'For everything you have missed,

you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.' (Emerson) Trite rubbish, of course, but I don't know any profound quotations about Blackberries by heart, and nothing in the text on either the BB or T-Mobile websites struck me as an uncannily profound opening for this bit, so we are stuck with me searching on a 'quotations' website for something marginally utile. So, Emerson it is; you can accept it (and 'lose something else!' thereby), or forgo this whole, dull posting and do something truly worthwhile, like reading some Merton or Jefferson, or listening for owls out in the woods.

Alright, praise God, the Blackberry is fine. The Blackberry is fine, and so is all of my so-called data, and so now when you call I will know who you are and answer the phone. Well, not the phone, of course, but the 'handheld,' the PDA, the 'device.' And maybe my knowing who you are will mean I will not answer the phone. But at least I will be making an informed decision.

In all my conversations with T-Mobile during this tedious ordeal terrifying crisis, it was only in the last two, after the Blackberry was once again cooing contentedly in my hands, that anyone mentioned there was such a thing as insurance for my device. The second time, after the person explained the basics of it (6 dollars a month gets you a replacement phone for 50 dollars or something in case of damage, theft, loss, or being me), I was daring enough to ask how long ago it was that this bold new idea was introduced. She or he let me know this was hardly a new idea, and that my telephone travails of the past many years could have had a quite different character had someone told me of this before...

Hmmm. I think it is like when I was sometimes having to spend three or four hundred extra dollars a month in overage charges: they see a good thing and don't want it to end, so no one makes a suggestion. Then, when I finally make a comment about it seeming like perhaps a change might be in order, I get a more perceptive one on the line who says he can't believe no

one ever called me and ran down the options before, that that's just crazy, that someone should have called, that he's never it wouldn't he can't understand why they. I suppose it's entirely conceivable that anyone looking at my records might just think I buy a lot of phones because I like change (--->). But if there are any notes somewhere on my account, 'stopped working after three months' and 'stolen with purse on ill-starred New Years Trip' have little to do with a zest for variety, even in the most generous or ESL-inspired reading.

At any rate, welcome home, little Blackberry. I have done the previously unthinkable and backed everything up. I have updated the software and loaded a picture of the neighbor's cat for the homescreen. I have read the NY Times on Opera, updated my Google Maps, added a new email account, deleted the 789 messages that were waiting to herald its rebirth, attempted anew to type coherent emails with enormous thumbs on microscopic keys, and had the pleasure of once again looking like an unrepentant Star Trek fan driving down the highway with a blinking light in my ear.

From now on I swear I will be a more careful and adept user. I will put the device in its little disabling holster when not in use so that neither my lipstick, purse lining, nor pointy hipbone on the other side of my coat pocket dials calls I don't intend. Second, now that I know what it is from the brief tutorial after the update download, I will use the 'escape' button located conveniently beneath the trackwheel (yes, it's an older model, because manifestly I can't be trusted with the newer ones) to exit screens I used to have to remove the battery to leave. I will keep the device synched to the computer and to reality to the greatest extent possible. I will not be reckless with battery life, and I will not cram SIM cards in past the point they should go. If I need to remove the SIM card and find I cannot, I will seek professional, or at least semi-professional, help. Torque will never be applied in the extraction or insertion of SIM cards. And lastly, I will endeavor to utilize Google Maps on the Blackberry in conjunction with GPS to preclude being three hours early, or one hour late, for anything ever again.

I'm...Sensing...a...Grammarian...from...Beyond...

We all remember Captain Kirk. Some - the hot alien 'humanoid' chicks on distant planets, for example - remember, no doubt, far, far more of him than we mere human late-night dorm-room Star Trek rerun watchers ever knew. But even we can recall his slicked hair, his ripped shirts, his luck with the ladies, the high attrition rate of his red-uniformed personnel when out in the field.

Mostly, however, what endures is his diction. It was daring, unique, revolutionary, even, not merely to have an African-American woman on the bridge of the Enterprise as an officer, but to also have a main character speak...in...so...repellent a -- manner. It needn't only be repressed trauma, however, that we take from this shared heritage: knowledge of exactly what someone means when he refers to 'Captain-Kirk-Speak' can help us in our quests to make the world a better place -- or at least not make people sick when we communicate with them.

Leaving aside the overrated realm of face-to-face contact, I would like to turn to the written word and, in fact, to pay especial attention within the print world to the problem of email. Email can be a bit confusing, I realize, because we send it to people we know and people we don't know, and we use it with people with whom we share a mutual fondness, as well as with people we despise and who despise us. Still, in hopes that the last category can remain smaller than the penult, I would like to add my own rule to the standard email proscriptions of Don't Write in All Caps; Don't Eschew Standard Paragraph Standards; Don't Assume Something Will Sound Funny and Not Mean Once Written; Don't Use LOL, R U, U 2, C Ya, or suchlike, unless you have not yet graduated high school; Don't Write in Such a Way that Emoticons Seem Necessary to Convey Your Meaning; and Don't Use Emoticons.

