Lonely London Lad: In Defense of Chain Letters
If you have been reading my status updates, you will notice that at least one of the "replies" reads like this one:
| IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS TO NINE PEOPLES STATUS'S IN THE NEXT 20 MINUTES YOU WILL GET KISSED AND OR ASKED OUT BY YOUR CRUSH TOMORROW! AND IF YOU BREAK THIS CHAIN YOU WILL HAVE BAD LUCK FOR THE NEXT SEVEN YEARS , AND WILL BE HAUNTED BY A LITTLE DEAD GIRL THAT BROKE THIS CHAIN SEVEN YEARS AGO. THIS IS SO SCARY CAUSE IT ACUTALLY WORKS. YOUR TIME STARTS NOW |
This kind of thing scares me. The poor grammar, along with the misspellings, I find terrifying. Did you know that Hitler was a bad speller? I cannot substantiate this claim, but it would make my overall case much stronger if I could. I do bet that his English wasn't so good. If you want to see world leaders lose all credibility, listen to them speak another language. JFK was an exception to this, at least in his Berliner speech. Where am I going with this? Nowhere, actually, so let's get back to my main point...
Because of the invariably poor presentation of these chain letter remarks, I have snobbishly shrugged them off, giving no credence to their claims of doom and gloom. To say that I will have bad luck for the next seven years, AND, in addition, be haunted by a little dead girl (as opposed to a large dead girl, which would be far less scary, since I could outrun her), is just silly. I mean, most of us could probably tolerate seven years of bad luck, OR being haunted by an annoying and deceased girl, but to have both occur SIMULTANEOUSLY just seems far-fetched, and incredible (and by that I mean "not credible").
Or so I thought.
My arrogance caught up to me. It happened slowly, then all at once (that line sounds good, but read it again and you'll see it makes no sense). After ignoring exactly 13 of these chain letter remarks, something really scary happened. Here is the 13th one I ignored:
| IF YOU DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THIS TO THREE BENEDICTINE MONKS IN THE NEXT THREE MINUTES, AN UNEMPLOYED PIRATE WITH A PROSTHETIC LEG AND A COCKATOO ON HIS LEFT SHOULDER WILL APPEAR AT YOUR DOOR IN EXACTLY THREE HOURS. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. |
The thing about being my last warning did catch my eye, as I did not recall seeing any previous warnings. But even if I wanted to avoid the unemployed pirate and exotic bird curse, I have no idea where to find Benedictine monks on MySpace, let alone Trappist monks (who since they respect a vow of silence, would probably not post "Do you like me YES or NO" on my page, to their credit). So I, foolishly it turned out, ignored this first and final warning.
Precisely three hours later, I heard a hook knocking on my front door. Since I don't know anybody with a hook for a hand, I was intrigued, and I answered the door without first looking at my 15 video surveillance screens (1 for the front door, and 14 for each of the bathrooms at my country house). I swung the massive oak door open, and to my utter surprise, was greeted by the aforementioned pirate. Only he didn't have a cockatoo on his shoulder, but a Bird of Paradise, which is actually much rarer and harder to find proper food for.
He said, out of the side of his mouth, "Aye, matey", and at first I thought he was mocking the whole Lonely London Lad affected Brit stuff. But no, this was a true pirate, currently unemployed by virtue of having been plucked out of a galleon sailing off the coast of Madagascar in 1763. All I could muster was a feeble "Blimey, would you care to come in for a cup of sack?" (Sack is Sherry). Not that I drink Sack, or Sherry for that matter, but it seemed fitting at the moment; I have no idea why I didn't offer him a more contemporary beverage. Like bottled water. As a side-note, I propose that lakes and oceans be generically referred to as "unbottled water" from now on.
"This is ye final warning," he said out of the opposite corner of his mouth. I found that odd, because I had always thought that people who speak out of the corner of their mouth always speak out of the SAME corner. I started to point that out to him, but then balked, fixating instead on "ye final warning". This was as bad, in historical context, as the "CAUSE IT ACUTALLY WORKS" line.
"Ye final warning?" I said. "YE?"
"Aye aye cap'n..." he said.
This was too much of a pirate cliche. I'm not a captain, but a colonel. A colonel of truth. I slammed the door in his wizened face, and inadvertently spooked the Bird of Paradise, which I regret. Heedless, however, I ran back to my MySpace command center and refreshed my status update. There was a new one that read:
| A DOG DIED 74 YEARS AGO. HE WAS BURIED WITH HIS MASTER WHO WAS STILL ALIVE. THE DOG GOT THE SPIRIT OF THE MASTER AND BECAME A HUMAN DOG. WITH A TAIL AND STUFF LIKE THAT. IF YOU DONT POST THIS TO 9 DOG PROFILES RIGHT NOW THE HUMAN DOG WILL BREAK INTO YOUR HOUSE TONIGHT AND GO POOPOO ON YOUR SOFA. |
Call me superstitious, but after seeing the pirate materialize at my door, I did not want to risk a human dog defecating on my couch. It would be too reminiscent of some of the things I have seen whilst on tour. Though that was half llama and half porcupine. Regardless, I wanted to avert that and all future misfortune. I didn't want to be the one to break the chain this time. So I did it. I found some profiles supposedly maintained by dogs themselves (not their masters), and posted the message to them. I spammed the living daylights out of their status updates. I then walked in a circle exactly five times, and lay down on the floor, where I fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke up to discover my couch completely covered with dog excrement. That had nothing to do with the chain letter, though. I had apparently angered the dogs by spamming them, and that was their revenge. In the whole pile, though, there wasn't one ounce of human dog poo, and I was relieved: I hadn't broken the chain. I had averted disaster.
And I suggest you heed my advice and do the same: Never break the chain.
This is your final warning.
- LLL
P.S. Watch the following music video 5 times and then tell 5 friends you love it 5 times:
