I Watched It So You Don't Have To: 2nd Half of Longmire

Ok fine.

I'll watch the rest of Longmire on Netflix. BUT, I will only finish watching the first episode.  How interesting can the State Troopers of Wyoming be?  Unless Lou Diamond Phillips delivers a performance that stuns me into a second episode, I don't think I will ever watch this show again.

So where we left off, Branch Connolly, is confronted by our Hero Longmire in the Sheriff's office about running for his position.  In a quick argument, Longmire sets out to go do what Branch should have done, since he has proven that he is under-qualified for the Sheriff's job.  Branch heads out to seek a favor from his favorite native American bartender.

At the bar, we see Longmire walk up to the bar and ask the bartender for a favor.  THE BARTENDER IS LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS!!!!!!  I knew he'd be around!

Longmire needs to ask Lou the Bartender here for some help on getting onto the reservation.  Lou can't do anything but help in this case.  So Lou drives back to his house after he's off of his tireless shift of getting people skunk drunk on Peyote Budweiser.  Once there, Lou's sister says that those dogs can smell white people.  I chuckled.

So as we are now stuck in the middle of the night with dogs barking and no clue as to who is in the back of Lou's truck.  Oh wait, we totally do, it's Longmire.  Always a gentleman.

Longmire and Pocahontas talk about some girl that is missing, or whatever was going on in the first half of this episode.  Apparently there is some prostitution going on in the Wyoming count.  Lou and Longmire chat about it on the ride back and then Lou says something very Indian-like about man.  Longmire agrees silently.
The next morning someone shows up at the door.  Longmire calls her 'punk', I call her 'The Miracle of another sexy woman in the state of Wyoming".

Oh wait!  It's his daughter.  And I think she's a lawyer since she said she needs to be in court and doesn't look like a cattle thief.  His daughter brought out the hidden box labeled Tea, that doesn't have tea in it since Longmire here is a French Press black coffee man.  Oh great!  It's full of his wife's Ashes!  Nothing like steeping your wife's ashes in some hot water for a morning pick-me-up.  I'm just kidding, that doesn't happen.

It seems like Longmire and his female deputy have something of a lead here.  The pair of pants has a belt buckle on them that for some reason reminded Longmire of something that used to be a ranch some years back.  Here we have a lineup of workers who are cooperating.  No one recognizes the pants that blondie is holding so then have to take their pants off.  Cue the Black Keys.  I'm not kidding, she says take your pants off and then The Black Keys start playing.  I have a feeling "Sport" here and his hardo buddy picked out that playlist for this episode.

After a 20 second montage of men trying a pair of Wrangler's and smirks from blondie, we find out that it is indeed "Sport" whose dungarees those are.  Of course, blondie has to be all "Hello Cinderella" because there is no way that a pair of pants won't fit more than one man on a ranch in Wyoming.  Not a chance in hell one pair of dungarees can fit another person.  But then Longmire pulls out the belt buckle that he got for his birthday from the ranch owner aka Dad.  I'd like to point out that if we just pulled out the belt buckle first, the trying on pants montage could have been negated all together.

Looks like someone has been dabbling in underaged prostitutes in the state of Wyoming, which is statutory rape, so says our hero.  The boy talks and says that many people go outside to the reservation to pick up hookers and bang them in trailers.  But then the trailers move around the state so that they don't find them.  I'm sure those probably make the best Craigslist postings. "SWF seeks Wrangler wearing cowboy to lasso this steer", or something like that.  How many people can use Craigslist in Wyoming?  In the final sentence in the interrogation, we find that it's the "Indian at the Red Pony" who knows where the hookers come from.  Time for Longmire to go visit his friend, Lou Diamond Phillips, who is named Henry.  I don't know why it took me so long to find that out.

