TWO EMAIL ADDRESSES

December 8, 2003 | 11:18pm

When I moved away to college, I thought my parents would be sad. There would be a gathering of all my dearest relatives and they would line up at the door. Each would be hold a gift for me to help me start my life away from the kiva. My Aunt Veronica would give me commodities, my grandmother would give me wisdom, my Uncle Julian, a computer and so on and so forth. I would leave, stifle back a tear or two and punch my chest with my fist saying, "I’ll make you proud! Just wait!"

But since we never lived in a kiva and I often live in a fantastical world, none of that ever happened. One thing did happen that day though, the DirectTV installation man showed up percicely at 3pm — one hour after I left — to install what would be the most influential piece of electronic equipment to the Tapia household. Yes, you read correctly — I got replaced with digital television. And no, I'm not bitter.

If I were to lie and tell you I learned nothing from this experience, I’d be, well, a liar. When I voluntarily returned home for winter break, (read: the dorm kicked me out) I had to do something and watching TV seemed to fill up the hours, especially with 2000 channels at my fingertips. One of my favorites was called ZDTV. It should have been called NerdTV, everything on it was about the internet and computers. Yeah for me!

Today, I’m going to share with what I learned from the miracle that was ZDTV. I’ll skip all the firewall, bootable disk, Mac is the future kind of stuff and focus on this: GET TWO EMAIL ADDRESS.

But why should I get two email addresses?

There are many reasons to have two email address. The first is to avoid what I like to call eShit. You know us Latinos like to ad "e" to anything that should start with "s" like "especial" or "estudio." But in this case, it’s an internet thing: electronic shit. eShit is spam, chain letters, and those stupid "you’ve just been hit with an electronic snowball, you must now forward this to ten people" messages. It can also be messages like, "Hi. My name is Suzy Sleepmattress and I have no arms, please email this to everyone you know so that I may live." What kind of shit is that? If there ever was a Suzy, she’s dead right now anyway and I never really cared.

How will you know if someone will send you eShit?

Easy, you don’t. You never know who’s going to do it, you may know someone who surely will, but you can’t guess correctly about everyone. Which is why I’ve developed the following system.

What system?

I’m glad you asked. I call it, Shit Blocker 2000. Here’s what you do. Give everyone you meet who wants your address the first address your "fake" address. I’m serious about this one. Strangers should get it, anything that asks you for your email address online, con artists, some loser at a nightclub, people in the subway, distant cousins, grandparents, and especially parents and sister’s in law.

Make it simple, yourname@hotmail.com works fine. The second should be for those who pass the first year without sending you any eShit. You can be a little more creative with that one, like oh I don’t know yourname@yahoo.com.

Did you notice the pattern? It’s the same email address but in different locations. It makes your job easier, because you don’t have to remember what you address is. It’s the same address only you either go to Hotmail or Yahoo! to check it.

When people pass the year marker you can tell them something like "Oh, you’ve been emailing my other email address, send me things here, I check it more often." They’ll never know you tested their loyalty and Internet prowess.

Your first email address (the one you give to everyone) will have hundreds of messages of eShit a day, and you don’t have to worry. Just delete everything when you get tired of sifting through horrible internet porn from Carla@cheapslut.org, Viagra ads or "got sewage problems?" Your second address will have all the really important messages anyway.

Are there any drawbacks?

None. Although, I did once get in trouble for not giving my boyfriend the "real" email address. How was I supposed to know he would be such a good guy? I really need a year to decide these things, I’ve dated many a stupid guy. One last tip: just don’t ever refer to it as your "real" address and your "fake" address. People get pissed off when they find out you deceived them.

But Lonnie, you thought of this, what did ZDTV teach you?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about them. Even though they took that place in my parents’ life called quality time, I did love DirectTV for teaching me this: never respond to email messages that have the "Do you want to be taken off this list?" link in them. If you respond, they’ll know someone at that address reads their junk mail causing a hundred more messages to be hurled at your account. Just delete them.

Well, that's all for day. I hoped you enjoyed my "fake" blog. My "real" blog has all the really important stuff anyway. Maybe you'll hear about it one day. Then again, maybe you won't.