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I remember sitting around a television in a university dormitory setting. (I forget the occasion). I don’t remember the network, but somebody had filmed and was presenting a documentary on youth in the 1960’s.

One of the other viewers was a self aggrandizing young conservative, someone who couldn’t waste an opportunity to proclaim that his values were supreme and anybody else’s deserved to be sneered and laughed at. When there were scenes of a campus demonstration in which eloquent young radicals were fervently presenting their case against the war in Viet Nam, the young conservative stood up, sneered his well practiced sneer, and pronounced, “If you believe that those assholes went to those protests for anything other than scoring dope or picking up a sex partner for the night, you’re dumber than I thought.” He did not say, ‘Good night, peasants-’ that line had backfired on him once too often. He did believe he was the product of superior breeding, but ‘goodnight, peasants-’ wasn’t hip enough or ‘now’ enough to say as he put on his genetically superior bored look and walked his genetically superior strut out of the television lounge.

At the time I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t believe that any member of ‘the great unwashed’ could be altruistically interested in making this world a better place. He’d been fed the party line by his parents and he’d embraced it. He might never have an original idea in his life, If he did any kind of ‘thinking outside the box’, he’d probably have to run to mummy and daddy (or someone who shared their convictions) and phrase it just right, something like, “Some one said, ‘Blankety blank blank.’ today.” and wait with a bored look on his face to see whether his mentors praised or dismissed his idea with extreme prejudice.

The bored look, the over-fed strut, the extreme cynicism of everything that flowed from his mouth gave him the persona that made him, in my mind, the poster boy for the ‘me’ generation. I often imagined him in a toga and sandals, strutting around the Roman Senate (I’d explained that he needed to be a Roman because the Romans had stolen anything culturally valuable from the Greeks and called it their own, and I always imagined this guy was on his way to the vomitorium to make room for another round of stuffing himself with delicacies that he’d probably sample from anybody else’s plate, because I couldn’t imagine he’d ever pay for anything himself. (I couldn’t imagine he’d ever be able to earn any money to pay for anything. Any kind of labour at all would be so menial he’d rather starve than participate)

Fast forward way too many years.

I’m trying to send e-mail to a technologically challenged friend. My friend either has an internet service provider that is totally paranoid of malicious attachments or my friend has his e-mail security setting so high that nothing can get through.

I thought maybe my gmail account was on his ‘do not allow’ list because somebody was afraid that spammers and malicious hackers would flock to gmail, set up accounts and start firing off worms and viruses and ‘trojan horses’ by the truck load.

When I tried my ‘real’ e-mail account (that ends in .ca, I live in Canada now) that was rejected. Okay, I thought, maybe the provider has his head buried deep in the sand and believes that anybody not residing inside the USA would have to be some kind of evil terrorist, and probably a computer hacker, drooling at the opportunity to steal technology or any other secrets he could get his hands on….

I tried a yahoo e-mail account that’s been doing nothing but collecting spam for years. That was rejected by my friend’s e-mail browser or isp.

So I thought I’d give it one more try and use an old .mac account.

“oops,” says log in routine, “This account doesn’t exist.” it died of neglect. Maybe I should have known that something was wrong when I didn’t see a bill for “dot mac” on my credit card report.

So I clicked on “Free 30 day trial” and thought I’d set up another dot mac e-mail account.

The process is relatively painless. They need information on a valid credit card in order to give you their free thirty day trial, and that is always a bit scary- flashing yellow lights and a deep down anxiety that ‘maybe I’m being conned’, raises the hackles at the back of my neck.

But- we get through the process and there are no error messages like, “You’re an idiot, we don’t want your business, but we’ve raided your bank accounts and you’ll probably have everything repossessed and be living in a cardboard box by this time next week-”

So I sent myself a message from my new e-mail address to make sure it worked.

I opened my e-mail ‘client’ and there was the message, I’d spelled something wrong in the subject line, but heck, no one would ever see that but me- so I opened the message-

And there on the address line was (”username”)@me.com. Jeeeze. “Me” dot com?

I’d rather subscribe to a service that forced me to be (Username)@imanasshole.com.