Tuesday, October 13, 2009

sob... " and she's not even my dog, she's my wife's..."

The internet never fails to surprise and entertain, for good or ill. I don't do as much on it as I used to, but I still check daily for e-mails from various friends, family and acquaintances. The point of most of these mailings is only vaguely to keep in touch--I think it's mostly about that age-old human foible of wanting to be the first one to tell/show your friends something spectacular, outrageous, or scandalous--it's that same trait that makes keeping a secret so very, very hard. Some of them are of the chain variety, beseeching you to send to seven other people for dubious reasons, including:

- proving your love for Jesus/saving your soul,
- saving the world,
- making you wealthy,
- giving someone a laugh,
- showing you have a truly macho set of cajones (be you male or female).

Each of us probably have friends who may appreciate forwarded e-mails, but even so I rarely forward.

Today, for example, I woke up to 4 e-mails that egged me on to forward, for some of the above reasons...but for other reasons, I deleted all and did not forward any.

Here you go:

1. Pix of cute toddlers doing outrageously funny things. I have people who would love some, but not all of these; I am too lazy to purge the ones that might offend.

2. Pix and narrative of an airplane badly damaged in a non-flying ground accident. This story amazed me and because of my background, really caught my interest. Unfortunately, the narrative was an unrepentant ethnic slam on the aircrew, who were 100% at fault and 100% all of the same background. I started to purge the narrative, then got lazy and deleted.

3. Pix of topless women commemorating "National Topless Women's Day." I didn't know we had such a holiday... and right on the heels of Columbus Day! But seriously folks, I don't solicit this stuff nor do I forward, but clearly I am a guy who knows guys who send it. I love a joke as much, maybe more than the next guy; I get lots of funny stuff and sometimes it runs on the ribald side. Though sorely tempted to forward a good joke, I don't promulgate this kind of stuff.

4. A quiz: NFL or NBA? "Which of these organizations is riddled with people guilty of the following outrageous, even illegal behavior? Answer: neither--it's your U.S. Congress!!! It's True!!!" Well, not exactly, as it turns out. There is a good lesson here. We all get e-mails that intend to startle us with some little-known but "indisputable" truth. It pays to check out rumor-ish types of e-mails at one of the debunking sites, like http://www.truthorfiction.com/ or http://www.snopes.com/ before forwarding. I once forwarded an alarming e-mail to many people about the toxic danger of re-using plastic bottles--I later found out it was an urban myth. I sheepishly sent out an apology e-mail to dozens of people. There is also a corollary lesson. I once e-mailed somebody back that "I checked your e-mail and it was a myth"--I was probably perceived as a snobbish boor--they never answered and I haven't heard from them since. Moral: I don't forward these, and neither do I correct them.

So, what, if anything, do I forward? Mostly simple things that strike me hard with some sort of truth. Here are links to two things I would forward:

1. Something that harkens back to a simpler time, when patriotism was about ideals, and not so much sullied by momentary political folly:

http://www.clown-ministry.com/red-skelton-videos/video/y_tBqrHMoTs

2. Something that amazes me, like tying the omniscient to the omnipresent:

http://www.andiesisle.com/GoD_and_DoG.html

That second one really got to me, hence the blog's title. Enjoy!

1 comment:

belleshpgrl said...

You know some ... interesting people, Dad.

I once corrected someone's myth and the same thing happened to me. I bet they were just embarrassed. It was the one about a killer spider lurking under Olive Garden toilets. Rewriting that even sounds preposterous. I don't know how anyone believed it.