Looking for one-off freelance gigs, one comes across…interesting job offers. I’ve seen a multitude of ads which may as well have been titled “Do you want to be an Internet spammer?” An unsettling number of requests to ghost write someone’s memories as an abused child. Some of the worst/most clichéd story concepts ever being sold as EXCITING AND NEW, YO! More on this in a bit.

But one stands apart as the most insane proposal I have ever seen for a job. One of the big freelance sites I log in to runs the gamut of work-from-home projects. Programming, web development, writing, translation, graphics, audio and video editing, and so on. Everything. I had gone in to the job browser and was about to head to the writing sub section when my sub conscious stayed my mouse hand.

Did…did I really just see that?

I looked back over to the job listing and there it was…

I am looking for a programmer to build me a key logger.

Well that’s…okay, that’s really messed up. I need to learn more! So I opened up the listing. You might think that it can’t go any further down hill than someone trying to hire somebody to gin up a probably illegal piece of software. You would be wrong. So completely and totally wrong.

“I need somebody to write me a custom key logging program. I suspect that my girlfriend is cheating on me. I looked at her credit card receipts, and there were some weird charges on there. But I think she’s doing all of this from her work computer. So I need someone to write up a key logger than can be installed there so that I can find out what she’s typing.”

Um. WOW. This is pretty much the dumbest request ever! Oh wait, there’s MORE?

“After you write this up for me, I’ll need you to send it to her in an email and convince her to install it on the company network. Then I can see what she’s up to.”

HOLY. FUCK. Let’s recap, shall we?

-Write me up a piece of software that typically isn’t used for anything good. When the best case scenario is that I’m ONLY using it to spy on my girlfriend, that should tell you something!

-Help get this piece of spyware installed on a corporate network. The way the guy put this, it sounded like we’re talking a major corporation here.

So now you’ve helped commit a corporate cyber crime. In the United States. Against a major company. I mean, this is the kind of shit where the accompanying news story includes words like “The FBI became involved…”, but what could go wrong? Right?

I re-read this nonsense at least a dozen times, convinced that I had missed the part that somehow brought it together in a way that it began to make sense. I hadn’t. There was no sense to be found here.

And what exactly is dude hoping to accomplish? THERE IS NO GOOD ENDING FOR YOU IN THIS, you unbelievably stupid bag of crap! Either she is going to ask I.T. about this weird email, or they’re going to become involved at some point when they notice something is up. And it is going to come back to you. And when they start asking questions, they’ll be asking things like “So, who hired you to commit corporate espionage?” You stupid, stupid man. Oh, and I somehow suspect that even if she isn’t getting dick from someone else now, she will be soon after this inevitably comes to light. Moron.

Also, I’m pretty sure we’re getting some idea here of why she might be stepping out on you…

POST TOPIC SHIFT COMMENCING!

On occasion you’ll get an email from one of these sites because your listed qualifications match up with a potential job. One of them that came to me was helping a guy write up a fictional story. I read the idea and was promptly insulted that my name popped up. The name of this idea?

ARMEGEDDON! Yes, I know that the name is misspelled. It had the sub title of ‘A Brilliant Story’. I laughed until tears filled my eyes.

It turned out to involve demon hunters driving big mechs in Feudal Japan, a TOTALLY NEW idea…if one ignores that Steampunk is a thing. My personal favourite part of the whole story idea involved this hilarious mash up…

-This story is basically an action/adventure story but contains elements of romance, comedy, family values and sci fi

-Story focuses on a prodigious pervert boy

Family values, ladies and gentlemen. That also might be the best character idea I’ve ever seen. Exactly what makes someone a prodigious pervert? No, I didn’t get the job (the winning bid was for something like $45 for 4 weeks of work. Yeah, fuck that). But I’m doing it anyway, simply for fun. I find myself actually looking forward to writing this. And godDAMN am I going to write the shit out of this! This is getting the full on cheezy Michael Bay treatment that it deserves. I’ll make a few changes to things like the title (which I will miss…) and character names, but the rest of it is such warmed over cliché that it’s staying.

I find that I’m really excited about this ridiculous project. And hey, getting a little practice in can’t hurt. The writing will commence soon. I’m going to lock myself in to the 4 week time limit that would have come along with this if I was doing it FOR REALZ. Some demonz iz gonn’ get fucked up.