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I AM a zine publisher. You've seen us, scuttling around with piles of paper in our hands, ink toner all over us, being ejected from office buildings by security after being fired for copier abuse. You've also seen us, friend, at the post office. We're always at the post office. You may breeze in and out for stamps, tsking your tongue at the shabby people stuffing envelopes and hanging ominously around the PO boxes. We are, in case you were wondering, the people who actually purchase PO boxes. Zine publishers are like the Oompah Loompahs of the post office--including a tendency to make up cruel rhymes about you people, the Normals and sing them while performing very lame, uncoordinated dance numbers. Oh, I know the post office. I love the post office, and I hate the post office. More accurately, I love the post office, and I hate everyone in the post office. Well, not the employees, strangely enough, who are, by and large, helpful, cheerful, and largely incurious about strange, scruffy envelopes being mailed off to Switzerland. No, I hate the customers. If we could reduce the population of the post offices of the world to employees and zine publishers, I'd be very, very happy. See, zine publishers appreciate the post office. We're amazed that this huge national organization exists that takes our scrawled crap and brings it to the other dysfunctional people in the world. To their door. I write "Here I am pantsless again" on Monday, and on Friday you're sitting over coffee and reading those very words, and thinking, Jesus, does Somers have anything else to write about? Normal people, they don't appreciate the post office. They see it as a chore, one more damn thing they have to do in their day. They see long lines, grouchy unhelpful employees, and of course they see the scruffy, unbathed zine publishers singing doggerel and trying unsuccessfully to create a human pyramid. Bitch, bitch bitch--but that's okay, because I've suddenly seen proof that everyone but me is a moron. That proof comes in the form of the new Automated Postage Machines.
Of course, nothing stops the lines for the machines from getting onerously long as well, which would negate the only benefit they really offer (well, the only benefit aside from not having to deal with your fellow human beings, which I think is worth almost any amount of money or inconvenience). In the best of possible worlds, the line would be split evenly between people with simple transactions that could use the machines and people with more complex mailing needs who would need human beings. But the strange fact is, I can walk into the post office at any time of the day, and no matter how long the line for the windows is, there will be almost no one at the machines. The only explanation for this is that most people are too dumb to realize that the machines offer an alternative and can be much much faster than the human lines. The machines do have their limitations, of course; You can only perform one transaction at a time, which means if you have three parcels to mail you have to swipe your debit/credit card three separate times, and there are sometimes mysterious delays while the machine dials home. Also, each machine is equipped with a camera that takes your photo in case you turn out to be a terrorist using the machine to mail bombs around the country. But even so, I have walked into the post office with an armful of TIS mailings headed for Europe, Japan, and Asia, breezed by a lengthy line of dispirited people waiting, and mailed 13 airmail packages from the machines in ten minutes, while three or four people have been served on the main line. I do this in front of everyone. It's no secret. Does no one else know this? Is no one else even curious enough about these machines to give them a shot, find out how easy they are to use? Or is the idea that you might need to make some decisions yourself far too difficult? I mean, the machine weighs the package for you, asks you how you want it mailed (giving you estimated delivery time frames), asks you if you want any supplementary services (delivery confirmation, etc.), asks you to dip your debit/credit card, and prints out an adhesive label to stick on your mailing. That's not difficult. Except, maybe it is, and maybe that's my answer: People are dumb. In fairness, the requirement of a debit/credit card precludes some people who don't have these financial conveniences. And some people may prefer to pay cash so as not to be tracked by the Illuminati, who obviously track every insignificant person's financial transactions all over the world because you, with your iron will and unique mind, are a threat to their world empire. That's fine--if you know about a convenience, a time-saving option, and choose knowingly to bypass it for what you consider to be good reason, then that's fine. But I suspect most people simply fear the machines and refuse to even go near them, afraid that legs and arms will sprout from them and the machine will grab them and eat them, slurping "Terminate! Terminate!" as it does so. I am, of course, not so secretly arrogant and elitist and I like to discuss endlessly how I am smarter than everyone else. So perhaps you should take all this with a grain of salt. Anything which reduces the amount of time I have to spend away from my beer and pornography sources is welcomed, and anything that also reduces my contact with the teeming millions is doubly welcomed--these Automated Postage Machines are a wonder! I will worship them in cargo-cult fashion until the authorities figure out who is leaving dead animals and flowers at their feet every week. Jeff |
June 20, 2005
