Cursed (two syllables) email

Have you ever stopped to think about the hefty price we pay for having an email address? I'm not talking about having to sort through the messages relating to Nigerian banking scams or Tijuana-based erectile dysfunction drug companies. Those are certainly a pain to have to weed through, but in my book those annoyances don't measure up to the accountability we are subjected to by electronic mail.

In the past I've had a few potential employers and organizations ask me for my email address only to follow up with the question How often do you check your email? Because I want the position (whatever it is at the time) I always say that i check my email daily, which is usually true, but in doing so I obligate myself, at least to some degree, of being on call 24 hours a day. In other words, it opens up the door for an employer to email me and expect an answer regardless of whether I'm scheduled to appear at work that day.

This is not so much a gripe as it is an observation.

This brings to mind the people who call up and upon getting an answering machine say I know you're there so pick up the phone.

How dare they?

When I was single I would constantly change the message on my answering machine. Once when I was fed up with aforementioned types my message said:

Please leave a message after the beep. Do understand
however that leaving a message does not obligate me to call you back. Also
if I am screening my calls, announcing who you are does not obligate me to pick
up the phone. My phone does not control me; I control my phone.

That message got mixed reviews. Some friends took it as a personal attack which was not my intention. I just couldn't believe the audacity of those who would assume that because they wanted me to answer my phone I should drop whatever i was doing and do their bidding.

Would these same people invite themselves into your living room and ask you to make them a sandwich? Can't you just hear them say Don't forget to cut the crusts off! They probably wouldn't be so bold, but in essence that's basically what they're doing when they make demands of you via the telephone.

Going back to the job application, what if instead of asking how often you check your email, it asked how often you were willing to work for free outside of your scheduled hours? After all, isn't this really what the question is asking when you get right down to it? Otherwise, why wouldn't the sender just wait until you clocked in to ask you whatever they needed?

As cantankerous as I may seem at times, I am not into complaining about things that are within my control. I used to work at a job where coworkers would complain about how little they made, yet they would continue to show up for work every day.

Talk is cheap.

My argument was that we set our own worth every day that we clocked in. Regardless of how "poorly" the employer was rewarding us, we told that employer we were okay with that every day that we showed up for work.

The same is true for responding to someone's email. If I respond during my personal time, I'm telling the sender I am willing to file them into the same category as I do my family and friends. I'm saying I'm just as anxious to receive their news as I am my niece's prom pictures or my friend's latest gossip or my wife's cherished sweet nothings.

If this isn't the case, I have only myself to blame.

I am curious to hear how others have dealt with this dilemma.

Blessed be the taxman

Blessed be the taxman for he bringeth us our refund. We shout and holler praise for the almighty deductions. Huzzah!

Yes, I know this money is actually nothing more than the piddly remains of what I've already forked out to the government and gotten back in the form of a check, but so what? If we didn't pay our taxes to the United States, who would fund the weapons of mass destruction? And then if there were no weapons of mass destruction, how could we justify the weapons of mass destruction destruction? And then hard working Americans would be out of a job now wouldn't they?

Our checks, both from the state and George W., came and went. No sooner were they in our mitts than they were rushed off to our credit union for deposit. No sooner were they deposited than they were spent. Thanks to a great tax guy and a thousand-dollar procreation credit our family has two more toys to boot.

And there was much rejoicing.

One toy is the notebook computer upon which I am typing to you now. It is a Compaq Presario XYZ-LMNOP or something like that. Does anyone else remember back when we called these things laptops? Remember Y2K compliance? Those were the days, my friend.

This computer replaces the seven-year old doorstop of a laptop I've been working on for the past . . . well . . . seven years. Actually, I won't throw out the old computer. It still works provided I'm willing to sit through the five-minute bootup . It also has writings and other creative endeavors of yours truly dating back to ye olde college days.

I don't know why I keep those papers, but whenever I get a new computer, I always transfer over old documents for which I have absolutely no use. I once wrote an essay comparing a novel by late Senegalese author, Mariama Bâ, to French philosopher Prévost's Manon Lescaut. The long title for the latter is actually Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

Does anyone really care about the title, much less to read my sophomoric literary opinions on the subject in pisspoor French? Then why has this oeuvre survived now for six or seven hard drives?

Explain your answer.

My new computer is pretty sweet, especially considering I only spent $480 on it after the $30 rebate. I'll keep you informed, gentle reader, as to whether or not I ever receive the rebate. Oh yes, I will keep you informed. Hopefully Staples will pull through though. Signing up for the rebate on their website couldn't have been easier.

