If you receive an e-mail with a subject line of "Badtimes," delete
it immediately WITHOUT reading it. This is the most dangerous Email
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. It will
recalibrate 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 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 only 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
your current boy/girlfriend is dating 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.
Badtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat
up and leave the hairdryer plugged in dangerously close to a full
bathtub. It will 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 afraid. Be
very, very afraid.