Thing to Do No. 1: Send Demanding Emails

With nothing more than a lap tray, laptop, and wireless connection, I can irritate, agitate, annoy, and berate everyone I know via email, this blog, and facebook. I am fashioning my email missives after Miranda Priestly as played by Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” one of the few book-to-movie interpretations where I felt the movie was infinitely better than the book. The book, to me, was very unfair to working, career women. I was more than a little put out when the main character and her temporary, one-year job were blamed for her drunk girlfriend’s car accident. “If only she had been there for her friend, maybe the friend wouldn’t have had eleven tequila shots and then decided to drive around in the middle of the night.” Give me a break.

Back to Miranda Priestly … My favorite thing about her in the book and movie is the utter vagueness of her demands. I see a lot of myself in her demands for instant comprehension, compliance, and gratification. Here are some excerpts of emails I’ve sent of this morning and over the past few days. I should be ashamed.


“Remember that piece of paper I gave you last week? Please scan and email that to me.”


“His name might be Chad Somethingorother. Send it to him.”


“Please do with this whatever I told you to do with the last thing like this.”


“Remind me what I said about that old file from two years ago.”


“What is the status on all that stuff I asked about before?”