Update #3: (drum­roll) Arno is/was Andy “Malarkey” Clarke. What a crazy — but funny — bloke!

Update #2: Jeremy Keith responds to Arno after receiv­ing a sim­il­iar email, but for perfume.

Update: Arno responds to this post. (read below first if you haven’t already for the full scoop)

You know, I’ve sifted through a truck­load of emails in the past few years about instant credit reports, money-making oppor­tu­ni­ties and not to men­tion sales­peo­ple inter­ested in sell­ing me every­thing from pet rocks to laser-guided golf ball retreivers.

In all this time I’ve never once received a domain acqui­si­tion email, until today of course.

Not more than 8 hours ago, I received an email from an Arno Zim­mer­man in regards to pur­chas­ing, or actu­ally acquir­ing this domain for a “well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio”. The email was a bit hazy, but to keep this on record for future con­ver­sa­tions I’m pre­sent­ing it here in it’s entirety.

Read on as I really can’t make this kind of stuff up:

Dear Mr Sagen,

My sin­cere apolo­gies for writ­ing to you unan­nounced. My name is Arno Zim­mer­man and I am CEO of an Inter­net domain name acqui­si­tions agency based here in Los Ange­les, California.

My agency is cur­rently engaged by a well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. The stu­dio is pro­duc­ing a new action movie called The Kar­tooner. The movie has an all star cast, includ­ing Bruce Willis in the title role, and will be released in the fall. My client is there­fore very keen to pur­chase the rights to the domain name kar​tooner​.com from you.

I am sure that you will under­stand that I can­not pro­vide you with much in the way of infor­ma­tion about our client at this time. How­ever I can assure you that they are sin­cere in their offer, and that they are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly.

I would be inter­ested to learn how much you would require for this trans­fer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man

Okay, admit­tedly, you caught me off guard Mr. Zim­mer­man. If some­one were to tell me — like you just did — that Bruce Willis would be star­ring in an action movie called The Kar­tooner, I’d be hes­is­tant to believe such a thing.

How­ever, if you want to talk about the green­back, I might be will­ing to budge for about $66,000 dol­lars, give or take.

Let me know, alright? In the mean­time, I’m going to try and fig­ure out what I’d pur­chase with that kind of money.

Arno Responds

Dear Mr. Sagen,

My client’s legal team have informed me of your arti­cle regard­ing our offer to pur­chase your domain name. While I was a lit­tle sur­prised, as I have not yet had a reply from you directly, I do not think that this will cause us a prob­lem as The Kar­tooner is now in full pro­duc­tion, cur­rently shoot­ing live action in Manhattan.

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous email, The Kar­tooner will star Bruce Willis in the title role. Bruce plays an impov­er­ished artist in New York who pays his bills by draw­ing car­toons for the New York Times. Through a series of unfor­tu­nate acci­dents, Bruce’s char­ac­ter mis­tak­enly becomes the tar­get of a Mafia hit squad and must use all his wits (as well as his artis­tic skills) to stay alive. Need­less to say I can­not divulge any fur­ther plot details.

You men­tioned in your arti­cle today that you would be pre­pared to accept a sum of $66,000. Unfor­tu­nately this is over the bud­get that my agency has been autho­rized to pay for the aqui­si­tion of your domain name. How­ever I won­der whether you would accept a smaller sum, in addi­tion to a small walk on part in the movie?

Would you please be so kind as to let us know your deci­sion as my clients are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man
CEO and Inter­net domain name acquisitions