The Netherworld Speaks Japanese

Of all the things that a person could experience in everyday life, dying is not the most pleasant. Yet for some reason, I can't seem to stop doing it.  Recently, I died no fewer than ten times. This was partially due to me dying a little inside after realising I'd left myself logged in to Facebook and coming back to find that my brother had posted all manner of statuses from my page, but it was mostly due to chain mail. Chain mail. Chain. Mail. Chain flipping mail. In the past, a fairly sturdy and somewhat reliable form of armour. In the present, one of the most annoying social phenomenons that the advent of the internet has ever given birth to.

Forget the myriad possibilities that the internet showers upon us, like a widening of our cultural lenses, or the opening of vast communication channels, or huge amounts of information, so vast that it would make our tiny human minds explode like an unopened tin of baked beans on an overheated barbeque: you don't have time to even contemplate these gifts, because Jessica, aged 10 (hobbies: lurking on forums, long walks on the beach and coming back from the dead), whose parents never loved her and whose randomly mutilated body was found by police in a stream in a forest near a nondescript suburban housing estate after being murdered by the local troubled witch-child, is coming to kill you in your sleep at 1 a.m. Tonight. Why? Because she's a vengeful little git with a penchant for murdering internet citizens who read select paragraphs, apparently. Oh, and because you didn't pass on the message about her little killing spree to five other hapless victims. Silly you. Look what you've done.

What strikes me as most concerning is that the people who write these messages, evidently in a vain attempt to save us by warning us of our impending doom but ultimately luring us into Jessica's wrath, seem to have very little grip of the English language (either that or the netherworld speaks Japanese, bearing poor translation), and subsequently the details of what is going to happen are often rather obscure, and tend to get more and more vague as the message progresses, which can only lead to more and more helpless people viewing it and spending their last moments simply being wildly confused and not knowng what to do, like a group of kittens with a thousand laser pointers flying round them all at once whilst a volcano erupts 50 feet away from them. Here's a sample I found earlier, broken down and analysed for your convenience:

"Tonight at midnight your true love will realize they love you."
Oddly specific. Creepily specific, you might say. But so far, so clear. This *is* going to happen.

"Something good will happen to you between 1-4 pm."
Getting more vague, aren't we? Just 'something good' (that could be anything, from finding a pound in the street, or being gifted with a blimp by a benevolent millionaire) and what's more, there's a three-hour scope for it to happen in.

"Tomorrow it could be anywhere."
Insanely vague. Understanding what on earth the implications of this prediction actually are would be like trying to decipher what Charlie Sheen is saying after banging seven gram rocks for three days straight, if his brain was also made of egg noodles and baby seals. I don't even know what's going on by this stage, which is presumably the point.

"Get ready for the biggest shock of your life!"
Oh. That was a sudden change of mood, it threw me. I'm even more confused. I'll brace myself.

"If you don't post this to 5 other pages. You will have relationship problems for the next 10 years."
 Of course, since there's a random full stop in the middle of that sentence, not only is the first half of the sentence an unfinished threat, leaving my peace of mind hanging somewhere in limbo, the second half of the sentence is now declaring that I *will* have relationship problems for the next ten years. Guess that's the shock. Well played, Jessica, well played

And so, emerging from the confusion-trap with my love life thoroughly condemned, I shall end this investigation, preferably before I die again. And, because I'm a shameless self-promoter, if you don't send a link to this blog to at least ten of your friends before exactly 2:43 and 56 seconds this afternoon, Tommy, aged 7, who suffered the loss of both arms in an explosion, and whose body was found emaciated and withering in his local playpark (he died of starvation after somebody pushed him off the swings and he couldn't lift himself back up again) will appear at your bedside at roughly between 1-4 a.m. and smother you. Or rather he would, but he has no arms. Jessica's still out there though. Sleep tight.