This journalist’s contact book lets him down
OOPS. THIS IS EMBARRASSING. A reader asked me to put him in touch with a contract killer.
But there’s not a single one in my contacts book.
Having said that, there IS one tax inspector, two chief nursing ward sisters and a school matron, which some people would say are pretty much the same thing.
*
The reader had written to me for help in committing suicide.
“Is there any way to find a professional contract killer to do it? Tks!”
said the email from a gentleman whose initials are HL.
*
I wrote back advising against using hit men (they mess up the wallpaper) and suggested he instead take his problems to counselors, who are cheap, clean, and often rather cute.
*
Why ask a columnist for help hiring a murderer? Probably because I wrote a column in September in which a reader named Dancer who lives near me remarked that out-of-work contract killers approached her husband in a park to offer a discount murder for the equivalent of US$38.
Mr Dancer politely declined, being unable to think of a single person he wanted killed.
I was shocked. “Not even one?” I said.
Wow, now THERE’S a nice guy. (I wrote a list in case he gets the same offer again.)
*
Meanwhile, one gang of killers-for-hire in Asia last week tried to raise their market value by using modern marketing methods, a reader from India told me.
They posed for photographs, listed the guns they knew how to handle and documented previous hits they had made.
Inspector Chandra Dhar Guar told the Times of India that the villains did this corporate brand-building so they could charge more per killing.
Officers who busted the gang are confident of getting a conviction. Imagine the trial.
Judge: “Are you contract killers?”
Gangster: “No, my lord.”
Judge: “Then why are your faces on this brochure which says Contract Killers R Us?”
These villains are surely due for a MAJOR oops moment. (More oops moments.)
*
It must be dumb criminal month.
From the US a reader sent the story of Scott Wellington of New Hampshire, who told his bosses his wife was sick. They gave him sympathy.
He said she was dying. They passed a hat around and gave him US$7,000 for medical expenses.
He said she’d died. His boss sent a condolence card to his house—which Mrs Wellington opened.
She apologized for her husband’s stupidity and offered to return the money last week.
The twist in the tale is that the boss told her she could keep the money for all she had to suffer in being married to a guy like that. Now that’s a wise and generous human being.
*
I did meet a real killer once, on a jungle trek through Sarawak in Malaysia.
An old, skinny man living in an Iban longhouse told us that he used to be the district’s main headhunter, and still had the shrunken heads of his victims to prove it.
I told him that people in the outside world no longer used the word headhunter. “We prefer to say executive search consultant,” I told him. “It’s better for marketing.”
He nodded politely although I’m sure he thought I was an idiot.
*
*
*
ON OTHER MATTERS…. Apologies for not being able to reach you guys for a while. I hung out with a real-life revolutionary (Jose Ramos-Horta) and commenter Angela. Will report more when I get the pictures downloaded.
In the meantime, I looked up Liftie’s allegation about the doctor who did poo transplants, and it’s all true. The full amazing story is here. A woman was dying so he opened her up and put her husband’s poo inside her, saving her life.
Chamin, I looked up Newater – this is Singapore sewage which is treated and then reused as fresh water. Eww. Chamin, I wish you had told me about this BEFORE I spent four days in Singapore…
Thanks also for the animal vids, fascinating.
