by Mark Morelli

Okay, let me start with my recent failures.

As far as I know there were not - as I predicted - thousands of little girls, born on January 1st, named Millennia.

My big idea for a bumper sticker: 'Y2K? BFD!' I printed 2 million of them for the Neo-Luddite crowd. But my web banner advertising went nowhere.

Not only do you need good ideas and appropriate advertising, you need an actual product. 1999 was the year I was supposed to write my best selling book. All I could come up with, though, was the title: 'Oprah's Book Club.'

But it is now a new year, an election year, and I am an excited devotee of the candidate who can accomplish just one thing . . .

In 1996 I voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader because he said he would spend no more than five grand on his campaign. Well, this year McCain's gunning for campaign finance reform, and that's cool, but I've got an even better, more Green Party-ish cause I'm going to back as soon as I can find the candidate who'll be its champion.

I will vote for the person who will reintroduce the lead pencil to America.

They talk about old-fashioned values! Show me the candidate who promises to spearhead a return to a time when America wrote things out by hand, and when someone wants to indulge me with something good to read, it will be because they took the time to copy it by hand and send it to me.

Should such a person even run for president on that promise, she (or he) gets my vote.

(It will probably be a write in.)

Take a moment now to examine the evolution of email:

THE FIRST STAGE OF EMAIL: You send people your address.

THE SECOND STAGE: You tell everyone what's happening in your life.

THE THIRD STAGE: Email as a conduit for information quickly becomes a place to make commentary about email itself. Messages are now reduced to: 'Isn't email great? I don't know how I ever got along without email? What's up with you?'

THE FOURTH STAGE: Uh-oh. You're forwarding jokes to everyone on your list. (Mostly your subject header will read 'Here's a Good One,' but I received one not long ago that was a sort of legal disclaimer: 'Asians Who Read This Please Don't Be Offended.' Welcome to the world of Disclaimer-As-Sensitivity.)

THE FIFTH STAGE: Even YOU, the culprit, begin deleting any messages sent to you that begin with 'FWD:'

My candidate tougher than Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan put together, (note to self: pitch remake of 'The Defiant Ones') will make people put forth the effort to actually hand write the words they are sending out en masse to the world. The next time one of our fellow citizens wants to share a joke with you and the world, he will be at home photocopying it, no, using carbon paper, no, hand copying each note like a monk! - and he will have to, stamp and lick every envelope.

When, oh when I get such a piece of mail, I will read every word.

Pressing a button that sends a tired old joke to a hundred people at once is like dropping letter bombs on a village from above the clouds.

Lead pencil sound on paper is like the sound of footsteps. The squeak of sneakers. The echo of heels in the hallway. The sounds of real physical movement.

It is a first-hand sound. It is the difference between the dull, light click of a computer keyboard and the hard clack of a typewriter.

Or the angry sound of crumpling paper vs. the nonexistent sound of deleting.

Find me the candidate who agrees . . . and that one gets my vote.

And for those of you who have received this PAH! by email . . . well . . . I don't practice what I preach because I am not the kind of guy I am preaching to.

(And finally, welcome to one who joined us on the morning of Tuesday 2/17/00, nephew William James Files.)