kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coercing Karma Well, on the heels of my last entry it only seems fitting that I loose the yipping dogs of war on something that just got up my nose this morning. It was a forward. You know the ones, at least if you have a Sweet Older Lady somewhere in your family. My mother is definitely a Sweet Older Lady, but she also has a mind like a diamond-lensed laser, and if she sends me anything like that, it’s because it has a good cat picture somewhere in it. But my MIL will send these things along, sometimes. Sometimes they have a little slide show that you download with pictures of puppies and kittens and plagiarized quotations from the Serenity Prayer. Sometimes they’re little lists of jokes that would make a diehard misogynist homophobic racist cry, if they hadn’t all be magically transformed into blonde jokes. Sometimes they’re those forwards urging you to not drink Pepsi because they don’t have the words “under God” somewhere on the can (I know, wha???? I’m not all that sure I understand that one.) Sometimes they’re little seasonal messages, like the Santa Claus who drops his little red knickers when you click the Ho-Ho-Ho. They all irritate me hugely, but at the moment it’s the “pass on the GROUP HUG” type message that's torquing my ass, and almost every single one of THOSE little fuckers has a note on the bottom. And it's that note that makes them voted Most Likely to Irritate Kethrai. “Pass this email on to 8 people within the hour, and all your wishes will Come True. Pass this email on to 6 people, and you will have magically passed off all your karmic irritation to each poor schmoe you mail it to. Email it out to only four people—well, dude, you’re short on friends but at least they’ll pity you. Mail it to two people, and you will only come down with a heavy flu. Don’t mail this on and you will DIE IN A FIERY CAR WRECK! Love ya, Your Buddy.” I have never liked chain letters with their thinly veiled karmic threats, and the ease of hitting forward—address—send makes them that much more prevalent and irritating. It’s a nasty form of hostility, mailing it on. After all, you read the warning at the bottom and what if your friend has momentary amnesia and can’t think of even one person to mail it on to, or it hits their mail box and they aren’t even around to check it and the hour goes by? Karmic Roulette? You bastard. Thanks so much. What is the point of these, anyway? Expecially the ones that say "Mail this back to me for a GROUP HUG, because I need one?" Needy, much? Goddamn. Get a teddy bear. Maybe because I spent a good deal of my life writing letters--actual letters, stamp and envelope and anything--I feel rather compelled to respond to email. But how do you respond to something that isn't even your friend or your mom writing? It's like hugging a robot. Yikes. There's no particular moral or summing up to this entry. Except if you're going to forward me something, it better have a good cat picture in it. 5:58 p.m. - 2003-02-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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