"The steady drip of dubious prose"

I'm breaking my vow of bloggering silence, descending from my higher pursuits of basic survival, because my email has been down all day. I hate to admit this but I feel a loss of connection when I can't email. It's like I'm disconnected from what's going on in the world, especially at work (of course probably not much going on since it's my work email that's down). Still, I needed something, so I allowed a short foray into the blogosphere which got me thinking about "You call this progress?" by Seth Shostak where he states that "E-mail has become a steady drip of dubious prose, bad jokes and impatient requests."

That steady drip phrase really caught my eye--a steady drip, a drip line which reaches embarrassingly to the very core of me. Because of these dangers, I've had to set email vows too as it can get out of hand. I do not allow myself to check email after 8 or 9pm and if I happened to check it I will not open any email that may be upsetting in any way (e.g. office politics, anything that smells of criticism, conference rejections, students I haven't seen for two weeks or who I chewed out...). So while I feel connection and have certainly connected with folks through email that I wouldn't have otherwise, I have to agree with Shostak when he says email is a "sure source of stress and anxiety." But I assume most of this anxiety is not connected to the genre of email itself--it's "built-in, insistent arrogance" as Shostak says--but rather because email is the portal to my various work projects, my students, and my social world.

But email can really consume me. And I think Shostak is right to insist that the "esthetic debilities" that we hear about too often in popular media are not the big threat: "rather it's the unstoppable proliferation." Yeah, I know that. Like when I try to set up a committee meeting and email out a couple of possible times and agenda items--later my box is filled with 20 emails some in chronological order, others coming in late, some chiming in without reading the sequence, all and all a tanglewood of prose, time/dates, and propositions. You'd think I'd just delete the mess but I don't--I mean someone has to go through these things, right?

As Shostak recounts, a friend of his confided that he couldn't afford to die because there's be no one to handle the pile up of emails--the drip, drip, drip...the horror of modern existence.

What happens in Vegas . . . unless you blog about it

Highlight of Vegas Conference trip so far—all before the conference even begins

** I naively forget about cell-phone in cargo pants pocket which upon the second infraction automatically triggers a sequestering behind tall glass walls and full-body metal sweep with long rod: “Hey, can you not put that radiation sticks so close to my boys?”

**Stupidly I decide to buy a bagel 15 minutes before scheduled take-off where a man with a voucher is trying to spend every last nickel (after buying a bagel sandwich, cookies, extra bagel with cheese: “let’s see I’d also like one of the special bagels, no not that one…so what happens to what I haven’t spent? Can you give it to this charity you are advertising”). All the while my now nervous colleague Brittany (note to self: take Brittany to lunch) stalls them at the counter: “I promise he was just here. This is his stuff. Can I take his stuff on? . . . Will you watch it, then? I’m sure…he’ll be here”

**When asking for directions at a booth on the strip:

Really, you guys are cute.

Well, thanks, but we are colleagues…

That’s not a problem. You can get married for 15 bucks have some fun and then get divorced for 5! What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

**The not so bright before-mentioned person: “Why don’t we skip the tram ride? The Dancin’ Queen is still coursing through my veins and I need to walk it off” One hour and 10 minutes later, one arrested hooker, much broken glass, and one cheap marriage/divorce offer: “Boy, these blocks are really making me tired.”

And now off to the conference.