mypersona@crisis.com

What’s a cool chick to do?

For reasons unexplained, a daily message began appearing in my e-mail inbox. I never bothered to open it, but could guess what was inside from the subject line that read, “Marikoismittens, Enlarge your PENIS SAFELY!!!”

It seems so oddly personal. Like there’s someone out there who is worried about Marikoismittens’ penis being enlarged beyond safety parameters.

The thing I find amusing is the fact that I am clearly a Marikoismittens, soft and fluffy, girlie and sweet. Surely that is not the kind of e-mail address you find attached to someone with a penis, let alone a penis that is about to be dangerously enlarged.

Right?

My nameless friend says that this is perhaps making an assumption that in today’s gender-non-specific age is not necessarily correct. Who says that there aren’t a million marikoismittens out there, she says, with huge dicks flapping in the breeze?

I don’t even want to think about there being another marikoismittens out there. I’m extremely proud of my e-mail address, which, as my friends will tell you, is the 20th one I’ve had.

About four years ago, back when e-mail addresses were starting to get cool, I went through an e-mail address addiction. Up until I graduated university, my e-mail address was always just my name (marikotamaki@somethinglame.com). When I moved back to Toronto I wanted to create a new and improved me, and so set about creating a virtual meeting place where people could send messages to that cool new me. My very first e-mail address was at gurlmail.com. I think it was pansy, or something (it’s defunct now so don’t send me any messages there). I chose pansies because they are the first flower to bloom after spring, hearty but sweet little flowers, perfect for my hearty but sweet new image.

My new e-mail address made me feel extremely hip and groovy, I used to love going to the pink and purple www.gurlmail.com website to pick up my pansy messages. Of course, this sense of e-mail joy only lasted several weeks. I quickly developed a bad case of e-mail persona disassociation. “Am I a pansy?” I asked myself. I thought I was, but three months later I changed my mind. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a pansy. Fortunately – perhaps unfortunately – with e-mail addys there’s very little commitment. It’s like shopping with your very first Visa Card. Within an hour I had another e-mail address and another nickname. Two weeks later I changed my mind again and picked up another e-mail address. And another. I stopped getting e-mails from my friends who refused to send heartfelt messages when there was a good chance they would end up rotting in some dark corner of the Internet.

No less than 15 e-mail addys later I realized that another obstacle had begun to wedge itself between myself and e-mail addy nirvana. I first discovered the problem when I tried to register the e-mail address fuzzybabybunny@hotmail.com. Sure enough, it was already taken! I had the option of registering fuzzybabybunny12@hotmail.com, but this begged an obvious question, could it still be my new cool web persona if it also belonged to at least 11 other people?

My friend Kim, who stopped having cool e-mail addresses when she realized she could never remember them, discovered a similar problem when she went to register her name as an e-mail address. Who knew there was more than one Kim Trusty out there? Kim switched her name around a bit and was able to find a suitable e-mail addy but her potential identity crisis made an impact on me.

The very next day I registered my own name. Just to be safe.

If it’s not surprising that we’re getting lost in the endless sea that is the Internet, at least there are some solutions. If you still want to be fag@ but are unwilling to be fag333@, you can try something like www.myowne-mail.com, whose “unique service allows you to create a free e-mail account that reflects your personality!” You can be fag@as-if.com or even fag@starwarsfan.com. I wouldn’t recommend it but the option is there if you want it. There’s even a @wetwetwet.com. Let your imagination run wild.

The other option is to get inventive. My favorite addy is luvmuffin; Lisa “Luvmuffin” Ayuso ran into a similar problem when she tried to register her e-mail address, luvmuffin@. It turned out another muffin, though no muffin she knew, had already registered. Lisa’s answer was to register lisaluvmuffin@, and I don’t think she’s lost any fan base for this decision. Alternately you can do what Dyke City’s Sonja Mills did when she registered her e-mail address. Sonja’s e-mail addy is tittyburger@ because tittyman@ was taken.

As for me I will stick with my marikoismittens because I’m afraid if I let it go some guy with a huge dick will take it.