Recently, a team of skilled Internet (small-e) explorers set out to find some trace of well-known adventurer, bon vivant and conversationalist Mail.app. After chasing down several false leads (one of which ended with a grisly discovery: the frozen, lifeless body of Eudora for Mac OS X Lion), they found this tattered journal, buried under a simple cairn of stacked BCC messages.
July 15: Setting off today on greatest adventure yet: traversing the fabled Mailbox Hierarchy. This mighty peak is the tallest I have scaled yet, and is known for its treacherous queries and unnavigable tables. Can’t wait to change the flags up at the top!
July 17: Slow moving so far. But I’ve just found a lost message, and I really think I should try to recover it.
August 2: Still trying to recover that message. I know I can get it, but it’s wedged into this crevasse really tightly.
August 16: Just replenished supplies and updated to 10.7.1. I wonder if I wedged my penknife in between this outcropping and that message if it would come loose?
August 19: Discouraged. Instructions relayed from user at base camp say to stop trying to recover that message. Fine.
August 20: User has now told me seven times to stop trying to recover the message. OKAY. WHATEVER. Moving on.
September 4: High enough now that I’ve finally crossed the spamline. Huge drifts of the stuff. Just spent three days rerouting to avoid a cornice of weight-loss messages.
September 9: Will have to connect with that Exchange server on the other side of this neve field. Checking all my equipment three or four times over. Nervous, but excited.
September 10: Incredibly frustrated!! Connection to server failed, and I slid down about 60 metres over rough ice and crashed. Filters are broken, and this inbox is getting jammed.
September 16: Supplies are running low. Many obstacles in way that aren’t marked on the IMAP. Altitude sickness setting in, and occasionally delusional. Maybe I should try to recover that message again?
September 25: Maybe footwear is the problem? Will reboot.
October 18: Have subsisted for more than a month on thawed spam and old phishing messages. Weighed down with mailing lists and Facebook notifications. Can’t go up, can’t go down, and can’t go on like this much longer. Shrouded in the Cloud for days.
October 21: For a few minutes, the Cloud went down and all was clear. Magnificent – beautiful – found myself meditating again for first time in years. Revelation: seems my whole life has been a struggle to free myself from attachments.
October 24: Decision made. Will attempt last-ditch maneuver: rebuild mailboxes while deleting everything older than two months. Could lose everything. Will let you know if I make it. Either way… see you all at Inbox Zero. 221 Bye.
We can only assume Mail.app’s desperate risk ended in a painful and most likely fatal bounce.
