Fun with the next generation

Trotter fan extraordinaire Sophie sent this to me recently, and I thought I'd pass it along. It is perhaps the most creative incitement to spamming I've received.



"Dear Friend,



A month ago, to this very day, I had a dream. A wonderful dream, full of revelations. Unfortunately, as is often the case with such dreams, I could barely remember it when I woke up. However, the most important revelation stayed with me, and it was a very important revelation indeed. Heck, it wasn’t just important, it was groundbreaking. It was humungously amazing. You see, I had the privilege of being revealed the Ultimate Answer. Yes, you got it- the answer to Life... the Universe... and Everything.



So what is this answer? First, you have to ask yourself, “Am I worthy of such an honour? Am I willing to spread the word? Do I have access to unlimited supplies of cornflakes?



If the answer to any of the above was ‘yes’, then you are ready to share the secret of the Ultimate Answer. The answer to The Ultimate Question is...



Hedgehogs.



Yes, friend, that’s right, hedgehogs. But don’t go putting that as all the answers on your next test yet! I did that, and did I get full marks? Did I heck! I jumped the gun. The thing is, you have to give the hedgehogs in question brain food, so they can answer your question for you. And, as everyone knows, there’s no better brain food for a hedgehog than cornflakes. So before my next big test, I spent a while going round my neighbourhood, sprinkling cornflakes anywhere it looked like those darn hedgehogs might be hiding. Sure, I got a lot of funny looks. But who cares? The very next day, I got a full 94% on my English exam! (I guess I must have missed a coupla hedgehogs there)



So, do what I did. Don’t spend the night before your  exams, GCSEs, whatever revising! Spend that night prowling the streets with a mega bag of cornflakes, keeping a sharp lookout for any spiky critters, and your efforts will be rewarded.



 WARNING! This won’t work if you don’t forward this email to everyone you know! You have to spread the word! I sent this to my brother. He did the cornflake routine but didn’t bother to forward it to any of his friends. The next day, he took his Maths exam... and failed. Not only did he fail, but all of the words he typed magically transmogrified into drawings of aliens having a shoot-up.  My friend Sally-Sue did the same thing. She fed her test to the teacher’s dog by accident and as a punishment for being so careless now has to spend all of her spare time sifting through the dog’s droppings to find semi-digested pieces of her test. So SEND THIS ON! Email it to everyone in your address book. The more people you send it to, the happier those hedgehogs will be! And if you just totally ignore this, well, you don’t want to know what’ll happen to you! Suffice to say, no-one could go within a 25-mile radius of my disbelieving friend Mary-Lou-Beth without fainting from the stench for almost five months after the ‘Cesspit Incident’. Send this email on, and everyone will benefit. Don’t send it, and I can’t be responsible for what happens."