The U.S. Post Office released these images of the new stamps.
Today in the Curmudgeon offices, it is extremely quiet but not narcoleptic. Why I do not know. Normally the place is full of laughter, grousing, whispered conversations, the occasional sob, and high-volume cursing like a fishmonger’s wife. And so it was that instead of working, I tuned into the Opera channel and a production of Dr. Atomic, about atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb.
There is something you should understand about me and opera: I hate opera. Opera sucks. Opera sucks the big one with wanton enthusiasm. And this one—this steaming pile of “fecality” stinking up the world of art—is a veritable orgy of “suckiness.”
And that is precisely why I was watching it: It was too damn quiet around here and I like quiet. Quiet makes me happy and I don’t like being happy. See? They don’t call me the Curmudgeon for nothin’.
Having done it’s job faster than a Tijuana hooker with a 16 year-old (the very thought makes my skin crawl, and probably would literally cause one’s epidermis to move of it’s own accord with nasty stuff a few short days later,) I soon did as the fishmonger’s wives would do, spouting epithets in colorful language, speaking to no one in particular, just my disembodied, foulmouthed vocabulary emanating from under my door.
Pleased as punch, I switched over to TV Land just in time for Dragnet.
Which is how I get to the new US Postal stamps. (Whew. Didn’t think I was going to make it, did you?) The main offering among the new stamps are 20 commemoratives of Early TV Memories. All great icons of American culture and gentle reminders of a simpler, kinder world. There are other’s as well, such as the Gary Cooper commemorative, but I’m not going to list them all here.
If you want to know what they are then you, my friend, are a Philatelist, and worse, that would make me one too, and then I could tell you what an “Inverted Jenny” is and say witty things like, “What have you done for me philately?”
The stamps will still be at the current rate—42 cents—but don’t worry, the price of 1st class postage will go up again in May. In spite of that, here is what I shamelessly say about the U.S. Post Office: They ain’t so bad. Think about it. For 42 cents, they take a letter and deliver it anywhere in the States, for chrissake! Oh, sure, sometimes things take a little longer and sometimes things get lost. You can’t even drive across town without losing your way, so I don’t want to hear any more bitching about the post office.
Letter writing is a lost art. Don’t let it go. It beats the hell out of email, at least for being meaningful and–if you are so lucky–romance. So come August, 11th, write a letter to a relative or an old friend, buy a new stamp with Lucy or Jack Webb or Groucho or Hitchcock or any of 16 others, stick it on the letter, and put it in that box you have out in front of your house. They’ll come and pick it up and take it anywhere in the good old USA.
And then come back here and lick this.
Your Enigmatic Friend,
Crusty
The Crusty Curmudgeon 