Friday Fives – goin’ postal on your asses

What’s the last thing you got in the mail?

Certainly wasn’t 13 pounds of cocaine wrapped in cellophane, butcher paper, and peanut butter.   It’s weird you would even bring that up.  Are you obsessed with me?  Who cares what I get in the mail?  Since it wasn’t cocaine, which I have openly addressed, it could have been anything.  You a cop or something?  it was the crap in a box things, what is it?  Cologuard?

This skit was just on last weekend, and it’s brilliant.  It also hit home.  Being 50, I have to get a colonoscopy.  I plan to get one.  I have dodged it for years, though… and here is why.  It’s not the pooping (am excited to lose the weight) or the camera up my butt.  Apparently, I’ll be so goofed on valium I’ll be rooting them on.  No, I can’t fast for 24 hours.  Don’t know how to, and am terrified to.  At least let me have some protein powder?  Nope.  Since I am in this demographic, I was offered to take place in a study.   In short, I’d get $200 cash to crap in a box and mail it off.  I thought about it, it was just all too weird.

ok… what were we talking about?  Post office!  Stuff in the mail

Likely guitar stuff.  Something simple, like strings.  Why would I ship guitar strings?  Do I hate the environment that much?  Well, the impact probably isn’t worse than me driving my pick up truck an hour each way to get some strings.  Memba… we live remotely.  The nearest set of guitar strings is about an hour away… EACH way.  I am much closer to the airport, though.  Amazon’s fulfillment centers are adjacent to the airport.  So really… this is closer and so is more eco.  See, those guitar strings at guitar center also came into DIA.  Then someone drove them an hour into Denver.  And now you want me to drive an hour into to Denver to get them?

Oh…  and what two hours do you suggest I set aside for that?  I work from home, business hours.  And we have amazon prime.  And come on… how great is it that I push a button and tomorrow afternoon I’ll have guitar strings in my hands without setting foot off the ranch.

What’s the last thing you sent in the mail?

Certainly wasn’t $23,000 in non sequential hundreds.   Holy shit cash is heavy.  How do you even explain that?  I told her it was dense heavy square… um… pottery samples.  The gal asks “um… ok.  Any stated value to the clay samples?”   This is NOT the time to say “I’d say about about 23K in clay samples.”  No sir, you just let that money go and trust the system.
other than that?  Since I absolutely did NOT send 23K in cash overnight while dressed as Tom Hanks?

Live paychecks.  Like it’s 1985 over here.  For my company.  Well, it’s not my company… but the company I work for.  Every new hire gets a live check for their first check, even if they do direct deposit.  It used to make sense to send these checks to Denver, since this is where our call center is.  Since the pandemic, though, our call center is closed.  We haven’t hired anyone in Denver for years.  Our staff are now spread out all over the country.  To simplify things, I guess… HQ still sends their checks to us.  I pick them up and fedex them.

Really, though, the only thing we use our mailbox for our here is to pass stuff from neighbor to neighbor.  Some postal folks really really really don’t like it when you use a mailbox as a community cubbyhole.  Our postal folk don’t seem to care, which is wonderful.  They are ‘rural route’.  Know what that means in the postal world?  A LOT.  They don’t have to take the post office or civil service exam, they don’t have to wear uniforms.  They don’t get a post office jeep.  If you want to get into the post office, this is the shortcut that will take 2 years off the process.  Apply to be a ‘rural’ carrier.

Lemme tell you how great and laid back these carriers are.  Our last postal guy, who I am super sad appears to be gone, wrote down our dogs names on the lip of the mailbox flap.  He brings them treats every day when he drives by.  If he doesn’t see the dogs out, he’ll drop a couple dog biscuits in the mailbox with our mail.  See the cool shit you are missing living in the city?

How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?

Work email?  9,949.  Yup.  And there might be some important stuff in there.  Our company has a culture of ‘reply to all’.  Every single email to anyone usually has about 6 people copied on it.  and everyone replies to all.  When I go to if I take a lunch, I get about 35 emails.  Maybe one of them needs my attention.    Every one email someone sends ends up creating about 12.  As a result, all of us miss a LOT of information.  I scan the email line preview in Outlook.  If it doesn’t start with ‘Hey Kevin’, or ‘Kevin’ or something like that… I don’t open it.

And far from people catching on what a time suck this is.  There is a guy who is pretty high up who adds more people to every email.  Oh, and this is just my main inbox we are talking about.  I also have 15 other emails that empty to me.   15 departments worth of emails I am copied on.  If I could wave my magic wand right now and change something… rather than smite Mitch McConnel, or solve world hunger… I would strike down ‘reply to all’ with a great vengeance and furious anger those who use it

What is your most recent text message about?

