Irate Cash4Gold letter to a lewd prankster

This Internet finding is an irate letter from the thin-skinned litigation enthusiasts at Cash4Gold to a "Mr Haberny" who apparently made a habit of sending gold-painted rocks to the firm, along with colorful missives describing the circumstances through which he came to posses them, which included a Tibetan pilgrimage with a legless hooker from Singapore. Mr Haberny sought many interesting forms of compensation for his "gold," including a birthday party at McDonald's, and an unspecified activity in the company of Ed McMahon.

(via JWZ)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Entertainment

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

Anonymous

What a great idea though. I hope this letter starts a gold-painted-rock-mailing fad.

The inclusion of quadripalegic hookers is optional.
- Sally
  
  Wonder how much I can get for a jar of gold glitter?
Anonymous

Epic, almost too good to be true

Made my day, thx
Anonymous

Hurr hurr hurr, I’m sure Carol and Tracy really appreciated those comments. Ugh.
Jim O’Connell

Fake. If you look at the copy on http://www.suckerchump.com/suckerchump.com/LETTERS.html and the copy presented above, there are two very different signatures.
I doubt that two copies were sent or that Jeff Aronson signs his name so differently.
Amusing, though.
Rezpect

I really enjoyed that, thanks!
ill lich

I knew a guy whose “art”* consisted of sending absurd and irate letters to corporations in order to get back (hopefully) equally irate letters. To his credit it often worked and the replies were hilarious (I imagine over-educated lackeys probably enjoyed getting to fire off an angry letter to an obvious crackpot.) That said, this one is clearly the best official reply I’ve ever read.

(* I considered it art, but I know others would just think of it as pranking.)
- kevinsky
  
  Was your friend Ted L. Nancy, the pseudonym behind the “Letters from a Nut” book series?
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_L._Nancy
  
  lots of fun to read, especially the ones where the correspondence goes back and forth over multiple letters
  - pencilbox
    
    That’s who I immediately thought of.
Christopher Vigliotti

Mr Haberny, you amuse me
Anonymous

feral? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
- DarthVain
  
  Ah you beat me to the feral comment, I was about to post the exact same thing. What a terrible odd thing to say, even considering apparently the original letter!
- Anonymous
  
  feral can mean like an animal style…rounchy….lol…this letter is amazing!! i wish he posted his letters to C4G.
Anonymous

Gold.
Anonymous

This was hilarious. Thank you for posting.
Anonymous

Writing that letter must have been some intern’s best day evar.
jungletek

Good. Fuck ‘em.

Hopefully it cost them more in lawyering than it did for the amusing prankster to mail some rocks.
drew826

So is Cash4Gold a polygamist operation? Their (presumably only) telemarketer possesses both a Carol and a Tracy!
Anonymous

“and an unspecified activity in the company of Ed McMahon.”

Seems to be specified pretty specifically.
Anonymous

http://www.suckerchump.com/LETTERS.html
JSARLES

Fake.
- shannigans
  
  While the fact that the employee didn’t put their position under their signature could be argument that it is fake, I’m assuming since you gave no substance to your argument you didn’t base your assessment on that. It is entirely plausible that a cash for gold employee charged with intimidating pranksters to stop wasting company time would occasionally have some fun with it.
  
  So not fake, or maybe fake. Why do you think it’s fake?
- Cowicide
  
  Fake.
  
  NO
  
  Feral.
Anonymous

hilarious, I now have a teeny-tiny bit of respect for Cash-4-Gold.
Anonymous

Se non Ã¨ vero, Ã¨ ben trovato.
invictus

Quadriplegic != legless.
- holtt
  
  Quadriplegic != legless
  
  That’s why Cory is a writer, not an editor – and not a very good news source :P
BadIdeaSociety

Fake or not, that letter made me laugh pretty hard. The stories they quoted from his alleged letters are pretty funny and the idea of sending painted gold rocks to them just sounds like a fun idea.
13tales

I call “fake, but hilarious”
Mister44

While the prankster is a jackass, I have to say I don’t care much because Cash 4 Gold is a rip off. Then again, I guess it isn’t their fault people are ignorant.
Anonymous

I’m not saying that Cash4Gold isn’t a scam, but I’m not sure I believe that this letter is authentic.

This redditor claims that he has a real cash4gold letter: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/eg83m/dear_mr_haberny_sincerely_cash4gold/c17uyrm

And here is the direct link to the picture: http://i.imgur.com/2YYtZ.jpg

And finally, Relevant: http://www.cats4gold.com
- Anonymous
  
  i have some gold, what cats are on offer?
urstromtal

Fake, and not at all funny. And I usually loooove good correspondence that ruffles some feathers with satire. This letter, and the few others on his site are declasse and not at all clever.

