which probably most have, today, April 30, marks the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Scam that Rocked the Internet, poor stupid Beth's really stupid stunt that cost Skins's island a great deal of its laboriously-earned credibility, making it the laughingstock of the internet.
It all of course had nothing to do with its cover story, that of the red round one suffering from pancratic cancer and needing an operation. It had nothing to do with franksolich instructing Paypal to delay disbursements, or with franksolich persuading Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to delay a medically-vital operation.
The red round one had already had an operation, unsuccessful, in his hometown of Seattle, Washington, the preceding February.
And how the Hell I myself possessed any power to meddle with either a financial account or a surgery of an individual wholly unconnected with me, escapes me. Perhaps the quick dude on DU Jr., otherwise known as the pintobean primitive, the primitive light in the loafers, who most recently levied this oft-levied charge, can explain.
It was all bullshit.
What was really going on was that poor stupid Beth was locked in a marriage she wanted to escape, her family was in peril of tax liens on some modest properties in San Francisco, and her elderly mother was about ready to lose the farm.
She needed money.
And because the red round one was dying anyway, and had a strong streak of the practical joker in him, he allowed her to use his "cause" to raise money for her causes. He'd accepted his terminality with equanimity, damn near serenity, and didn't care.
During the "fundraiser," meant to garner $25,000 for this alleged operation but actually to relieve poor stupid Beth of her financial pressures, donations were instructed to be sent to the Paypal ac**** of the red round one.
It's highly unlikely that anything near $25,000 was raised, and it was moot anyway. Upon the demise of the red round one, his "husband," the termite primitive, in whose name the Paypal account was joint, absconded with the proceeds, however much or little they were.
Beth was left out in the cold, but managed to divorce her husband anyway, lost the properties in San Francisco to property taxes, and a couple of years after that, lost the family farm to foreclosure.
It's a great story, in the sense of medieval morality tales, in which greed and gluttony and lies never prosper.
