Mike Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

Three recent news items which may be related…

PODUNK, ME 04444 — Federal agents yesterday arrested Mildred Crump, 82, at her home. The charge was Personal Use of the U.S. Mails.

“We caught her mailing private letters again. Let’s just say the lady has been warned before,” said Ted Fish, head of the Postal Crimes Investigation Unit of the FBI. “She says she was ‘only keeping up with friends.’ As if she had never heard of Facebook! And ‘paying bills?’ Through the U.S. mail? The USPS has all it can do now to keep up with vital advertising circulars, credit card offers and threatening letters from banks. Old people have to learn to use the Internet; that’s why Al Gore invented it.”

The new law, Personal Use of the U.S. Mails, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, plus surrender of all postage stamps in one’s possession.

“I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t,” a tearful Crump said. “I’m addicted to the written word, I guess.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Not satisfied with forcing the U.S. Postal Service to fund its pension plans 75 years out, Congress yesterday proposed rounding off that pre-funded range to an even 1,000 years.

“You never know how long people will live in the future,” said Congressman Bill (Somebody), who refused to be identified, primarily because he couldn’t remember his own last name.

Congressional leadership explained that their previous attempts to kill the U.S. Postal Service and all pension plans, public and private, are not moving fast enough. Executives from UPS, FedEx and other private mail services have been pressuring Congress to eliminate the quasi-federal department from competition immediately, so that the parcel companies can consolidate into one giant monopoly and begin cutting services in earnest. This will ensure even greater profits for their stockholders, which, Congressman Somebody insisted, is “the God-given right of mail services, and the entire American corporate enterprise, for that matter. It says so right in the Constitution!”

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CARTHAGE, TN — Former self-described president (“Just Do the Recount”) Al Gore said yesterday that he gets too much credit for inventing e-mail, and for inventing global warming by blowing so much smoke.

“I’m not Thomas Edison or anything,” he said. “I just have these ideas and I can’t go back to sleep.”

Gore’s latest insomnia attack would solve several key issues with the embattled United States Postal Service.

“All those trucks and trains and airplanes that the post office and package services consume fossil fuels, which create greenhouse gases, and that just exacerbates climate change.”

“My idea is to fire all the current postal workers and replace them with 16-year-old boys, who need summer jobs, anyway. We set up way stations along all postal routes, all the way out to California. I call it ‘The Pony Express’.”

“I also have an idea for a telegraph system, but I can’t divulge the details just yet.”