Longmire storms into the Red Pony and asks what Henry has got himself into.  Henry replies, and I kid you not "Jukebox is broken, only plays country."  I can't even begin to break down how dumb that is.  A jukebox, which is hilarious to see an Indian repair, is being fixed since it only plays country.  IN WYOMING!  "Turns out Longmire, we've had some requests for that new Dubstep and Screamo Punk music that the kids are raving about.  We can't let this bar turn into one of those broken down bars that only locals come to to eat ribs, drink heavy beer, and then drive around in the country to widdle a walking stick.  That's what Applebee's is for."  This show is getting more and more irritating to watch.  Yes, I know it's set in the country, but the fact that someone needs to fix a jukebox to not play country music anymore is just ridiculous.

So Henry and Longmire have a standoff that lasts less than 5 minutes.  Henry pretty much says "are you going to let 37 years of friendship be thrown away before you trust me?"  Longmire does the Wyoming version of the Horatio Cane open jacket stance to show his power and his badge.  Then walks out of the bar after Henry tells him he should find his lead to the missing dead hooker somewhere outside.

Longmire and Branch get into an argument over the probably murder weapon.  Upon further review from Longmire, the gun that is in question is clogged up from black powder corroding the metal on the inside of the gun.  Longmire knows his chemistry.  Or he knows enough about gun corrosion to show up a minor.

Branch and Longmire begin to argue about Sheriff campaigns and what this town wants to see from it's Sheriff.  Branch thinks he has the skinny on his boss, noting that a Sheriff who drives around with beer cans in his truck is past his prime.  Longmire points out that when he drinks, he drinks Rainer, and the reason he has beer cans in his truck is because he hates looking at litter.  Which really plays well into the idea I had in the first blog post I had about this show.  So Branch gets what's coming to him and that is a speech about Longmire advising he read some Sherlock Holmes to work on his detective skills.

I imagine this is the liquor that Longmire loves to sip down.  It's malt, which may throw someone off the scent, but maybe the marketing company for Rainier just really wanted to find some revenue out there that wasn't from Pre-Depression T-Bills.

The wife of the dead man in question (which by and large seems so God damned removed from the rest of the story) comes in and asks Longmire for some getting over your dead husband advice.  It's been probably a day since he died.  I switched away from the Netflix screen to go and type that last sentence and BOOYAH!!!!:

RAINIER IN THE HOUUUSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Looks like someone loves getting sloshy with the local hair-growing hobo!  So happy I caught that.  From this conversation, which lasts about 1 minute on-screen turns into some insightful evidence about "the indian that works at the Red Pony".  Apparently, there is more than one working at the Red Pony, prompting Longmire to go out and meet up with Henry, and maybe apologize if the Rainier hasn't gone to his head.

Longmire meets up with Henry and finds out where to meet the kid they want to arrest.  The other "Indian" at the Red Pony just shows up at a random house and tries to explain himself to Longmire.  Longmire, ready with gun drawn, let's the kid talk.  The kid's name is Avo, which I'm guessing is short for Avocado.  Avocado, as he will now be known is struck from a distant sniper bullet from someone well-hidden.  Longmire runs for cover, counting to 5, knowing that a sniper needs time to reload in single shot weapon.

The next sequence that really makes me laugh, is that the sniper is apparently terrible from close range, shooting directly into the center of an oncoming Ford Bronco.  However, Longmire gets out of his car, grabs his rifle which looks more like Ralphie's rifle from A Christmas Story, and nails the sniper, who has now gotten into his Cadillac SUV and driven probably 60-80 yards from where Longmire is parked.  WHAT IS THIS SHOW?!  Longmire confronts the gunman, who is actually some actor we saw earlier in the show but at this point is irrelevant.  He has a goatee.  With Longmire walking away with more information about how to stop the prostitution in Wyoming, the gunman begs for mercy and asks Longmire to call him an ambulance.  Only there's one thing: Longmire doesn't have a cell phone.  Which may or may not be illegal for all police officers.  Uncovering montage occurs.  Families reunite.  Sex trade ends.  Hooray for all.