My rule, friends, is simple: it is Do Not Abuse the Ellipsis. We all have our problems, our own crosses to bear, but years of living upon this earth have taught me that most of them derive from bad parenting, poor health, and imperfect decision-making skills. I can think of exactly none that could possibly be traced to run-ins with three...sequential...printed...dots. So take out your pain on something else.

Here is the lowdown on the skinny re the 411 about the ellipsis (plural ellipses, and coming from the Greek ἔλλειψις, meaning, unsurprisingly, 'omission').

• You can use it in quotations, to indicate you are leaving something out, as in this bit of Yeats, where I show I hacked it from the front and back and tore some guts out of the middle, as well:

1. - ...Our breasts are heaving...our lips are apart...

• You can stick it at the end of something, to indicate you could go further, that there really is more to be said (again, an omission), but you are opting not to, for reasons patent or opaque. You might also see this type of usage in fiction writing to describe the trailing off of one party's side of a conversation.
  

1. - Obviously I never planned to sleep with Jennifer...
2. - Surely you're not wearing that shirt...
3. - Ronald was doing perfectly fine until he met up with those Heideggerians...
4. - Now that you mention it, I don't remember turning the stove off...
   

• And I admit that it can be used, at least in casual situations, at times, to represent a pause longer than a comma between two parts of a sentence. Alright, fine, even between two sentences, but again, only in very casual communication, and not all the time, and not to imbue the writing with a gravitas that it lacks qua writing (which is how and where writing should get its bloody gravitas, if it even wants any to begin with. Not from dots. No dots I know of are capable of impregnating any pause).
  

1. - He told me he loved me...again.
2. - I rewrote the article...with no ellipses this time, sir.
3. - Well, yes, it seemed odd...but he is a Heideggerian.
4. - Of course I turned the stove off, pet...or was that yesterday?

What it shouldn't be used for is a crutch, as with habitual attempts to render thought processes typographically. Nor again, as per the above, to make things seem thinkier or deeper than they really are. Think of it as simple mathematics: if you look at a page of writing, what does it mostly contain? Positively tons of letters, only here and there interspersed with dots and other punctuation. The punctuation is there in the service of the letters and the words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs those letters make up. The punctuation is like the boom-mike guys on a set: necessary, but hardly the crux of the matter.

So these sorts of things frighten me:

1. - time to...think, and...reconnect, with self...
2. - wanting to...understand
3. - to think...and to feel...
4. - for me...and...for you
   

I don't know what they mean. I don't know what the ellipses mean, either. That's a bit of an exaggeration: I do, to a certain extent; the ellipses are there, in cases like those, alternately to 'soften the blow', to serve as a proactive, prophylactic defense against allegations of callousness, and to prove, through graphical representation, that each word was labored over until just the right one, or, minimally, the least wrong one, out of such an imperfect selection, was at last found. I'd say more here, but I'm...thinking...right...now, in fact. Is it not obvious? Can you still suspect I am not, despite the preceding proof?

Dear...friends (see? it's creepy, no?), the Japanese are the only ones on this planet who can use ellipses routinely without thereby increasing my chances of dying of stress-related illness. The reason is that the Japanese are the only ones on this planet with a culture that demands much be left unsaid, in order to preserve dignity and promote harmony. Because of this, there is a whole infrastructure, thousands of years of precedent, giving context and meaning to each incompletely-uttered thought. That in practice means it is far from impossible in the vast majority of cases to deduce what lies on the far side of the dots.

1. - Yes, Friday is perfect... (It's just that)...
2. - I didn't sleep with Jennifer... (But that was only because I fell down the stairs untying my shoes)...
3. - We'll certainly consider your proposal... (And by 'consider' I mean laugh about it and toss it in the trash)...
4. - I would be ever so happy to join your Heidegger study group... (I'll just make sure to be elsewhere and unreachable every Wednesday from 3 o'clock on...)

All four have implications that conflict with at least part of the stated sentence. And in spoken Japanese, or English spoken by a Japanese person, this fact would be obvious in the moment, as would be the gist of what remained unsaid. But unless you are Japanese, and dropping a few dots at the ends of things to maintain decorum and foster civility and good will, I beg you: be chary with the ellipses. Plus, if you save up enough of them, you won't have to worry about coming up with any pithy Final Words with your last breaths; you can just whisper 'Dotdotdot' and leave the world to make the necessary inferences from your life.