Saturday, February 28, 2009

From the Laptop of Hæleð Wulfgar

My Dearest One,

greetings from East Anglia, which you may know as Anglo-Saxon England. I am a most esteemed warrior and owner of wide tracts of fenland and I am looking for someone I can trust to accept into their checking account a large sum of silver pieces, roughly in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 silver pieces, or in your economy, a gadjillion dollars. I am so sad to report that my liege-lord died of a terrible spear wound in a battle with some filthy, godless heathens and we have been weeping and crying over this because now there is no one to give us rings, but we also have all these silver pieces from selling fen plots and we have no more forever a great hall to put them in: cattle die and kinsmen die, thyself too soon must die [or, in your language, where is the horse and the rider, where is the horn that was blowing, they have passed like rain on the mountains, etc.]--you get the picture. For the sake of our lives we have been hiding out in a deserted barrow in Crowland, going out every now and then to do a little raping and pillaging, but mainly we are very depressed and we do not have the divine boon of your pharmaceuticals. While we are making do with beer we are worrying so much about what will happen to us and are hoping that you, our esteemed friend and lovely dear, will help us and become our partner in a glorious investment.

Just before he died, our liege-lord asked us to send all of our treasure to the future, but to bury the cattle and slaves with him [that's why "cattle die," etc.], so we don't need your help with the cattle or slaves [which we really wish we had right now because we're starving and there's no one to bring the hot towels after the massages], but more importantly, your ability to put the said funds into circulation wisely for our joint interest and relocating us is a major considerable factor regarding our request as our knowledge on financial matters is not enough to handle an amount of money above a gadjillion U.S. dollars.

On your personal advice, we are also considering the below options as areas relative to our interest to put the said funds working:

1) hospitality industry
2) farming and acquisition of fenlands
3) slanket manufacturing
4) microbrewery
5) post-hole digging

In view of this, if you are touched to work with us in sincerity, by standing as our late liege-lord's foreign representative to receive the said deposit on our behalf, we shall embrace you as our new found lord/kinsman and will compensate you accordingly. As you indicate interest, please be fast to contact us at this email address (wulfgar@eastanglia.uk) to enable us to give you further information relative to the presence/position of the silver pieces and the steps we shall take to finalize on the project.

Do not hesitate to include your personal telephone/fax numbers as this will facilitate communication between you and us. Thanking you in advance for your kind and urgent response, more so for keeping our proposal to yourself.

Sincerely, Wulfgar

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant.

;o)

Jeffrey Cohen said...

Why do I think that this Wulfgar fellow knows the intimacies of my soul? His letter worked its magic: to Slanket Manufacture investment, my heart going like mad, yes I said yes I will Yes.

Anachronista said...

I'm in. But I'll need the secret of time travel first.

i said...

I expect a letter from a proud queen of a Scandinavian tribe whose husband has recently been eaten by a savage, fen-dwelling monster, and who is now left with a valuable throne to dispose of...

Anonymous said...

T'is more convincing that many such letters that folk fall for...

anna klosowska said...

I know what we can do with the money: we can erect a large stone structure in the fenlands, with massive blocks of rough hewn granite arranged in a circle