Our final shot, we see Longmire hammer a cross into the ground.  Is he about to bury his dead wife's ashes and move on?

No.  Because he's still traveling with his wife's ashes in his truck.  He just posted a Re-Elect Longmire for Sheriff sign.

This show sucks.  Your welcome for spoiling and ruining everything.

Condensing my Netflix Queue: And So Can You!

How long is your Netflix queue?  Really, how long is it?  Look at what's coming up next in the mail, or what is supposed to be your next movie to stream?  Have you given that movie any thought in the last month?  If you have, good for you.  If you looked at what's next, and thought "Well, I don't really want to see that," or "Who the hell am I going to watch that movie with?", or "Have any of my friends seen this movie and can I talk about it with anyone?"  If not, it's time to UNCLUTTER your Netflix queue.

Okay, let's start with a few suggestions of how to properly clean up your Queue:

1. Do you share your Netflix Queue with more than 1 person who watches about as many movies as you do?  If so, you might need to do this with them.  Spend some time and figure out if you REALLY NEED to see that documentary about oil drilling or the one about which kinds of foods are killing Americans (I'm not surprised there isn't an instructional video on how to make a food-umentary with all the other spawns of Super Size Me out there).  But seriously, go through each movie together and find the ones that you added to your queue when you were drunk or you just HAD TO SEE based on recommendations from the Netflix algorithm.  
2. Find any and all TV Shows that you've seen on the Netflix front screen for the last year or so, and put those toward the bottom.  Netflix is able to get the contracts to most TV shows since the licensing deals are easier to acquire.  The licensing process for movies takes a while to get because movie studios are a bitch to work with (I'm just assuming from the point of view of Netflix).
3. Follow InstantWatcher on Twitter (if you have a Twitter).  This website is devoted to showing what's moving and what's soon to be expired on Netflix.  They show what's coming soon, how many days are left on each movies contract, and whether or not people are watching these movies currently.  It's a great website.  I don't know why Netflix hasn't overtaken such a website, but it's beyond me why Netflix does anything that it does.  But InstantWatcher can show you lists of NYT's critics picks, Rotten Tomatoes Fresh movies, as well as many other movies.
4. Have a personal policy in place for WHY you would want to see a movie.  For comedies, it's obvious that you would want to see a movie that makes you laugh.  You can apply that to any genre really (horror-you want to be scared, documentary -you want to learn, etc.)  But for other genre's of movies, you should have a reason why seeing this movie is worth your time.  Now I've seen my fair share of Indie movies, but they rarely come up in conversation.  I do talk with a couple of people who are avid movie-watchers like myself, but the discussions of certain movies don't extend beyond that point.  So, if you have a movie in your queue that you don't think your friends will ever talk with you about, it might not be a movie worth your time at the moment.  For instance, let's take a movie like Safety Not Guaranteed.  It's an Indie movie that has some rising stars like Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, and Mark Duplass.  I enjoyed watching it, but none of my immediate friends have seen it, or probably will see it.  Indie movies might not be the movies that your friends talk about, but you like everyone that stars in the movie.  Having a policy like, I'll see this movie because I like the stars in it, or I won't see this movie because my friends won't ever see it thus it's pointless as a discussion topic.  Now, I saw this movie, but I knew that a couple of my friends would have seen it.  Thus, I didn't think it was a waste of my time.  

Now, there are some people out there who are cinephiles or completists who want to watch every kind of movie based on who the director is or who is the starring character.  By putting a personal policy in place for my own tastes, I've cut my Netflix queue down from 160 to 30.  I cut out BBC shows that are no longer on TV that I could watch later, all high-and-mighty documentaries that are just a vehicle for promoting a ridiculous cause, shows that I've already seen every episode of, movies that are too long, and movies from the 1960's or older that carry no significant importance in today's world.  Inversely, I've managed to not bother with movies that are of a bigger vehicle e.g. I haven't seen Thor or Captain America because I saw The Avengers in theaters, thus making it useless to see both and try to connect the two.

