As if the recent photo were not proof enough…

I can count on one friend of mine in particular to forward tons of email jokes and just about every hoax that crosses his inbox. Still. He counts on me to look up evenly the patently absurd junk to verify that

  • Bill Gates/Microsoft/AOL will not send him money/prizes for forwarding this (or any) email message
  • Cell phone numbers are not soon to be made public to telemarketing firms
  • Fred Rogers and Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan were not Navy Seals or Marine snipers
  • There is no evidence that Barack Obma is secretly a loyal Muslem and pretends to be devout Christian
  • Entering your PIN backwards at an ATM will not alert the police
  • Cars cannot be unlocked by transferring a signal from a remote through your cell (or any other) phone

Despite my assurances that ANY email that suggests you “forward this to everyone you know” is almost certainly untrue and my suggestions that he can easily verify information through sites like Snopes.com and About: Urban Legends and Folklore (two of my favorites), he continues to spread this stuff around. I can’t always tell if he really thinks there may some truth in them or if he’s just sending them for humor value.

So I wasn’t surprised when he sent me a link to what is supposed to be a CNN story about a study claiming that “fellatio may significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer in women.” This particular link clearly did not connect to CNN.com (or any other news agency — some versions of the hoax apparently spoofed AP instead of CNN). The hoax has been around in various versions for a few years and its history is well-documented. But it is so clearly a hoax in the version that he sent to me that I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was sent for entertainment value (because these are the types of issues about which men will joke with each other). We are pigs, after all.

And even though I immediately deleted his email without replying, I had a fleeting moment when I thought, “I’d like to make a donation to reduce breast cancer….”

Posted by tvs