Forward This Or Else

I got this email the other day. You have to see it in all it's glory:

This is Serious!
This incident happened recently in North Texas .
A woman went boating one Sunday taking with her some cans of coke
which she put into the refrigerator of the boat.
On Monday she was taken to the hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit.
She died on Wednesday.

The autopsy concluded she died of Leptospirosis.
This was traced to the can of coke she drank from, not using a glass.
Tests showed that the can was infected by dried rat urine and
hence the disease Leptospirosis.

Rat urine contains toxic and deathly substances.
It is highly recommended to thoroughly wash the upper part
of all soda cans before drinking out of them.
The cans are typically stocked in warehouses and transported straight to the shops without being cleaned.

A study at NYCU showed that the tops of all soda cans are more contaminated than public toilets (i.e.). full of germs and bacteria. So wash them with water before putting them to the mouth to avoid any kind of fatal accident.



Please forward this message to all the people you care about.
I JUST DID!

Mmmkay. These things set my teeth on edge. Pet Peeveville. Since the people who forward this type of email don't have the netiquette to use BCC, I hit reply all and put in a link to Snopes or whomever debunks the obviously false statements, and in the past few years, I've gotten - well, a bit more sarcastic with my responses:

Leptospirosis isn't fatal, and none of the people in this email existed. Guess that killed em, since they weren't real. Link

I got a response. Now, I love this person a lot. This person means quite a bit to Sis and I. This person responded with a comment that the part about the cans being dirty was true, and that was what was important. I agree that cleaning is important. But I do NOT agree with sending alarmist lies to people attempting to cause panic to support this "policy." There was no "woman in North Texas. NYCU doesn't exist, so it would be difficult for a figment of the author's imagination to have published the study in question. I was in debate for four years - evidence is important. Made up evidence starts my motor, and not in a good way.

Okay, so most of these people have no geek blood in them. The magic box just works, and big companies and money are involved. Therefore, there has to be a simple secret to making money with no effort at all - why, there are ads on late night tv that say you can! The people using computers and making money probably didn't get rich by long hours, hard work and good ideas. No, they got it from some secret process that involves forwarding an email:

Dear Friends,
Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.

When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period.

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00.

Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.

Regards.

Chinu! I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my address and within days, I received a cheque for US$24,800.00.

You need to respond before the beta testing is over. If anyone can afford this Bill Gates is the man. It's all marketing expense to him.

Please forward this to as many people as possible. You are bound to get at least US$10,000.00.

Trust me. It doesn't work. The Taco Bell Chihuahua never ran across your screen, now did it?!? If it's not Gates, it's some coupon, or some other company looking to over pay for a grassroots email promotion. There is not an email tracking program (yet, but Our Benevolent Government would just love one). I could get all geeky and glaze eyeballs with an explanation but that isn't what ya wanna hear. Sorry, you're just
gonna have to trust me rather than some anonymous yuckster laughing their asses off somewhere.

I'm part of the 8%. If you love Jesus, you'll forward this email. If you love the devil, just go ahead and delete this email. 92% will delete this.

Please show me any church's doctrine that claims that forwarding emails professing to love Jesus will get me into heaven, but deleting will send me to the pits of hell. Hey, remember, it's a magic box, and G_d is hooked in as well. Frankly, I suspect when I stand before Him on my Judgment Day, He is going to be a bit more concerned with how I obeyed the Ten Commandments and what I did for other people. I'm just sayin.'

You won't see this in the media. Our brave soldiers are doing a world of good, but there is no coverage of the positive things our boys do (followed by a lot of uplifting pics of soldiers, happy kids, and so on - most likely taken by Michael Yon). Forward this to all the people you know, because we want to show the mainstream media that we support our troops, and we want the word to get out.

Remember, this is the magic box, where things come easy. I'm sure our boys in the sandbox are extremely comforted knowing there are millions of emails circulating the internet supporting their efforts. That has to be much much better than, oh, say, a nice care package from home, or a letter or postcard. Yep, when they come home, the stories of how all those emails will be on their minds and lips - they just can't wait to thank you for your major big time effort. Click away, you internet patriot! Make Keith Olbermann and Katie Couric rue the day!

This virus was on the front page of USA Today, and on Norton's and McAfee's websites. This virus destroys the zero sector of the hard drive, where all the important data is kept.

Yep, actually looking or searching the named websites are beyond our concerned forwarder. They did their part - they'd rather send this out to all their friends and be wrong than not do it and feel responsible for all their pal's destroyed zero sector of the hard drives. Apparently, the data on other parts of the drive just isn't important. Better go grease your muffler bearings, Bunky. You might find the zero sector there. Besides, that might warm you up so flapping your arms especially fast can get you to the moon.

I wonder if I can write one of these:

This is National Ear Wax Awareness Week. NASA and the Pentagon, with assistance from the NACM (National Association of Christian Ministers) and teamed with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have announced some important news you should know. The mainsteam media has not been informed. The parties involved want to spread this knowledge by email, because the people who use email are more technically literate and therefore more desirable for the survival of our planet.

The existence of human earwax eating monsters from Mars has been confirmed, and their plans of world domination have been discovered. The monsters appear to be clones of the older Elvis Presley but with an anteater like probiscus meant to suck out human earwax. Unfortunately, when they attack, the brains of the victim are usually ingested by these inhuman freaks. Equally unfortunate is the fact that their space traveling technology is superior to ours, so they will attack.

What can you, as a selected person, do? First and foremost, you must keep your ear canals clean. This means using Q-Tips© in an unapproved manner - you must insert the tip in your ear canal to clean the material. The monsters have a highly developed sense of smell, and will not attack you if your ears are clean.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have supplied this program with funding as an incentive to help save humanity. For every person you forward this to, you will receive $150. For every person they forward to, you receive $149. The third teir of forwarders nets you $148 - and so on. They all receive the appropriate amounts for the people under them as well. This should keep us all well stocked with Q-Tips© and walking around money until the military and NASA can deal with the aliens.

The program founders also feel that Christianity should be represented by the majority of the survivors. So, the NACM requests that if you love Jesus, please forward this to all your friends. They also advise that if you love the Devil, or are in league with the monsters, then by all means delete this email.

Remember, you will not hear of this on television or the radio. This is an internet exclusive. I'm not a lawyer or a scientist, but I have friends who are. They assure me this is for real and not a hoax. If you want to survive, forward this email. Since this email was released by the Pentagon and they don't want the media to find out, if you do delete this message, the zero sector of your hard drive (where this important information is kept) will be destroyed.

I love you and Jesus, so I sent this to you! Please do the same!

If I get this in an email, I'm gonna be ROTFLMAO!