I hope these tips help out with uncluttering your streaming life and improve your social capabilities.  

Day 12: Bullet Your Whole Day

So this is what my day looks like in Bullet form:

• Wake up a little before 7:00 AM
• Make Keurig coffee (Marylou's Mocha Mint)
• Drink coffee while checking e-mail and internet crap
• Get dressed
• Put in contacts
• Leave for work around 7:30 AM
• Sit in traffic listening to a podcast
• Get to work around 8 AM
• Work for 2 hours
• Go to McDonald's and get a $1 coffee
• Go back to work for 2.5 hours listening to podcasts
• At 12:30, go to lunch
• Ate lunch while checking phone and Twitter
• Went back to work for 3.5 hours
• Drove home
• Video-recorded a huge ass Acura fire on Rte. 128
• Went to Panera, ordered the Steak and Cheddar panini with Tomato soup with a coffee
• Drove to my parents house and watched the most recent episode of Mad Men on the DVR.
• Came back home, got comfortable, which means take off everything but mu underwear and socks
• Blogging and listening to some podcasts
• Go to gym
• Take shower
• Have a snack
• Watch some Netflix or Hulu
• Go to bed

Day 3 - Top 5 Pet Peeves

Sorry for the late post, but I've been busy.

So in this third edition of the 30 day blog post challenge: I am to blog about my top 5 pet peeves.  This is assuming I can cut my list down from infinity to 5.  I have many problems with many things.  I don't know exactly which ones I would rank near the top.  Although, I'm guessing that a Pet Peeve is a just a small problem that goes from a bug-bite to an infestation of hives over time, while never being really cured.  I won't put these in any order, but I will try to list 5.

One thing that continuously irritates me is when a company or brand comes out and releases something that they think is so fresh and so new, but when it's brought out to the public, it's a piece of crap idea.  Netflix's Qwikster idea comes to mind.  So does Google Glass and Google Driver.  My friend and I figured out that if no one has to drive a car for a person, that person can go drive around with both hands free.  Meaning that if a pedophile wanted to stay within the speed limits of a school zone and just masturbate in a car while the car drives itself, we've created a bigger problem than needed.  The Google Glass problem is that now we get to see what it's like for a person to see what they are doing.  Now imagine if a porn star got a hold of Google Glass and decided to have a guy finish on said glasses.  Congrats on making a new POV-style of porn Google.  Oh and Google Driver?  Thank you for creating a way for pedophiles to enjoy school zones and for creating a new idea for movie: when two computer driven cars collide, killing everyone.

My second pet peeve is when a parent or an elder hears your warning about something, and is totally shocked when that thing actually happens.  I don't know if this just happens to me, but I get it a lot.  A parent will HEAR you warn about something, and when that thing actually happens, it's a total shock to them.  Maybe it means that my parents don't listen to me.  But I know that it happens with other people too.

My third pet peeve is when women get the false notion that guys want something other than what we've always wanted.  Ladies, when a guy looks at you, he's not looking at your nails, or your earrings, or your bracelets, or anything else that you've burned calories thinking about.  There was a time when a lot of girls dyed their blonde hair jet black and caked on the bronzer.  You know, to look like Kim Kardashian.  Well Kim K is really known for having a huge ass first and foremost.  We do not like her because she has tanned skin and black hair.  We like her because of her giant round tanned ass.

My fourth pet peeve is when you go out to a friend's and if there isn't music blaring all the time, then there is something wrong with the scene.  I enjoy conversations and also enjoy when there is that moment when everyone stops talking simultaneously.  This next part can go in 4-b: when one person is hell-bent on controlling the ipod or music throughout the whole party.  Whoever's house it is you are at, should control the music.  If they have an ipod dock, figure out who has the best playlists and let that person and ONLY that person control the music.  I can't stand when I see 8 ipods near one iDock and everyone jumps in to play one or two songs leading to discussions like "Your music sucks" "No you suck" "F*** you" "Eat sh**", etc.

