Ducks and the US Postal Service

Thank you to headgardener who took my mind off weightier things today by posting this yesterday:
Q. What's the difference between a duck?
A. One of its legs are both the same, and its beak's a different colour.

I have a vague memory of inventing this joke (without the beaky bit) back in 1975, with two school classmates with whom I shared a particularly surreal sense of humour. We came up with dozens of gags like this, and this one was probably our favourite. Of course it could all be False Memory Syndrome, which it probably is, and someone will very likely come along at this point and say "I remember hearing that one back in 1839", which is the kind of thing that usually happens to me with this type of post.

Anyway, on a completely different track, greengolux, coalescent and the rest of Third Row will be pleased to know that twenty copies of Meta are currently winging their merry way across North America. Posting them from the large Post Office at 909 Third Avenue in New York yesterday was not without some difficulty, however. coalescent hand-wrote the addresses, which is no problem in itself, but I was unaware of certain facts which the following scenario should elucidate:

9.20am. Lick and seal twenty envelopes. Delicious. Clean teeth again.

9.30am. Arrive at Post Office in cheerful mood with twenty brown envelopes containing fanzines to post to the great and good of US and Canadian science fiction fandom.

9.35am. While waiting in queue, get hassled by elderly and rather unhinged woman who wants me to know the US has a serious immigration problem with moslems and george_w_bush should evict them all to Guantanamo Bay, or perhaps somewhere less hospitable. Ignore and hope she goes away and hassles someone else. She does.

9.40am. Less than friendly post office clerk, whose tone would convince anyone from out of town that yes she does want to argue with you, advises me: "We can't accept these, you have no return address on the envelopes. Don't you know it's been the law since 9/11?"
Taken aback a little I reply, "No I do not, as I'm not American," thankfully.

9.41am. With mild irritation, retreat to large table in middle of large room. Open envelope addressed to Dale Spiers and extract fanzine in the hope it contains greengolux's return address. It does. Hand-write return address in England twenty times in small letters along the bottom of the front of twenty envelopes, because coalescent has written all the addresses nearer the top. Re-seal Dale Spiers' envelope with tape, realising he will probably now think the CIA are on to him.

10.02am. Rejoin queue. Get hassled by kids trying to see/hear what I'm playing on my iPod. Motörhead. Be afraid.

10.10am. The same annoyingly bright and cheerful clerk advises me, "We can't accept these, the return address should be at the top of the envelope not the bottom, the zipcode reader reads the zipcode nearest the bottom so will probably direct these to your return address."
To which, with a more visible onset of mild irritation, I reply, "But I've posted mail here before [my own fanzines with printed labels] with the return address underneath. You've just watched me spend twenty minutes handwriting these." Despair sets in.
"Well, I'm just advising you. Give them here –"
"Hold on, a moment ago you said you can't accept them, so are you now saying you can accept them? I don't want to post them if you are certain they won't arrive at their destination."
"Look, I'm just trying to be of service, sir, OK?"
"Then can you be more clear on what you can and can't accept?"
"Look, I'll take them."
"Thank you. In that case I will need nineteen 60c stamps and one for 85c."
"I need to weigh them first."
"Please go ahead."
"...They're 60c each. How many?"
"Nineteen."
"And one for?"
"Canada."
"...That's 85c. Cash or cheque?"

10.20am. Envelopes posted, now in desperate need of some browsing at Barnes & Noble across the street.

Of course, this means twenty copies of Meta could in fact be winging their way back across the Atlantic to greengolux's mum's address, but at least she won't have to read all of them...