Today is the day to make all the predictable jokes.

I got an extremely disturbing email from a fellow named Mr. Anthony Nuttall the other day:

"Hey,

I was reading the blog of that guy from Oklahoma who kidnapped, raped and killed a 10 yr old girl and was planning to eat her. I'm pretty sure you will have heard of him, if not, googlenews Kevin Underwood.

I read a post on his blog (July 29th 2003, 1:40 am, if you want to check it out) in which he links to your website because he discovered you linked to his (he was returning the favour).

Just thought it was interesting, and thought you might also.

I hope i'm not the 100th person to already point this out to you.

Anthony"

Amazingly I didn't read it for a while after I got it, which is rare, so it felt very spooky that I let that creepy information sit for so long in my inbox.

Anyway, I wanted to see what this was about. Had I ever emailed with Mr. Underwood? Were we pen pals from a while ago?

I found the original post:

"I was just looking over the statistics for my web page counter thing, and noticed that several people got here through a link from someone else's webpage. I checked out the webpage, and, sure enough, there's a link to my site. Though I've never heard of the person, or their website. I looked it over a little, and it seemed like it might be interesting, so I'm returning the favor, by linking to their website, Zulkey. What's weird is that they were talking about Circle K stores, and the words "Circle K" were linked, not to a website actually about Circle K, but to my site."

And I found what I had linked to him for originally. I was interviewing author Paul Davidson (who, coincidentally has a book out right now but I swear I'm not posting htis just to get his book attention). In an answer to a question, he mentioned the store "Circle K." I did a search for a link that referenced one of the best quotes from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and completely randomly linked to his site.

Anyway, though, not like I actually ever knew Underwood, he sure doesn't make James Frey and JT Leroy look so bad, does he?