My fifth and final pet peeve, which will probably be a crime in the future first world: when a person working at a coffee place gets a coffee order wrong.  The way I see it, when a coffee person, who may or may not have full citizenship in the USA, gets a coffee order wrong, it creates a ripple effect for at least one person.  Now, since I live in Mass., Dunkin Donuts has this thing on lockdown in terms of drive-thru and whatnot.  Most people around here get Dunkin Donuts and McDonald's coffee.  Which is funny when you look at it; you might have trouble figuring out whose breakfast sandwiches are more disgusting.  Now it doesn't take a genius to realize that the person working the drive-thru or in the back at a Dunkin Donuts might be from a different country and may not get the order exactly how you wanted it.  Usually when this happens, it makes a person's morning difficult and they get upset for the whole day.  In the future, when productivity is so important for a person's job, the culprit for most slumps and firings will be blamed on breakfasts and coffee orders.  What a day that would be.

So, it turns out I was completely wrong about Limitless…

So, I had plenty of time to kill last night while being at home.  I went thru my Netflix queue and found that I had saved Limitless sometime in the last week.  I watched it.  I didn’t expect any of what I saw.  Sure, Bradley Cooper takes a pill and begins to earn money better and all of his dreams come true.  But the way the story and screenwriting was crafted, made it seem more like a futuristic version of Less Than Zero or any other drug addiction story that was fast paced and had a touch of confusion to it, just to keep the viewer at the edge of the seat.  The dialogue wasn’t the best, but the scenes and cinematography were a lot better than what I expected.  Going from one end of town to the next in a series of shots that look like you are traveling through a tunnel was really cool.  I ranked it 4 out of 5 stars on Netflix.  The main part that kind of hooked me in was the struggle to find more of the drugs and the the final scene of the movie which I will not spoil for you.  One thing that I first questioned was whether or not it was really Bradley Cooper’s voice that does the voiceover in the movie.  It doesn’t sound like any other character of his, which made me wonder if it was going to be one of those movies starring one person but then having a different actor do a voiceover.  My next review will be of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which as I’m watching it, is already terrible.

How many hours would it take to catch up on everything that is on TV?

Let me explain this: I don’t have cable.  I have Hulu and Netflix.  That’s all how I get my entertainment from television shows that everyone (except me) talks about.  Now, Hulu doesn’t always have the shows on my queue the next day after the show airs.  Here is a list of shows I’ve kept tabs on in the past year:

Family Guy, Cleveland Show, New Girl, Archer, Workaholics, Jon Benjamin Has a Van, Community, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Bob’s Burgers, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Whitney, Beavis and Butthead, Walking Dead, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, Louie, Portlandia, The Event, Up All Night, Wilfred, Game of Thrones, South Park, Saturday Night Live, Kitchen Nightmares, White Collar, Burn Notice, Tosh.0, 30 Rock, The Booth at the End (Hulu series), and Whites (another Hulu series). 

I think that’s all of them.  I did catch a couple episodes of 2 Broke Girls, but I didn’t really care about it as much as any of the other shows listed.  But think of all the other shows that I didn’t list.  I don’t watch just about any reality show except for Jersey Shore and I didn’t even watch this season. 

If you figure that Sunday nights consist of Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Cleveland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead on a given Sunday night: that’s roughly 4 hours of television.  If I were to try to watch a weeks worth of television, I don’t think I would make it through a week unless I actually planned to sit down and track all of this.  But let’s try to figure this out.

Sunday: Pending Football season I would need to watch roughly 4 hours of television.  If I was watching during football season, it would amount to about 12 hours or so.  12 hours being 4.5 original TV hours for Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, and Cleveland and about 8 hours of TD’s, INT’s, and Ed Hochily triceps.  Game of Thrones might also be in there if I continue to watch although it hasn’t been that successful.

