A cunning scam

From Angie Schultz at The Machinery of Night:

A week ago today I got an email from my stepdad that started out like this:

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education"...

"Dad, you scamp!" I thought, "What are you up to now?" Dad is what is known in the vernacular as a card, and so I read along, figuring I'd come to a lame punchline at some point. I thought maybe he'd stumbled across some other fellow with his name who was the kind of do-gooding low-life who trots off to African conferences.

But no. No punchline of any degree of lameness. Instead it's a sad, long-winded (sounds like Dad there) tale of how he stupidly left his dough, credit cards, ID, etc in a taxi and now he's flat busted and is going to be kicked out of his hotel and he's using a library computer and only has thirty minutes and can he have $1300, pronto.

Read on.