Note: Apparently written by rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins). However, this is unconfirmed.

If you receive an e-mail with a subject line of "Badtimes," delete it
immediately WITHOUT reading it. This is the most dangerous E-mail
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 your
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 dating your current
boy/girlfriend 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 hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows,
it will 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.