I've got mail, do you?

It's a touchy subject, but I'll just say it. I feel bad for all you Ariel users sweating out this Webmail problem right now. \nYou may lose it all. Every contact you kept. Every file you had stored. Every e-mail you received from your beloved Billy, or Lynn, or Billy Lynn. They could all be gone the way of the ARPANet.\nIt must really be a pain in the ASCII, but I wouldn't know because I'm not an Ariel user. Although I'm an IU student, I'm in the group of students that uses Kate instead. The reasons behind the strange divisions and awkward names are very complicated, but all they mean is I'm better than you.\nIt's true. If God really wanted us to be equal, he wouldn't have crashed your account. While you're missing that e-mail from your psych professor that your midterm was pushed up a week, I'll be reading about my distant uncle in Nigeria who died and left me everything. Sweet success!\nThe good news is that this gives you the opportunity to explore the history of communication.\nOf course the first message ever delivered from one person to another came about 6,000 years ago, when Eve said to Adam, "I have nothing to compare you to, but that can't be right." Relations across gender lines have been strained ever since.\nThe Pony Express is a well-known first in communication, when poor frontiersmen were recruited to deliver mail from rich plantation owners in Virginia to rich gold-panners in Colorado. According to www.americanwest.com, one classified ad in California read, "Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." The postal service was right on. Why can't we do that now? We'd be much better off with specialized classifieds for our favorite envelope pushers, like:\n"Mail truck drivers wanted. Old, fat, crotchety white fellows. Not under three chins. Must be good at driving in the passenger seat. Willing to risk fashion sense daily. Must flirt with ladies named 'Flo.'"\nMoving on to the digital age of communication, I present the development of the Internet, without which we would not have e-mail systems like Webmail, with which I am so gloriously having no problems.\nThere is a famous story that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, and that leads us to a monumental moment of miscommunication: it never happened. Precisely what Gore said was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." He was referring to his participation in a House committee that funded the development of military computer networks. What Gore did do was horribly misuse the word "create," and in a very boring way. What he didn't do was pretend to have invented the most important tool of the last 50 years. And, for the record, he never said he "invented" the Internet. Anyway, it's all water under the Bush.\nWhich brings us to the present, where I still have e-mail access and you still don't. Maybe you have a problem with my incessant use of unnecessary blasphemous phrases. Or you might take issue with how I make jokes at your expense. Sometimes I tend to cross the line.\nIf I've offended you, just send me an e-mail.