A humorous virus hoax apparently written by someone at Iowa State named Rich Hawkins and subsequently spread around the Internet. Laika made a groovy song out of it on Good Looking Blues. Like many such e-mail jokes, it's been mutated slightly as it's traveled the world. This is the Laika version, as read by Margaret Fiedler.

If you receive an e-mail with a subject of "badtimes", delete it immediatly 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.

It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your VCR, and use subspace field harmonics to render any CDs you try to play unreadable.

It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend your new phone number.

It will mix antifreeze into your fishtank.

It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over.

It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit and hide your car keys when you are late for work.

Badtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin.

It will give you nightmares about circus midgets.

It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your current boy or girlfriend behind your back, and billing the dinner and hotel room 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.

It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it.

It will kick your dog.

It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice.

It is insidious and subtle.

It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

badtimes will give you Dutch Elm Disease.

It will leave the toilet seat up.

It will make a batch of methamphetamine in your bathtub, and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase high school kids with your new snowblower.

These are just a few of the signs. Be very, very careful.

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