zen = amnesia = book = notes = type = profile = nhwc = px
43things = soma = three dog party = fotolog = host

belated valentine shout-out to 'gmail'

it seems whenever i talk, nay gush, about my 'gmail' account, i get flushed and my heart beats faster and i can't stop grinning. in this season of enforced sentimentality, methinks this smacks of love--passionate burning true love! what? with an email program? sadly, yes. i have pondered the why of this infatuation at length and have come up with a plausible theory...

'gmail' rocks my world so much because it enables me to "archive" (a.k.a. "horde") things instead of throwing them out. here is a direct quote from their site espousing the joys of hording/archiving:

"With more than 2,500 megabytes of storage, the typical user can go for years without deleting a single message.[!!!]
You never know when you might need a message again... you can easily archive your messages instead [of deleting them], so they'll still be accessible when you need them." [*sigh*]

that's right, in 'gmailville' i am liberated from the tyranny of making choices and can opt to keep all messages--even junky ones which, had i less storage space, might rightly be deemed unworthy. but wait there's more!

i don't have to organize anything! all my old messages get swept into a huge pile under the rug-of-archived-ness (out of sight and out of mind) until i need them. i can enter 'purple crayon' into the search engine and in seconds some old message in which i used these words is handed to me, sans dust bunnies.

i am in love with this magic and dream of the day when i can have a real physical 'gmailville' life. how beautiful it would be, when plagued by towering piles of amorphous junk, to just hurl it all out of my bedroom window into the backyard where it would magically be retrievable by mere desire, and miraculously arrive pristine. in this fantasy the backyard transforms into a huge invisible warehouse (made of the same material as wonder woman's automobile) in which i may stash all things no matter how ephemeral or pointless (old twist ties? check! mismatched socks? check! movie stubs, old receipts, valentines cards from 2nd grade, my deceased dog's collar, vintage board games, odd buttons? check!) or lackluster (falling apart tee shirt with more sentimental value than threadcount? check!).

until the day that 'gmailville' merges with 'siriville' proper (which will be a day of parades and cannons being fired in the streets and banner waving), i will continue to struggle in vain to create a hierarchy for which material goods get discarded, muddle through misguided attempts at organizing the bounty of junk, and provide a thriving habitat for dust mites and their ilk....

(and yes, i know 'gmail' reads my emails and invades my illusion-of-privacy, but realistically, what is 'privacy' anymore? and also, if i want to hatch top-secret plans to take over the world, i'll meet with my conspirators in private and exchange secrets via whisper, not email.)

before = after