email – Memphis Flyer

There’s a pile of books beside my bed, most of which I’ve started, few of which I’ve finished. The last book I finished was a short novel that was compelling enough that I actually went to bed early and finished it over the course of a week earlier this month. But that’s rare, these days.

I’m a fast reader, and I used to immerse myself in a book until I turned the last page. Lately, I’m more likely to start a book, set it aside, and never get back to it. My attention span isn’t long enough to get me across Lick Creek. I’m running out of bookmarks.

Distractions are the new, you know… whatever. Go see some live music, and half the audience is holding up their phone to put a video on Facebook instead of actually listening to the music. Go out to eat, and you’ll often see two people at a table staring at their phones or taking Instagrams of their food, instead of talking and eating. Walking in the woods, communing with nature? Hey, look at that maple foliage! I need to get a picture of that to share. Watching the Grizzlies on TV? It’s a lot more fun if you’re on Twitter, too. It’s called double-screening, and the attendant GIFs, snarky tweets, and Vines just add to the experience. Did you know they’re now calling Jon Leuer “Tennessee Dirk”?

Information is served to us like a vast, weird, never-ending buffet where the Cheetos are next to the prime rib, which is next to the gummi bears. Here is a small sampling of Tuesday’s headlines on Huffington Post: “Missouri Declares State of Emergency Ahead of Grand Jury Decision”; “Adrian Peterson Suspended for Rest of Season”; “Japanese PM Calls Special Elections as Country Slides Into Recession”; “Hacker Group Goes to War with KKK”; “Why We Never Got Those 250 Emoji We Were Promised”; “You’re Buying Your Sheets All Wrong”; “The Three-Minute Skill That Will Totally Change Your Breakfast”; “Legendary Photog Snaps The World’s Most Beautiful Women (NSFW)”; “GOP Hires Constitutional Lawyer in Obama Lawsuit.”

Where to start? Sure, I need to know about what’s going on in Ferguson and in Washington, D.C., but I’m curious about that secret breakfast skill. And I certainly don’t want to continue buying my sheets all wrong. And I wonder just how NSFW those pictures are… Oh wait, I just got an email. Hey, someone wants to be my friend on Facebook. Oops, need to answer this text, first. BRB. Oooh, puppy video!

Whew! It’s an ADHD world, but I really want to reconnect with that pile of books. Maybe it would help if I started live-tweeting as I read them?

I’m sure I’m not alone in having done this: You get an email from an acquaintance — perhaps a co-worker worked up about something trivial or someone whose politics you despise or maybe even your boss.

The emailer rants and ego-struts and shows his buffoonery with every sentence. You are amazed and amused at this pompous maroon — so amazed and amused that you decide to share it with a friend. So you forward it, along with a snarky email of your own about what an idiot this fellow is. You smirk at your own cleverness and hit “send.”

Four seconds later, you realize that instead of forwarding the message to your friend, you’ve sent it back to the person you’re making fun of.

Panic ensues. You call the IT guy and ask if there’s any way to “call back” the email. He chortles as only an IT guy faced with 43 daily requests to “fix the copier” can chortle. “Nope,” he says. “Once it’s sent, it’s sent.”

I imagine the feeling one gets at such moments is similar to what’s going on in the White House these days. Unlike Nixon’s infamous missing 18 minutes of audiotape, e-mails are forever.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Democratic investigators are demanding access to a Republican National Committee/White House email system that was used by Karl Rove’s office and other top officials. Democrats suspect the system may have been used to end-run the official government system — a violation of federal law — to conceal contacts with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, among others.

The Times says some Republicans believe that the emails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration’s far-flung political activities.

“There is concern about what may be in these emails,” said one GOP activist.

I can relate.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com