Breaking the Chain

[Sheila Samples]

I can't help it. I'm suffering from intense guilt because I refuse to forward 50-billion freaking chain letters sent to me by folks who actually believe if I send them on to everyone I know, a poor little karma-deficient girl in the backwoods of Arkansas with a penis growing out of her forehead will be able to raise enough dough to have it removed before her enterprising redneck parents sell her to a traveling freak show where someday she may escape and become president of the United States.

I'll admit, back in 2002, I did get my hopes up when I got this notice from Bill Gates that he was gonna send me -- and everyone to whom I forwarded "his" email -- a thousand bucks. Call me gullible, but -- hey -- if I could believe that priests grope innocent children, that corporate CEOs snicker while their hands are working feverishly in my pockets, that pasty draft-dodging cowardly vice presidents beefed up calls to send my babies to chemical death, and nobody trusts nobody anymore -- why wouldn't I think the world's richest geek, a scholarly-looking little nerdy high-school dropout who serenely vacuums up the dollars of the universe, would be adverse to sending me a few measly bucks? After all, if anybody in this country could afford to do that it's little Billy Gates for God's sake...

The only thing that was in the mail back then was hope, and it died there. So I broke the chain.

But I'll admit the old adrenalin started pumping again recently when I was told if I scrolled down while simultaneously closing one eye, making a wish and loudly breaking wind, I'd get a new Boy Toy who looks just like Al Pacino. And -- here's the best part -- I would meet him the very next day!! Oh yes yes scroll wink wish blast!...scroll wink wish blast! All I got out of that little adventure was a nervous tic and a room of my own out behind the barn.

I keep getting told that what I'm promised is straight from the horse's mouth and I can take it to the bank. No way I'm taking anything to the bank that I received from someone who can't tell one end of the horse from the other. Huh-uh. No way.

And don't threaten me with evil chain-letter leprechauns who will swarm on my house and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter than St. Peter started in 5 AD and was covertly brought to this country by tiny little itty-bitty rogue pilgrims on the Mayflower. Screw them. That's what I always say...

Don't try to send me on a guilt trip about one of my fellow Americans with no teeth who was captured in Botswana and has been shackled against his will to the ass of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5-cents per letter he'll receive if I forward your email. Hey -- I've been suffering the same fate for nearly a decade myself. Unless my nickel will get that unfortunate twit to the polls where he'll be motivated to ram his marker up that Rooster's ass until the freaking bird squawks, I don't have time for him...

So, if I break the chain -- don't threaten me with my underwear turning carnivorous and consuming my nether regions. I don't care. If it's funny, I'll send it on, Okay? Otherwise, I don't need no steenkin' chain letters.

Point is -- don't piss me off. Make me laugh.

Now, forward this to everyone you know.

Love,

Sheila

[Horse with no Name]

1. This is funny.

:thumbsup:

[Sheila Samples]

9. Thanks

There's a little ol' lady down in Texas who sends me "pass on to 10 people in 10 seconds or we're all gonna DIE!" emails all the time. The more I threaten to go down there and smack her upside the head, the more she sends while, I'm sure, giggling maniacally all the time...

[The_Commonist]

2. I just forwarded this to everyone in my address book...

...now where's my pony?!?

[crim son]

3. Great post.

Count me in as one who can be counted on to break the chain.

[MisterP]

4. Art Buchwald? n/t

[puebloknot]

5. This'll do it: Single payer health care now assured for all. Whew!!!!!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Please forward the following to everyone in your mail list or you

may grow a penis out of your forehead as well.

http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm293.htm

Subject: Help in this Christmas Season

My name is Billy Evans. I am a very sick little boy. My mother is typing this for me, because I can't. She is crying. The reason she is so sad is because I'm so sick. I was born without a body. It doesn't hurt, except when I try to breathe.

The doctors gave me an artificial body. It is a burlap bag filled with leaves. The doctors said that was the best they could do on account of us having no money or insurance.

I would like to have a body transplant, but we need more money. Mommy doesn't work because she said nobody hires crying people. I said, "Don't cry, Mommy," and she hugged my burlap bag. Mommy always gives me hugs, even though she's allergic to burlap and it makes her sneeze and chafes her real bad.

I hope you will help me. You can help me if you forward this email to everyone you know.

Forward it to people you don't know, too. Dr. Johansen said that for every person you forward this email to, Bill Gates will team up with Disney World and send a nickel to NASA. With that funding, NASA will collect prayers from school children all over America and have the astronauts take them up into space so that the angels can hear them better. Then they will come back to earth and go to the Pope, and he will take up a collection in church and send all the money to the doctors. The doctors could help me get better then.

Maybe one day I will be able to play baseball. Right now I can only be third base.

Every time you forward this letter, the astronauts can take more prayers to the angels and my dream will be closer to coming true. Please help me. Mommy is so sad, and I want a body. I don't want my leaves to rot before I turn 10.

If you don't forward this email, that's okay. Mommy says you're a mean and heartless bastard who doesn't care about a poor little boy with only a head. She says that if you don't stew in the raw pit of your own guilt-ridden stomach, she hopes you die a long slow horrible death and then burn forever in hell. What kind of cruel person are you that you can't take five freakin' minutes to forward this to all your friends so that they can feel guilt and shame about ignoring a poor, bodiless nine-year-old boy?

Please help me. I try to be happy, but it's hard. I wish I had a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty that wouldn't chew on me and try to bury its turds in the leaves of my burlap body. I wish that very much.

Thank You, Billy "Smiley" Evans

Warning: For those of you who may be incredibly gullible... NO, this is not a true story! Burlap Billy is NOT a real boy and you should NOT send this around as if it were true... sending it around for a laugh is a different matter.

[Sheila Samples]

8. HAW HAW HAW...

Wish I'd written that. Thanks.

[pipi_k]

13. It's a little known fact that Burlap Billy

had a twin sister who was also born with a head but no body. Her fate is a little more heartbreaking, though...

She was given a body made from cheesecloth. Poor little Cheesecloth Cathy spent the entire nine years of her life leaking goatcheese curds whenever she walked.

She also suffered from a nearly constant stream of whey that ran down her legs and filled her snack cracker sneakers, making them squishy and very dangerous for her.

She passed away one day when she fell asleep at the cheese wheel and crashed into a salad bar.

RIP Cheesecloth Cathy

:cry:

[crossfade]

7. Helpful tool

If you find your resolve at a moment of weakness this can help...

http://www.csicop.org/chain/form.html

[BlueMTexpat]

10. Thanks for a good laugh!

I "dared" to break the chain long ago and guess what? The world didn't stop revolving.

Life pretty much continued as it has all along, with a mixture of high points and low, with happy events and some tragic ones interspersed. Because of my failure to forward a chain letter? Hardly. Even my overactive guilt complex can see through that one.

Chain letters usually stop with me, although I will occasionally share some of the truly witty ones with a few friends who feel as I do.

[The Wizard]

11. If you fail to comply

plague, pestilence and locusts will visit you.

[bertman]

12. Now I feel better. Thanks, Sheila.