Free Apple iPad: An Interview

With this week’s release of the Apple iPad, email inboxes the world over have been flooded with sketchy offers that claim you can get an iPad of your very own for doing next to nothing.  Sometimes, all you have to do is sign up for a free trial.  Sometimes, you just have to agree to use the damn thing.  And just like that, you’re on the highway to the free iPad zone.  But can it really be that easy?

In a Funnycrave exclusive, we sit down with Blake Winchell, a man who claims that clicking a link, providing an email address and signing up for a two week Netflix trial ultimately led to a free Apple iPad.

FunnyCrave: So Blake, you claim you actually received a free Apple iPad after responding to one of those shady email spam offers?

Blake Winchell: Yeah, I got this email.  I was skeptical at first, because I’ve been burned before.  Like that time I forwarded this one email to fifty of my friends expecting that Bill Gates was going to send me a $100 gift card to Chi-Chi’s.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  We haven’t had a Chi-Chi’s in this area since 1998.  Is that place even still in business?

FunnyCrave: No, buddy, not since that Hepatitis outbreak.

Blake Winchell: Yeah, I figured as much.  Anyway, all of my friends thought I was a fool.  What would Bill Gates be sending out tex mex giftcards for?  They all laughed.  But nobody’s laughing now, because I have an iPad!

FunnyCrave: Awesome!  So, why don’t you tell us how you got it?

Blake Winchell: Well I got this email, it said my friend Mike wanted to give me a free iPad.  And all I had to do was complete a free trial offer.  I don’t know Mike that well, but he’s always seemed like an alright kind of guy, so I figured it was on the up and up.  And besides, I’ve always wanted to try Netflix.

FunnyCrave: Wait, you never used Netflix before?

Blake Winchell: No.  Why?  Is that weird?

FunnyCrave: Kinda.  That’s like saying you’ve never tried YouTube or something.

Blake Winchell: Youwhatnow?

FunnyCrave: Wow.  That’s heavy.  Anyway, so you signed up for Netflix, then what happened?

Blake Winchell: Yeah, so I finish the trial, I cancel it online or whatever and they give me this code.  I have to enter this code back at the original site that the email directed me to.  I enter this code and it says “You’re almost there!  Refer two friends by providing their email addresses below.  Once they complete their free trials, your iPad will be on its way!”  So now I’m kind of pissed because it never mentioned a second step, but I’m emotionally invested at this point, you know?

FunnyCrave: We all are, Blake.  We’re all right here with you.  Just keep talking.

Blake Winchell: Yeah, so I figure, I’ll get my girlfriend in on it.  I give her the details, she seems excited about it, which in turn makes me excited, and now everybody’s excited.  All around the room, iPad mania, catch the fever!

FunnyCrave: Woooo!

Blake Winchell: Yeah!  So I tell her I need a second email address.  I tell her we need a friend of hers or something who might want to complete one of these free trials too.  And she’s like “you mean like a three way?” and I’m like “no, I mean, if you’re into it, yeah, but no, we just need a third and we’ll all get a free iPad.”

FunnyCrave: You mean like a three way?

Blake Winchell: Exactly!  So after I drill it into her head what I need, she sits down and enters this third email address for me.  And at first, I’m thinking about how nice of a gesture that is, because I was all prepared to type it myself if she would just dictate it to me but then I notice…it’s some other guy’s email!

FunnyCrave: Whoa!  Speaking of dick!

Blake Winchell: Come again?

FunnyCrave: You said “dictate” and then it was a guy’s email, so I was like “Whoa!  Speaking of dick!”

**awkward silence**

Blake Winchell: So I just play it off, right?  I’m like “hey, I thought maybe you’d pass it along to one of your girlfriends or something.  Who’s this Bruce guy?”  She gives me some yarn about how he was her lab partner last semester and he was kind of a geek but he was really into gadgets and shit so she figured he’d be the most likely to see this whole thing through, because he’d probably really want an iPad, you know?

FunnyCrave: Makes sense.

Blake Winchell: What?  Whose fucking side are you on here?

FunnyCrave: Sorry?

Blake Winchell: Yeah, you will be!  So anyway, I’m a little suspicious, but like a good boyfriend, I keep my jealousy buried down deep until we’re in an argument that I’m losing or something.  That way I have a card to play.  Good thing, too.  Because a couple weeks later, we were balls deep in an argument about how I don’t have a job and out of nowhere I’m like “well why don’t you just go fuck Bruce then?”  BOOM!  Subject changed!

