BlogHer07: A Square Peg in a Round Hole

Maybe BlogHer07 wasn't as bad as I thought.


What can have changed my mind? OK, call me shallow: it's because Susie Sunshine and Blackbird and I won prizes.

That's what I won. It's toy bins. Made of fine, smooth birch wood, lovingly hand-painted in organic milk paints by disabled garden gnomes. Or something along those lines.

Now, do I need a toy box? No, I do not need a toy box. My children are 10 and 12, and my toy box days are pretty much over.

But it was free. A prize! (A prize that I totally don't deserve to win; I crashed the party.)

But I'm going to accept it. And then, if I feel a bit guilty, I'll send it to Dooce.

BlogHer07: I can't believe I wasted $200 on this. Updated.

OK, that's kind of a misleading headline, because that kind of behavior is exactly what I do best.

You know how social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster are always asking what your interests are? If I took them seriously, I'd type in different answers. I'd answer "blogging, deciding whether I have more of a crush on Jack Aubrey or Stephen Maturin, putting on makeup, and wasting money." Instead of that crap I'm always spouting about reading and listening to classical music.

So I'm actually not opposed to wasting money. Not on principal, anyway. It's something of a hobby of mine. But BlogHer07 was definitely a waste of money.

The best thing about it has been meeting and talking with other bloggers. Not the famous ones, so much, although I was introduced to a few famous ones by Blackbird and Schmoozie Sunshine,* and they were all very nice. And their business cards were so cool that I'd love to go back and get more. Talk about imaginative. These girls are business card geniuses. Some of them weren't even cards. Kristen at Mommy Needs a Cocktail was handing out shotglasses. The Sarcastic Journalist was handing out tampons. (All we needed was someone brilliant enough to give away chocolate. Or Brad Pitt.)

But the panels? Sucked. I sat through three, and came to the reluctant conclusion that the people leading them didn't know what they were talking about.

Or the "writers panel" one panelist wrote books first, and then took to blogging in order to promote her book. One blogger blogs short stories. One blogs every day. I am not impressed. BlogHer executives: this is not the equivalent of having Janet Evanovich, Anna Quindlan, and Norah Ephron up there. On the branding yourself panel (whose title had already set off a loud "WTF" response in my head) Penelope Trunk declared that there was no such thing as going from blogging to book-writing. (Jen Lancaster, anyone? Who's on book number three? Hello?)

No wonder we were all live-blogging or twittering or checking our email or web-surfing or checking out each others' blogs. Give us a place to plug in our laptops and free wireless and guess what happens? We tune out the stupid stuff and do what we want.

But I didn't need BlogHer to do that.

So the $200 I paid appears to have covered the meeting space, the hotel shuttle, breakfast and lunch the first day, the printed program, one cocktail at the first evening's cocktail party, free wireless, those dreary panels ... not much else.

Seems a bit steep.

* * * * *

Update: If you want to save $200 and maybe a bunch of travel costs, read Schmutzie's 769th post. You'll have to scroll down, but it's worth it.

To Schmutzie's advice, I will add that you should have clickable links to each post.

*hee hee hee.

Blogher. The writing panel.

Chick number one: I already have two degrees in English literature. I already know that drama is different from non-fiction.

Chick number two: I'm so glad you're not still blogging about selling Avon. Because, you know ... Avon?

Chick number three: I love your earrings. But they wouldn't work for me.

BlogHer: Fashion Crimes and Speed Dating

Right now, people are standing in a big circle meeting each other and exchanging business cards. I'm not anti-social, but it's way too loud. I have to conserve my vocal chords.

I wish I knew sign language. I could press my business card into their hands and give them a heartfelt message.

Unfortunately, the only sign language I know would look hostile.

While waiting in line to register, I spotted my first fashion crime.


Sock liners aren't supposed to show.

also:


Dear GM,

I'm sorry. I'm still not interested in your cars.

Love,
Poppy Buxom
The Unknown, Not-Famous, Non-Schmoozing Blogger

BlogHer07 breakfast

Here's something new and different. At the opening session of Blogher, when you get bored, there's wireless. So you can check your email.

Blogher: Loud. Female. Alcohol Ridden.

(At the cocktail party at the W hotel with blackbird and Susie Sunshine ... very loud. Very female. Imagine a hen house with deafening music and $10 glasses of wine.)

More later.

It's almost Blogher

Why am I not excited?

Let's make this a multiple-choice question, shall we?

