Way back in 1994, British Telecom launched an advertising campaign built around the slogan ‘It’s good to talk’, which generally involved an etheral Bob Hoskins following an old woman around her house, pointing out that the only reason she received birthday cards was become some yammering housewife blackmailed her family to do so via a series of phone calls.  After the ghostly presence of Hoskins creeps around for a while, he delivers the final line in his cockney slur “iss good to talk”.

BT would say that though wouldn’t they?  I mean, if nobody talked then their little machines on the ends of wires would be fairly useless and they’d stop earning money.  Personally, talking is fairly low on my ‘things I’d much prefer to be doing right now’ scale, somewhere roughly above ‘drowing in a bowl of soup’ and below ‘cutting the tufty bits off the cat’.  Plus Bob Hoskins once played second-fiddle to an animated rabbit in a movie, so why should I listen to him?

You are cordially invited to an Interplanetary BBQ. 6.00pm, 4th October, 2452 at my place BYO Meat and Beer. RSVP: Year 2100 Cheers
Daniel Edmonds
Melbourne, Australia

Fortunately, the forced need to actually talk to people these days is on the wane, thanks to increasing uptake of email, social networking and mobile phones that are ever-more predominantly used for text messages.

Greetings from earth. My name is ricardo. I am bar FREE. Please stop by my house for a drink…
ricardo
Davie, FL, United States

Now, thanks to an observatory in Canberra, Australia, you can now force your garbled nonsense into the depths of space, towards the planet Gliese 581d, the nearest Earth-like planet outside our solar system likely to support life.  Just head to their website, www.hellofromearth.net, write up your super-important message (taking distinct care not to a) piss off any possible super-intelligent sentient life that might come and kick our asses, nor b) write something so dramatically inane that any form of life instantly groans and decides it’s not worth the trip any more) and they’ll send it off for you.

The Credit Cruch was hitting NASA harder than expected

we’re a mob called human beings. we make lots of mistakes but we basically mean well most of the time, although i wouldn’t trust us as far as you could throw us
deb
denmark, Australia

It will take a while to get there however, arriving some time in December 2029, so why not copy your messages into the comments here as well.  Hopefully we can finally prove that there might be some intelligent life out there after all.