Haiku of the day:
Blue mailbox has been
empty going postal no
option blog alive
I know...it's been a long time since your e-mail was cluttered with a "you've got mail" notification from the blue mailbox. Your mail carrier has been preoccupied and distracted. Things going on in life just seem to get in the way of consistently posting witty blog entries (loved ones passing, sisters moving, storms rolling, overtime working, project finishing, political commentary watching, vacation planning, Chastain ticket selling, birthday celebrating, NetFlix movie selecting, and just plain dreaming). But the writing, synchronicities, general observations, interactions and impressions don't stop. They just get redirected to other writing venues, held in my head, discussed in person or shared with the head shrinker. And since this blog has become a venue for my own style of self-effacing humor, I certainly wouldn't want to disappoint anyone, or myself, by writing anything too serious. I do, after all, want you to look forward to reading this blog. There are plenty of other things you can dread all you want.
Lately, the only thing in our mailboxes (e-mail and the USPS real thing) are the standard advertisements for stuff we don't want. Despite this, I still slowly open my laptop computer and physically, with determination, walk out to the street-side mailbox with hopefulness and excited anticipation. Maybe today there will be something special, something unexpected. It doesn't have to be the winning lottery ticket, just let it put a smile on my face.... A thank you card, a birthday card, a holiday card, a party invite, a monthly statement from Edward Jones telling me my mutual funds are doing well (ha!).
Any of that would have been great. But when I went to the real mailbox yesterday, I pulled out two, yes, count 'em two, (one for me and one for Doc. B) presorted, first class mailers from the Department of the Treasury - The IRS with a capital "T". On it was stamped, in bold red print: "ENCLOSED IS AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE IRS ON THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS ACT OF 2008. DO NOT THROW AWAY!"
My tax dollars, that are paying for this economic stimulus payment, just paid for every taxpayer to receive a notification about the money I might could (southern for "may") receive. This information has been on every single news station in the entire U.S. and I'm sure world-wide. I'm already peeved about how much coin it's costing to send these stimulus checks in the first place so I was really irked when I got a postage-paid notice telling me about it. Who is the IRS trying to reach by doing this? The 1% who may not have heard about it? And if they hadn't heard about it, do you think they would be arguing if they "randomly" received a check in the mail? No, they'd be going down to the local check-cashing kiosk the very next morning - no questions asked - yet another form of "don't ask, don't tell".
Guess what I did? I threw it away. Well, I had to pull it out of the recycling container to write this blog, then I disregarded the bold, caps, red, "DO NOT THROW AWAY" directive...
Okay, you can go back to American Idol now. Prediction: Carly Smithson wins.
