I recently downloaded version 5.0 of the popular e-mail program -- paying, as usual, for added features that I never knew I needed. (Such is the guilt of the techno-challenged.)

Among the expensive new features in version 5.0 is something called MoodWatch -- available, as luck would have it, only in "Sponsored and Paid Modes." The latter is a category designating fools like me. As the online manual describes this feature, "MoodWatch [whatever happened to the concept of spaces between words?] is a new Eudora feature that monitors incoming and outgoing messages for offensive text. A new settings dialog has been added for MoodWatch so you can determine how you wish to use MoodWatch," which, one is informed, "works similarly to a spell-checker," scanning words and phrases in e-mail messages and headers and flagging those that "may be offensive."

The feature bears some graphic resemblance to a slot machine, with iconic drawings of vegetables instead of fruit. A new column appears in all e-mail logs alerting the user to "the level of offensiveness" of messages by the appearance of "one, two, or three red chili peppers." One chili, says the manual, indicates that there "may be a slight bit of offensive language in the message." I'm not certain what constitutes a slight bit of offensive language. Perhaps it's the salutation "Hi, honey" in a letter to a female friend. In any case, it's a tamer category than two chilies, which is still conditional but somewhat more emphatic: "There may be offensive language [not just a slight bit of it] in the message."

Three chilies and you've stepped way over the line, buddy. It means "there is offensive language in the message," no "may be" about it. This kind of outgoing message triggers a "three chili warning dialog box," says the manual.

The three-chili dialogue box is a pseudo-hip yet quaintly old-fashioned reminder that I have succumbed to the temper of these licentious times. It reads: "Your message to [recipient] regarding [subject line] is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down." I do relish the anthropomorphism of software that refers to itself in the first person, but the message sets off a higher level of paranoia: There's someone hovering above my e-mail messages hinting with his or her "drift" that I'm getting out of line again. To send that message despite its patently offensive text, I'd have to click on "send anyway," which, I confess, I am tempted to do with a wicked chuckle. Mind you, these are messages we ourselves were dumb enough to compose and send before Qualcomm Inc., with its innate good taste, intervened in the interests of decency.

As a writer, I have a silly and sentimental attachment to my own words, offensive or otherwise. Fortunately, there's a software fix for those who remain attached to their own offensiveness. I immediately clicked on the box in "Options" that disables MoodWatch, and went about my business. But Qualcomm did not so easily relinquish its vigil over the language of my correspondents. No dialogue box popped up when I sent messages, but incoming messages continued to arrive labeled with chilies. I tried eliminating the MoodWatch columns individually in each of my mailboxes by dragging the column lines together, leaving no room for the chilies, but the next time I opened a mailbox, the column would be resized to its original width to accommodate the chilies, which had also returned.

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