Thank you, thank you!
THE DIGITAL age has changed our lifestyles, not least in the way e-mail links us instantaneously with every far-flung place on the globe, allowing humour to flit about the world in nano-seconds. This is undoubtedly good.
But there is a downside also: loads of junk mail that has to be filtered out; the instantaneous distribution of urban legends to an audience that never could have been reached before; and a veritable explosion of chain letters, often with menacing warnings against the consequences of breaking the chain.
Reader John Knottenbelt provides a response to the strangers who have, unsolicited and with the best intentions, contacted him by e-mail over the past year
"Dear Friends
"I just wanted to thank you for the e-mails you have forwarded over the year just past.
"I must send a big thank you to whoever sent me the one about rat droppings in the glue on envelopes, because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing.
"Also, I now have to wipe the top of every can I open for the same reason.
"I no longer have any savings because I gave it all to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in hospital for the 58th time. But that will change once I receive the $30 000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft are sending me for participating in their special email programs. Or the money from the senior bank clerk in Nigeria who wants to split $7 million with me for pretending to be a long lost relative of a customer who died intestate.
"I no longer worry about my soul because I have 63 214 angels looking out for me.
"I have learned that my prayers get answered only if I forward e-mails to seven friends and make a wish within five minutes.
"I no longer drink Coca-Cola because it can remove toilet stains.
"I can no longer buy petrol without taking a friend along to watch the car so a serial killer won't crawl into my back seat when I'm filling up. I no longer go to shopping centres because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.
"I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number and then I'll get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore and Uzbekistan.
"I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my backside.
"I can't even pick up theR100 I found dropped in the car park because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.
"If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144 000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhoea will make a deposit on your head at 5pm tomorrow afternoon and fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbour's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's beautician.
"By the way … a South American scientist has discovered after a lengthy study that people with low IQ, who don't have enough sex, always read their e-mails while holding the mouse.
"Don't bother taking it off now, it's too late.
"Regards,
"Your friend."
Tailpiece
THIS fellow had been marooned on a desert island for 10 years. Then a beautiful woman is washed ashore and the fellow tells her his story.
"You mean you've been on this island all this time?" she says. "Did you smoke cigarettes before you were marooned?"
"Why, yes I did."
"Here, have one of mine, "she says, taking a packet out of her pocket. "Were you a drinking man before you got shipwrecked?"
"Yes, I was."
She produces a hip flask. "Help yourself. Say, I guess you haven't had the opportunity to play around in all those years."
"Good Heavens! Don't tell me you've got a set of golf clubs as well?"
Last word
If living conditions don't stop improving in this country, we're going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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