08-01-01 @ 1:39 am EDT

It looks as if my "Unbelievable" entry may be a load of crap, after all.

Earlier yesterday the person who had supposedly "died"--WHS--showed up to post that he was in fact very much alive, that some jerk had gotten hold of his password at Yahoo! and at Hotmail (same password) and had changed them to an expletive. (I won't bother guessing which one.) This person had then posted the news that he was dead.

I thought the first message, from a "coworker" who just happened to have access to this guy's account, was kind of fishy, but it's not kind to disbelieve people who bring news of another's death.

Now I find myself doubting it yet again, but in a different way.

I won't dispute that things such as this CAN happen, and HAVE. Someone impersonated me on a message board once, taking on the name "Tehuti_.88" to fool others into thinking I was insulting them and demanding that they visit my website. I had to delete some angry messages from my guestbook as a result. This person...well...he deserves his own five or six entries somewhere down the line. No space or time here. Just illustrating that yes, it does happen.

But still...

From what I could tell, this guy was all around nice and wouldn't do something like this just for fun, unless he's got EVERYBODY fooled. (It happens.) So...I'm of the mind that sometimes people like to "test" others, to see who their TRUE friends are. I mean, take a look, when will your friends show their true faces, except when you have died? Those who take the time to show their sorrow are generally the ones you can count on later on in life.

Post and say that you are a friend and you have died; garner the words of sympathy, take down the names of those who count--and then miraculously come back to say that the news of your death had been greatly exaggerated.

Simple as that.

This is incredibly cynical, and as I said, he may very well have gained his own stalker (he claims it was someone who privately harassed him at KP), but as this is online, and you can never know for SURE who is who, I'm going to hold off on total belief on this one...

Needless to say, the black ribbon is now gone from my profile and Thoth is back up where he belongs.