You've Got Mail
First and foremost, I have to get this off my chest. "You've got mail" is grammatically incorrect. If you remove the conjunction, it reads, "You have got mail." That's redundant, to say nothing of sloppy. Then again, I don't suppose AOL is going to pony up the dough to have that cheerful gentleman come back into the recording studio just to say, "You have mail." They should though.
I don't have AOL. I have Hotmail, otherwise known as "Annoying Mail." To have a Hotmail account is to take a filthy lukewarm bath in spam. I get over 10 spam mails each day, and it's just become routine for me to delete messages from "Wet Yvette." I'm sorry to hear about Yvette's liquid status, but that's the extent of my concern. Ah, but I'm not going to talk about spam mail. I've already analyzed that topic to death, and I'm still getting spammed, so it's pointless to bitch.
My gripe today is about forwards, the chain letters of the world wide web. I think it's safe to say that I've seen every forward ever forwarded, albeit in slightly tweaked form, 20 times each. I swear, for about a month about two years ago, I got the same "Ugly American" forward sent to me 30 times. It was attributed to everyone from George Carlin to the local television repairman.
And, although it totally cracked me up the first time, I think I got that "Every Time You Masturbate, God Kills a Kitten" thing about 80 times. By the eighth time, however, I had lost all sympathy for that cat. I wanted those creatures to catch that cat and violate it in whatever way big brown cushy monsters violate cats.
The point is, I'm tired of forwards. I don't look at forwards any more. I had to tell my girlfriend to stop sending me forwards or I'd break up with her, and I was only partially kidding.
I don't want to read another top ten list of anything. I don't want to read some piece of pseudo-inspirational tripe that has to be sent to ten other people immediately or my head will shrivel like a raisin and my penis will fall off. I don't want to read another piece of poorly written poetry about the horrors of drinking and driving. I know that drinking and driving is bad. I don't need a poem about some teenager named "Kathy" who hurtled through a windshield to make me understand that drinking and driving is bad. And I'm NOT going to send it on to 20 other people. Kathy's horrible tale dies in my inbox. Sorry Kathy. Get well soon.
Now, I understand that some people enjoy getting forwards, and they can't wait to wade through their inboxes and read through every single one of those irritating things, but I am not one of those people. I guess I would rather read original thoughts from friends and family, rather than regurgitated crap that has circled the globe a thousand times and has become so familiar, people in Tanzania can recite it verbatim.
I view forwards as tantamount to the boring relative who keeps telling the same stories over, and over, and over again. Forwards, I think, are a sort of friendship life support system for friendships that are hanging by a thread. Sure, you haven't talked to "Tony" in over three years, but you send him forwards all the time, so everything is good. In actuality, Tony is probably a lot like me, deleting the damned things without so much as a second glance. So, for the sake of world sanity, please stop sending forwards.
And, please, send this on to 20 people, or your hair will turn white and you'll grow breasts from your armpits and the only television station that comes in at your house will be the one featuring the Anna Nicole Show on a 24 hour loop.
Posted by Ryan at February 7, 2003 11:10 AM
Stumble It!
