Postal Service

I guess I have a few continuing thoughts on the mail.

1. When I was small I thought it would be fun to be a mailman. Not driving a truck, but the ones that walk around. We didn't have those where I lived, but I saw them on TV. Newman on Seinfeld is a good example. A related occupation was to be collecting shopping carts from the parking lots of stores. For both of them you get to go for a walk and have goals of how fast you can do it. And it would be interesting, or so I thought at the time. So, either of those or a river pirate, but none of those worked out.

2. In the last blog I mentioned that it seems that postal service will fade away at some point. It's run by the government, so that would save some money. It turns out, not that much, though. I saw a cool thing online where you try to balance the federal budget. You decide how much to raise or lower the categories. It turns out the things people talk about being wasteful are just a drop in the bucket and would hardly do anything. Getting rid of Amtrak, public television, lowering senators salaries, would hardly make much of a difference. It would be like being thousands in debt in your household budget and deciding to cut back on gum purchases. "Only two sticks per person per week from now on." It would help a little, I guess. To do much on the federal budget you have to make big cuts in defense or social security - stuff that won't get you reelected. That's probably why we stay in debt.

3. Why don't we hear of shootings in post offices any more? "Going postal" will have no meaning to future generations. Do they still happen, but don't get reported? Maybe there are school shootings now because they are reported more or that is what crazy people decide gets the most attention. It might sound like I'm making a joke, but I'm not. Most of the mass killings seem to be planned out well ahead of time. They probably go for what they think is trending.