"Bad Times Virus" joke

If you see a message on the boards with a subject line of "Badtimes," delete it immediately WITHOUT reading it. This is the most dangerous virus yet.

It will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer (20' range at 72 Fahrenheit). It will re calibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream melts and milk curdles. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, reprogram your ATM access code, screw up the tracking on your VCR and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to play.

It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend your new phone number. It will program your phone autodial to call only your mother's number. It will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer and leave its dirty socks on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will hide your car keys when you are late for work and interfere with your car radio so that you hear 1940's hits and static while stuck in traffic.

"Badtimes" will make you fall in love with a hardened pedophile. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of "Badtimes", it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.

It will rewrite your back-up files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretation of key sentences. "Badtimes" will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up and leave the hairdryer plugged in dangerously close to afull bathtub. It will wantonly remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, and refill your skim milk with whole.

It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs.

Be very, very afraid.