Monday: Mondays consist of Monday Night Football (if I had cable) and just about nothing else.  Very boring here.  I imagine if I were to take a future night class I should schedule it for this night, seeing that missing Monday Night Football isn’t a bad thing, but a great thing.  I can’t think of the last MNF game I cared about. 

Tuesday: New Girl, Jon Benjamin Has a Van, White Collar.  2 hours.  I like these shows mainly because they are so far apart from one another.  The quirky comedy, the clip show that bends the rules of comedy, and the serious crime show that keeps me interested in men’s fashion and artwork.  I mean it, White Collar might be the show with the best dressed people on it.  Plus Tiffani Amber Theissen is on the show.  And has a major role in this upcoming season.

Wednesday: Up All Night, The Booth At The End, Whites, South Park, Tosh.0, Workaholics.  3 solid hours.  This sounds like a riveting night.  Comedy, Serious, Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Comedy.  The Booth at the End is a really low budget serious film about a man who sits at a booth at the end of a diner restaurant who can give people whatever they want as long as they do something in return.  Kind of like making a deal with the devil.  It’s really something that isn’t found that often anymore in cable, mainly because it’s setting is just one section of a restaurant and the actor doesn’t have to move for 8 hours. 

Thursday: Community, Whitney(moving to Wednesdays), Parks and Rec, The Office, Archer, The League, Louie, Beavis and Butthead, Burn Notice, Wilfred, Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  6 hours of viewing.  Quite possibly the busiest night of the week.  Every good comedy show is on this night.  Mostly on FX and NBC.  Because that is where comedy lives now.  Burn Notice is a show that is more like a Miami Vice kind of thing, but with a Magnum P.I. twist.  A ‘burned’ spy who is a hired gun to help put away bad guys and find out who burned him and help get his girlfriend back with him and his life back to normal. 

Friday: Portlandia, Kitchen Nightmares.  Hour and a half.  Both shows are just great.  Sketch comedy and reality-ish TV where you know what is going to happen in a given week.  This TV line up screams I am hip and love good television as much as I like a delicious dish right before it.  If I were a hipster chick, I would only be watching these two shows in a given week.  Mainly because I would love Portland, be stuck painting something to a Smiths album, and only drink coffee that costs $5 and took 24 minutes to make.  I think I just found a new idea for another blog. 

Saturday: SNL and maybe Key and Peele if it ends up being a good show.  2 hours.  Saturday nights aren’t a very good TV night.  Mainly because they are just consisting of college football, hockey, basketball, and SNL.  Pretty much anything you can watch at a bar is shown on a Saturday night.  Which is why most people go out and drink on this night.  Or just stay in a catch up on their weeks worth of television.

So that’s 13.5 hours of television of just scheduled television that I consume basically in a week.  Not including any sports, news, weather, or anything else.  Just the shows that I have loved over the last year.  I haven’t added in that I watch sports, which for some ungodly reason have decided to come close to 4 hours long for a single event.  How can anyone even sit for 4 hours and enjoy something?  Especially when someone like Josh Beckett has control of the time.

I don’t even know if I can sustain the on-coming new shows that are going to appear this Spring.  Who knows if I will even have time to blog about them.  Not because I blog so much, but because when I blog I try to get every thought I have on something out at once.

This number doesn’t even count the fact that I don’t watch a single CBS show or ABC show that just so happen to be very popular right now.  Modern Family may be the most popular show right now, but I could really care because all the talent is on NBC, AMC, and FX.  Prove me wrong. 

