HUG YOUR CHILDREN
Apropos of nothing, I was reorganizing some files this afternoon and found this:



The backstory: last year, some friends and I got tired of finding weepy and/or inspiration chain mail in our in-boxes, so we decided to perpetrate a scam. I found the photo on some random site and, a few swipes at creativity later, we had created the sad tale of Mboto.

Our goal was for Mboto's story to travel around the world, one gullible e-mailer by one gullible e-mailer, until he returned to our in-boxes. Alas, we know of but one person who was guileless enough to swallow the story and forwarded it along with the ice carvings of firemen and angels and the stuff that keeps Snopes.com in business.

We probably made an error in not asking people to forward money or greeting cards...