Monday, September 17, 2007

The E-Mailman Wears A Bucket

For months I have had a hate/hate relationship with my two free email accounts. While I can begrudgingly justify the need for both of them, I vigorously curse their existence every time I find 25 or more newsletters, political action updates, helpful reminders to donate money, pathetic pleas from blog link-whores and other pernicious little pieces of spam waiting for me after just one single day of neglecting to log in.

Last night I finally decided that enough is enough. My first step was to deal with the things I thought I could easily control: all of the newsletter subscriptions that I don't remember ever signing up for and can't remember ever reading.

I opened up every single one of those buggers, scrolled to the bottom of each where the little "unsubscribe" button resides and, with a great sense of liberation and empowerment, clicked like I've never clicked before. For a few of these irritating intruders that was enough. For the majority, however, my enthusiastic clicking opened up a brand new web page where I was told that in order to take me off their list they would need my email address so they could send me a notification that I had been unsubscribed.

The incredible incongruity of these requests with the original goal of my evening's endeavor led me to abandon all hope of ever regaining control. So I'm out, permanently. From today forward I'm eschewing all forms of digital communication. (I mean, of course, the ones and zeroes type of digital communication, not the finger type. I MUST be able to communicate with my fingers...or, one of them, at least.)

Nope. No more e-mail for me. I'll use snail mail, telephones, fax machines, Fedex, telex, telegrams, holograms...just keep your filthy e-mail messages away from me because I don't need them anymore. Unless, of course, you happen to be a Nigerian government official who needs my help to move your assets into America. I love helping those guys.

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