Bruce the Blog

“There’s a sucker born every minute,” P.T. Barnum apparently never said (contrary to myth), but if he had, the circus czar and master of promotional bluster would have to modify it for the internet age to “There’s a sucker born every nanosecond.”

Is there a person breathing who has not received one of those outrageously ridiculous emails that sound too good to be true because they never are true? In this case, ‘tis better to receive than to give.

It’s beyond comprehension why anybody chooses to redistribute these obvious scams to others. I like to think those who are so forward do it as a gag, because it can’t possibly be that anybody actually believes they’ll get something for nothing, do they?

Even if they do believe it, why would they send mischevious missives along to supposed friends (who may turn into ex-friends if they don’t suffer being pestered needlessly) that are announced with eye-splitting subject lines like PLLLLEEEAAASSSSEEEREEEAAADDD! IT WAS ON GOOD MORNINGAMERICATODAY!…

In this e-pisode of Scam I Am, we’re told that Bill Ionaire Gates (bet you didn’t know that was his middle name) wants to give away some of his fortune. Who knew? Nobody, because it’s of course untrue. No doubt it WAS on Good Morning America at some point, to inform viewers it was a ruse making the rounds. Heaven only knows how they found time to broadcast that tidbit with all the 24/7 news Michael Jackson and his trusty team of physicians continue to make. (Fact is the “Gates” email scam, like most of them, has been polluting cyberspace for years, long before the demise of MJ turned into a 24/7 deathless news story.)

When you are dumb enough, like moi, to bother opening this ilk of junkmail, you sentence yourself to a seeming eternity scrolling down a phonebook’s worth of unrecognizable names before encountering an amusement park of baseless prattle.

First, there’s the gloriously misinformed statement of non-fact that “Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies.”

In America Online’s case, “now” was 10 or more years ago, but in the now “now,” AOL is struggling mightily to hang around Time Warner’s neck, like an albatross on life support.

And as overwhelming as Microsoft may be when it does Windows and software, in the land of Internet giants Google, Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace, its dominance is underwhelmingly inverted into soft and micro.

Claiming that “Dollar” Bill Gates, who is as sober as an AA meeting, would give money away to anyone – anyone, mind you – who simply forwarded emails to other anyones is a particularly ham-handed hoax. The hoaxer presumably never spoke to flight attendants who served Bill in coach, or Vegas limo drivers who never saw him tipsy or tip. This is not the sort of operator who systematically gives away his hard drive-earned money for no good reason.

Oh, there are ostensible good reasons stated for the Gates giveaway, as those know who were unlucky enough to get and read the subliterate email in question — something to do with Internet Explorer, a browser that has nothing to do with email, and about Microsoft tracking your personal email, which is not possible even for Microsoft to do.

How do I know that? Because whenever I have too much time on my hands and get one of these suckers, rather than be a sucker, I go to snopes.com, which verifies facts and invalidates what are hoaxes, with detailed histories and explanations.  You should snope around yourself rather than be duped.

In the meantime, refugees like me from the mid-20th Century pine for the good ol’ days when we were reminded regularly that certain types of chain letters mailed through the postal system are illegal. The same should apply to email, PLLLLEEEAAASSSSEEE!

I had just finished ambling through a full course of ripe greens at Trump National Golf Course in Briarcliff last Saturday as the guest of my good friend Doug Press. During “a good walk interrupted,” Doug, who has known me through thick and thin waistlines, noted how much brisker was my gait less 30+ pounds than seven months ago.
That, he later observed to his lovely wife Linda, was in contrast to the rather hunched-over lumbering person who used to accompany him on the holey, rolling tract that the likes of Bill Clinton and Westchester County Executive Andy Spano had trod recently, accompanied by a four-man Secret Service entourage, two each in front and back. It’s been rumored for years that WJC has a distinctive golf game that pays homage, tee to green, to the great golf god Mulligan. (Yeah, whatever, it’s nothing to have a stroke over.)
As we sat in the commodious bar lounge section of the palatial Trump (is that redundant?) clubhouse, occasionally glimpsing on the plasma TV the Red Sox reeling from the third leg of their sold-out “Get Us Out of Here Now” Bronx Humiliation Tour, and waiting for the wives to arrive so we could clambake it down at the Olympic-size palatial pool, Doug asked why I shed 13% of my girth. First I credited the role model that is my determinedly fit spouse Elyse, who was having a fit about my unsafe and unappealing weight, bless her fat-free heart.
Then, I sheepishly revealed the baa-d news that next year is my 60th. “We’ll have to celebrate!” Doug exclaimed. “What’s ‘The Plan’?” (Easy for him to say. Celebrating 60 is a luxurious sentiment afforded to those who haven’t even or — like Doug — not long ago crossed the half-century mark.)
“The Plan,” replied his 59-year-old golfball buddy, “is to reach 60.” So far, The Plan is working. Only about 220 days to go. What is age anyhow, except a rude reminder that we’re not getting any closer to the day we were born. Not unless you’re a movie character named Benjamin Button. Time’s hourglass slowly but surely slips from our grasp, turning from our glass half-full to our glass slipper that we carry around in search of a new lease on life.
If youth is wasted on the young, the calcifying among us might as well husband every last drop of vanishing vanity we have left. Get in shape. Stay there. Look your best. Hang on to health. Feel better. Think clearer. Stand straighter. Work smarter. Play harder. Kid yourself into thinking it will forestall the inevitable. It just might, right?
While you’re at it, kid yourself into thinking shaping up will trim your golf score. Now that, for the first time in many years, I don’t tip 200 pounds or more on the scale — en route, I hope, to 190 — my next breakthrough goal is fewer than 100 strokes for 18 holes of golf. If you think that’s easy, either you don’t play golf or you play better than me. Wait a minute … that covers just about everybody!
200, 100, 60. Numerologically speaking, I’m fine for now with 59. Let’s see, that means I was 19 when at Woodstock, which is an unWoodstockian 40 years old next week. Woodstock was where and when we told ourselves not to trust anyone over 30. Oh, to be 58 again.

Even though I brag about being at Woodstock, I don’t miss the Woodstock era, but, at 59, I probably shouldn’t trust myself to believe such self-delusions.