A Zebra in Tijuana.

A while ago – here – I received an email from a certain Serge Lavagne, who may, or may not have been a robot.

Even though I don’t receive many missives from metal, I was so underwhelmed that I wrote all about it on this blog (the blog with stuff) and surprisingly received more comments than I had ever before, or since, witnessed.

On comments alone, Serge-the-possible-robot was my most successful posting.

Just before Christmas I received an email from Emma Peters. Who isn’t.

Isn’t a robot that is, I’m pretty sure she is a Peters.

Though you never can tell about either.

Her mail however, looked like a very similar ploy; here is what she wrote:

Hi Chris,
My name is Emma with Amplified Media. We were impressed with the quality and
scope of bitsnbobsshowntell.blogspot.com. The Christmas advent series you
feature on your site is a great way to really get into the holiday spirit. We
enjoy your selections, and appreciate you sharing them with your readers!
Please email me at emma@amplifiedmedia.org if you are interested in learning
more about opportunities to work together. I look forward to hearing from you.
Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays!

Nice touch!

I don’t very often get unsolicited mail from women who go out of their way to compliment me so I headed of to the website to learn more about Emma.

I’m pretty easily manipulated you know.

I clicked on their “meet the team” clickable bit and there was her photo!

Apparently she is a Zebra!

When Serge wrote to me he introduced himself as “Accounts Manager”.

The Zebra though is “Director!”

I saw a Zebra in Tijuana once; I had gone there to get married.

What I mean by that is that my future wife and I went there to get married, not that I went there looking for a wife.

And there, in a back street was a Zebra! (this is true by the way).

Tijuana you may remember is in Mexico, a land not renowned for Zebra, and this one was just standing there in a side street.

On closer inspection it turned out to be a donkey that had been painted with black stripes.

From a distance it was fairly convincing.

There was a second sticky donkey on the main drag and tourists were occasionally fooled into having their photo taken alongside.

Or maybe they just saw the whole thing as so naff they had to record it.

Thinking about it I……, anyway.

So ever since I have been always a little suspicious of Zebras (I wonder if that is correct, Zebrae perhaps?Zebri?) out of context.

I wrote back to Emma Peters-Zebra asking what exactly did she mean by “opportunities to work together” and listed some of the more boring items of housework that I have neglected in the last month, hoping she might not say neigh. (Zebra joke).

She replied!

She said – “I have some clients who are interested in two posts on your site:
http://bitsnbobsshowntell.blogspot.com/2011/12/john-denver-muppets-12-days-of.html and http://bitsnbobsshowntell.blogspot.com/2011/11/unprofessional-again.html.
They would pay you a total amount of $40 via PayPal for you place one link within each post (two total).


I wondered about correcting her English at the end there, but then who am I to talk?

Instead I considered my options, after all 40 dollar is 40 dollar that would be a, er, 40 dollar profit after over 1000 posts, I will be a millionaire in, er, well, a hundred years after I have died!

But i spent a lot of money at Christmas.....

I’m fascinated as to who these clients are that would be interested to pay me to link to a video of The Muppets singing The 12 Days of Christmas when it is readily available on Youtube already, but can I really justify selling my soul to the devil?

When she is just a Zebra?

Please advise.