of your brain that doesn’t want to accept that this could possibly be a scam, and there is another part that doesn’t want to accept that it could possibly be true; and the two of them war within yourself violently vying for possession of your reality!

Honestly I can tell you that I have never had emotions like this before. The thought of being rich, and being freed of all the shackles of my material world was wonderful beyond description. It was like an orgasm that would wrack your body and mind for long minutes at a time as your wildest dreams would come true in a movie before your very eyes. But then slowly the rational side of my mind asserted itself through the euphoria and I began to question whether or not this was real!

I called up one of my best mates in London, Glen, to tell him of the news only minutes after I had read the letter, and he said to me that while he was very happy, I should keep my head on my shoulders and just stay sharp for any irregularities and bullshit that might mean I was going to get fucked! After all, everyone has seen scams like the Nigerian bank transfer that everyone with an email address receives at some time or another. Then when I took it to Mark’s place and showed him, he started to say the same thing (albiet after he showed signs of having an orgasm too after reading the letter).

For the next couple of hours at Mark’s, him and I had a fucking fantastic dinner of vego lasagne, red wine, Jack Daniels, vodka and a couple of beers; all the while talking about how we would spend the cash if by some miracle it turned out to be something legit.

Well as it turns out, it all looks like a crock of bullshit (as we say back home)! I found this link which is almost the same letter I received, except there was no email address specified in mine.

Well easy come, easy go, as they say! If nothing else, it provided a fine peice of conversation between Marko and me over a couple of hours, and a fantasy about how I would spend 800 grand if it was mine. One thing I know is, if I really did win this money, I know that at this stage of my life I wouldn’t lose my head, and I wouldn’t lose my friends! I really feel like I know what’s important and what’s bullshit in life!

Having said that, man it would be some party! And youse would all be invited! :-))

Padwanna!