Sunday, June 10, 2007

On Postage

It now costs forty-one cents to mail a letter.

I'm sitting here in horror, trying to wrap my mind around said egregious fact.

It costs forty-one cents to mail a letter.

It costs forty-one cents to mail a letter!

And yet there are no riots on the street. I hear nothing of tear gas and policemen, of broken glass and burning vehicles. No one has gone to Washington to demonstrate. No one has fled the country. The world still spins on its axis. Apparently, everything still goes on as normal.

Yet here I sit, petrified. Aghast at the demise of the country I love.

What I greatly feared has come upon me. I will most surely go broke. I will live in misery and perish in obscurity, the innocent victim of a tyrannical postal system.

I still have vague remembrances of the good old days, the days when one could mail a letter for twenty-nine cents. Sure, that was still too much, and you had to lick the back, but at least there was a little money left over to pay the bills after you paid the postage by which to mail them.

Not so these days.

We scraped together a small fortune and bought some stamps a few days ago. They were large and triangular, which struck me as rather odd. They were also unusually beautiful. Apparently, the post office has decided that they will obscure their evil by putting a new face on postage. Apparently, they have been successful.

But the truth remains. This is no time for sugar coating the matter. We have done that for too long already. Ladies and gentlemen, the end of all things is at hand. Prepare to meet your Maker.

It costs forty-one cents to mail a letter.

It costs forty-one cents to mail a letter!




9 comments:

Alexander Blair said...

If you only pay $.12 in bills, I'd like to know where you live. :P

($.12 is the difference of $.42-$.29).

:D

Anonymous said...

Hmm...dare I tell a non-Greek our secrets?

Truth be told, IM, we really don't pay any bills at all. Especially not since postage went up.

Our water comes from a well. Our electricity comes from solar panels.

And we live happily in utopia. Or we would, if only the IRS would take us off their mailing list...

As far as our exact physical location is concerned, I'm afraid that that must remain classified. We can't have the whole world visiting now, can we?

Christina said...

$.41 ?? What? You think that is a lot? Here we pay $.52 just to mail with the country and to mail to you it is $.93 *gasp* Now who is really going to go broke?

I was remembering the good old days when it was $.45. Yes, lets have a riot. :D

LOL!

Sarah said...

Wow, Christina. I'm speechless. That is unfathomable.

52 cents to mail a letter? How do you all afford to eat? ;)

And 93 cents?! If nothing else, I admire you for writing to me. You must save for months to afford to send me the beautiful epistles that you do. :D

I will, from this day forward, treasure your letters even more highly than I did before.

And you will be in my prayers. If you ever decide to sneak across the border and live in relative freedom here in the US, I will support you wholeheartedly.

:D

Anonymous said...

omg, that's crazy .... what country does christina live in??? to have to pay that much? when i mail letters to england, i only have to pay about 60-some cent stamps. and yes, sarah, i agree, 41cents for stamps is outrageous. i've switched all my penpals to epals :)

Christina said...

No, I don't go broke, because I am already broke. But. I don't pay for the postage, I get it all free. :)

I live in Canada and I love it. Thanks for your offer Sarah, but I like it here. You just have to get a good job if you want to pay for postage. :) And my dad has a good one. :D

I did decide that I have to make my letters worth mailing though. :) (As in, making them at least three pages long)

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes. Canada. The socialist regime up north. :P

You're broke, too? It's good to know that I'm not the only one, at any rate. We can commiserate with each other. :D j/k

You don't pay for your own postage? Ahem...well, truth be told, neither do I. I know, I know - from the tone of my post, one would have thought that I pay for the whole world's postage. ;) Dad read it, and then he said, "But I buy the postage!" :D :D

No matter. It still costs too much money. :P

A letter worth mailing. What an excellent thought. I eagerly await the arrival of the next one... :)

Andrew said...

Hey guys, I have some breaking news!!!
There's this new thing called email. Have you heard of it ? You get online and get an address free and then you type out letters to send... There are 2 catches tho; they get to the recipient instantly, and are totally free !!!
Check it out guys.
:D

Anonymous said...

jacob said....
email