Reminder for acupuncture tomorrow at 11:30am

Do you have a favorite postage stamp design?

No.  wait… the forever stamp.  I know that isn’t what you meant, but I’m exploiting a loophole.  I have some stamps in my wallet, prolly been there a few years.

Btw, since we are talking about the post office, they are apparently 4 billion in debt.  They can fix that, virtually overnight (in about 2 years).  Stop Saturday delivery.  They have already run the numbers.  Most players agree, but here is why I didn’t happen (these discussions were started back in Bush jr’s presidency.  To drop Saturdays it literally takes an act of congress.  That is why it can’t, and won’t, get done.  Neither side wants the other to get credit.  Additionally, each side prolly wants to tack some riders on (on page 162 of 182 pages, someone will put in tiny font ‘oh and a fighter jet factory for my home district’.

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Let’s play a game

Who am I talking about?

She was the light of our lives.  She brightened every room.  People naturally gravitated to her.  She went out of her way to help folks.  When someone needed anything, she was the first one there and the last one to leave.  She was beautiful, everyone had a crush on her.  But someone she was never stuck up.

Know who I am describing.  That dead girl.  No.  I mean every dead girl.   Ever.  I watch too much true crime, apparently.  Just go ahead and file that away, but I guarantee you will hear that paragraph up top verbatim on the 10 pm news within one week.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear “Well, he was kind of a dick.  He didn’t deserve to die by any means.  He wasn’t a bad person, he told me.  But, he also parked in handicapped parking.  Said he was a hero who was empowering the cripples.  Um… yeah, that’s about it.  Thoughts and prayers to his family and stuff.”

Note on that – do not watch the 10 o’clock news every night.  It’s just people killing each other, and its right before bed.  That isn’t what should be running around your subconscious dancing to the Scissor Sisters.  That should be me.  Watch the morning news, instead.  It’s WAY lighter in content, and the weather report is fresher.

Living Underwater for 100 days

There is a processor in Florida who is going to live underwater for 100 days.  Bad ass!  Let’s get our science on.  Ok, lots of questions.  How do you eat underwater?  How do you poo underwater?  How do you masturbate underwater?  What about peeing?  Ok, he could eat through a feeding tube, I guess?  But, if you are putting food in your mouth, then you aren’t breathing.  Maybe a liquid diet, like protein shakes?   Sure.  It’s in a pouch with a straw.  He pulls away the breathing thingy and swaps over to the protein slurry.  Not great, but doable.

** note – odds are that much smarter people than me have figured these things out.  But it’s fun to guess and problem solve.  Use the ol’ noggin.  As a result, I am heroically not googling it.  Ok, on to peeing.  We have all peed in the ocean.  Masturbating is really not a practical solution.  Since no guy has ever gone that long without taking advantage of himself… he’ll just have to have sex.  That can be done in the ocean.  I’ve done it.  It’s wasn’t great, but it’s doable.  Crapping?   Oh boy, it isn’t going to be easy pleasant.  Especially when you recall dude has been eating nothing but protein slurries.  I mean, I guess you could just pull your suit down and take a dump.  Every other animal on earth has done it.  I don’t think I have tried that.  This guy, though… is going to have the runs… to put it lightly.  And it’s just gonna bubble up around him.

Gross.  But…er… butt… this is for science.  What about sleeping?  How do you sleep under water?  If it were a day or two, maybe you could do sedation… but not for 100 days.  Maybe  you anchor yourself down and strap your oxygen on.  Eventually, you’ll fall asleep.  It won’t be great sleep, but nature will find a way to make it work.

What do you do all day, though?  I am sure there is lots of sciencing going on, but you have to unwind somehow.  Do they have cable down there? I guess that is my biggest concern, ocean bottom boredom.  It’s a whole thing.  I know it is, because I just named it.  Pretty sure there is about to be a commercial and medication for that soon.  The one with all the side effects.

So I went back to the story to see what the eggheads came up with for these problems.   AND… to obviously offer my assistance with the sciencey stuff.  I am a project of public schools in Arizona!  The only state funded worse for schools is Mississippi.  Guess what I found out?  NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING. 

Dude is not living underwater at all.  He is living in a pod underwater.  So, he will have air, and light, and a toilet, and prolly a fridge.  I am not even a tiny bit impressed.  Neither is Mark Kelly, who lived for a year in space.