Air Message

Imagine this: a world in which your next communication is just a few keystrokes away.  Type a few words into a box -- as few or as many as you'd like! -- choose a recipient, click the "Deliver" button, and that message appears in his or her Message-Box, not in a few days or a few hours, but AT NEARLY THE SPEED OF LIGHT!  And all of this is done without having to lick a stamp or work a fax machine or hear the sharp hiss of the dial tone in your delicate ear.  It sounds like an insane future, right?  Well that future is here today: with the amazing power of Air Messages.

This invention is completely different from email.

Air Message is a revolutionary communication platform that will change the way we work, play, communicate, and do other stuff.  It will seem unnatural and strange at first, typing everything from quick "hello"s to your most heart-felt declarations of love into a small box on your computer screen and sending them off invisibly.  It's an experience unlike any other, including email.  But once you use Air Message for the first time, soon you will be addicted to filling out the Message-Reason Line and sending cool Affixed-ments to all your friends.

Email is electronic.  It's electronic-mail.  Air Message goes through the air.  So that's one difference, straight off.  Email only works with electricity.  Air Message works wherever there is air, and an electrified computer to send your messages with.  So you do need electricity, but only the DEVICE needs it, not the message itself.

Hear that blaring klaxon?  Get used to hearing it most of the day, and for extended periods of time!  That's the sound your Message-Box being filled with a new Air Message.  It doesn't stop blaring until you've read all the messages.  This is yet another of the major differences between Air Message and emails.  When you get an email, it just shows up, without any declaratory sirens.  Air Message demands more of your attention, which is a good thing, in my opinion, because otherwise I'll just read a few emails and leave the rest of them, but if there were a blaring siren I couldn't shut off, you can bet I'd stay glued to my screen until I read them all!

Sick of Air Messages with ads you didn't ask for clogging up your Message-Box?  Just drop them into your BEEF folder.  BEEF stands for something, I forget what it was, I wrote it down somewhere (I should have Air Messaged it to myself!).  Once the message is in your BEEF folder, it will be "frontwarded" to a three-judge panel who will adjudicate whether the Air Message violated our terms of services, or whether it was a permissible commercial contact.  If it is found to be in violation, then the sender will lose their Air Message account and you will never hear from them again!  If it is found to be permissible, then it will be frontwarded back to you fifteen times and you will pay a fine to cover costs of flying the three-judge panel to arbitration headquarters in Nebraska.  None of the judges live in Nebraska, and they have to be flown there several times a day to handle our many adjudications.

Someone send you a cool Air Message and want to give the sender a quick thanks?  It's easy!  Just click the "Retort" button, complete a twenty-minute survey about your pornography purchase habits for our advertisers, and your retort will be flying through the air in no time!

Air Message accounts are not compatible with email addresses.  If you try to send an Air Message to an email address, our servers will be unable to read the recipient-line and will melt, resulting in a loss of Air Message service for all users for up to 12 hours.  Please do not try to send an email with Air Message.

Hey, ever dreamed about sending an Air Message from your car?  Now you can!  Just plug a heavy microwave-sized box into your exhaust pipe, install wheels on the box, start driving around, and it's fully functional!  The Car Input works by beeping the horn in Morse code to spell out your Air Message.  Just beep several times for every letter!  And don't worry, Air Message won't affect the functionality of your horn -- in fact, many say their horns beep louder, and occasionally without being touched as other Air Message signals floating gracefully through the atmosphere are picked up by your new exhaust-powered box.

People who have never used Air Message often say things like, "this sounds just like email, only worse."  Well, if it's worse than email, then it can't be just like it, can it?  It's a totally different invention then, you've just admitted it, you stupid fucker.

Air Message is entirely free, except for the microtransactions that are withdrawn from your account literally millions of times per day.  This way, you lose money, but just a little at a time, so you don't even notice the subtraction unless you check you bank account less often than every few seconds.  Ever see someone look over a bank statement that is unfathomably long due to countless withdrawals of between zero and one cent, such that their larger transactions are completely buried under lines and lines of useless data?  Well, as for their Air-Message Identification Key and send them a "hello," or select from dozens of Air Message-exclusive "FacE-L-eXPressions," which are like human emotions expressed in typing form, like "O&" which is a sideways head with stupid hair.

I think you should just give Air Message a fair chance.  If you don't like it, well, then just keep using it and keep using it and keep using it until you get used to it and you're too invested in it to change back.  And if you still don't like it after all that then maybe you should look in the fucking mirror to discover what your problem is instead of blaming it all on me and my invention.

Because I don't think you understand.  I quit my job to invent Air Message.  It is my life and it is my passion by default.  I was inspired when I was sending an email, and I said to myself, "there must be another, not necessarily better, but at least different, way to do this, that I can make some money off of."  I used to work at a town park.  My job was to sit behind a little desk on a patio and whenever a kid wanted to play with a ball I took a little key and opened the supply closet and gave them one and made them sign it out, and then collected it back at the end of the day and crossed their name off the list so I knew they were not negligent.  The older kids would jump me when I turned my back on them to unlock the closet and make off with all the balls they could carry, and pour their sodas on my sign-out sheet, rendering it illegible, and throw rocks and hornets' nests at me when I tried to plead with them to follow the rules.  And when an honest kid came up and asked to sign out a ball, I had to explain that I had failed them, and then at the end of the day the stolen balls would just be scattered around the park and I'd have to go and collect them, from the basketball courts and the sandbox and they'd chuck some deep in the woods and a few of them would be in the pond, which always got really cold at night and I'd have to go in there and fish them all out, and many of them would be filthy or popped and I didn't feel right asking for overtime to stay late and fix them, since it had been my fault for them getting in that condition in the first place.  I was a bust at ball disbursement and collection, and my salary was a waste of tax money.  Well if I couldn't do that, I thought, maybe I could do some other thing: maybe I could devise a way to send Messages through the Air, to make communication frictionless and beautiful and without bullies or hornets' nests, and anyone who was cruel would always lose their adjudication hearings.