How to Get Off a Mailing List

We moved into our current apartment over a month ago. We love the place, the people before us loved the place--it's a great place. Big windows, everything's within walking distance, and there are several choice bus routes in case we need something more than everything.

It's just that the people here before us don't seem to believe in forwarding addresses, and they did a lot of catalog shopping or got on a bunch of mailing lists. This combines adversely with our ill-tempered postal carrier who (using his handiwork as evidence) is on the verge of "going postal" in the grand old-fashioned way.

Routinely, every day of every week, if there is mail coming into our narrow mail slot, he packs it all in as though muzzle-loading a musket. He could take all the mail and roll it into a tidy cylinder, but no: he seems to put my postcards in first, then the bills, then he rolls up the catalogs and jams them down on top. All my mail is crushed and spindled, to borrow a relevant phrase.

My response to this is two-pronged: I've obtained a phone number to call to complain about this guy. I love the postal system, I love mail, I even understand that our mail slots are not roomy at all, but his behavior is a sign of either incompetence or poor anger management skills.

A glimpse of my secret world: Swiss Gear travel bag,
cutting mat and X-acto knife, How To Draw Manga
Women, and three tedious, unlikable postcards.

Secondly, I've undertaken a little project in which I cut out the mailing label from every catalog (including the bar code and any catalog/customer IDs) and paste them onto the backs of postcards. For this, you can use anything from posterboard to the lid of an old pizza box. In my case, I'm using some ugly postcards I would otherwise be too ashamed to share with anyone I liked. They're from a set of vintage gift wrap designs from the '20s, and many of them were nice, but some were so bland that no one would be delighted to receive them in the mail.

This is how you formally request to be removed from a mailing list, in a forceful and legally compliant way that no responsible business has any right to refuse. Beneath the label (or just your address, if you prefer), you write these three things:

• REMOVE FROM DISTRIBUTION LIST
• DO NOT SHARE CONTACT INFORMATION
• DO NOT CONTACT AGAIN

Anyone who writes back to you after receiving that is in line for a lawsuit.

And remember, the destination address must be the lowest address on the postcard: paste (or write) your address up high and then write the destination address as low as you dare. Leave some room for the bar code label the post office will apply there, and what I do after that is write the address in reverse order, going up from city and state and ZIP, line by line. That way, I leave as little room as possible at the bottom of the card.

Colbert's Ironic Commemoration

Image: blog.zazzle.com

There was no way I could let this slide by. In actuality, I'm embarrassed that I haven't posted about it earlier: that's the level of my procrastination.

What you see is what it is: Stephen Colbert has designed (as anyone can, and as I have in the past) his own First Class rate stamp through Zazzle.com. The image is of his gleeful farewell to the U.S. Postal System via smartphone. (For the record, I'm an avid fan of Colbert.)

This is in reference to my prior post, about the struggling economics supporting the USPS. Reports I read in the news are conflicting: some suggest that the USPS will shut down for the winter, relegating all postal freight to private companies like UPS or FedEx; others, in line with the articles the Missive Maven cited, predict more moderate outcomes, such as losing Saturdays in the delivery cycle.

Either way, if you're thinking about shopping for postage, Colbert's levity provides yet another alternative. I just sent out a large batch of square postcards going out to global destinations. That's 98¢ plus a fee for using a square postcard--because there's no clear up or down on it, it has to be hand-processed. This fee used to be 13¢ but recently I sent some out and it seems the additional rate has gone up to 20¢. I was unable to confirm this on the USPS' website, indeed, I couldn't find any chart delineating the rates of variously sized postcards. I really need to buy one of those handy graphed mats the postal workers use, or else photograph one and design my own. In fact, that will be my next project, and when I come up with a definitive answer you know I'll post it here. Eventually.

I mean, sending postcards is tricky business. Did you know the stamps can go anywhere on the address side, but the USPS will process the lowest-appearing address (be careful when supplying your return address)? And you've got to leave four inches clear to the left of the stamps (in the upper right corner) to make room for the postmark. Postcards can be pretty tricky.