One more reason to hate Ed Rendell and the City of Philadelphia…

I recently went thru my Netflix queue tonight and picked out a documentary that I have not seen or heard anything about: The Art of the Steal.  I had no idea who it involved or who it was made by.  I only knew that it was a catchy art film about a collection of art that was involved in the press.  After seeing it, I was shocked and appalled that something like this flies under the radar of national attention.  Now I don’t want to draw anyone away from seeing this documentary, mainly because it involves an art collector by the name of Albert C. Barnes, who had more post-impressionistic art than the Louvre, among other priceless pieces, and his collection is the more impressive collection in the world.  It was opened to students and people who were open to the idea of going to an art gallery to learn about the history and essence of these pieces of work.  It wasn’t a museum and wasn’t something that was generating money for a profit of a corporation. 

Now here’s where the story begins.  Barnes drafted a trust that would protect his assets and keep the art where it was: AWAY FROM THE CITY.  Governor Ed Rendell and many more politicians try to move in and take away the art from the city of Merion (5 miles from Philadelphia, by the way) and do it in a way that would make you never think. 

As a fan of Art in almost every form, this is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person’s legacy.  One creates a trust to protect the future of their assets, not to have them squandered by politicians who control zoning boards and pocket trustees of foundations.  After seeing the end of the documentary, I would urge any person who owns or collects priceless pieces of artwork to have them securely entrusted to a child or grandchild.  That was Barnes’ only mistake.  Not having a future to defend his priceless collection.

The Death of the Post Office: Paying for Postage and Congressional Free Riders

So, a couple days ago the United States Mail Service announced that they will be cutting their overnight delivery for packages since the costs are getting too high.  What this does for Netflix and Gamefly services is ridiculous.  Paying bills can be done online and should be done online.  DVD’s though, are a different animal.  In other country’s like Japan, the postal service is privatized.  What’s weird about this story is that mail and the mailing of things is mentioned in the Constitution.  Meaning, that if the country is going to try and fix this problem of closing post offices and less mail being delivered, it will literally take an act of Congress.  Congressman are allowed to have franking privileges for the U.S. Postal Service.  In economics, we would call this a free-ridership.  A certain group of people pay for one service while another group of citizens use that service at no charge. 

Now, the video said that he expects to lose around 50% of his business.  Now if Congress continues to mail me flyer after flyer regarding the campaign issues and smear campaigns and “vote yes on whatever” while not paying for something like stamps and postage that we all pay for, there has to be some changes.  Congress may have thought this would be a good idea 200 years ago since they didn’t want to be held back like they were during King James’ reign.  However, we live in different times and modern countries have allowed for privatizing of public goods to decrease the amount of dead weight loss on a publics budget.  I had asked my mother how her Congressman gets in contact with her and it’s mostly through e-mail, which is free. 

The part about this that is so absurd is that if I asked someone to take a letter across the country for me and get it there in a couple of days, would you pay the less than a dollar?  No.  Wouldn’t they want to get at least whatever it took in gasoline for the travel?  Exactly.  The mail service in this country has become unsustainable and must be either paid for in full, meaning higher prices and less service, OR we privatize it and let someone else take charge of the operation.  How that would be done is very hard to comprehend.  We would either have to have a monopoly or a duopoly operate while knowing everyone’s mailing address.  This would also affect the process of getting a license and changing addresses.

This would also make one wonder if companies would charge one for concealing or making your address private to certain entities.  Quite a future we would have to plan ahead for, don’t you think? 

One, there would have to a couple of companies competing for your address or just claiming your address for them as if they were marking their land in a game of Risk.  They would then have to set up mailboxes and stations at mini-malls and corners where ever seemed suitable.  Then comes the time when you receive mail from either one or both companies that deliver this mail.  They charge for postage and all that jazz, but then comes the time when they must keep your information from security breaches and hackers. 

Would such a world exist?  Would Congress allow for it to exist?  Has our economy come to the point where we need to privatize more and more of our public goods so that we can employ more people? 

I personally think it’s a good idea, because if this Congress doesn’t see that there are forces in this universe that not only work faster than them but more efficiently and are able to keep the ship afloat, then I think it’s a road that we should start to explore.