A trawler pulled up beside her, and right above the name Silver Edition painted in huge letters, a fat ugly man peered over the side at her.
"My Dear Madam, may I enquire whether you are Jewish or Gentile?"
Muffy could now hardly keep her head above the water, but still she managed to stretch out her hand and whisper, "Help me!"
The weasel ignored that, and continued, "I have a theory on why Jews are smarter, it goes as follows. For roughly 1,200 years there were only two avenues of upward mobility for ambitious Christians looking to move up from peasantdom - either you became a knight which meant you had to be big and strong and were probably not all that bright, or if you were smart you entered the priesthood in which case you took a vow of celibacy. Thus, for 1,200 years Christians were breeding out their smartest people. Meanwhile, Jews were marrying the son of the most successful man in the community to the daughter of the Rabbi, the smartest man in the community. They were breeding up!!!"
Again Muffy managed to feebly reach out her hand muttering, "Help me!"
"Please allow me to introduce myself," continued the scumbag, "I'm John Westergaargle. I am 45 years old with 60 years experience says my bio, actually 67 years at this point. I have been engaged for 40 years in publishing investment research on speculative stocks and no one has ever sued me or questioned my integrity, nor have I ever had a regulatory problem. My full bio is at www.wbomb.com. Your head is still up. First, I consider there to be no greater tribute than to be known by the enemies I make. May I be your enemy?"
Muffy again fruitlessly tried to get Westergaargle to help her, but he just rambled on.
"The background of hostility has to do with the fact that my company, Westergaargle Online Systems, Inc., through its publishing channel, Westergaargle Broadcasting Network.com <http://www.wbomb.com> is engaged in a business, the purpose of which is to help protect companies and their shareholders from anonymous posters engaged in posting purposefully misleading or fraudulent misinformation at Silicon Investor and other message boards that rival mine. It's not surprising that all these jokers there are angry. If one gets one's jollies from posting the crap most of these people put up at SI and other boards, one would of course be upset by the threat a wbomb.com poses. WBN IS BREAKING NEW GROUND: Five years from now there will be half a dozen third party bogus research firms such as ourselves engaged in assisting public companies to maintain control of their "corporate personae" on the Internet. Shareholders will insist they do so. Fraudulent public companies cannot afford to let themselves be hung out to dry by hostile parties, be they short sellers, ex employees, ex wives, competitors, or promoters manipulating their shares, whether it be up or down."
"HELP!!!" Muffy tried screaming as hard as she could. Westergaargle ignored her, and went on.
"To deal with this problem is what wbomb.com is about. For the business to be successful we will need to have investors believe we are honest, responsible and qualified. Establishing our credibility will be a gradual, inevitable process, but I'm happy to inform you that I've just received a valuable endorsement. Let me quote from Financial Bed, a comprehensive investment site that publishes a service called "Shock Detective" which rates investment services as to their disclosure policies and provides a potpourri of other information to help sort out the good guys from the bad on the Internet. Last week wbomb.com was reviewed and given a favorable rating as being in full compliance with Section 17b of the Securities Act of 1933 which is the regulation covering disclosure. In a side letter, publisher Kevin Lickman wrote: 'While you pretend to abide by ethical and lawful practices at all times, some of your clients may not. What you can do, in our opinion, is to make your disclosure as detailed and as visible as possible and be selective with regards to which companies you represent. Having said all that, I'd like to tell you that I believe your reputation is superior to that of most of your scumbag peers. I've ignored every instance where your name or that of your company has been associated with hype or other unethical promotions. It's too bad many more firms in your industry will follow your example, but that's life.' So, My Dear Madam, as I asked to begin with, are you Jewish or Gentile?"
Muffy could no longer keep her head above the water. Unable to answer she just frantically waved her hand for the last time, signaling for help.
"Hmm, probably a Muslim," muttered Westrgaargle, turned away, and ordered, "full steam ahead, let's trawl for some more suckers!" |
