The Postal Service lost something I mailed a week ago to my Dad. This kind of an occurrence may not be any less rare today than it was before e-mail and other services, but it's definitely losing credibility as an excuse.
"It must have gotten lost in the mail," is never believable when money is involved (it was here, a check. And no I couldn't just pay Dad with PayPal. Long story.) It's even less believable now considering all the means by which we can send stuff to each other. But I just had to sit there and take it and make other plans.
The only other time I've been involved in lost mail is when my ex-girlfriend sent me a dozen erotic postcards with a message written serially on the back. "Did you get them?" she cooed. "Get what?" I said. She explained what she'd done. "If they don't toss them out at the sorting facility the letter carrier will probably steal all the good ones," I said. Indeed, the only one I got was some chick in a gas mask and a bikini.
Feel free to discuss whatever's on your mind. Here's some topic starters.
• Today saw the final airing of The Oprah Winfrey Show. I think I've watched that program, start to finish, maybe two or three times at the most. Not a hater, just a dude, and I don't spend a lot of time in waiting rooms.
• Is it really an 11-year standoff when the sheriff don't give a shit? Naturally, this is in Texas. Naturally, the fugitive is a constitutional scholar, too.
• This is widely portrayed as "paying kids not to go to college," but Silicon Valley zillionaire Peter Thiel awarded 20 20-year-old entrepreneurs $100,000 each to put off college and pursue their ideas. Sounds great, but Thiel also backs some real off-the-wall ideas, and isn't such a big fan of women's suffrage.
• Fifty years ago today: President Kennedy challenged the nation to fly a man to the moon and return him safely before the decade was out.