FunnyCrave: Clever.

Blake Winchell: So now it’s all out in the open and I’m asking about this Bruce guy and why I never hear about how his free Netflix trial is going or if he’s got any good leads on an economically priced silicone sleeve to protect our iPads once they arrive or anything like that and just when I’m really gettin’ fired up she stops me and says “there’s something I need to tell you.”

FunnyCrave: Aw, shit, Blake, I think we’ve heard enough.  How about you just stop talking for awhile and try to relax?

Blake Winchell: So she sits me down and goes into this long story about how at first, Bruce really was nobody and that her explanation about him being a geeky lab partner was true, but she could tell I was jealous and that made her mad.  So mad, in fact, that she decided to email Bruce just to see how things were going and to ask if he ever signed up for that free Netflix trial and maybe if he did they could get together and watch a movie some night.

FunnyCrave: Please tell me this is the part where Bruce calls her a retard for assuming he’d never used Netflix before.

Blake Winchell: That’s exactly what happened.

FunnyCrave: Whew, that was close!  Your lady almost cheated on you!  Glad that worked out, buddy!  I think you’re going to be ok!

Blake Winchell: You didn’t let me finish.  They were talking via email, so when he called her a retard, he added one of those little emoticons on the end like men of lesser character are prone to do sometimes.

FunnyCrave: Oh dear God.

Blake Winchell: Six hours later, Bruce was banging my lady on his Wal Mart metal framed futon.

FunnyCrave: Wow.  Metal frame.  What a whore.

Blake Winchell: I was so devastated after she told me that I just kind of wandered out to my car and got in and started driving.  After a few miles I glanced over and noticed that I had this huge unopened bottle of vodka there in the passenger seat.  I had stolen it from my buddy’s liquor cabinet and was going to try and take it to the liquor store and return it and then use the money to buy booze.

FunnyCrave: That is literally the stupidest thing ever.

Blake Winchell: I realized that after awhile, so instead I cracked it open and started drinking.  I figured the booze would calm my nerves a bit and maybe I could figure out where the hell I was even driving to.

FunnyCrave: Now that’s using your brain!

Blake Winchell: Yeah, so I’m driving into the city and I had this really badass death metal tune just cranked to keep me on point, you know, because I was kind of hammered, but at some point I must have dozed off for a second and next thing I know there’s just bodies, fucking, bodies flying everywhere!  And loud noises!  Like the sound of a car hitting a person and sending that person hurtling into the air.  And the music changed.  It wasn’t death metal anymore.  There was some kind of whimsical indie rock playing in the background, you know, amidst all the blood and stuff.

FunnyCrave: Probably a Feist song.

Blake Winchell: Maybe.  I don’t remember.  I don’t remember anything after that.  Just, carnage, you know?  A whole lot of hipster carnage.  And then…I was here, with you.  And I have my iPad!

FunnyCrave: Wait, have you been talking about that iPad this whole time?

Blake Winchell: Yeah, this one right here.

FunnyCrave: You mean the one currently lodged in your sternum?  That’s what this whole story has been about?

Blake Winchell: That’s the one!  Didn’t cost me a dime!  Sure, it might not support flash or run mult….

FunnyCrave: Well not to interrupt, but I think I can fill in some of the gaps in your story.

Blake Winchell: Ok.

FunnyCrave: See, after you “dozed off for a second” you plowed your car into a crowd of people standing in line outside of an Apple store waiting to buy the new iPad.  In the ensuing death and destruction, this here iPad must have become lodged in your chest and, by the looks of things, it’s probably the only thing keeping you from bleeding to death right here on the street.

Blake Winchell: Wow.  Kind of a double edged sword if you think about it, because if I live, I’m almost certainly going to prison for a long time.

FunnyCrave: Maybe.  Depends on the laws in this particular jurisdiction.  I’d Google them quick but I’d have to remove that iPad from your chest to do it.

Blake Winchell: What a pickle!

FunnyCrave: Eh, I hear the Wi-Fi on those things is kind of shitty anyway.

Blake Winchell: Yeah, it’d probably just be a big waste of time.  In fact, I’m starting to think this entire ordeal has been a waste of time.

FunnyCrave: Not a complete waste.  I mean, I did get this new iPad out of the deal.

Blake Winchell: What?  No!  You wouldn’t!  It’s the only thing keeping me alive though!

FunnyCrave: Sorry, Blake.  Looks like keeping you alive is just one more thing the iPad sucks at.