My Mailbox Runneth Over!

Here's a selection of recent email correspondence from readers. Please note that some of the messages have been edited for the sake of brevity. Oh, and the names have been withheld to protect the innocent, as well as the not-so-innocent...

Dear Guide:
As long as I have your attention, I should point out that several years ago, a local Philadelphia TV news anchor left suddenly, and was reputed, via urban legend, to have had a gerbil in much the same predicament as Richard Gere supposedly had in your current article. The anchor's name was Jerry Penicoli (2% chance I spelled his last name correctly), and I have seen him nationally on Hard Copy or Entertainment Tonight. (: but never from behind :)

The newscaster in question (and by the way, your spelling of his name can't be any further from accurate than the other half-dozen renderings I've seen) has indeed gone on to bigger markets, but the rectal rodent rumor has never lagged far behind (sorry). I've found references dating back to 1988, which suggests the rumor is a few years older than that, and thus probably pre-dates the Gere version.

I'm told that newscasters in several other locales around the U.S. were victims of this same bit of gossip during the mid-'80s. As for the rodents in question, they seem to have lost their sex appeal in the '90s... unless I'm speaking too soon.

Dear Guide:
A point seems to be missed in the kidney harvest story. It seems that one of the reasons that this story survives and adapts is because of its moral content, i.e. don't go drinking or other stuff with strange eager women. Maybe the reason that the story does continue to be told is that it fulfills some role in controlling social behavior, as do other legends?

That's a great point, and one that I didn't address in my article. Although I question the notion that urban legends actually play any role in controlling social behavior, it stands to reason that a story that reinforces standard moral precepts by illustrating drastic consequences for sinful behavior is more likely to thrive than one that does not.

The best example of this is the Austin, Texas version of the legend, wherein the victim, a student, supposedly had been partying, drinking, taking drugs, and consorting with a "loose woman" before having his kidneys heisted.

But bear in mind, too, that not all versions of the legend deliver precisely the same moral message. People have also been said to have lost their kidneys simply by being incautious while traveling, or too trusting of foreigners. If there is one overriding "moral of the story" that emerges from all the variations taken together, it is that one must be wary of strangers. Sounds terribly familiar, doesn't it?

Dear Guide:
Just wanted to thank you for the information on the Gerber class action suit. I'm a new mom and recently had both sets of grandparents encouraging me to apply for the savings bond. I'm very glad I did a little research first. I would hate for some criminal to use my daugher's name and SSN!

And the hoax is still going strong! According to a recent story by the Associated Press, the post office is still receiving up to 15,000 letters a day regarding the non-existent Gerber settlement.

Which means, by my calculations, that there must be around 10 suckers born every minute.

Chalk it up to inflation?

Dear Guide:
i searched your site (but couldn't find) anything about a guy who purportedly either
- injected his penis with cocaine, or
- put cocaine slurry up his urethra
resulting in a prolonged erection, followed by avascular necrosis and loss of the penis. have you heard this before as an UL?

It's been going around for some time. You may be interested to know that this is one of those cases of a popular story that is both an urban legend and factual. See the New York Times article posted at the AFU & Urban Legends Archive.

Dear Guide:
There's a forwarded mail going around right now that is allegedly from the Massachusetts Bar Society. It's a list of "actual questions" asked by lawyers during cross-examination. Seems like a hoax. Any news on it?

A list similar to the one referred to -- containing such lawyerly gems as "Was that the same nose you broke as a child?" -- did, in fact, appear in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly on June 9 of this year.

Call me a doubting Thomas, but the mere fact that the thing was printed in a journal by and for lawyers didn't convince me of its veracity, so I did some further checking. The article cited a Website run by a Massachusetts attorney named Alan D. Humbert as its source. I looked it up. Sure enough, I found roughly the same list of bloopers there.

Humbert, in turn, gave credit to The 'Lectric Law Library, an online archive of legal reference materials. I found the bloopers on that Website, too (and then some), with credit given to an author by the name of Mary Louise Gilman.

Gilman, I discovered, had compiled a couple of books since the late '70s:  Humor in the Court and More Humor in the Court, from which our well-travelled list of bloopers was originally excerpted, more or less intact. Who was Gilman? She was a professional court reporter who gathered the material for her books from actual court records all across the U.S.

Sadly, both books are now out of print, but the bloopers live on, thanks to the Internet... where information never dies.

Dear Guide:
I'm just wondering -- I didn't find anything about it on your site -- if you've heard the legend concerning "The Ten Commandments" by C.B. DeMille. Allegedly, when Charlton Heston as Moses raises his staff to part the Red Sea, an alert viewer can spy his Rolex watch. I've watched the scene several times and have determined it to be untrue, although I have heard this rumor many times over the years. Are y'all aware of it?

No, it's a new one on me. If it is an urban legend -- which seems likely -- you've just debunked it for us. Thanks for reporting your observations. (If anyone else out there has heard or observed anything to the contrary, let us know!)

By the way, while looking up The Ten Commandments on the Internet Movie Database, I came across another interesting legend about the film: it has been said (most notably by himself) that director Cecil B. DeMille, who served as narrator on the film, also played the Voice of God. However, in the years since DeMille's death in 1959, both Charlton Heston and another actor by the name of Delos Jewkes have each made the same claim for themselves. Whose word shall we take on this?

Dear Guide:
Hello! Thank you for your article on virus hoaxes. My sister fell prey to this email story and passed it on to me. A smart teenager blew the myth out of the water, but not before much time was wasted alerting others -- and subsequently un-alerting them. What an embarassment!

It's just as I feared -- any intelligent teenager could do this job!

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