I was especially obnoxious today responding to a chain letter

I usually try to be a little reserved and diplomatic. Today I fully admit I was a little obnoxious. Did I cross the line into rude?

I replied to the sender (and all the other recipients, with a reply-all) with the following:

Completely false, as are most chain letters. I've been getting this particular one over and over and over and over and over for over ten years now! You can always check these on Snopes.com. They do a great job researching Internet chain letters. Here's their research on this particular chain letter, which I found by typing "good morning america" into the search form prominently appearing on their home page:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp

You can check these chain letters out by typing in a few words that are in the text of the letter.

Chain letters are a type of virus. The authors get their kicks out of getting you to damage the functioning of the Internet by fooling people who don't understand the harm they do into passing on an exponentially-growing burst of traffic. These clog and slow mail servers, and irritate people by circulating around forever. They are evil.

Break the chain, and refuse to forward any chain letter, ever. Please.


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:37:56 -0800
From: ...
Subject: Fw: PLLLLEEEAAASSSEEE REEAADDD! IT WAS ON GOODMORNING AMERICA....

How to Properly Eat a Fortune Cookie

	Enhance your presentation of fortune cookies and amuse or annoy your dining company by directing them in the proper etiquette for handling these message-bearing biscuits. When the fortune cookies arrive, make a spectacle of urgently admonishing anyone against reaching for a cookie before becoming versed in this procedure. Reach for a solitary cookie yourself, hold it outstretched at about eye level for all to see, and demonstrate the following steps, providing the melodramatic narrative as you proceed:
I think one of the above may apply to me, but I forget which one. Thanks to cpstorm on Flickr for use of photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpstorm/ / CC BY 2.0

Things You'll Need: One or more fortune cookies Indulgent friends with whom to share them

STEP 1

Take one fortune cookie and break it open gently by cracking it approximately in half with both hands.

STEP 2

Separate the two pieces, pulling one piece slowly away from the other to reveal a fortune protruding from one half of the cookie, and none from the other. Do not yet read the fortune, lest you will shame the cookie, and your fortune will not come true.

STEP 3

Eat one of the halves of the cookie only. Do not finish eating the cookie yet, lest you will shame the fortune, and it will not come true.

STEP 4

You may now read the fortune. You may react politely.

STEP 5

Eat the rest of the cookie. Discarding the last bit of cookie would, of course, shame it considerably. Your fortune would not come true. Should you find your fortune to be unfavorable, you might be tempted to discard the last half of the cookie intentionally so as to ward off a bad fortune. This is not recommended, as shaming the cookie thusly may cause your fortune to come true out of pure spite.

• This procedure is inspired by the practice of covering the challah (bread) during the blessing over the wine at the beginning of the Jewish Shabbat (Sabbath) meal.

I originally wrote this for eHow. After about a year, they deleted it suddenly after I called attention to it by rephrasing a couple words, so I'm preserving it here in my blog. -Dan

I've been censored!

I was so happy today to get my first ever paycheck for writing articles. It was a whopping $7.09 from eHow.com for the three articles I wrote last year. I was planning to celebrate by posting a link to my favorite, "How to Properly Eat a Fortune Cookie," on Facebook.

I pulled up my article and noticed a couple words I could change to make it just perfect, and saved it. Suddenly, eHow rejected my corrected article! Granted, the article is more humorous (in my humble opinion) than useful, but I put a lot of creative energy into it and it was fine for nearly a year! What's worse, eHow doesn't even let me read or edit my own rejected article anymore, and I had never saved myself a copy.

After a little Googling, I learned how to recover the file from my own web browser's cache, from the last time I looked at it. So I'm going to repost my deleted eHow article to my own blog. 'Cause it's mine. I wrote it. So there.

Update 1/13/2010: They activated my article again, so I guess I'm not censored after all! I think it was my letter of complaint that did it.