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GOING POSTAL...GOING, GOING, GONE?
by Chris Joseph
With the post office now considering cutting back mail delivery from six days a week to five, as well as raising the rate of mailing a first-class letter another two pennies to 44 cents, one burning question comes to mind: What do we really need a postal service for, anyway?
It’s not as if the post office is the model of efficiency, and with the prevalence of the Internet, it’s now much faster (and a hell of a lot more fun) to send my nastygrams via e-mail.
But what would life without a post service be like? Here are some examples.
1. The phrase “going postal” would vanish from the lexicon, to be replaced by a term that’s more relevant in today’s economy for the disgruntled, stressed-out coworker who one day comes to work dressed in camouflage and starts lobbing grenades. Some possibilities: “going financial,” “going auto worker,” or “going mortgage broker.”
2. There will be no more honoring our prominent historical figures by putting their pictures on stamps. Instead, we could pay homage to these icons in a fashion that’s more applicable in the 21st century, like tattooing their faces on our butts.
3. We’ll need to do something to with those 800,000 displaced postal workers. Why not create a new government agency that can make use of their ample skills, like placing envelopes in boxes or saying “next” 250 times a day? My suggestions are the Department of Sloth and Indifference, or the Department of Homeland Incompetency.
4. With no more mailmen (excuse me–“letter carriers”) to attack, our vicious yard dogs will need some retraining. Here’s hoping the new economic stimulus package includes funding to build a Michael Vick Obedience School for Wayward Canines. Ground-breaking would take place in July to coincide with Vick’s release from federal prison.
5. At some point, a displaced postal worker will fess up and admit that all that “lost” mail was really stolen and stashed in storage facilities scattered across the country. When FBI agents investigate, they’ll discover a litany of birthday cards (minus the five dollars from Grandma), empty boxes of Christmas cookies, and Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues with the pictures cut out dating back to 1968
6. The elimination of all that junk mail would also mean a sharp decrease in the amount of paper we use. So what to do with all those extra trees? We could put America back to work by hiring thousands of loggers to cut down our precious national forests. We can use the lumber and extra space for something we really need right now–more houses!
7. Instead of those classic movies, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, a new genre of feature films will grace out theaters, such as The Postman Took a Severance Package, or The Postman Enrolled in Bartender School.
8. And what about that surplus of postal Jeeps with the steering wheels on the wrong side? Why not barter with one of our NAFTA partners, like Mexico? We give them Jeeps so their drug cartels can better transport their goods, and they give us tons of illegal narcotics, the sale of which could stimulate our economy. Not to mention our citizens.
9. In a decade or so, the nostalgia craze that pervades our television airwaves will spawn a sitcom featuring some of our beloved postal workers from years gone by. Hello, Newman...Hello, Clavin, featuring the two loveable letter carriers from Seinfeld and Cheers will document the duo’s wacky adventures as they open a post office branch in upstate New York, circa 1992. I bet they were the ones who were cutting up those SI swimsuit issues.
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