Dark Orpheus, She lives in Santa Barbara, where the residents are very calm, very cool, very meditative. Plus, she has four great dogs. So, you know, I always follow Debby’s advice.

Debby, That’s a good question — I think it has to do with the availability of cheap stuff, and with the way incomes have risen, and with a change in expectations about what’s our due, materially-speaking. Someone should write a big article about this for the New Yorker. But it’s not going to be me.

And thank you for being your OCD self. What would I do without your help in all things design, fashion, punctuation and life-related?

Mari, that is actually incredibly funny, the $13,000 John Deere tractor. In LA, they could become the new chic car of the moment — sort of a middle America thing.

WR, I like hearing that watching others agonize can have the salutary effect of curing a person of doing a similar kind of thing. I’m going to keep my eye on that around here.

My problem is a work intray with 6000 mails. Perhaps I should adopt the same approach. (Though it’s only a problem because I keep running out of space. If they’d let me have as much space as I need, the problem would go away…)

Just clear your mind. Everyday. Sit. Everyday. Pay attention. Everyday.

And speaking of Spam: I have been getting some from people claiming I still owe payment for an eBay item I purchased. I haven’t used eBay in over a year. I took a chance and clicked on one of these messages and found that I allegedly owe $13,000 for a John Deere tractor.

I check my spam folder everyday and mass delete everything in their everyday. Unless someone has a better suggestion, I think it’s the only way to deal with that stuff.

Hi Corina and welcome. And congrats to you. That bunny shape sounds like the kind of thing you’d see in your dreams the night you decided it was a good idea to have a dinner made up entirely of sweet tarts and french fries. I’m glad to hear you’re combating THAT scourge.

Lilian, I’ve never used the flag key before. What a good idea. I mean, what a good idea that WOULD have been at one time, when I had some e-mails to flag. I’m going to try that at work, though, where, unfortunately my inbox is in the same shape as my earthlink e-mail.

Hi Rae — First, welcome! Second, I’m always afraid to reply to spam in any way, thinking it’ll alert them to the fact that there’s a living person here (albeit one who doesn’t need to buy pills or potions….). For a while, I was getting stuff from Greece, which I sort of liked, because at least I couldn’t understand it. The chinese ones have not yet made their way to me.

Hello Merri, Free is good, I agree. I have to PAY for earthlink, although come to think of it, I don’t know why I do. Maybe it’s because I need the address, maybe they do something else for us… I need to check that out. And welcome!

Congrats on hitting that “delete” button on 13,000 emails!!! you rock!

I don’t think I would be brave enough to delete 13,000 emails all at once! *Impressed!*

My trick? I check regularly, but always unsubscribe if I notice someone’s getting a bit too overzealous from a certain spam address.

My only real spam problem is that I keep receiving ones that are written in Chinese characters and being that I do not understand it – have no way of figuring out how to unsubscribe from those.

Those spammers are really sneaky sometimes.

This was a great post.

Pete, Me too! If only I had a better answer than, “blow up your inbox.” It would be only just if they did get a lot of spam, so I’m going with yes, as an answer to your second question.

Well, Pauline, better me than the guys who’re in charge now, don’t you think? I’m relatively benign, never act in anger, and, well, I read books. They don’t.