I've been to Fort Worth, Little Rock, Tempe, I guess everywhere man

Either I’ve invented a new form of sleepwalking, let’s call it “sleep traveling,” or I’m not taking enough pictures.

We get a lot of emails here at the Cheney Free Press. A lot of it’s good, requests for advertisements, press releases, informational opinion pieces, story leads and so on.

A lot of it is crap. It would be great to filter it, this Spam (I actually like Spam, the mystery meat), but alas, we can’t as it could block other messages we do wish to receive.

So we endure. And in enduring, as I said above, I do believe I’ve been doing a bit of sleep traveling.

And in my travels it seems that either I have been somewhat of a naughty boy, or become involved with other shady characters. You see, I keep getting notices to appear in court.

Sometimes these come as “Hearing of your case in court,” or “Notice to appear in court.” Occasionally they’re even “Urgent.” And of course they all contain a number, my “case” number I guess.

The interesting thing about these notices is they’re from all over. Thirty-two so far, and that’s just the ones I’ve been saving for the past few months for just such an emergency as writing a column when not especially opinionated.

The notices aren’t all from the same place. So far I’ve been to Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis and Modesto, Calif. twice each. Hey, don’t knock Modesto until you’ve been there, which apparently I have.

I’ve been to some other hot travel destinations too: Irving, Tucson, Oakland, Overland Park (where?), Little Rock, Tempe, Grand Prairie (really!), Chattanooga, Oxnard (now that’s inventive!), Kansas City (there I went), Sacramento, Philadelphia, Jackson, Miami, Augusta (apparently not for the Masters, however), Virginia Beach, Shreveport, St. Paul, Buffalo, Corpus Christi, Ontario, Las Vegas, Oceanside, Portland and Minneapolis. I wonder if there’s a song here, man.

That’s 31. Maybe I was in Fort Worth three times. I don’t know, after a while they all run together.

In reality, it’s sad to receive these notices. It’s sad because the people creating them know there are people in this world gullible enough to believe there is a court case pending against them, and thereby follow the directions to fill out forms and provide the requested personal information.

All that gets them is an empty bank account, and/or huge credit overdrafts as the con artists perpetrating these falsehoods access the information and drain them dry.

But it’s also sad people who apparently have creativity and technical savvy waste their talents on these schemes. They could probably put their abilities to better uses.

But then again, we’re an instant-gratification, get-rich society. The pursuit of wealth, of having things, is our mantra. We lack the ability to look around at what we have and say, I have enough.

Instead, we want more, often just for the sake of having more, or having the latest and greatest. And in some cases, to have more, we need to take it from others, especially others who don’t have a lot, and are fearful of losing what they have — fearful enough to fall for a fake, “urgent” notification of a court case against them.

And I thought I wasn’t going to get opinionated.

It’s a waste, and it’s a shame these types of scams. Worse, I didn’t take any pictures.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.