How can I prevent "Mail" from popping up alerts? I don't use Apple's Mail application at all on my Mac OS 10.7.2 System.

Every so often its icon starts bouncing in the dock and an alert comes up complaining about some configuration issue.

I went into the config dialog and set it to check for mail "manually," thinking that would prevent it from checking on its own, encountering issues, and annoying me with dialogs. But that didn't work. It's still unhappy that it can't reach my mobile me account.

One option would be to configure it properly to access my email accounts, but I specifically don't want it messing around with my email. I definitely don't want it downloading tons of email onto my hard drive.

I could just delete the app altogether, but I sort of want to keep it around in case I feel like using it at some point.

Is there a way to get it to just sit there and not do anything at all, ever?
I asked this question at Superuser a while ago and received a good answer (chmod):

https://superuser.com/questions/337134/how-do-i-stop-apple-mail-from-opening-because-of-ical-appointments