I’ll have my spam shaken, not stirred, thank you

This could be my last Reality Check column. By this time next week I fully expect to be embroiled in the exciting world of international espionage. I’ll be driving a cool little British sports car equipped with laser guns, rocket launchers, ejection seats, underwater capabilities and hidden turbo jets that pop out and propel me forward at mach 4 when I push the discreet red button hidden beneath the dashboard.

I’ll be dating a long-legged, scantily clad blonde who makes sneaky-looking facial expressions whenever my back is turned. She won’t know I’m watching her from the sides of my rear-view sunglasses and when it comes down to the wire I’ll shoot her before she gets a chance to shoot me. She will then have the good taste to die beautifully in my arms, whispering that I was only an “assignment” at first, but that she has grown to love me.

I’ll be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Asian gentlemen who crush golf balls with their bare hands and cut the heads off marble statues with their thrown bowler hats.

I am going to be so cool. I will try to remember all you little people, but it ain’t gonna be easy once they issue me my number; I’m hoping for double-oh-eight, one better than James Bond’s 007. As Special Agent 008, I will routinely rid the world of whatever small pockets of Communism remain, even if that’s just five stoners with a Mao poster hanging on their dorm room wall at a college campus in Berkley.

And I will look good doing it. I already own a black suit. If things get formal, I guess I can rent a tux, at least until Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, or whomever I wind up working for supplies me with one of my own.

You may think I’m just blue-skying it here, but I’m not. I’ve already been contacted via email by a covert group of commie spies, probably former high-ranking members of the former Soviet Union’s Politburo. They’re trying to get me join them and go undercover as a “mole” here in the United States. At least, I think that’s what they want. Since I can’t read Cyrillic, I don’t know for sure.

As some of you regular readers may remember, in addition to this column I also pen a monthly horoscope for an English-speaking newspaper in Moscow. This, I assume, is how I came to the attention of the Russian agents. Because I regularly predict the futures of a couple million Muscovites, the agents suppose I’m sympathetic to their pro-commie agenda.

I’m not. I usually vote Democratic, but that’s about as subversive as I get. But the Russians don’t know this; they trust me. I plan to use this trust to gain inside information into their operation and pass it on to whichever agency is willing to hire me on and provide me with the car, blonde and free tux.

Of course, it’s possible, though unlikely, that the email I received is just some sort of Russian spam. I’m cutting-and-pasting it here in the hope that some bilingual Reality Check reader will be able to interpret it and let me know to which secluded parking garage I’m supposed to report:

Соберем для Вас по сети интернет базу данных потенциальных клиентов для Вашего Бизнеса (название телефон факс e-mail имена рода деятельности товары услуги итд) Узнать подробнее Вы можете по

That’s it. If you also could let me know if I’m supposed to wear a tux to that first meeting, I’d appreciate it.

Do svidanya, comrade. (Don’t call Homeland Security; I’m just practicing.)

Please email your Russian translations and/or plans for world domination to: mtaylor325@gmail.com.