I get chain letter email pseudo-viruses all the time. You know, things that command you to "SEND THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!!!" (Who needs replicative software technology when human stupidity will do the job faster and easier?) Several months ago, I received a dollar bill in change on which someone had written the following legend in the margins:
"ANYONE WHO HAS THIS BILL WILL BE BLESSED IF YOU WRITE THIS ON 10 $1.00 BILLS."
Damn if I didn't get another one in change today down at Pinnacle Pizza. The legend was slightly different and it had a date on it: 3/1/00.
No promise of a specific payoff, like $50,000 worth of similarly inscribed dollar bills (which would be kind of cool, actually) or one of Sammy Sosa's home run baseball. Nought but "blessings." I have my share of those already, and used to have some holy water, even--but I put it in a tablespoon over the stove to boil out the water and see what 100% pure holy looks like when not dissolved in water. (Looked a lot like tap water lime, in fact.)
I got as far as looking in my pocket to see if I had ten singles...nah, only four. Guess I'm out of luck. But I'm going to keep this one in the bottom of my penny jar in case another one comes in. Collect all 10, and...who knows? It could rain holy water in Scottsdale--which, right now, would be a damned good thing.