The bearded queen that's always on top

Regular readers may be excused for not knowing what the hell I’m talking about when I say that this blog is really two blogs in one.

On the one hand, it’s the nearly 200 posts since mid-January, 2007 that have come barking down the WordPress puppy mill at this address, along with the various pages and fiddly sidebar doo-dads few bother to click on but have come to expect when you stumble upon an everyday non-stick, peel-off, biodegradable, low-calorie passive-aggressive blog such as this.

On the other hand, there’s one post that regular readers have probably forgotten but which sets itself apart from the rest. One post that almost since its completion one cold, dreary day back in early December last year has drawn more than 200 times the hits, generated more comments and attracted more meet-’em-in-the-park crazies than nearly any other you’ll find here.

It’s the one making fun of some scam email where the so-called writer poses as a representative of the Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation, an organisation that does various good deeds for needy people in more places than I care to mention or bother to link to.

On the face of it it’s really hard to figure out why it’s so popular. One read-through and you think…meh. The concept’s been done before, and the jokes? As a great man might have said:

Sir, your post is both funny and original. Unfortunately, the original parts are not funny, and the funny parts are not original.

Seriously, I consider it a mediocre effort. A far cry from the gut-splitting one-liners I’d imagined coming up with as I got the idea for the post cycling home from work.

So what’s bringing them all in?

Is it the scandalous depiction of Canada’s beloved sovereign wearing the unmistakable facial attribute of a male, hinting at what might lie below?

Or is it the mistake in the headline? In another brilliant example of my aversion to research and chronic state of sloth, I adopted the scammer’s mistake by leaving out Elizabeth’s all-important apostrophe-s in the headline. So for months Google has been coughing up that post as high as the highly-coveted Number One Result Position when searchers wrongly type in Queen Elizabeth Foundation.

Not bad, eh? Try it yourself and see. Type in Queen Elizabeth Foundation into Google and see what you get. Do it many, many times and maybe you’ll help push it back up from the number three where it is now.

Speaking of bizarre visitors, I’m sure you aren’t one of them, but some guy calling himself a private investigator and who lives in his mother’s basement in Toronto definitely is.

Sans-merde Sherlocque really didn’t like the off-hand way I told a commenter that the stupidest thing anyone could do would be to send the scammers any money.

Of course he had to point out that it’s your identity they’re after, and in no uncertain terms in subsequent comments made it plain that I am indeed the lowest form of ill-informed pond-scum ever to disgrace the Internet, and furthermore … Well, at this point my eyes kinda glazed over, but you can take a look for yourself. For maximum impact, read them all.

I dunno – maybe I was a little too polite to him? He says he’s a fellow Canadian, after all.

Perhaps on a flight to Hamburg this very minute. Whoa.