This week a man called God­win Grech admit­ted to writ­ing a fake email that attempted to make Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd look like he was giv­ing his mates spe­cial treatment.

Obvi­ously God­win Grech (that’s him above, after the wind changed) is not very good at writ­ing fake emails. So today I present my guide to writ­ing a good, fake email.

Start the email in a friendly man­ner so as to make the reader feel com­fort­able right from the begin­ning. A casual greet­ing such as Waddup witchoo? is a good start. For the moth­ers read­ing this it trans­lates to What is up with you? And for the grand­moth­ers read­ing it trans­lates to How are you, my dear?

Next we need to decide how exactly this email will be a ‘fake’. Some peo­ple like to try to trick peo­ple into send­ing them money. Some peo­ple like to try to make the Prime Min­is­ter look dodgy. But I like to send emails that are the equiv­a­lent to mak­ing prank calls. For exam­ple, I might pre­tend like I’m giv­ing away free Hip­pies, which are a cross between a hip­pos and pup­pies. They’re very cute.

So I would write I am giv­ing away free Hip­pies. Click here if you want some. But instead of link­ing through to the free Hip­pies (which don’t exist any­way) I would link through to some­thing gross. Like a pic­ture of Bear poop.

Then sign off the email as pro­fes­sion­ally as you can so as to not raise sus­pi­cions. Some­thing like See you on the flippity-flip-flip side, From Andrew. Also put some­thing in the sub­ject line of the email that makes it look like a real email. Some­thing like Pick Up a Free Hip­pie. Now let’s see how it reads.

Date: 6/08/2009
From: Andrew McDon­ald
To: Some­one else
Sub­ject: Pick Up a Free Hip­pie

Waddup witchoo?

I am giv­ing away free Hip­pies. Click here if you want some.

See you on the flippity-flip-flip side,

From Andrew

Take note God­win Grech. This is how you write a proper, fake email.

Chris Ware is one of my favourite artists/writers. This short ani­mated video, based on Chris Ware’s book Quimby the Mouse was put together by Ware, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird and ani­ma­tor John Kuramoto. It’s an absoulte gem. Enjoy!

Quimby The Mouse from This Amer­i­can Life on Vimeo.

Dur­ing the week my house­mates and I found an old skull hang­ing on the fence in our back­yard. We had never seen it before in our lives. Well, OK, one of us had. The rest of us just hadn’t looked very hard before.

Rather than be spooked by the skull on the fence I have decided to embrace the skull into my life. Thus, I am propos­ing that we make Mon­day week — August 10 — National Take a Skull to Work or School Day.

I hereby call on all those who have skulls lying around (other than the ones encased inside your heads) to take them to work or school with you on August 10.

It doesn’t even have to be a real skull. Any skull will do. It may sound a lit­tle creepy but as long as you don’t take a real human skull (because a mur­der charge may ensue) it’ll be fun! Just like when some­one brings a pet or a baby to show off at school or work.

I for one will be tak­ing the skull from our back fence along with me to work to cel­e­brate National Take a Skull to Work or School Day. So, who’s with me?

I am a Tintin freak. It is true. And so I wanted to share one of the coolest lit­tle Tintin videos I have seen. This short video clip is taken from a Swiss doc­u­men­tary made in 1960 about Tintin and his cre­ator Hergé (though I’ve never heard of this par­tic­u­lar doco before; how­ever the 2003 doco Tintin et moi is most excel­lent). Watch Tintin in (pen­cil) action!

Today I spent a lovely morn­ing down at Alph­ing­ton Pri­mary School in Melbourne’s inner-north talk­ing to the Grade Threes and Fours about my book, blog­ging and writ­ing in general.

They were a fun bunch and at the end of the morn­ing we all wrote a lit­tle story together. One stu­dent — Tom — did a draw­ing of the hero of our tale and another stu­dent — Annabel — tran­scribed as the rest of us made the story up on the spot. Thanks to all the kids who con­tributed to the story (which was mostly every­one!) Here it is.

BARNEY THE GUITAR-PLAYING CROCODILE
by the Grade 3/4s at Alph­ing­ton Pri­mary School

Once upon a time there was a guitar-playing Croc­o­dile who got fired from a band. He had no job now so he had to play on the streets. One day a Mole came along and offered him a job in his band.

The End.

Nice one, Alph­ing­ton Primary!