When I've needed to send mail from C, I just call a CLI mail user agent like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx, and configur

When I've needed to send mail from C, I just call a CLI mail user agent like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx, and configure it to talk to a local MTA (traditionally sendmail), which buffers messages locally before sending them to a real mail server on the internet (I use authsmtp). Python has a nice builtin library for talking to my local SMTP server like, I suspect, many other modern languages. There's no technical reason why email addresses like markbao@news.ycombinator.com can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.