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How to Email

So maybe it’s time for my annual rant about how to compose email. I know that some people might suggest that, given how slowly I answer mine, I’m not the best person to be doing this. Sorry.

Be forewarned. The bitterness and crankiness factors in this journal entry are high, and the saracasm factor is moderate.

Point one: An email message is not a telegram.

You do not, in most cases, save money by using fewer words than are needed to complete your sentence. I have a friend back east, a very nice woman I’ve known for years, who sends me email which is virtually indecipherable. She uses shorthand (“u’ for you, “4” for “for”, and “pls” for “please”) almost exclusively. I’m lucky if every third or fourth character grouping is an actual English word. The overall effect is neither cute nor concise. It’s just distracting and annoying.

And, by the way, distinct paragraphs are allowed in email. Really. They are indicated by the presence of a blank line between them. Punctuation is allowed too, and (again) there’s no extra charge for it.

Reference is allowed too, whether it just involves quoting the statement you’re responding to, or just telling the recipient which of the 500 pages of his website you’re discussing. Believe it or not, the one page you found on Yahoo may not be the only one on the site.

Point two: An email message is also not a novel.

While I may read and enjoy every word of a really long email message, there’s a very good chance I will not respond to every item in it. While I’ll try to do so for friends, there’s even less chance that I’ll do so for complete strangers who have just emailed me their entire life stories.

While I appreciate that people feel comfortable enough to do this, it’s intimidating as hell and I rarely have an extra hour and a half to answer a really long email message from someone I don’t really know, even if I want to GET to know them. Start slow and concise, and then build up.

Point three: Email messages should rarely be forwarded.

Especially if they contain jokes I don’t care about, virus warnings about operating systems I don’t use, or charity pitches.

Point four: Context, context, context.

I’ve recieved an awful lot of really abusive email from customers of supermarket chains around the country, pissed off about the bad service they received, etc. Most of them emailed me because they thought this site belonged to their favorite chain. This, depsite the notices on EVERY PAGE stating that the site is not connected with any supermarket chain.

And frankly, I don’t really think Safeway’s website, for example, would have a picture of a Kroger store at the top of each page.

I get a lot of baffling messages on the other sites too. Here’s a reality check: while your Google search for “lesbian strip clubs” just happened to turn up one of my pages which just happned to contain all three words, there’s no reason to assume that I really know where any are. Or care. When I email someone about their site, I’ve usually visited most of it and figured out what it was all about.. Again, the one page you found on Yahoo may not be the only one on the site.

Point five: There is still no such thing as “an email”.

You cannot send me “an email” any more than you can go to the post office to send me “a mail”. There is no such thing, just like there is no such thing as “a foliage” nor “a traffic”. It is not grammatically correct. You can, however, send me some email or an email MESSAGE if you like.

Other email pet peeves?

Note that none of this is to suggest that I don’t like getting email. So feel free…

The Weekend

Hmmm. Let’s take stock of the weekend:

  • Created many ad banners for sex sites. It’s amazing how non-stimulating dirty pictures can be while you’re tweaking them and making them into phone sex ads.
  • Realized how odd it is that Jonno and I are both discussing phone sex ads today.
  • Kept trying to (a) minimize my sore throat and (b) figure out why I have one.
  • Pissed off a few people (perhaps justifiably) with what I believed was an innocuous comment about literacy levels and education in the south.
  • Watched a few “Streets of San Francisco” episodes while nodding in and out on the couch from the allergy medicine.
  • Vacuumed up all the remaining construction dust in my apartment.
  • Had dinner at the most miserable, useless Pizza Hut in the world with Dan and Jamie.

It seems like I accomplished much more than I really did…

On my mind moving into Monday:

  • Damned throat.
  • I’m glad I didn’t go out, pick up a boy, and stay up doing nasty things tonight like I did last Sunday.
  • I have heat again.
  • There’s really very little good daytime TV on the weekends.

Integration

This was unexpected: poking around the Census Bureau’s Factfinder, I discovered that each of the inner-city areas I’ve lived in as an adult is actually less integrated than the suburb I grew up in (where my parents still live). Throws a bit of a monkeywrench into both the ideas of segregated suburbs and of the segregated south, huh?

Or does it just say something about gentrification?

Thanks

Just wanted to offer a quick thanks to all the people who’ve sent me really nice email this weekend. And also to Dan and Jamie for making me consume lots of read meat and ice cream. I’d also thank the nice lady at the San Diego coroner’s office for calling me back, but she’s probably not reading this today…

Now, if all my assorted clients will just refrain from being pissed off about all the work I didn’t do this weekend, everything will be OK…

I’d rather not ever mention the coroner’s office in this space again, thanks…

Summer of ’80

The summer of 1980…

I was 15. I’d been hanging out with Jeanne, an older girl of rather loose morals. Dating seems too strong a word, but we necked and petted and all that kind of stuff. It was pretty apparent she would have let me fuck her, had I been so inclined. At the same time, I was supposed to sort of watch out for her and help keep her out of trouble, which was a task for which I was ill-prepared…

One night Jeanne and I went out drinking and getting stoned with my friend Kris. He was older than me too (17) and had a car. We all ended up in some park, sitting in the car talking. Jeanne and Kris were getting a little chummy…

Eventually, they got out of the car and went behind a bush. Kris fucked Jeanne. And it didn’t particularly bother me. I didn’t think of the implications behind the fact that he was screwing my date. All I could think of was that I wished I’d seen his naked ass bobbing up and down as he gave it to her…

A few realizations that night:

  • I prefer boys to girls in the sack (no surprise).
  • I have voyeuristic tendencies, particularly when they involve friends I have the hots for.
  • I’m a bit of a wimp.