1. A conference for people who have only two things in common (they are women who blog) seems pretty stupid. Unless you're making it about a smaller subset of humanity (albinos who play electric guitar) you're going to end up with a very amorphous, heterogeneous mass of people.

2. I never bought the idea that women bloggers are marginalized. Hell, there are so many idiotic blogs out there, anyone who punctuates correctly should feel marginalized. And I do.

3. The panels have impossibly vague titles. So now we're going to have a large, amorphous, heterogeneous mass of female bloggers going to panels called "Blogging the Body," and I don't know about you, but that sets off my bullshitometer.

4. The Blogher website sucks. The conference information is buried over in a sidebar. This leaves me feeling confused and resentful. ("I gave these idiots money?") On the other hand, I have a good sense of humor, so I find the idea that someone running a website that shitty has the nerve to claim any kind of internet expertise so hilarious that I want to hang around and make sarcastic remarks about them. Although I don't want to hang out with them, especially when I'm sober. Speaking of which:

5. Breakfast and lunch are mentioned, but where's the alcohol?

6. All of the above.

On the bright side, I know I'm going to be hanging out with Blackbird, Susie Sunshine, and Jen Lancaster. But I don't need Blogher for that. I could hang out with them anyway. I don't need a reason to drink and blab with my friends. "The earth revolves around the sun" works just fine.

It's good enough for astronauts. But not good enough for me.

Say I decide that too much cork is bad for me, (see below) and I'm going to stop drinking the wine with the little life rafts bobbing around in it. What do I chose to drink? On a hot summer day? A nice refreshing Diet Coke.

But now, scientists have conspired to make that sound like a bad idea, too.

So ... what's left? Soy milk? Bubble Tea? Tang?

How to quit drinking so damned much in three easy steps

1. When your husband offers you a glass of wine, say "yes, please."
2. Wait while your husband opens the wine.
3. Spend the next hour trying, with each sip, not to get a mouthful of cork.

In which Poppy takes quill in hand, and writes

I'm about to start writing a report for the annual meeting of a non-profit on the fundraiser I recently chaired for them. We raised a record-breaking amount of money. In your face, doubters and nay-sayers! Because I'm pretty good at raising money.

What I'm not so good at is making nice. Right now I have to try to remember the name of every single person who did anything to contribute to the event. And I will be sure to miss a few, because I am forgetful, and I don't know--someone who donated $5,000 is just somehow easier to remember than someone who donated some used object to the silent auction that didn't end up selling. But charity work being what it is, you just know that the $5,000 person won't care about being mentioned, and the used items person will care deeply. And will then go around behind my back whining about how her efforts weren't appreciated enough.

Well, Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care. But I do care that stupidly, I came downtown with my laptop but without my power cord. So here I am typing away at a desktop--that doesn't have a printer. I can't print. And so my report will be hand-written.

HAND-WRITTEN, people. Inaccurate, incomplete, pissing people off, and HAND-WRITTEN.

Have I told you lately how much I love you, internet, in all your typed beauty?

OK, gotta go forget some people.

In which Poppy quotes a lot of old records, and then sets the record for ranting.

Sorry, yesterday I was way too busy to fill you in on the excitement in my life.

Because I was posting here, there, and everywhere.

I was also waiting for the electrician or someone like him because Lord knows when these two fabulous bloggers come to stay with me in Chicago, they deserve to have lights that work.

Not to mention the new carpeting that got installed. (I'll pretend it was for them. Because that will make me look like such a great hostess.)

And I was trying to buy a copy of this from the local independent bookstore. Which only had one copy, and then couldn't find it for me on the shelves. After a bit of fruitless searching, some foot-tapping, sighing, and eye-rolling, I told the clerk "this is your cue to offer to special-order it for me." Honestly, here I am getting off my ass and going into a bookstore instead of 1-clicking the thing from Amazon, which would have been easier, faster, and cheaper. That bookstore should be kissing my feet, instead of wasting my time. Fuckers.

And now? Blogger has added word verification to the posting process. So when I--the princess of punctuation--realize that I left out a comma, I have to go through all that rigmarole to fix it. Honestly, Blogger ... what's with the passive-aggression? If you want me to move to Typepad, just say so.

Poppy enters the world of high finance

So, I'm getting ready for Blogher, and I realize, good lord, I'm going to be partying with Jen Lancaster, and I haven't read her new book yet. Bad Poppy!

So then I checked Amazon for a copy. And a cottage industry was born. Do you see the price for the collectible version?

The question is, how many copies can I get Jen to sign?

