Worst Case Scenario

So let it be said that I have not made an entry on this blog in quite some time. And those that I have made have been few & far between. And while the entries that I have made have been nothing of a current nature, they have all been entertaining to the scumbaggery & the righteous alike. They have been tales hoisted from the past adventures of Foulio the Pirate, in his lifestyle of disreputable fortunes. That being said, the following is the report of an equally true story from my teenagehood, that could have happened to anyone, nonetheless it did indeed happen to me.
Anyone born before the mid-eighties will likely remember a series of commercials by the Reese’s Peanut Buttercup Co. That claimed “there’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s” . Well at some point during said campaign I was remanded, dubiously & against my will, to the care of Baywood Psychiatric Hospital in Houston, TX. During the forty two days spent incarcerated in this facility, witness was borne to many & myriad of manor of human strangeness. On this particular day I was in the cafeteria with the rest of the adolescent unit when “Crazy” Kim (a name used more liberally, in comparison to Kim Oliver & Kim Sandoval who also inhabited the adolescent ward at Baywood) decided that she would visit the candy machine with her disposable income.
Crazy Kim returned to her seat just a few spaces down from myself with her afternoon delight and proceeded to peel the Halloween colored package open ever so slowly, revealing her treats in a seductive spectacle true to form for the mental hospital crowd. She then picked up one whole peanut butter cup & placed it delicately inside her mouth & did not chew, simply held it just so. She then began to methodically break the other cup into pie-like pieces in front of her.
Noticing this neurotically tantalizing procedure, staff overseer Mr. Laythom caught eyes with the young mental patient. (It is at this point that it should be mentioned that James Laythom was a gargantuously swollen human being that not only had previous occupations as both an NFL player for the Houston Oilers and a prison guard, but that he also had a PHD in psychology) Raising his over-sized arm and pointing at Crazy Kim, he shouted across the lunchroom “Kim, you will eat your Reese’s the right way, or you will not eat them at all!”.
Now, red blooded American & unjustly interred mental patient that I was, I felt that I was seeing my opening. An opening that possibly had never been opened before and would likely never open again… For Anyone, So against my better judgment, (and against the better judgment of many a man who have ever come up against the authority of James Laythom) I interjected, boisterously & for all the room to hear… “But Mr. Laythom, there’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s!”
Re: “Mr. Capra, you will Not finish your lunch. You will go back to the ward & sit in time out”
… And that’s the day I found out that, at least in Houston Texas, there is in fact a “wrong” way to eat a Reese’s.

Being from New Jersey, a place where seemingly everyone is trying to get over on each other in one way or another, I am no stranger to the art of the con. Growing up in any such environment one tends to develop a keen sense of bullshit detection as well as becoming increasingly jaded to most forms of clandestine chicanery.
So for years I, like any other semi-cognizant human have found the classic internet email scam to be a laughable, bottom of the barrel attempt at duplicity. Usually of the humorously transparent variety whereas one opens an email from some unfamiliar source claiming to be a benevolent Nigerian prince, or philanthropic foreign lottery winner whose only wish is to bequeath you several million dollars, no strings attached. If you will only first send them $50,000 and all of your personal & banking information. Or some other corresponding financial high jinks, usually written in some strange form of ye olde English, as if it had been mysteriously emailed to you from the middle ages.
Well apparently the good nature & benign intentions of Nigerian royalty, having gone ignored for so long have somehow metastasized into some treacherous new form of homicidal extortion. As was exposed to me in the following email, that I received this morning. In all seriousness the content below was copied directly from my hotmail account & pasted here on this blog, at what according to it’s author is great peril to my life.

URGENT!!‏
From: Paul Smart (pete.hamilton@hotmail.com)
Medium riskYou may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: Fri 6/04/10 10:28 AM
To:
Hello

This is the only way I could contact you for now,I want you to be very careful about this and keep this secret with you until I make out space for us to see. You have no need of knowing who I am or where I am from.I know this may sound very surprising to you but it’s the situation.I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer. It’s someone I believe you call a friend, I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusations he leveled against you. Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them,because if you do, I will know,and I might be pushed to do what I have been paid to do.Besides, this is the first time I turn out to be a betrayer in my job. I took pity on you,that is why I have made up my mind to help you if you are willing to help yourself.

Now listen,I will arrange for us to see face to face,but before that, I need $30,000. I will come to your home or you determine where you wish we meet; I repeat, do not arrange for the cops and if you play hard to get, it will be extended to your family. Do not set any camera to cover us or set up any tape to record our conversation, my employer is in my control now. Payment details will be provided for you to make a part payment of $15,000 first,which will serve as guarantee that you are ready to you co-operate,then i will post a copy of the video tape that contains his request for me to terminate you which will be enough evidence for you to take any legal action against him before he employs another person for the job. You will pay the balance of $12000 once you receive the tape.

Warning; do not contact the police, make sure you stay indoors once it is 7.30pm until this whole thing is sorted out,if you neglect any of these warnings, you will have yourself to blame. You do not have much time, so get back to me immediately.

Note:I will advise you keep this to yourself alone, not even a friend or a family member should know about it because it could be one of them.

Regard

1998 was a banner year for the Foul Mouth Jerk. I was twenty three years old, newly single after eight of the most brutal years spent outside of Auschwitz, and my new band was touring nationally. That fall we set out on the most debaucherous of said funk tours. And being the Caligulan arch-fiend that I am, I was leading the hedonistic charge for the entire band & it’s entourage. I was being outdone only by the acid casualty who’d been arrested, leaped naked & handcuffed from a speeding cop-car, hospitalized and then returned to tour. But in my efforts to regain the title, my travels had devolved from a series of musical performances into a hideous maritime charade, awash in an ocean of Old English 800 and LSD.
On the night in question, I left the venue wildly inebriated, aloft on the feeling that whatever had happened back there, it must have been awesome and I by transitive properties was equally fantastic. Whatever the case, the young and beautiful hippie girl on my arm was in complete accord. Upon arriving to the hotel where I had no room of my own, my new lady friend and I bounced between the series of rooms where friends and nefarious associates were partying. At some point in the night, our intentions became of the more amorous nature, thus we searched high and low for any modicum of privacy. As none was to be found in any of the occupied territories, we took our mostly exhausted plastic bottle of off brand vodka & adjourned to the hallway.
As we meandered the premises of the Holiday Inn in Burlington, Vermont we came to the end of the second floor hall, where a chair had been set next to the elevator. It was at this point that I believe, in our infinite wisdom, my temptress and I decided that sex in the elevator would be the most appropriate course of action (it’s not just for Aerosmith anymore). So we pressed the button and began feverishly making out.
At some ungodly hour that morning, I was unceremoniously kicked awake by a pair of officers of the law from this, the Green Mountain State. I had been sleeping upright in the chair at the end of the hall, next to the elevator. Wiping the sleep from my eyes I asked the officers “Someone called the cops on me just for falling asleep in the hallway?” To which the constable replied “You’re naked”. Looking down to examine my visage, I was in fact completely naked, with a sexy, equally nude young hippie girl fast asleep at my feet and a plastic bottle with the small surviving remnants of vodka in the crook of my arm. Our clothing strewn vigorously in piles about hotel’s hallway.
I looked that policeman square in the eye and affirmed “So I am… is that a crime in this state?” The officers were unamused. “Wake up your friend, you’re coming with us.” I shook my sleepy little lady by the head and grumbled “Wake up stupid, we’re in trouble.”
And That, gentlemen is why we don’t drink the liquor from the plastic bottle. It is not your friend.