I also am playing on Windows Vista which, for all practical purposes is semi-somewhat better than XP. I guess. I haven't taken the bundled cyber tour of what all new features I can expect from this new operating system, but I'm sure it's chocked full of user-friendly features I will never use.

One annoyance is the pop-up program called the HP Total Care Advisor slash PC Health and Security. I really haven't figured out what all this does that benefits me as a person. I have learned from other innerwebbers that the program actually slows down my system performance considerably and it contains an equally annoying innerweb search window down in the taskbar. Again, I'm not sure what good any of this does me. I'm a big believer in if-it-ain't-broke-don't-eff-with-it, and furthermore why is the program called what it is? It sounds like it was installed by Kaiser Permanente or some other health care provider.

And that's another thing? Have computers and their minions usurped the term health care the same way they did viruses? Are we now going to have to distinguish between human health and computer health?

I also recently purchased a Sharp Notevision projector and let me just tell you that this thing rocks in all caps. Why anyone would spend thousands on a large-screen TV when they could get one of these for under $700 is beyond me. You hook it up to your DVD player, notebook computer or whatever and project whatever you wanna watch up on to your wall. The image quality is stupendous. It's like being at the movies only the drinks are cheaper and you can still here the film when you're in the bathroom.

Even cooler is that we plug up the audio to the wireless speakers so we can easily listen to surround-sound. And since the speakers are wireless, we could easily take the whole thing outside and host a neighborhood movie night up against the garage door.

I know that sounds naughty but it's really not.

Anyway, deductions plus good tax guy plus impulse equals toys. And that's what it's all about.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

A dear friend of mine begins his blog with the phrase If you haven't got anything to say, then by all means, start a blog.

I'm sorry, but isn't this just the truth? What other medium allows us to so blatantly self-indulge or better yet feign author status when in fact we are contributing little more to the literary universe than Marcia Brady's lost diary (if you don't remember, just google it.)

Early on in my career as a professional freelance pro bono autobiographic blogger, I posted about a lot of the goo you find when you surf through internet blogs: political rants, gratuitous profanity, the usual self-aggrandizement and so on. Since that time I've noticed a common trend among those of us who like to share the nothingness of our lives with anyone who might regularly read our blogs or at least stumble upon them after googling "free panties." The trend I'm referring to is the blogging exodus.

Some of the best blogs I've run across have gone through some sort of cyber restructuring or in some cases, just come to an end. There have been still more that I no longer link to simply because they're not updated with fresh material. And while at first I scoffed at those bloggers who made some final spiel before leaving the world o' blogs, I am the first to feel jilted when a blog just stops dead in its tracks without any explanation being given.

Take for example Soap in My Mouth. It was written by a fellow Atlanta blogger. I don't know her from Adam, but her stuff was funny, hip, and genuinely interesting to read. Her last post dates back to mid-January and it talks about her being ill. And that's it.

Well, did she ever recover?

Did she die?

Has she been incarcerated all this time? Without an update, we'll never know. And on some level, this bothers me.

Fat Asian Baby was one of those bloggers who on March 21, 2006 at least told us why she was leaving. One of the reasons she sited incidentally was the very reason also sited by Blonde Vigilante in one of her pre-exit posts, the fear of someone you know discovering your blog. Fat Asian Baby (whose also Jewish -- go figure) finally came back much to my delight, and Blonde Vigilante (whose not blonde -- go figure) shut down her discovered blog and started anew.

Again much to my delight. Her shit is funny. She starts her blog profile with Circle, circle, dot, dot...welcome to my blogspot. It just gets funnier from there. I don't know who it was who found out about her blog, but I hope they don't find this one. I don't want to have to chase her all around the innerwebs again.

The End is Now author is one of those who gave us notice that he was leaving but has since returned. His blog is currently under some sort of overhaul and a lot of his older stuff I can't find anymore, but he's definitely worth checking out. His funniest bit is one I couldn 't find on his own blog, but someone else out there copied and pasted. Why Lie? I Need A Pie is an absolute must to add to your reading list. The guy stands outside a McDonalds with a sign panhandling so he can get money to buy an apple pie. To this day, if my wife sees me reading his blog, she'll ask, "Is that the Ineedapie guy?"

Blog Antagonist is another one gave ample notice of her departure but then returned. We're glad she did of course. Anyone who titles her blog Blogs Are Stupid has got to rock.

I don't know why I thought this new trend deserved a post unto itself. This is not my own final remark. I don't plan on going anywhere. I just think it's kind of funny that along with this relatively new method of expression comes some emerging protocol for its end.

You know, I'm trying to come up with a somewhat interesting way of ending this entry, but I really just don't have anything further to say. Then again if my friend mentioned at the beginning is correct, having nothing to say is tantamount to having a blog.