Is there anybody out there?

As opening lines go, Douglas Coupland's JPod takes some beating:

"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."

And now reading The Gum Thief – which considers a middle-aged alcoholic car crash of a man working in a branch of Staples while writing a novel about a middle-aged alcoholic car crash of a couple who swill Scotch, bicker wittily and encounter a young buck novelist who is writing a novel about a middle-aged alcoholic car crash of a man working in a branch of Staples, phew – I can't help thinking that this is sometimes Coupland's world, we just live in it.

Nope, I'm not middle-aged, alcoholic, a car crash or working in Staples. I just aspire to be.

Anyhoo, somewhere amongst the to-and-fro correspondence of its main players, an email address comes up:

blackchandelier@gmail.com

Out of interest, I've sent the following email to this address:

Do people actually write to email addresses they find in books?

(I'm sorry, it was the most Couplandesque thing I could think of.) Well, you've got to, haven't you, eh? I'm hoping this delivers goods, like Homer Simpson's email address, as once revealed (and spelled out) on The Simpsons. Acknowledgment would be nice and all. I'd settle for that.