Two thoughts come to mind: first, choosing an email address is a lot like naming your child, or getting a tattoo -- this is something that you're potentially go

Two thoughts come to mind: first, choosing an email address is a lot like naming your child, or getting a tattoo -- this is something that you're potentially going to have to live with for the rest of your life. Picking a joke address and using it for your primary online ID might be a bad choice. Second, this is why I have been a customer of pobox.com for over a decade. They don't host mail, they just provide forwarding and spam filtering, directing my mail at whatever endpoint I pick (and with most clients, including gmail, I can use them as my outgoing mail agent too). Changing mail services is as simple as a couple of clicks in their UI. Since their overhead is low and they get paid for their services, I expect them to be around for a long, long time.