Oh well.
Antinous / Moderator

I wouldn’t bother with sex that wasn’t feral and preposterous.
- XerxesQados
  
  So you only have sex with furries? =D
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Bears in bunny suits, when I can find any.
    - Cowicide
      
      This guy?
- DoctressJulia
  
  I hear that! The one thing that bothers this shit out of me, though? That damned apostrophe. ‘Telemarketer’s'… agh
  - adam
    
    Oh, oh, oh I’m glad I’m not the only one that bothered!
angusm

I think I want “feral and preposterous” on my business cards.
Anonymous

What would be really funny is if the C4G management had made someone write this letter KNOWING it was a prank and the writer thought it was real.
Aknaton

1) The Suckerchump link includes other letters this guy has written to himself, e.g. one from Bush 43.

2) Somebody printed it out and framed it in their Chinese restaurant.
Anonymous

I agree antinous.

It’s odd the writer uses ‘feral and preposterous’ and not, say, lewd and inappropriate.
LightningRose

Kewl. I’m going to spend next weekend prospecting for iron pyrite.
Anonymous

I wrote a satire article like this about a year ago for my student newspaper.

http://www.uvureview.com/2009/10/26/incident-studies-in-rejection/
- Anonymous
  
  Just read it…..funnier, and far, far more articulate.
Anonymous

Merriam Webster’s 2nd entry for feral: not domesticated or cultivated : wild. It fits. In polite circles “backdoor entry” is an act considered un-cultivated or wild.
Jesse M.

Wow, that’s real? The letter is so ridiculous I almost want to say the lawyer was in on the joke and playing along (but I’ve learned never to underestimate the human capacity for humorlessness!)
Anonymous

This made me so happy.
Loraan

This letter, and all of the letters at suckerchump, strike me as fake. The most telling factor is how often the author of the letter quotes the offensive content. Given how offensive the author is supposed to find the content, it stretches plausibility that they continually quote it so. The most plausible reason for the author to quote the offensive content like this is its humor value.

Furthermore, thanks to the Internet, I have seen more than my fair share of actual cease-and-desist and other letters from lawyers. While an actual motion before a judge often does contain lots and lots of lurid details about the purported facts of the case, including quotes such as appear in these letters, a letter from a lawyer hardly ever does, largely because it’s usually boilerplate.
kitto

For some reason this letter appears to have been placed inside the plastic menu cover at a Chinese restaurant before someone took a picture of it with their iPhone.

Assuming that it’s from suckerchump.com, odds are that it’s not real. While I would not be so surprised by a few spelling or grammar mistakes from the folks at Cash4Gold, the quality of the writing in the letters from from the White House and MoMA featured on suckerchump is similarly poor, and the same problems crop up in this letter too. I would like to believe that people hired to answer letters for the White House would be screened for basic English language ability, but then again that may be overly optimistic of me.

In conclusion, I really liked this letter.
Anonymous

HAAA! Cash4Gold is so deserving of treatment like this, freekin opportunists! This had me rolling on the floor.
funkadelic73

STAGGED
Anonymous

there is no fold marks from sending in an envelope
Anonymous

Luckily, it’s the last time C4G will contact Mr Haberny, so he can carry on sending rocks with impunity.
Anonymous

This is why I love America
Anonymous

I say that the nuggets are actually skunk-ape droppings. and are actually worth 10 times the amount appraised!
pidg

http://i55.tinypic.com/2rdw0ew.jpg

Irate Boing Boing letter to lewd prankster…
- acrocker
  
  Win win win! Someone give this man a cookie!
- CuttingOgres
  
  Kind of odd that the edges of the letter overlap the frame, huh?
Anonymous

Feral means menacing and wild, amongst other things. I am certain they used it in the correct, yet awkward, context.

~Nicki~
Anonymous

This letter is the work of artist Greg Haberny (SuckerChump.com) who is the creator of many profound documents, paintings, sculpture and other ephemera.
Anonymous

Jeff Aronson and Cash4Gold are total scumbags, taking advantage of dumbasses and encouraging theft better than any pawn shop ever could.
Anonymous

Mr. Haberny is as heroic as much as Mr. Aronson is a humorless boob.
Anonymous

Easy to tell as fake: no creases from folding and mailing. Obviously printed and framed. But still hilarious…
edwinx2

Alert! Pedantic Missive Ensues:
The two main senses of the word “feral” are: “wild and menacing” or “organism that has reverted at least partially from domestic to untamed ways.” There is no exclusive association of “feral” with animals, and “kids raised by wolves” are routinely referred to as “feral children.” Nothing about the term suggests furries or bestiality, simply a “decline” into wildness. I do not know if the author of the letter intended to use another word here (or, indeed, if the letter is at all real), but “feral” makes sense in the context it is used in and, probably due to the general quirkiness of using that word in an unexpected context, is hilarious. I’m going to start referring to all sorts of things as “feral and preposterous” from now on, until I get bored with it in a couple of days.