Totoro Man vents about "If you don't forward this spam you're part of the problem" emails

http://totoroman.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-you-dont-read-my-blog-youre-part-of.html

It happens that every so often you get emails forwarded to you that declare in the highest of alarms and with the most intense rhetoric that if you don't forward said email to everyone you know you are what is wrong with America, or part of the problem. There was a brilliant Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin is talking about a chain letter he received that he doesn't plan to keep. Then he reads a postscript explaining that some kid like him decided not to keep the letter going and got run over by a bus. And so it goes ... .

Perhaps Totoro Man has simply been reading the sorts of emails I occasionally actually read. He isn't really the type to just read any email because it is forwarded from someone. He and I instinctively ignore forwards because most of them are scams, spams, and plans. I don't really think a federal employee has a jackpot of money for me if only I would send my personal information. I don't suppose that I'm the sole surviving distant relative of someone in Nigeria. Even back in the early 1990s I ignored emails like that because I was told anything that sounds too good to be true isn't true and probably not very good, either. There are times when I have hoped those who have advised me thus had heeded their own warnings about a few things but we can't perfectly implement our own advice all the time, perhaps not even most of the time.

Yet, for all that, I suppose that is one way in which proverbs are passed down to us. Proverbs mostly work, if they are actual proverbs, and proverbs become the riddles we can reflect upon to measure ourselves and not just rules of thumb to live by. We can have rules of thumb because we have opposable thumbs ... for too long monkeys have been under the thumb of humans and the time has come to OPPOSE that thumb! Sorry ... I digress.