So my friend, for personal reasons, needed to keep in touch with a lot of people on a particular subject, and someone subscribed her to a Google mailing list for that purpose. The need eventually expired, and she decided to unsubscribe from the list.

Problem was, even after she'd clicked on the "Unsubscribe" link, she kept getting messages from the group. Eventually she asked me for help. After trying a few things via the "poke it with a stick" method, I eventually determined the problem was that she hadn't actually subscribed to the group herself; someone else had done it for her.

Which meant that, because she'd been signed up to the group by proxy, she hadn't set up a Google Groups account for herself.

Which meant that Google Groups wouldn't accept her request to unsubscribe, because she wasn't a Google Groups member.

Which meant that even though she was a member of the group, she couldn't leave the group because she wasn't a member of the group.

And if she is insane, that means she doesn't have to fly any more combat missions.

I first read that book when I was 15 or 16, and I go back to it every five years or so. This is probably the purest example of the catch I've ever come across in real life.

Later the same day, her Microsoft Outlook stopped connecting to the mail server, and I eventually advised her to turn the computer off and on again. "And if that doesn't work," I told her, "try renaming it egg salad."

She knew exactly what I was referring to both times. This scares her.