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!

Overheard at the Capitol...

Unidentified Senator: "If you get ten letters on an issue, it's a big issue."

Senator Graham: "I love the House [of Representatives], but I don't always trust them."

Senator Graham (paraphrase): "But I just read through their governmental regulations, and it only took me 10 minutes! That's not long enough." [We need more government control than that!]

Senator Wilson (discussing birth): "Sometimes the placenta can get tangled around the mother's neck." :P

Senator Wilson: "You know the game, and it's all a game."

Anonymous lobbyist about anonymous legislator: "If he were in a different body, he would be the perfect man." (she was kidding, just for the record)

Abram, a Christian lobbyist, regarding a petty dispute in the legislature: "Regardless of race, religion, or party, when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, all men are four-year-olds."

Greeting card: "When a man is talking in the woods and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

Anonymous Legislator: "Oh, those Republicans! Those lazy, corrupt, foolish Republicans! Oh, wait - I'm a Republican."

Anonymous individual: "He's a nice-looking guy. Too bad he's not a nice guy."

Soft in Spirit

Stephen: "I want to marry someone with a soft spirit, so she won't fight with me."
David: "I don't think that will work for you, because you have a hard spirit."

Andrew: "You know how people are more likely to crash when they're speeding? Well, they should change the speed limit to 100 miles per hour, and then less people would speed, and so less people would crash."

David to Andrew: "You would look better if you were black and a little bit fat."

David: "Jacob worked 7 years for Rachel?! That's stupid! And it seemed like a short time to him?!"
Jacob: "I would have just found another girl."

Andrew: "Sarah, why do you always mark emails as 'unread'? You shouldn't do that. That's lying to yourself."

Dad to Abigail, while discussing Bill and Hillary Clinton: "I wonder if it's possible for the Beast and the Antichrist to be married."

David, while eating homemade yogurt: "It's still alive!"

David: "Those puppies were really cute. They were even cuter than me!"

Abigail to Stephen: "You're about to make me lose my temper. And you don't want to do that. Trust me!"

Sarah: "My perfectionism makes me cruel."

Sarah: (looking at Amazon.com and smiling with anticipation) : "I really want some more books to read. Oh, wait, I have lots of books to read downstairs!"

Jacob to Dad: "I would really like to have this. Aren't Dads supposed to buy things for their little boys?"

David to Dad after Dad cut his leg with the chainsaw: "How old is your leg?"

David, after being pricked by a cactus: "Ouch! This is pricking me. But it's all for the best..."

David to Sarah: "You're too old to be cute."

Andrew: "A team can do anything."

David: "Mommy, did you call Uncle Steve 'uncle steve' when he was a little boy?"

David, seeing a pillared building on a hill: "Mommy, look! The Romans live up there!"

Sarah to an unidentified male: "You are chivalry personified - you just have to be goaded on a little and nagged for a few minutes."

Abigail: "My calendar says, "All you need is love". I'm not so sure. I could use some money, too."

Abigail: "People think that love is an upwards kind of thing, but it isn't. It's a downward thing. You fall in love."

Andrew to Sarah: "You're going to share your chocolate-covered raisins with us? If I were you, I would keep them forever."

David to Sarah: "Why are you putting your chocolate-covered raisins away? Is it because you are embarrassed that I am throwing them?"

David: "I really want to be an uncle!"

David to Sarah: "If you wait too long to get married, all the men will be dead."

Andrew to Sarah: "If you care what I say, you are very gullible."

David to Sarah: "I am the spoiledest boy in the whole world."

Andrew to Abigail: "What? You are sending an email to __ ? You have no business sending her an email that long! Oh, you're going to start talking about me. Of course. I'm the famous one!"
Abigail: "Sigh to the fifth power."

David: "Sarah, you have braided hair! That is cool. Were you born with braided hair?"

David to Sarah: "Did you notice that most of the people in the park today were sinners?"

Dad to Sarah: "Don't ever get engaged to a man who wears a baseball cap all the time."

Andrew: "Sarah had it harder than all of us. She had to break Mom and Dad in."

Sarah to Abigail: "I had to fight for everything I've got, but you get life handed to you on a golden platter!"

Andrew: "Usually ladies don't make good comedians."

David: "I saw a man cigaretting [smoking]."

Jacob, after nearly slipping on a puddle of water in the kitchen: "Whew! If I was an old lady, I would have died!"

Westward, ho!

Yes, you heard right. The Greeks went off to Colorado some time ago for a bit of visiting, skiing, mountain climbing, hiking, and other great adventures. We've asked aspiring writer and historian David Greek to give us exclusive access to his personal journal for his firsthand account of the skiing portion of the trip. He's agreed, albeit very reluctantly, and so we're going to hurry and post this before he changes his mind...

SKIING!

"I skied for two days. It was very fun skiing. I rented my skies and boots. I went on the chairlift about 12 times a day. It was very fun skiing when I went down hills. I learned how to ski very fast. I skied down White Rabbit ski run and Lonesome Whistle and Hobo Alley, Bluebell, Coronaway, Edelweiss, Marchhare, Dormouse and a few more. We went as high as 11,307 feet. The drive up was very curvy. The two person chairlift was scary. But the other chairlifts were not scary. We went skiing at Winter park. It was very fun skiing. Stephen fell getting on the chairlift. I saw a little boy skiing with a walkie-talkie."

And there you have it - David's personal narrative, reported exclusively to the privileged readers of the The Grecian Inquirer. Maybe if you leave lots of nice comments, David will be persuaded to make more of his writings public. Rumor has it that he's been churning out some wild western fiction lately.

And yes, we realize we haven't been posting, but we also realize that you don't want to hear our excuses. We do plan to post more often...and we have lots of good stuff in storage. Keep watching! :)