Stop the Presses!

I cooked dinner tonight. This shouldn't be amazing, because I'm a housewife, but it is, because That Stud Muffin I Married does most of the cooking.

What can I say? At this point in my life, cooking is about as thrilling as going to the grocery store. You spend enough decades doing something, and the excitement, once at a rolling boil, subsides to a barely-perceptible simmer.*

But tonight I made: pulled pork in a red, vinegary sauce served on top of home-made mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and home-made coleslaw. Dessert was home-made vanilla ice cream topped with organic raspberries, that miraculously, were only $1.89 a punnet.**

* Please note deft use of cooking metaphor. I'm not just a good cook; I'm an English major. A writer, forsooth.

** Which is a word that amuses my husband to no end.

I'm ready for Blogher

Eight (weird) Things

Blackbird tagged me with that eight things meme. Which I already did. I'm supposed to post the rules and then post eight things about me. But I'm not going to. Because I'm also on a quest to discover the weirdest thing about me.

So I've decided to post eight weird things about me, and then people can vote for the weirdest in the comments box. And I'm not tagging anyone because it didn't work the first time, so fuck it.

1. I don't watch television.

2. I don't understand why everyone is so interested in sex. Come on, people. It's just an orgasm. Sheesh.

3. As a consequence, I've never watched a single episode of Sex in the City. I understand it's about Sarah Jessica Parker having sex with Manolos, which is so nasty I simply can't believe you people.

4. That whole get married/have children/move to the suburbs trajectory? Totally my husband's idea. It's true. If you don't believe me, ask That Stud Muffin I Married. I was dragged kicking and screaming up the altar. I distinctly remember asking him. "Are you sure you're ready to get married? Don't you want to sow some more wild oats?"

5. I feel almost no affection for my mother. In fact, she drives me batshit crazy for, among other things, demanding that I write her a letter a week. So I print out blog entries and send them to her. (OK, I get rid of the swears and shit like that, OK? I don't just mail her a screen dump ... but yeah. My mother reads my blog. She just doesn't know it's a blog.)

6. I don't like gossiping. I mean, sure, OK, I can do it, just the way I can make small talk to the boring guy next to me at a dinner party, but I don't find it compelling or anything.

7. I don't like to talk on the phone. OK, people are fucking howling at this one, I can tell it. But people from the internet to whom I have talked on the phone--when we talked, did I call you? No, I didn't. YOU called ME (except for that one time with Badger) and naturally, I didn't want there to be one of those awkward silences, so OK, I kept you on the phone for two hours. But it's still your fault.

8. I didn't learn to drive until I was 35.

That last one is how I know I'm actually female. Because in a lot of other ways, I'm a man. Or maybe I'm in drag. Or at the very least, from time to time, I rustle uneasily in my transvestite clothing. To borrow a phrase from Laura Mulvey, whom I've only read

BECAUSE I'M WEIRD.

And now, I would like to thank the little people ...

So that reporter from North Shore Magazine and I had a little chat on the telephone, and I guess that means I've been interviewed. You know--officially.

See, I've decided that there are two ways to be asked questions. One is when someone asks you a kind of predictable question, where you've actually thought about it a little bit, and you can come up with a normal-sounding answer:

Friend of Nine-Year-Old Poppy: So, Poppy--what do you want to be when you grow up?
Poppy: I want to be a judge on the Miss America pageant, because, frankly, they need help. Or maybe write children's books.

Friend of Nineteen-year-old Poppy: So, Poppy ... have you given any more thought to that whole going-to-college thing?
Poppy: Not really. But I have to do something soon, because living at home sucks.

That's the normal way to get asked a question.

Then there's the interview way. I think interviewers are supposed to surprise--or, in extreme cases, blindside--you with questions that you've never thought of, to get you to say something really juicy and memorable.

So this guy asked me what was the weirdest thing about me. And I couldn't think what it was. Not because I think I'm normal, mind you. No, it's because I'm a veritable Symphony in Weirdness. I mean, where do I begin? Exactly.

So if you have any insights, do me a favor and tell me. Because right now, the only thing I can think of is that I never watch TV.

From the Mailbag

From "Fit Life"

I have been taking HGH Life™ for five weeks and there is a noticeable improvement in me overall. Waking up without muscular pain is the most obvious! When I run out, I shall be ordering as much as my pension will allow. I am in England and am 79 years young!

Dear Mr. Life:

Good for you, sir! I'll bet you don't look a day over 80.

