'Tis the Season for More Tripe Like This!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve already ranted adequately about those goddamned syrupy “pass this on” emails I get from well-meaning ‘friends.’ I had forgotten that with the holiday season comes more occasions for this shit to be passed on. Here is the latest gem. I hope you enjoy the little “pass it on or you’re some kind of prick” addendum.

Gifts are Sometimes Invisible.

The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper.

Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box was empty. He yelled at her, “Don’t you know when you give someone a present, there’s supposed to be something inside it?”

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All just for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness.

An accident took the life of the child only a short time later [Wow! Cranky didn’t see THAT coming!] and it is told that the man kept that gold box by his bed for many years and
whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us as humans, have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, friends, family and God. There is not a more precious possession anyone could hold.

You now have two choices:

  1. Pass this on to your family and friends; or
  2. Delete it and act like it didn’t touch your heart

As you can see, I took choice number 1. Family and friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering “how to fly.”

2

I was having a perfectly good day until I read this glurge. I am going to go and remove myself from the gene pool now.

3

And I mean none. My niece (my 9 year-old niece, ferchrissakes!) recently sent me some heart-wrenching story that someone else had forwarded her and guilt-tripped her into sending to me. I flamed her. I think I made my sweet little pig-tailed niece cry. I apologized, of course, and explained that I was in the grip of a berserk fury (and a borderline diabetic coma from all the syrupy goodness,) promised to buy her a doll or something, and crawled back under my rock.

I hate that I showed my “Ogre” side to my niece, but I was very firm. “Don’t ever send me anything like that again, please.”

Now who is “cranky as an old man?” And I’m only 28!

4

My . . . eyes!!! They’re melting! GREAT VISHNU MAKE THE PAIN STOP!!!

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On the other hand, those of us on Christmas budgets have just figured out the perfect presents for our parents.

6

Awww… That was such a SWEET story!!! You guys are all just heartless bastards who don’t give a damn about the holiday spirit. Shame on you! :rolleyes: (Sorry, but someone was bound to do it.)

Seriously, I never get this stuff. Not that I’m feeling left out or anything.

::runs off to “hide” her email address in her profile:: :smiley:

7

I want to find the bastard who MAKES THESE STORIES UP and wring his neck.

If I want to be shamelessly manipulated, there are other places I can go…

And yes, we do have someone (a business person’s WIFE, no less) who has our office on her mass email list for just this sort of crap. It drives me nuts to get this stuff at work, as if I’m not busy or anything.

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And the thing I hate worst about it (and, lo, there is much to choose from) is the implication that if you think this is vomitous dreck, then you are a worthless, callous person with a heart of stone – sort of, “isn’t this sweet and if you disagree, you’re a jerk.”

Actually, I’m going to send it to my sister because I know it will give her the dry heaves, so I guess it’s not entirely worthless. :slight_smile:

9

The only thing worse than receiving something like this in your e-mail is having your pastor include it in his sermon. At least if it’s e-mail I can just delete it, but I haven’t been able to find my pastor’s Stop Loading button.

10

This is the sort of crap a local radio personality LOVES to read as part of his daily “commentary” - inevitably a sappy, inane piece that ends with: “That’s my opinion. We welcome yours.”

Oh yeah, like he’d let anyone broadcast a dose of reality! I hope Santa brings me a CD player for my car so I don’t have to listed to radio when I drive home…

11

:::wiping vomit off keyboard:::

12

geez…I figured the little girl would have died shortly afterward of some excruciatingly painful disease. Oh yeah, and didn’t the little girl actually raid the small tin box on the shelf that held what little money was left for food between now and christmas and spend it in the wrapping paper.
blessedwolf, don’t you know how hard it is to get that stuff cleaned up from between the keys. Yeech!

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Dear Moron Who Forwarded this:

Was my heart touched? No.
Gag reflex? Oh yes.

Your former friend,
Cranky

14

You cannot imagine how much I hate, nay, loathe this kind of schlock. It makes my gentle heart, a heart full of goodwill towards men and wishes for peace on earth, want to hit the sender over the head with a bat while screaming at them, “Don’t you know this is complete crap that some tear-jerker, quasi-writer slapped together in his/her spare time? Use your head! Do you think this really happened???”

