The mail is here

Here's another chapter for my latest blog saga (Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are also available). With any luck, this will be the final chapter, and we'll have a nice trilogy to remember.

First off, don't worry, US Postal Service, I'm done knocking you down... for now. Although you silly blunderers managed to mangle my home address, even though I relaied it propperly to "The Shipper", who was able to produce it for me in it's full and correct form.

So customs, nonsensical pricks that they are, held my package for an arbitrary number of days. Then the local Post Service did their number. I really shouldn't knock on them too hard, not only because I find them kind of brittle but also because, within the confines of idiocy, they did rather alright... in a way... a very narrow, twisted way, mind you.

So the address the USPS dispatched my package to could have been any of two flats out of the four on my floor, sixteen on my building and more than I care to count on the whole. All in all, could have been a lot worse, even more so considering one of the two flats they narrowed it down to, by mangling my address, actually is the right one. Enter the mailman (or should I say the mailperson, in case it happens to be a lady doing this route? Oh, like anyone on this blog - including you - bloody cares about politically correctness).

So the mailperson was left with the decision of picking one of two adjacent mailboxes to put the delivery attempt notice (not actually attempt to deliver. That would have been much too troublesome) in. Considering their job consists of merely reading addresses and putting letters and postcards on the apropriate box, a decision must have been quite the thrill. I imagine this meek employe(e) of the almighty entity we refer so merely as The State would have had the need to take a deep breath and lie in the shade for a while before continuing on to the next block. Actually I really shouldn't be so mean to the mailmen and mailwomen out there, more often than not they seem to be really kind and competent people, even though this one made quite a blunder, IMO. Regardless, I've a bit of bile to spew.

Needless to say, they put the slip on the wrong box. Now why should I be angry at this? It was an honest mistake, Shark. You cold have done that, you'll say. Well, not quite. See, my neighbours, who got a misplaced delivery slip, weren't the only ones to recieve correspondance that day. I myself got some, a letter, addressed to me personally, not merely "Resident" or any such non-descript nonsense. So, faced with decision, should this mailperson have put the slip for a package addressed to an "Arabian Shark" on the same mailbox as the other letter, addressed to Arabian Shark, which is one of two likely possibilities for the right mailbox for the slip, or assume a different Arabian Shark lives next door to the Arabian Shark who recieved the first letter? "Oh, heck, Arabian Shark is such a common name... I'd swear at least three cousins of mine and two of my wife's have "Arabian" as their first names and most people in the village my father was born had "Shark" for their last name" is not a sentence you hear very often.

So, alright, my name is not Arabian V. Shark, but it's still fairly uncommon, or at least uncommon enough that you don't mistake it for the name of some shrill-voiced, over-excitable, ever-screaming girl the likes of the ones who recieved my slip on Thursday. So, as it would happen, they didn't notice they had recieved a slip by mistake until Friday, and I don't blame them (for that), and when I noticed it, still on Friday, the Post Office was closed for the weekend, meaning I still don't have my package. But at least now I'll be able to get it on Monday... today, that is.

Pax vobiscum atque vale.

ArabianShark will be required to pay tariffs amounting to less than a fourth of the item's value, even though he's once had to pay nearly three times an item's worth in tariffs alone. Now someone please try to convince me tariffs aren't just some scam "The Man" came up with to arbitrarily bleed out private citizens of their hard-earned finance and punish them for wanting more than their lame country is able to provide.