Very truly yours,
Poppy Buxom

From "Rosie Hutton"

Good Day !

Business Trade company offers the position of Local Agent.
We are looking for the trustworthy person with excellent organizational and communicative skills. The good knowledge of computer and business practice will be your advantage. This is the part-time job, which can be combined with any permanent or other part-time job. No special experience is necessary.
There are different kinds of a part time job that our company offers.
We are waiting for your resume at our contact e-mail address: businesstrade99@aol.com

Dear Ms. Hutton:

You can't kid me. You're Manolo from the shoe blog.

Yours very truly,
Poppy Buxom

* * * * *
From D****

Hello,

I'm a freelance reporter with Newtopian Shores Magazine. I'm working on a "best of"-type piece on Newtopian Shores blogs, and I was hoping to ask you a few questions about The Opiate of the Masses. It's snarky, it's fun, and it's worth writing about.

Please feel free to e-mail or call me at (555) 555-1212. My deadline's kind of tight, but I'd love to get you in there.

Thanks,
D*****

Dear Mr. Wonderful:

I love you. Will you marry me?

Yours most sincerely,
Poppy Buxom

Guess who I saw tonight?

Here's a hint: he was hot in the 1970s. And 1980s.

No, not Sting.

It was



OK, it looked more like



(I'll bet there are people out there who still haven't figured it out. Losers.)

This is for the smart people: OK, he's not as supple, and his jumps have lost a lot of height, but he's still amazing. And he hasn't gained an ounce. He even has all his hair.

Update on the stolen purse and my current state, which is of such an anxiety, mon Dieu!

So, just on a whim, (because you all know I really want to climb back onto a plane and fly to Paris to pick up my recovered bag at the stolen bag holding facility in Paris) I sent an email to a former professor of mine, who, from time to time, spends a year in Paris running the junior year abroad program.

And guess what? It turns out that he wasn't running the program, but he happens to be in Paris this week, and he's agreed to help.

So right now, he and I are busy emailing back and forth. I've sent him scans of the letter from my new French boyfriend, Chief Inspector Dreyfus of the Recovered Handbags Department, and a scan of my passport, and a letter from me, telling the French police--in French--to pretty please hand my purse over to my former professor. (Which my former professor had to write for me, because as everyone who reads this blog already knows, I speak some French, but I am not tres fluent.)

So at the moment, I am COMPLETELY mental with a combination of excitement and suspense. Strangely enough, I'm also retroactively loving my vacation more and more. My daughter feels the same way. Like all of a sudden our vacation has morphed from this horrible ordeal where cruel French thieves conspire to make clodhopping Americans miserable to a warm and whimsical scene from a Jacques Tati movie. Can you hear the accordions playing, mes amis? Because I can.

Color me crazy. In 4 x 6 portrait size.

Here's a little-known fact about fundraisers: they have the half life of plutonium. (Whatever that means. Science isn't my thing--but metaphors are.)

In other words, if you chair an event on June 22, it is quite possible that you will be working your ass off on it on July 7th. And you will not be anywhere near done. No, what you once thought of as those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, where you were going to have all kinds of free time, is becoming that month where you spent so much time indoors with a rapidly overheating laptop on your lap that you almost developed your first yeast infection.

What have I been doing with said laptop? Well, for the past couple of days I've been going through pictures. Four hundred and 16 of them, to be precise. I spent four hours on Friday finding out who all these people were. Then I was busy putting together little collections: this set for Chicago Social, this set for Skyline, this set for some regional magazine for a suburb so chi-chi-poo-poo that I don't think I've ever been there.

Oh, and since I'm apparently the only person IN THE WORLD who uses computers, I have to upload, edit, download, distribute, and print photographs to bring to show other, less-technologically gifted people. So they can decide which pictures they want to use. Because, you know, they don't know how to look at digital photographs. Because that would mean they'd have to use a computer.

Oh, and Walgreen's on line printing service doesn't like the photographs, for some reason. So now I have to bring a disk in to an actual store and find out what's wrong with them.

I don't know--they look OK to me, but what am I? Only the fucking event chair, but what does a ruthlessly egalitarian chain store like Walgreen's care about fancy titles? As far as Walgreen's is concerned, titles are worthless--they are yesterday's newspaper, the aluminum tray from a TV dinner, the pull top of a Tab can, the dried-out husks of the 17-year cicadas piled up under the oak trees in that yard I'll never go outside and enjoy because I'm trapped inside working on these photographs.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Walgreen's hates me. And actually, so does Blogger, who's been giving me a hard time over these furshlinginer pictures, too. But Blogger has finally condescended to accept them. So here's a sampling:

Holy merde!