::ahem:: adjusts dress::

Now, I wish Snopes would come up with a UL site for this kind of feces. Then I could email the page cite back to my sister (who sends me this dreck even after numerous pleas not to) with the big headline:
“YOUNG CANCER VICTIM DOES NOT WANT EMAILS FROM EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD; WILL NOT BE PRAYING FOR EACH EMAIL SENDER”

or

“GOD DOESN’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE BECAUSE THIS MADE YOU CRY! IF THIS PIECE OF JOURNALISTIC DETRIUS MADE YOU CRY, YOU NEED TO SPEND MORE TIME HELPING OUT DOWN AT THE SALVATION ARMY!”

okay, I’m done.

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Ask and ye shall receive.

The Inboxer Rebellion

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Paste this into your Outlook or Eudora or favourite Web mail server and send it right back to the folks who send you Heartwarming Stories.

A HEARTWARMING CHRISTMAS TALE

Some years ago in a big Midwestern city, a wealthy businessman known for his avarice found himself opening a Christmas present from his young son and daughter. When he opened it, he found that there was nothing inside.

The greedy man was furious. “Don’t you know that when you give someone a present, there should be something inside?” he yelled.

In tears, his children explained to him that they had blown kisses into the box for him.

The businessman was humbled. He had not thought the gift could be so simple and yet so special. He realized, then and there, the purity and generosity his children had displayed, and how they understood the true meaning of Christmas.

Plus, his small children had come up with a magnificent idea! Gifts with nothing in them but imaginary kisses! He hugged his chilren and thanked them for such a great idea.

That afternoon the man skipped Christmas dinner and went into the office to work on his new idea… NoGifts! Soon his company made billions by marketing and selling elaborate gift boxes with nothing inside except inane messages like “I filled this box with hope/love/kisses/hugs for you!” The boxes became a hgue craze. People loved to give them away to show how artsy and refined they were, even though the boxes, made exclusively by the man’s company, were quite expensive.

The next Christmas the man’s children again approached him with a gift… a NoGift! Furious, the man yelled at his chilren again!

“But Daddy,” they cried, “all the men outside made us give it to you!”

What men? The man rushed to the door to see what was outside.

Sure enough, the street outside was thronged with tens of thousands of furious consumers, all irate that they had been suckered into buying $49.99 NoGifts and ended up recieving NoGifts in return, leaving them with huge credit card bills and not even a lousy T-shirt to show for it. The screaming man was pulled out to his lawn by the irate mob and crucified on a cross that had been built especially for the occasion. While he squealed like a pig and writhed in indescribable agony, he was set on fire and the mob danced around the blaze, singing Christmas carols. Later, his blackened corpse was fed to a pack of rottweilers while his family was forced to watch. The next day they raided the man’s corporate headquarters and hanged or disemboweled the entire workforce. Over 2900 were slain in the raid, ensuing riot, and the barrage of gunfire from the riot squad. The city was ablaze for a week and much of it is in ruins to this day.

Thrown into poverty, the greedy man’s wife eventually killed herself with an overdose and her children who had started the whole goddamn mess were adopted by a granola-eating couple who didn’t give Christmas presents at all because all that wrapping paper meant more murdered trees. They both ended up needing a lot of therapy.

The moral is: If you screw people at Christmas, you’ll be crucified and set on fire and fed to dogs, so don’t cheap out on presents, you greedy bastard.

17

OK, technically Barb and Dave cannot prove that God isn’t crying right about now. But they sure rip the hell out of all the dialysis machines and AOL CDs.

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Beautiful, Rick! Thanks!

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Merry Christmas. :slight_smile: http://www.snopes2.com/glurge/glurge.htm

20

Just this morning I received some crap of that kind, with the heading : “Please take the time to read through this”.

The hell I will.

Delete.

Then some numbskull on the mailing list sent it again. :mad:

I’ll be using Rick’s offering, as I’ve suddenly developed the urge to piss a few people off.