if you read this, your crush will die

Like everyone, I hate e-mail forwards. I hate the five-alarm ones warning me not to stare at my popcorn while it's in the microwave because one time my brother's friend knew this guy who did that and the popcorn exploded in his face and then he totally DIED. And the ones frantically warning me that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should I open any emails containing pictures from an anonymous source... seriously, are there still people left doing this? When you get an email from Patty Fuckleberry and a subject title like "check out these kool pix" are you going, "Oh, great! Are these from my cousin, of the whole family playing bocce ball together last fourth of July?" No, idiot. Delete.

I don't like the jokes. Blonds are dumb, Bush is dumb, and here are 101 things you could do to make your coworkers inch away from you in terror. They're never really funny enough to warrant the forward, are they? Sometimes you're not sure what your otherwise sane friend was thinking, sending this waste of time to everyone in their address book when you've heard them mumble funnier things in their sleep. And I hate the ones that are like women's rules for men, which always go from bland to depressing... put the seat down, learn to ask for directions, call when you say you will, stop hitting on my girlfriends, please don't make me cry anymore.

My least favorite of all time are the ones about friendship and how friends are like stars because even though you don't always notice them, you always know they're there, watching over you. What? And it's always sent to you by some schmuck you don't even like that much, and you're like, thanks, I don't recall inviting you to be a star in my freakin' solar system.

Some of these e-mails reveal themselves to have been meant for 12-year-olds because they conclude with, "If you send this to one person, your crush will notice you. If you send this to two people, your crush will talk to you. If you send this to three people, your crush will ask you out." And if you send it to everyone on the planet, your crush will give you herpes and then start stalking your best friend. Thankfully, most of them just end with that ominous threat about how you have to send it on to fifteen people in the next twenty seconds or else your great aunt will be killed within the next seventeen minutes. It may not be comforting, but at least you know the e-mail was meant for adults and not middle schoolers. After a certain age, dismemberment is just more socially acceptable than lusting after lacrosse players.