Virus Alert

The Mother Of All Viruses

If you receive an email entitled "Badtimes," delete it immediately. Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.

It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play, except Yanni CD's--with them it doubles the volume.

It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will program your phone auto dial to call only your mother-in-law's number.

This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your good beer and replace it I.C. Light. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will talk nasty about your mother.

Its radioactive emissions will cause your toe jam and bellybutton fuzz (be honest, you have some) to migrate behind your ears. 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--he only card stripe it didn't demagnetize.

It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.

If the "Badtimes" message is opened in a Windows 95 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk. It will replace all your luncheon meat with beef tongue.

It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles--but, on the plus side, they're kosher dills.

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 of infection. Beware.