Hello,

My name is Amoobi.  I am a Nigerian songwriting student, currently studying at the Escuela de Cantautoristas de Pablo Smog in the dangerous port city of Veracruz, Mexico.  I arrived several months ago on a songwriting visa supposedly issued by the Mexican government, under a program devised under the Nigerian Songwriters Treaty signed by Pablo Smog, who operates in an unofficial, generally unrecognized diplomatic capacity on behalf of the Mexican government in the streets and alleyways of various cities in Mexico.  Using gunpowder for chalk, Maestro Smog scrawls his supposedly-great ideas on the wall of some back alley in a bad part of town, gesturing wildly while screaming in some mad, incomprehensible dialect of Gringo Spanish about chords and lyrics and theories and I don't even know what, while his subjects cower in a forced state of rapt, musically-cognizant terror at his feet.  He has grown rich and powerful on the backs of the ignoromic commonwealth, teaching the finer points of songwriting to local cartel members, Islamic militants, small children selling Tic-Tacs, and Nigerian and Haitian refugees for a usurous, non-negotiable fee, the non-payment of which will lead to ridiculous, unpronounceable horrors.

I have become scared for my life, and want nothing more than to become free of the constant lectures about gringo songwriting, on which my would-be freedom has depended for several months.

You can help me out by sending thousands of dollars to my grandmother's bank in the United States, so I can pay the coyotes and pollos and other assorted gang fowl that are necessary to cross the border into the SOCIAL DECONSTRUCTION ZONE known, for now, as the United States of America.  My grandmother's name is Nathan Payne, which is a traditional Nigerian name for women of an older generation, so don't feel weird or have any doubts.  The bank is Charles Schwab, which is the largest, most prestigious bank in Nigeria, and the account number is:

Charles Schwab checking acct #440029741962

Routing number:  121202211  

I can hold your money for you until I cross the border, at which time I will come to your door in person and work off my debt by stealing your livelihood.  

Don't be afraid, generous American, I am not Nathan Payne, and Pablo Smog is not my pen name.  My name is Amoobi, and I am trapped in Mexico on a fake songwriting visa, which isn't even listed in the official list of visas provided by the Mexican government.  I am terrified for my life.  My taste for auto-tuned, musically-simplistic garbage performed by stuffed animals drunk on cough syrup has already waned to dangerously-low levels.  I fear that I will even move beyond songwriting, and learn to appreciate Miles Davis and Frank Zappa before it's all over, so help me Dios.  Yesterday we learned about Townes Van Zandt and The Stooges, just to keep the Federales off our back.  I am in a state of perpetual mortal terror.  Please, for the love of Dios, send my grandmother Nathan Payne $10,000 immediately, so I can pay the pollos and the coyotes and get out from under the thumb of this fascistic, backalley songwriting class led by a crazy, pontificating gringo who never wears anything but black, even on the hottest, brutalest, most unforgiving days of neverending beautiful sunshine.  I am Nigerian, so it doesn't bother me.  But this guy is going to burst into flames and all our money will go up in flames with him, unless you help me get out of here immediately.

Thank you from the bottom of the depths of my darkest heart of neverending darkness.

Amoobi Payne