This could have been a big moment for me. It could have been either my first fight, my first (and only) sexual encounter with a female, my first gangbang, or my first three-way. Or some combination of the above…

Instead, I just sat in the car and joked with them after it was all over. Then I went home and had a wank. Within a year and a half, I’d given up girls (and getting stoned)…

I Love My Mom

  

It’s true, you know, and not just because it’s Mother’s Day.

I really do love her. She’s fun to be around. She has interests outside cooking and cleaning. She’s about to buy an iMac, for Chrissakes. She asked for my email address today on the phone. She’s even offered to help me paint my apartment next time she visits.

This is a woman who dealt not only with her own really weird Depression-era upbringing (maybe I’ll tell that story some day), but with a really weird kid, and she turned out just fine. I never wanted to play sports or whatever the hell the other kids did. I wanted to prowl around downtown taking pictures of old buildings. I wanted to go to flea markets and diners and read books and play DJ. She not only coped, but she encouraged me. When I went through my “drug phase”, she was remarkably sane in retrospect.

My mom has driven me places and put up with strangeness no woman should have to deal with.

And she had a career. Thirty years with the IRS. By the time she retired in 1985, she was working with computer security (but I still have to re-program the VCR when I go home). For several years in the 70’s when my dad was unemployed, she was the sole breadwinner of the family.

Coming out was never an issue really. Mom is not an idiot. One day I just introduced her to “the guy I’m dating now” and it was just as natural and normal as if I’d said “nice day, isn’t it?”. Now she asks about ex-boyfriends on the phone and walks in the AIDS Walk and sends me newspaper clippings. Lots of newspaper clippings.

She treats all my friends like family members (although I think she has favorites). You’d think Dan, my ex-roomie, and Duncan and Jeff, my two oldest friends, were her own kids. She even asked about Sarah, even before they’d ever MET. And she seems to have taken well to Mark too, which is a good thing…

She’s adopted not one or two, but THREE immigrant refugee families, and not in a stand-offish “society matron” way. She babysits, goes grocery shopping and cooks Christmas dinner for her “families”.

Mom wants to go places and do things. My dad seems to be getting more and more letharigic, and so my mom just goes without him. She’s been to New York, Atlantic City, and the beach in the past month, and she’s coming here soon. She’ll be staying with me. And I’m actually looking forward to it.

I love my mom…

And no, she’s not online yet. She won’t be reading this, so I’m not kissing up to her. And shame on you for thinking that…

Under the Milky Funk

Song I like very much tonight: “Under the Milky Way” by the Church. Which probably suggests that I’m in a funk. It’s meant that just about every other time since 1988 or so. Owning many hours of music videos which were taped during the very hardcore funks of one’s youth is either a blessing or a curse at moments like this…

It may just be a different level of the same mild funk I may have been in since about midway through my vacation. Or it may not be (nor ever have been) a funk at all. I’ll keep you posted. Either way, I’ll try to spare you further nostalgic ramblings…

Anybody want to hang out and listen to some Ultravox this weekend?

Web Design as a Profession

I’ll probably never work full-time as a web designer (nor, God forbid, as a developer). I don’t have the interest level nor the self-discipline required to teach myself every new technology. Web design has always been more of a means than an end for me. I don’t want to be a programmer. I’m a content-driven sort. I want to communicate simply, and in as aesthetically-pleasing a manner as this simplicity will allow…

That’s not to say that I don’t have strong opinions on the subject, nor is it meant as a criticism of those who blaze new territory. It’s just that I personally don’t see the need to add complicated functionality on my own sites just because I can. There has to be a really compelling reason for me to go to the effort required to learn new technologies, My sites (or my life) must be improved dramatically in some way to make it worth my time…

For example, I started using Dreamweaver templates a long time ago. It made my life and my updates much easier. I started using limited CSS for the same reasons (and to improve page loading times). I have not, however, found any particularly compelling reason to experiment with Flash, XML, PHP, or complete CSS-based layouts. I may at some later point…

I can write HTML from scratch (and often do, as it’s sometimes the only way to make the aforementioned Dreamweaver work properly), but I’d prefer not to have to do so on a daily basis. If I can come up with a reasonably attractive layout in a (good) WYSIWYG editor, which will load reasonably quickly for a reasonable percentage of browsers and operating systems, I’m happy. And I don’t feel particularly guilty nor low-tech…

At least I care about design and realize that not everyone on the planet is using Internet Explorer for Microlsloth Windoze with a resolution of 1024×768 on a 17-inch monitor, which will always put my stuff a few notches ahead of about half the websites out there…

Yes, I’ll occasionally play with something just to see if I can make it work, but it’s usually to solve a specific problem like complicated navigation or whatever…

I have the highest respect for those few people who are strong on content AND backbone. I guess I’m not one of them, although I probably know more about the nuts and bolts than most users and many designers. I don’t think I’d ever have a webhosting account which didn’t come with Unix shell access, just because I want it to be there the couple of times a month when I feel the need to “chmod” or to “ls-l”…

But dang it, I’m not completely convinced that the medium is the ENTIRE message, so while this may read like an apology, it really isn’t…

About High Point

Note to one condescending yuppie bitch from Marin County (where the level of pretentiousness is matched only be the level of faux liberal hypocrisy):

  • I managed to live ten miles from High Point NC for the better part of 25 years without once drinking chicory.
  • I’ve yet to see a single egg being cooked in lard, even at Waffle House, although we also never used organic eucalyptus secretions or whatever.
  • When the overwhelming majority of your customers want their tea sweet (as opposed to unsweetened and brewed sometime last month as it often is in California), it’s ony natural that this would be the default option.
  • Judging from the lines in Union City and Mountain View, Krispy Kreme doughnuts are somewhat of a delicacy here too.

I will grant, though, that it’s probably easier to find a $300 hotel room in the Bay Area than in the Triad…