Once upon an alleged time, man had to actually talk to his peers, man to man. What a dreary time it must have been, devoid as it was of emoticons. How our caveman forefathers ever managed to organize themselves to hunt buffalo without Twitter is quite beyond my understanding, since in my experience, it takes, at a minimum, two e-mails, sixteen flyers and at least one status update to induce a college student to show up for free food. Fortunately, man soon innovated and created pens, phones and chatroulette (oh hey, six weeks ago). Along the way, man also realized that sometimes you don’t want to talk right now, and you’d rather leave a message. Writing is a rather convenient invention addressing this particular need.

Now, for some godforsaken reason, a fool in the hot bed of hot messes (read: Palo Alto) came up with voicemail. Speaking, of course, is intended to be in and of the moment; writing, on the other hand, is meant to be recorded. It’s above all a method of stored communication. But this bastard invention mixes the two humors into a nauseating concoction that somehow has managed to survive the advent of text messaging and caller ID.

You might think most rational people would believe I’m barking up the wrong tree as far as critical issues facing everyday people go, but, I think the fact we still even use voicemail is sufficient evidence that most people aren’t rational. Lest you think I’m fighting a ManBearPig of a problem, consider the following. Suppose each American wastes two minutes of productivity and/or American Idol viewing time because of this inefficient invention. That’s 600 million minutes a day, give or take, and, if nothing else, frankly Ford probably wouldn’t be performing so poorly if all those minutes had been spent watching Carrie Underwood and Clay Aiken traipse around in a Focus. It doesn’t take a hockey-stick graph on a PowerPoint and pictures of polar bears crying to prove that voicemail is lame.

Voicemail, like the DMV and Ke$ha, is one part unavoidable and two parts obnoxious. There probably was a time when it was exciting to gather around and listen to the recording of the last caller. But, obviously, that day has passed. Only people who look back fondly on the days of Furbies or Milli Vanilli should find voicemail attractive, and, even then, it’s only because they are deranged nostalgic masochists.

That being said, I’m not sure if there even is an audience that enjoys voicemail. The people at Brach’s that design those Valentine’s candy hearts still include antiquated messages like “Fax Me” and “Page Me” on their candies. Somehow, they neglected to design one that says “Leave Me a Voicemail!” Reasonably, you might imagine that the size of candy hearts prohibits a message longer than 10 characters. Alternately, it’s because no one ever intends to leave a voicemail; it’s always the communication method of second choice. There’s no excitement to it. A text or e-mail or even a fax can be how you choose to contact someone; a voicemail is what you’re stuck with when calling doesn’t work as planned.

So voicemail is decidedly unromantic and certainly impractical, yet in spite of competition, survives on momentum. Paraphrasing Marx, tongue firmly in cheek: phone owners of the world, unite–you have nothing to lose but your phone tag chains.

@LadyGaga: Stop telephonin’ me-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh. E-mail Emily at [email protected] .