Ok. I’ve had it. Between magdalene’s glurge troubles and the three I’ve gotten at work today, one from I cousin I don’t like, one from someone I sort-of know and one from some rocket scientist who figured out how The Security Guy sends e-mail to everyone in the building, I was inspired to write the following rant and send it back to the glurgers. I’m sick of my life being glurgified. I want a glurge free life dammit! (Glurge-free, perhaps. Trouble free…maybe not. If the Rocket Scientist shows this to the IT department, I suspect I’m gonna get another talking-to.)
These are all TRUE stories!
In California there was a little girl named Brittanie. She loved her mommy and daddy very much, but because they were sSSsooo busy, they didn’t have time to watch her as closely as they could. One day, while playing on mommy’s computer Brittanie got an e-mail message from a friend of her mommy’s which talked about how a little boy named Timmy was dying of a horrible disease and how mommy should pray for him. Brittanie decided to go to the hospital so that she could be his friend. She was hit by a cement-mixer truck while trying to cross a highway in an attempt to get to the hospital. She slipped into a coma and died in agony that night in the very hospital where Brittanie was trying to go. What’s truly sad is that there was no such person as Timmy. Brittanie died for nothing. If only mommy’s friend had THOUGHT and CHECKED HER FACTS before sending that silly e-mail, Brittanie would be alive today.
Grannie Agnes was reading the e-mails her “friends” sent. These “friends” were too busy to actually write to her, but they passed on every little bit of silly, useless, preachy story that they ran across as a sop to their conscience. Granny read these messages because it was better than sitting in her lonely room waiting for one of her “friends” to call. She had several huge stacks of printouts of those messages. The latest one was about a boy named Michael who saved his sister’s life by singing “You Are My Sunshine” to her. Granny reached up and put it on the top of the pile. The pile toppled and fell, crushing her. She wasn’t found for three days. No one had cared enough to visit her. But she did have 31 more e-mails just like that from her “friends” as she lay dead.
Jamal loved his baby son Kareem more than life itself. But when his baby son ingested some poinsettia leaves during the holidays, Jamal was frantic. He tried to log onto the internet to find out how to treat poinsettia poisoning, but he kept getting interrupted by people sending him “Heartwarming Christmas Messages” about how Candy Canes represented the “J” in Jesus and the red and white stripes stand for His blood and purity. He eventually cleared all these messages out and was relieved to find that poinsettias weren’t poisonous at all. Relieved, that is, until he found that his son had gotten tangled in the Christmas lights and strangled. If only Jamal could have gotten the poinsettia information sooner!
Fenris, who was trying to work, got one too many e-mails about a mommy birdie who sacrificed herself to save her baby birdies from a forest fire. He snapped, got a machine gun, climbed a nearby tower and died in a shoot-out with the cops. If only he hadn’t gotten that e-mail.
What do these four stories have in common?
In each case, a person was so selfish that rather than spend a moment of their time writing something honest that shared a bit their life or amused or entertained or informed, they took the cheap, easy way out and sent prepackaged lies to people in an vain attempt to imply that they cared. Don’t be like these people. Don’t forward this message. And don’t forward any others.
Fenris, Jamal, Granny Agnes and Brittanie thank you.
Fenris
[Fixed your url code, just as Jesus would have done if He were Pit moderator – Alpha]
Hell, I think I WILL send it to the morons that keep sending my this junk…What’s the worst that could happen, they stop sending this shit my way? They don’t send me ANYTHING?
Fenris, can I have your permission to save the OP as a means of responding to people who send me sappy “send this to everyone you know and add your name to the bottom” E-mails? I’d replace the name “Fenris” with my own, of course (since people I’d send this to don’t know you).
I have my own satire piece (about Farmer Joe and his cow Betsy, who is dying of Cowdienitis), but this is a helluva lot funnier.
You know, poinsettas ARE poisonous to cats and dogs, though.
Which is why I always scream at my dad for bringing the damn things home, since Misty likes to chew on EVERYTHING she gets her furry little paws on. One of these days, that cat’s gonna get hung up by her tail! Argh!
I must say, I feel I’ve made a small dent in the fight against ignorance. When I used to work at the law firm, we had one secretary that would forward glurg on to all the secretaries. Continually. The same ones. Over and over. Before I left, I was complaining to a friend and was telling her about Snopes. She emailed me the other day with a glurg (yep, from that secretary) attached, asking me for the web address “of that one site that tells how all this is bulls***…” Success! Hopefully, she emailed it on to the other gal.
That was great!
So I’ve been getting glurged and didn’t know what to call it.
I just delete them.
But I will save your OP and send it to them instead.
Thanks.
You, sir, are cool.
Fenris, I need a slightly toned-down version for feeble old people.
I sent a version of Milo’s comments (in the other thread) to my Grampa and one of the Aunties -
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the self-preservation instincts to flee armed terrorists wherever they may attack.”
My Grampa wrote back:
“the Men had Guns, Jennifer” (capitalization reproduced intact)
What the hell does that even MEAN?
This man is one of my heroes in life. I need a gentler way to tell him to STOP FORWARDING CRAP! I guess I’m gonna have to cop out and go the old “my inbox is too full route” with family members. With friends I’m pretty comfortable saying “Unless YOU wrote it specifically to ME, I don’t want it ever” or, as a good friend once said “I mistrust all email not originally composed by the sender.” But how to deal with sweet kind old men looking out for their granddaughter’s soul? Tell him I sold it to Enderw24 on http://www.soulexchange.com?
My standard response to glurge, e-mail snowballs, flying cows, chain letters and general tripe:
T H E W O R L D ' S F I R S T P R E - E M P T I V E
T H E R M O N U C L E A R S T R I K E
V I A E M A I L
OOOOOO
OOO OOO
OOO OOO
OO OO
O O
O O
OO OO
OOO OOO
OOO OOO
OOOOOO
O O
O O
OOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
O O
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOO
_________________________OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO___________________________
CONSIDER YOURSELF NUKED.
*******************************************************************
What exactly is the difference between spam and glurg? I always thought of these afoementioned chesseball e-mails “spam.” It sounds like glurg is a particular type of spam, yes? And how did the term “glurg” come about? Doesn’t “spam” come from a Monty Python routine?
Eager to Get My Learning On,
Patty
P.S. I appreciate the difficulty some folks would have sending Fenris’ message out - I tried to gently straighten out a friend and some others about the breast cancer/antiperspirant crap that Cecil debunked ages ago (even quoted from his column to do it) and she didn’t take it well. Barb complained she wasn’t sure WHAT was okay to send me.
