Birch Tree Jelly

Does anyone remember the Good Times virus? Or, the virus hoax, I should say. Back in the early days of the Internet, I was an AOL user, and there was a virus warning e-mail that a lot of people forwarded around. Supposedly, all you had to do was just read the "infected" Good Times e-mail and your hard drive would be erased, or some other nonsense.

After a while, AOL and others started getting the word out that there was never any virus called Good Times, and that no virus code can execute on your machine simply by reading an e-mail. (You have to click on a link, or download an infected file.)

I've seen that Internet virus hoaxes are alive and well these past few years. I will sometimes point my family or friends to www.snopes.com when they inadvertantly pass on an urban legend or virus hoax. I've found Snopes pretty reliable.

I leave you with a funny thing I came across years ago. It's related to the Good Times virus hoax, but I think you could apply it to a lot of these hoaxes going around today. I had saved this off as a text file, and I just found it in my archives. The file's time stamp is 1997, so this goes back a ways. Enjoy!

READ THIS:

Goodtimes will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.

It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.

Goodtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.

It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of Goodtimes, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.

It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

Goodtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.

Listen to me. Goodtimes does not exist.

It cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this message to everyone in the world. Tell your friends, tell your family. If anyone else sends me another E-mail about this fake Goodtimes Virus, I will turn hating them into a religion. I will do things to them that would make a horsehead in your bed look like Easter Sunday brunch.

So there, take that Good Times.

(Author Unknown)