Urban myths

A subject of great interest to me is/are urban legends. A subject of
great interest to me is urban legends. Hmmm. Something wacky there.
Anyhoo. Some of you know what I refer to. An irate customer at Neiman
Marcus is charged 300 bucks for a cookie recipe. Only not.
Various disgusting elements found in fast food. Not true. Now, for some
glutens or grease or maybe even hair, sure. But the stuff in legends is
much grosser.
Of course, various warnings: men hiding under your car at Kroger. Men
hiding in your backseat. Toxic mascara. Sunscreen. Men who meow. When
you try to find the cat- WHAMMO. And was that an eclipse or an
asteroid?
Death is imminent.
Forward this email and the FBI will track how many people get it.
Computer viruses galore. Death to your PC is imminent.
Poor sick child wants this email to get to a million people.
The worst one is "Ban on Religious Programming" otherwise known as
Petition 2493. The goverment actually has an official office to deal
with this rumor. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars answering
questions and dealing with petitions, etc.... There is no Petition
2493.

Very interesting stuff. Every time I get an email warning me of
imminent death/terrorism/natural disaster/commercial injustice/cookie
recipes... I go look it up. Most of the time it's hooey.

(you can look up hoaxes on http://www.urbanlegends.about.com or http://www.snopes.com - or you could go to the accused company's site. They usually have rebuttals)