Dastardly Deed of the Day

I'm bad.


I can't help it. I have a mean streak in me that I usually keep under control, but sometimes I just have to let it out, and Friday was one of those days.


My husband received one of those chain letters in the mail - you know the kind that promise big bucks in return for no investment. This one was a doozy. It claimed you could make $250,000 in weeks and all you had to do was send some guy $10 and mail out 19 other copies of this letter telling people how much money they could make by mailing out the same letter.


It was four pages absolutely rife with grammatical, punctuational and spelling errors, not to mention fuzzy facts and contradictory statements. And it was supposedly written by a lawyer! How anyone could fall for it, I don't know, but the really big question on my mind as I read it over dinner, was how could anyone read this crap and not succumb to the all powerful urge to EDIT it???


So I gleefully ran to my desk, grabbed my red Sharpie and went to work correcting every single mistake from the odd punctuation !, to the number discrepancies - your investment on page 1 is $23,20 [with a comma for a decimal point, btw] and on page 3 the breakdown of costs adds up to $33.20. It was a treasure trove of bad, an editor's playground - well, more like a nightmarish fun house - editors really do like clean copy, you know. Honestly.


After all four pages were good and bloody, I stuck them back in an envelop which I mailed back to the hapless schlep who got my husband's name [and spelled it wrong besides!] thinking he's going to get rich quick over this mess. I'm sure he'll be shocked and offended that someone had the audacity to correct his money-making scheme, but if the claims in the letter are correct [it works perfectly EVERY single time you use it!!] maybe he'll at least feel a small bit of shame at being taken by something so blatantly badly written.


After all, if you're going to scam someone, at least have the decency to proofread your chain letter, ya' know??