RAAAAAAAANT

No matter how much I complain and scold those near & dear to me, they JUST WON'T STOP!

Why don't they listen???

WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE!

That was my dad's favorite quote. And no, it didn't originate with George Carlin, Andy Rooney, or Jay Leno. Try Shakespeare.

At least Dad got the attribution right. He was a high school dropout, but had he lived long enough to get familiar with the internet, I think he would have been appalled at some of the ignorance that gets spread far and wide by otherwise savvy, educated people.

I'm talking about URBAN LEGENDS. The ones you get in your e-mail from YOUR otherwise educated, informed friends.

The ones that tell you to throw away your dollar coins because those godless liberals trying to subvert our American way of life maliciously omitted "In God We Trust." If you believe this, and facts have any meaning to you, click here.

And they're still, STILL sending this one around. The more recent rationalization is, "Well now the gangs have heard about it and they've started doing it!"

The one and only time I got emotionally caught up in the "revelations" of an e-mail was back in '99, when I was still relatively new to the delights of the online community, and got this one in my in-box. Oh, those poor chickens! I was upset for a couple of days until I finally tracked down the refutation. I don't know if they had snopes.com back then, but they do now, and anyone who doesn't check the veracity of these stories will find themselves losing points with me.

Even Snopes itself gets caught up in this crap, so if someone e-mails you a fascinating rumor, please, please, PLEASE check it out for yourself first, before you cram somebody's already full inbox. And make yourself look like a gullible stooge!

And it's not just me.