June 14, 2004

• It was considerate of the DEA to include a little note with the baggie of now-pulverised brick. Thoughtful: that's the DEA. [very amusing!]
• Ski. A large amount of postage was affixed to a card that was attached to the ski. The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workers attention). Notice of postage due received, 11 days. Upon pickup at the station, the clerk and supervisor consulted a book of postage regulations together for 2 minutes and 40 seconds before deciding on additional postage fee to assess. Clerk asked if mailing specialist knew how this had been mailed; our recipient said she did not know. Clerk also noted that mail must be wrapped. Great article! As much as the we bitch about the post office, the results of this experiment were impressive. I once mailed empty unwrapped merchandising crates (like the kind they used to use at Pier 1) to my ex-bf. The postal carrier was somewhat puzzled and concerned that something had been stolen, but they were delivered nonetheless.
• ))) Saw this a few months ago, but I absolutely loved it.
• And yet it's perfectly legal to take a man's soul and crush it out like a stale Pall Mall.
• I had a buddy who I used to correspond with when I was a kid and we would liven up our envelopes with as much artwork or funny quips as we could. (It's amazing how an envelope addressed to "That dood In that house over there" gets through as long as you have a postal code and house number attached) I always wondered if the carriers stopped to read everything on those envelopes when they handled them.
• I recieved a magazine subscription to "Herbert J. McBooby" for a couple years. None of the name resembled anything close to mine. The postman always put a question mark next to it though.
• Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight ... Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. Great stuff!
• One of my roommates was visiting her parents & the rest of us wanted to let her know we missed her. So we took the burnt, half-eaten pancakes that were left from our dinner & stuck them in a ziplock bag. We put some stamps & an address label on the baggie and stuck it in the mail (no envelope). It went from MN to MA with no problems.
• I *wish* I could remember the source, but I remember hearing William Buckley mentioning in an interview that he once received a letter in the mail addressed simply - 'To the Insufferable William F. Buckley' It cracks me up to this day.
• Brick.... Ski..... Deer tibia.... Dead fish, old seaweed
• When I was fourteen or so, a guy I liked moved away, so once in a while I'd try to keep him involved with what we got up to by mailing odd things to him. I think the strangest was an envelope of popcorn with extra salt.
• True story: When I was a mere child, we lived in Denver, Colorado. My mother's people were Serbian, and they made the best home-grown kielbasa in the universe. Holidays, they'd send a package full of goodies, including the aforementioned kielbasa from the old homestead back in Pennsylvania. Anybody who's ever had the real thing knows that it has an extremely strong aroma. Nevermind that it was wrapped in layer on layer of foil, plastic and butcher paper, as well as being double boxed, you KNEW that stuff was in there. I swear some of the boxes had chewed corners and drool marks when they arrived. One year, the Christmas package wasn't delivered. The US Postal system owes me big time!!!