Today a letter arrived for me. Specifically, for Madame Buxom. It was greatly festoonee'd with the French stamps, mon dieu, and eet was from the Prefecture of zee Police!

I read through it pretty quickly, but it seems--correct me if I'm wrong--that les petits gendarmes have found my stolen purse. And now they want me to come get it.

Here's the letter:

Madame:

I have the pleasure to you inform that the objects referenced above and something you something were deposited the 29th of June 2007 in the Service of the Found Objects.

You are disposed of a delay of three months, counting from the date of the posting, for the picking up, in which you presenting to the address and in the hours indicated below. you wish well, something of your passage, you something the present letter and a piece of identification or the declaration of something itself.

If you can't displace yourself, you have the possibility of authorizing a person of your choice, bearing a piece of identification, to operate this retaking. You would well to him put, in addition to the documents cited above, a procurement on free paper, accompanied by a photocopy of your identity piece.

A right of guarding and of a showing of 10 Euros will be perceived at the moment of re-taking.

If these objects are not retired in the something prescribed, it will be disposed conforming vigorously to the rule.

I beg to something, Madame, the assurance of my distinguished consideration,

The Chie of the Office of Found Objects and something that sounds like furniture, foreigners, or furriers, I'm not sure,

Jean-Michel INGRANDT

I know what you're thinking: eight years of French and that's the best she can do?

The Buxoms Celebrate Independence Day

We're very patriotic around here--hey, who isn't? But we don't tend to do anything special on July 4th. And this year is no exception.

There will be no Fourth of July cookout, no fireworks, no parades, no visit to the beach, no barbecue, no red-white-and-blue Jell-O and Cool-Whip monstrosities ... I probably won't even fly the flag, because it looks like rain.

It's not that I'm opposed on principal to traditional July 4th celebrations ... but we see fireworks every Wednesday and Saturday night. And grilling ... well, to tell the truth, we haven't broken the grill out for the summer. It's still in the garage.

And let's face it; we're geeks. My daughter got up late, ate breakfast, and is now playing Nintendo GameCube. My son got up, ate, and is now probably in his room watching YouTube videos of Sonic the Hedgehog characters. I'm sitting at my ease in my cool and shady living room, blithely blogging away, drinking tea, and reading this.

It gets worse. My husband? He's at the office.

But ... we get to have our geeky fun in a democratic republic. Not a monarchy.

And so, my fellow Americans ... Happy 231st anniversary of sticking to the man.

Why I am an Asshole

1. Today I agreed to travel to the local tennis center to buy tickets for a friend who is out of town. (OK, that's not the part that's assholy.) While there I ran into a friend's husband. He whispered "Hello, Poppy" really softly, so I asked him if he had laryngitis.

Friend: No, I'm doing this for the tennis players.
Poppy: Oh, fuck them--it's not like they're playing golf.

[Pause]

Friend: Where's Mr. Poppy?
Poppy: He's at work. Why aren't you?

2. Then I dropped by the post office to mail a few letters. There was a card table with a lot of crude hand-drawn posters--something about impeaching Cheney--and stacks of literature that someone obviously wanted me to pick up.

Political Dude: Do you like my poster?
Poppy: It's OK. But I never heard of this "Larouche" person, so your organization isn't marketing itself very well.
Political Dude: He's ...
Poppy: That doesn't mean I want you to tell me.

3. Then I headed to the local grocery store. I wanted to buy some hamburger meat. Extra lean. I went and stood next to the meat counter where a white-haired woman picked up package after package of extra lean ground beef. And then put them down again. I didn't know whether she was trying to pick the package that was heaviest, lightest, oldest or youngest. It seemed random. I wait while she shuffled packages around. But not for long.

Poppy [reaching around the woman and grabbing a package of ground beef] Here, let me show you how it's done.

An email from Nora Ephron

Internet, I've got nothing for you today. Why? Because I spent most of the weekend cleaning out my study, that's why.

My study, which was a vast dumping ground for all of the paper a girl tends to accumulate when she's chairing not one, but two fundraisers, is almost kind of clean. The budgets, solicitation letters, mission statements, agendas, menus, invitations, proofs, reports, and general bullshit had been stacked up in piles all over the place. But now it's down to a dull roar in there. You can actually see the rug. And even my desktop! And I found a lot of bills I should have paid, and (in a fiscal attempt at equal time for opposing parties) a lot of checks I should have deposited.

