after the tone

So a question I ask in a variety of contexts, including sometimes on this weblog, is "Coincidence, or causality?" This question has a special self-absorbed counterpart: "Quirk, or incisive exemplar of a fundamental flaw in Jeremy's character?" To wit: I've let the voicemails on my cel phone pile up again. I've got like 17. I didn't check my messages one day, left my cel at home the next, and next thing I know there were 8 messages for me. Who wants to deal with 8 messages? But then I keep putting off listening to them, and new people keep calling (or old people keep calling again), which just makes me not want to deal with it even more*, which just makes it pile up all the more. Am I alone in this? If I'm not alone, is it because we share the same fundamental character flaw?

Sorry if I haven't returned your call. Don't take it personally. You know that if it's anything important you should e-mail me, right?

(Okay, this is crazy, even by my standards. I am not going to post this until I have listened to all my messages... There, done. No family members dead for days, great. Later messages did include--verbatim, from separate people--"Darling, where are you? Why don't you ever answer your phone anymore?", "Jeremy, every part of your overall communicative apparatus has failed me at this point..." and, eek, "Jeremy, answer your [expletive] phone..." Ah, well, the boy detective is back on top of The Case of The Vibrating Treo.)

BTW, I've disconnected my landline at home. I decided that ~$80/month was altogether too much to pay when a high-speed home Internet connection (the main reason I had it in the first place) might perhaps be obtained through certain uncostly means.

* This might be different if I could listen to my e-mails from the most recent message backwards, like with e-mail. Why doesn't voicemail offer this feature?