Baraka_Guru

Our office got rid of our fax machine/line a few months ago. Up to 99% of what we were receiving was spam (junk faxes?). (I'm not exaggerating.)

Everything was fine until recently when a magazine editor wanted permission to reprint from one of our books. He asked if I would fax him an agreement. I told him we didn't have a fax machine (or should I have said "a facsimile machine"?) and I just emailed him an agreement. That could have been the whole deal right there, but apparently he needed (wanted?) something signed (you know, with an actual pen), so he couriered a printout of the email I sent him with a line he drew on the bottom for me to sign.

I rolled my eyes and signed it, and then proceeded to scan it into a PDF and emailed it back to him.

A few days later, he left a phone message stating that he had yet to receive the signed agreement and would like to get it soon because the magazine was already issued.

I gave up any hope at this point, so I just snail-mailed it back to him, essentially wasting an envelope and a stamp.

I feel bad, but I couldn't help visualizing him as a dinosaur...who likes to eat snails.

To me, fax is dead.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot