Earlier, I mentioned that if you need to sign up for things online but don't want your regular e-mailbox clogged with the resultant Spam, it's easy to get a special e-mail address at Yahoo or Hotmail or even e-Garfield just for that.
Several of you have sent me descriptions of methods that might even be easier. One is BugMeNot, which is a database of communal usernames and passwords for free websites that require registration. If you want to access the New York Times site, for example, and don't wish to sign up, you go to the BugMeNot site and you can look up a username that someone else got for this purpose.
Another is Mailinator, which is a clever idea. It's an open-to-all temp mail service. Let's say you need to sign up for the Prune Growers Monthly site and don't want to open a Hotmail account just for that. You make up a name and affix the Mailinator domain to it. Let's say you pick "Stupidface." You sign up on the site as Stupidface@mailinator.com, then you can go to the Mailinator site, log in as Stupidface (without a password) and the response e-mail will be there for you to see. Mailinator keeps it online for a few hours, then deletes it but in the meantime you've set up an account for Prune Growers Monthly without giving them your real e-mail address. Neat.
Thanks to Kip Grey, Stuart Kaufman and others who sent one or both of the above tips.