Since the dawn of time, the bane of correspondence, and those who love correspondence, is… The Chain Letter.
This is one man’s (overdue) response…
“Chained” to Chain Letters?
(Intro “Chain of Fools”, by Aretha Franklin)
From the beginning of time, people have received chain letters and we’ve always been conflicted as to what to do with them.
Noah once found himself on a chain letter list, and it took centuries to fulfill his “obligations” and earn the fame and fortune promised to him in the ancient Aramaic text. (It’s true! Go ahead look it up. It’s in the “Book of Obligations, verse 5:14”):
“Yea, Verily, For then, the Sequence scripture sayeth unto him: Letteth not even one link of yon chain scripture be rent asunder, for if thou allowest this, thou mayest findeth oneself under a great multitude of water!”
Noah took this warning to heart, as we all know- he was late, but he tried! Building that big boat just took up a LOT of his time…
Harry Truman once got a chain letter. He didn’t like ‘em! NOT ONE BIT! Nossir! So, you know what HE did with chain letters! They went right into the “circular file”! He broke the chain and he still became President!
Where do you think the expression: “The buck stops here” came from?- only it originally was : “the Bullsh*t stops here”… (Historians just cleaned it up for seventh grade textbooks!)
Before the internet, they’d show up once in a while, and you only had that queasy feeling until you finally decided to either continue the chain or toss the ominous letter in the waste basket.
“Do ya feel lucky, punk? …Well, do ya?” Do you dare break the chain?
Ol’ Clint E. got famous and found himself on numerous chain letter lists. Why do you think all those early westerns of his were made in Italy? He was much more difficult to find, so he didn’t have to worry about breaking the chain!
Now that the internet has sped things up considerably, I get a chain letter of one sort or another almost every day…
– There’s child in Brasil who will receive a kidney transplant from Bill Gates’ brother in law’s doberman, if he can send a bazillion e-mails all over the world and get people to stop what they’re doing and then write an e-mail back made entirely with “emoticons”… :-)~
– There’s a bible teacher in East Horse Neck, Mississippi who believes that if he can contact everyone in the U.S. at the same time, he’ll be able to create a critical mass in the internet and the barrier between Man & God will be broken down at last.
– I remember when, if you wanted to “see God”, all you had to do was take some acid. You didn’t need to contact three dozen friends.
Now, if I pass these chain letters along, I feel kinda sleazy; sorta like an AMWAY “distributor”! People who are normally your friends “forget” to return your calls… Things like that. Friends don’t send friends chain letters!
– Finally, there are the normally kind, intelligent and ordinarily good, kind folks who simply live for passing along some addled questionnaire in the mistaken belief that we’ll think that it’s as “spiffy” as they do!
“And if you don’t drop everything and send it to at least 27 people in the next five minutes, you’ll “never find love”, or at least you’ll have smelly feet for the rest of your life!”
Scary stuff, right?
But think about it…
Peoples’ “in” boxes are already stuffed to capacity with messages, 99% of which are spam.
What would make anyone think that I’ll endear myself to their friends if I add to their spam problem?!
Will I “find love” with my friends if I bombard them with un-asked for crapola that demands that they stop what they’re doing & continue this “extremely important” Chain Letter?
Would you be glad to see more unwanted junkmail? – Particularly from friends?
Do ya really think chain letters “work”? C’mon! Do the writers of these things still believe in the Easter Bunny?! – Or, even, that we now have a “kinder, gentler” I.R.S.?
Get Real.
Besides, you’ll probably find love IF you’re a nice person AND you’re lucky. As for the other “threat”: If your feet stink, try bathing more often.
So…
Stop what you’re doing.
Right now.
I mean it.
I’m not kidding…
If you’re driving right now, pull over!
(picture, in your mind, a border with little hearts, or fluttering birds, here…)
And, pretend that you’re scrolling down endlessly, for no apparent reason, except to waste, yet MORE time.
And, now…
Send this to everyone you love.
If you don’t send this to at least 28 people in the next 90 seconds, your teenaged daughter will announce that she has decided to run off with a roadie named “Bluto”, who has “pierced EVERYTHING”, and despite the fact that he has really bad eczema and brown teeth.
If you delete this,
I promise you,
You’ll be sorry…
You’ll never find love…
And
Your feet will smell like sewage… forever!
Outro: Final chorus- Chain Of Fools by Aretha Franklin