But that's it. Apart from some of my usual maunderings at Mamarazzi, and surprisingly enough, at my shopping blog, I haven't had much to tell you.

So I will let Nora Ephron do the talking, in an op-ed column from the New York Times.

And don't give me any of the usual shit where you object to me squandering someone else's intellectual property. I know all about intellectual property. Intellectual property has been paying the mortgage for years. And if I take the car in for its 30,000 mile check up and find out that I need to spend $900 on repairs, I just whip out my Bank of Intellectual Property card and pay for it. So shut up. In my opinion, Nora Ephron (who??) and that useless birdcage liner The New York Times should be both pleased and proud that I'm violating their copyrights.

* * * * *

Op-Ed Contributor

The Six Stages of E-Mail

• By NORA EPHRON

Published: July 1, 2007

Stage One: Infatuation

I just got e-mail! I can’t believe it! It’s so great! Here’s my handle. Write me! Who said letter writing was dead? Were they ever wrong! I’m writing letters like crazy for the first time in years. I come home and ignore all my loved ones and go straight to the computer to make contact with total strangers. And how great is AOL? It’s so easy. It’s so friendly. It’s a community. Wheeeee! I’ve got mail!

Stage Two: Clarification

O.K., I’m starting to understand — e-mail isn’t letter-writing at all, it’s something else entirely. It was just invented, it was just born and overnight it turns out to have a form and a set of rules and a language all its own. Not since the printing press. Not since television. It’s revolutionary. It’s life-altering. It’s shorthand. Cut to the chase. Get to the point.

And it saves so much time. It takes five seconds to accomplish in an e-mail message something that takes five minutes on the telephone. The phone requires you to converse, to say things like hello and goodbye, to pretend to some semblance of interest in the person on the other end of the line. Worst of all, the phone occasionally forces you to make actual plans with the people you talk to — to suggest lunch or dinner — even if you have no desire whatsoever to see them. No danger of that with e-mail.

E-mail is a whole new way of being friends with people: intimate but not, chatty but not, communicative but not; in short, friends but not. What a breakthrough. How did we ever live without it? I have more to say on this subject, but I have to answer an Instant Message from someone I almost know.

Stage Three: Confusion

I have done nothing to deserve any of this:

Viagra!!!!! Best Web source for Vioxx. Spend a week in Cancún. Have a rich beautiful lawn. Astrid would like to be added as one of your friends. XXXXXXXVideos. Add three inches to the length of your penis. The Democratic National Committee needs you. Virus Alert. FW: This will make you laugh. FW: This is funny. FW: This is hilarious. FW: Grapes and raisins toxic for dogs. FW: Gabriel García Márquez’s Final Farewell. FW: Kurt Vonnegut’s Commencement Address. FW: The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. AOL Member: We value your opinion. A message from Hillary Clinton. Find low mortgage payments, Nora. Nora, it’s your time to shine. Need to fight off bills, Nora? Yvette would like to be added as one of your friends. You have failed to establish a full connection to AOL.

Stage Four: Disenchantment

Help! I’m drowning. I have 112 unanswered e-mail messages. I’m a writer — imagine how many unanswered messages I would have if I had a real job. Imagine how much writing I could do if I didn’t have to answer all this e-mail. My eyes are dim. I have a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. I have a galloping case of attention deficit disorder because every time I start to write something, the e-mail icon starts bobbing up and down and I’m compelled to check whether anything good or interesting has arrived. It hasn’t. Still, it might, any second now. And yes it’s true — I can do in a few seconds with e-mail what would take much longer on the phone, but most of my messages are from people who don’t have my phone number and would never call me in the first place. In the brief time it took me to write this paragraph, three more messages arrived. Now I have 115 unanswered messages. Strike that: 116.

Stage Five: Accommodation

Yes. No. No :). No :(. Can’t. No way. Maybe. Doubtful. Sorry. So Sorry. Thanks. No thanks. Not my thing. You must be kidding. Out of town. O.O.T. Try me in a month. Try me in the fall. Try me in a year. NoraE@aol.com can now be reached at NoraE81082@gmail.com.

Stage Six: Death

Call me.

Nora Ephron, the author, most recently, of “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,” is a contributing columnist for The Times.

* * * * *

Are you still there? Because I'm back. OK, so this is what is making me feel incredibly witty, in that smug, post-modern way: in order to blog this, I emailed this article to myself.