how to minimize the size of my inbox

i use gmail. that thing will never be full because as of right now i have almost 3 GB and it grows daily. the fullness of my inbox is not the point. gmail rocks because i never have to delete anything so if i ever need to reference something all i do is type what i'm looking for in the search box and up it comes. i love my gmail account. i love my friends with gmail because i can see when they are online checking their email and then i can talk to them. you all should get gmail. what i DO NOT love is my family (my friends know better, at least most of them do) who continue to send me fowards, you know the ones with the subject lines that look like this "fwd: fwd: RE: FWD: the world is ending at exactly 10 pm on oct 10" despite my repeated pleas for them to knock it off. i HATE forwards. i hate that you have time to hit the 'forward' button on your email, or fill out a survey that tells me the last three things you ate for breakfast but you do not have time to send me a real email or better yet, pick up the phone and call me. what are you doing? you are adding to the flood of emails i get daily and making it hard to see things that are important like the lastest gossip from my girl amy. so let me give all of you a tip...i know that none of you are adding to the crap in my inbox but you might be adding to the crap in someone elses inbox. you might be one of those people like my family who gets an email telling you that if you don't pass it on to 8 billion people in the next two seconds you will have bad luck in this life and 5 lifes after. you might be one of those people who gets an email quoting some famous person saying how he believes that things should be different in America or from some rich guy saying if you pass it on his monopoly of a company will trace it and send you a check for 1.2 million dollars and you can retired at the age of 14. you know what i do when i get these? 'archive' (in gmail it takes too much effort to delete). if you ever get one of these types of emails from me its because i was smart and went to Snopes to check it out in the rumor mill. please, blog friends of mine, use snopes before passing on useless emails that tend to get everyone riled up in a tizzy. if you send an email that says a plane will drop $100 bills from the sky on friday make sure you check to see if the lovely people at snopes did the research for you on its truth. if it says 'false' don't pass it on. the world is already full of enough stupid people, enough junk mail, and enough spam. YOU can do your small part by not contributing to any of the above.

thank you for listening to this public service announcement concerning my obnoxious inbox.