COLUMN: Singing the e-mail blues

James Miller, U. of Michigan, "The Michigan Daily' James Miller, U. of Michigan, "The Michigan Daily'ANN ARBOR, Mich. (UWIRE) -- I had never sent an e-mail until I came to U of M. On the first day of classes, I had to ask the guy next to me in the computer lab how to log in to the system. On the other hand, like any invention in widespread use, there are a few problems. E-mail has a sinister and twisted side. There are e-mail abuses and crimes committed upon the English language. The first and most grating is the conversion of the word "message" into a verb. I don't know exactly when or where this started, so there's no blame to assign, at least very precisely. I came across this little grammatical treasure when I worked as an office slave one summer. Several times a day you could hear it floating around the office. "I'll message you with those meeting minutes." "She messaged him two weeks ago. I don't know what the deal is." For all the puffy, polyblend, middle management execuberries with Celine Dion CDs in their cars and the complete set of John Grisham books bound up in their library: "Message" is not a verb. It's this same class of administrative meatsacks that gave us words like "paradigm," "paradime" and "quality" that don't mean anything anymore, except using them means either you have a slightly overactive thyroid or want a bigger office. You can't just make a word a verb -- that's not the way it's done. Grammar rules are arbitrary. That's their beauty. That's their strength. Without rules like "message is a noun" we would all sound like those post-modernist co-op rats in our English classes ("Like, man, this is a chair. But is it a chair, because it has some intrinsic 'chairness'? Or because it's just, like, a word? Think about that, dude.") Let's all be undisciplined, half-educated grammar artists. No more rules! Yay! Glick nicks blarney floo. Your second cousin's underwear. Weedle weedle neener neener message me this week! The next sin is varied and complex: The mass e-mail. There are several different breeds of mass e-mail. The first is the "I don't know you, let alone like you, but I want something" e-mail: "Hey gang, I need two tickets to the Michigan-Penn State game! Preferably next to each other, my daddy's coming to see me! Thanks!" Even better than this kind are the e-mails of shameless personal boosterism. Your RA or the preppie girl at the end of the hall, both of whom wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, all of a sudden decided to establish a close personal friendship with you, just as their sorority or engineering honors fraternity is having a danceathon for homeless Guatemalan performance artists with AIDS. Feels genuine, doesn't it? "Hello students of the Psych 111 lecture. I'm sure I'll have time to catch up with all of you later, my personal friends. But for now, I'm here to tell you that my organization, The Resume Packers of America, is bringing a speaker to campus. Steven P. Deltoid is an internationally recognized expert and speaker in the field of 'being a poli sci, student group, ass-kissing, overly earnest, MSA-meeting-attending, stuffy little weenie.' It'll be great. Everyone come so I can go to Harvard." I think, however, that there is a small piece of my heart whose hate burns with the heat of a thousand suns. That hate is reserved for the E-mail Retards. These are the people who are either unaware of what the "reply to all recipients"option really means or are just so lonely and pathetic that they want everyone to read their vapid e-mail, banking on the fact that bad attention is still attention. If I could talk to these people for a minute. Gentlemen, ladies, think about this for a moment. If the person who sent you a message is the creator of the list, why are you sending everyone on the list a message that says "PLEASE TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Are you under the impression that that does anything? Were you born this way? Do you now see the irony and irritation here? Lastly, your inside jokes aren't funny. If someone sends a business-related message to a group you belong to, don't reply with one of the little jokes you and the rest of the lifeless chum invent to buttress your non-existent social life. The next time your computer asks "Reply to all recipients?" please remember that the entire University community regards the "irrelevant, reply-to-all people" as little children who stamp their feet and stand up on chairs singing the "Transformers" theme song for attention. Stop being toddlers. Hit "no."