Powerpointless

We all have friends I am sure - good friends - who send us funny emails.

Like an unending electronic game of pass the parcel they receive funny emails from their friends, pass them onto some other friends who don't know the original friends and these people will in turn then pass the email onto even more friends who didn't know they had these friends in the first place. On and on it goes and no-one really gets the present.

I bet such activity accounts for 90% of the world's email traffic.

And by and large I don't have a problem with it. Some of the funny emails are actually funny. Some - Heaven forbid - are even informative though this is a rare occurrence. It's a lazy way of keeping in touch with people, I guess. I've received an email from so-and-so therefore I can deduce that they are not yet dead and still have some sort of sense of humour and a working email account.

The emails I do have problems with are the Powerpoint presentations.

You know the ones. The chain letter ones. The mildly threatening ones. The ones that wheeze through 80 frames at one frame every 90 seconds containing a ridiculous sob story sourced from an origin that must be buried deep in the biggest pile of bullshit in the universe.

And then at the end - the thing that really gets my goat - is the "threat". The threat that is bollocks. The threat that you and I both know is utter tosh (because we're sane, well adjusted and media savvy) but that someone (the sender of the email) thinks... ooh, there might be a chance this is real and if I don't forward it I'll have the voodoo put on me... and so they send it. The threat that uses people's own absurd and ungrounded superstitions against them.

You must forward this email to at least 10 other people within the next 15 seconds or bad luck will befall you. But if you do send it you will receive a telephone call within the next hour with some wonderful news!

Gaah!

I want to scream every time I receive one of these. Instead I just delete them immediately but this is in no way cathartic enough. I need a program that will somehow mangle the offending file like a werewolf snacking on a rabbit. I want to hear it scream and gargle in its own electronic blood as it is rendered subroutine from subroutine.

These emails are pathetic. I can't believe that there are people out there who actually spend their time making the damned things in the first place. Who the hell are they? Does anybody know who they are?

Of course not. Because they can't possibly have any friends.

But then again... how do they start the chain in the first place if they have no-one to send it to?

No matter. I just want these people identified and their Adobe Photoshop / Microsoft Office licenses revoked. And then I want them publically lynched and force-fed their own kahunas. And I want it filmed and put on YouTube so I know that it has been done to my highly esteemed satisfaction.

Wonderful. I can then email you all the link.

Please would you all be kind enough pass it on?