Tiz The Sea-zen

I have a friend who I don't see eye-to-eye with politically who, I think, will laugh her ass off when she reads this. Two nights ago she forwarded me an email that appeared to have been sent from a friend of the "original recipient." In other words, it seemed like a third generation email from a friend of a friend of my friend. The gist was that Obamacare was going to force the writer of the email who has cancer to forgo their treatment and instead talk to an end-of-life counselor. It went on to describe how the sympathetic doctor who has no use for socialized medicine could do nothing about it. He then recited some facts about how people in Britain have to forgo placements of heart stents if they are under a certain age or something like that.

I got suspicious by that point so I Googled a phrase from the email and the first link that came up was Snopes. The Snopes article for some reason began on the topic of Natasha Richardson, but quickly went into the loony facts from the email I had been forwarded. The fact that Snopes was apprised of this information indicated that this was not an email written by the friend of a friend of a friend.

I forwarded the link to my friend with the warning that this is why people think Richard Gere has a gerbil stuck in his ass to this day. That pre-Internet rumor was always retold the same way - "This is totally true. A friend of a friend of a friend or something is an emergency room doctor and one night..."

While I was at work yesterday I was sent two emails in response to the link I sent her, but I didn't have the energy to stress about my job AND the bait she was stringing out so I ignored them. Wise choice considering she's watching my dog during the day. If I had read what she sent I probably would have been agitated into sending a response which may have made things awkward. "Fuck you and feed my dog at 5."

Besides, I'm realizing that it's impossible to convince people of what they don't want to believe. Cheers to the people who keep trying. I'd rather let time prove me right. And in the even heart patients start dropping in the streets, it looks like I owe my dogsitter a Coke.