Laughing just to keep from crying?

I received probably an unusual spam yesterday (not that offers of drugs, porn or untold $$$ from family relatives in oil-rich nations constitute ‘usual’ but you get the idea) when a ‘stand-up comedian’ (do any of these people ever sit down?) asked me to register to vote for him in an online competition. The lure for me was that if he won, he would donate all of $500 to the Save Darfur campaign. Clearly anticipating the reluctance of spam readers everywhere to believe this, he promised to place of video of him making the donation on YouTube once the winnings came his way. What a wonderful concept — use new technology to subvent all rules of fair play yet make us feel reassured that we really are really cheating for a good cause. BTW, the prize was $10k, so he’s promising a hefty 5% of his winnings for this. In the interests of fair play I did register (using his email address) and voted for someone else.