No one hates e-mail forwards more than I do, especially ones that tell me I’m not a good enough Christian because I don’t forward the cheesy things to everyone in my contacts list.  The forwards I despise the most are the ones that mention kittens and/or guardian angels.

Knowing this, one of my friends takes special care in finding some of the worst ones to send to me, as a joke.  I received one last week that tells the story of an old married couple living in a tall apartment building.  When they argued, the man would wave around his unloaded shotgun at his wife, for dramatic effect.  However, this particular time he pulled the trigger, it was loaded.  The bullet missed his wife but coincidently hit a man jumping off the roof who fell past the couple’s window as he committed suicide.

He died from the bullet, not from the fall.  The old man would have been convicted of murder of the jumper, but they found out that the jumper was actually the son of the couple and his name was Ronald Opus.  The son had loaded the gun, knowing that his father waved it around in times of argument, knowing that his father would pull the trigger and possibly kill his mother.  Inheritance money is what the son was after.

But after trying for months to find ways to kill his mother, Ronald Opus gave up and jumped off the building.  The irony was the police cited the incident has suicide because Ronald himself loaded the gun.

That’s all I could think.  Immediately I Googled “Ronald Opus”.  And sure enough, there was a full Wikipedia entry for the fictional urban legend of Ronald Opus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Opus

I’m no Doubting Thomas; I just pick up on red flags when stories don’t add up or seem legit.  The thing is, I’m not usually one to call a person out on their BS.  I’d rather let them believe that alligators live in the sewers of New York City.  Why should it be my role to rain on their parade?  When a person starts a sentence with “did you know?…” that typically means whatever they are about to say is urban legend or a fabricated story.

Read “Did You Know?” http://wp.me/pxqBU-g

I have to call out another BS situation too right now.

Since last week, I have been seeing this commercial for a popular fried chicken restaurant franchise advertising that they are now donating a portion of their profits from the sales of both grilled and “original recipe” (fried) buckets of chicken to breast cancer research.

For all the millions of dollars we have donated to breast cancer research, the strongest findings they have released to us is this: The more fat a person consumes on a daily basis, the more likely they are to eventually get breast cancer. This does not necessarily mean that overweight people are more prone to breast cancer.  Because some people eat a lot of fattening foods, yet stay slim.

It truly angers me to see companies try to take advantage of people with what I call The Breast Cancer Gimmick: “Want a find a cure for cancer?  Buy and eat this bucket of fried chicken and we’ll help by donating money to research.”  But really, the fried chicken only increases the chances of getting cancer and encourages a lifestyle to stay unhealthy.

Of course it’s not just fried chicken restaurants committing this insulting and greedy gimmick.  It’s pretty easy to find chocolate candy companies during the same thing.

Here in Nashville, I recently saw a car dealership’s commercial advertising that they will donate $400 to breast cancer research for every car purchased within the month.  That’s tacky, but at least it doesn’t contribute to the unhealthy lifestyle of the customer.

I very much want the cure for breast cancer to be discovered, but I refuse to fall for a marketing scheme like this.

If you want to donate money to breast cancer research, do it.  Just don’t let a fast food restaurant or a candy company be the middle man.

To read more about the actual causes of breast cancer and ways to prevent it, click the link below:

The Unholy Trinity of Food http://wp.me/pxqBU-Hk