More Postcards, Less Stationery

I did it! I finally crested 13 postcards at Postcrossing. Not that that's a major achievement, just a personal one. See, the maximum number of postcards you can send at one time is determined by how many you have sent. I was capped at 12 for a long time, but finally my sent postcards totaled 250, so now my limit is 13.

Well, I think it's neat.

Currently my project is to use up all of my present stationery. Have I mentioned that before? I've selected a felt tip pen as an arbitrary starting place, and I've been using up these Snoopy & Woodstock cards we found at my wife's house. I've been sending those to friends to apprise them of my new mailing address. We finally finished the contract with that horrific sublet and are finishing unpacking in our lovely Uptown apartment. I even have a few overseas pen pals who should know about the change, and when I send them a postcard I'm able to write tiny enough with a Slicci to insert my new address in the median or gutter. The downside to that, I suppose, would be if the reader were not expecting it or interested in the card in general, therefore not looking very closely, so I'm essentially tossing cards into the void with no hope of response.

Not that that would be unfamiliar!

Anyway. I'm trying to get back into blogging more. I don't have much to add here, though I will endeavor to continue to do so. I suppose I could profile some of the interesting postcards I receive? Lots of people do that, it's a popular tack. If any itinerant reader here had a request for something stationery- or language-related, I'd certainly be open to attempting to satisfy such a query.

There's No More Work at the Post Office

Wow, two obvious things. Obviously I haven't posted here in a long while, and obviously the biggest news pertaining to this blog, arguably, is that the United States Postal Service might close down for the entire winter. Given that the Christmas season is unquestionably the busiest time of the year for the Postal Service, wouldn't that be shooting itself in the foot?

They're worried about losing money, and they need a bailout from Congress to stay afloat, despite it being the hands-down most popular department of government. Currently they employ twice as many people as live in Minneapolis, MN, and slightly less than live in Austin, TX (they have 770,000 employees). Proposed solutions to save money include shutting down all winter, ceasing mail delivery on Saturdays, massive office shutdowns and layoffs, or repaying it the $6.9 billion it says it overpaid to its retirement program.

50 Writing Tips!

This will be a very terse post, my friends, because it's late at night and I'm seconds from bed, but this information is so important it must be shared with everyone.

The Poynter Institute's 50 Quick Writing Tools. Know them, learn them, live them. Not comprehensive by its own admission, but so, so, so excellent a start for so many people who don't know where or how to start.

Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Quiz

Just a little blurb between breaking news stories and startling events in the worlds of Language and Postal Services:

If you're reading this blog, you'll find it worthwhile to haunt Merriam-Webster's games section. Lovely crosswords and other games, usually gadgets retooled to center around words instead of garden creatures or gems. You know what I mean.

But what's really cool, what I really enjoy, is their Vocabulary Quiz! You get ten words that pop up sequentially, and each one has four attendant words: you race against the clock to select the best synonym. It's a real test of vocabulary--many of the words are easy or medium, but once in a while they throw in hard or genuinely obscure words.

On the other hand, if you have a good vocabulary, it's simply a physical test of hand-eye coordination and response times. My first score was 3200 points, pretty good for my age bracket (oh yes, they show you how other people your age did!), the average score being 2730. I improved that to 3800 points, and yesterday I scored 3940, after three tries. A lot of that is luck, of course, when the obscure word happens to be one I know.

That leads me to believe a perfect score would be 4000 points, and the only thing that holds me back is my response time. I'll have to be satisfied with that.

Oh, an' That's a Bad Miss

This is some of the big news circulating today: Amy Winehouse's addiction has finally caught up with her. The police call it an "unexplained" death, but they have to, don't they. I think there are no mysteries behind this.

The unexplained mystery here is how the "Editor-at-Large" of Mashable, Ben Parr, got tangled over his use of "alluded/eluded." This is a screenshot of Parr's post on Google+.

You can be sure other people following him called this out. And sure, it's a common enough mistake, but it's exceptional when it comes from the hands of one whose trade is wordsmithing. One advantage of Google+ is that you can edit your posts after they go up--unlike with Facebook--but it's been over six hours and Parr hasn't touched this. Ouch.

The Subtleties of Font

How many of you have ever practiced calligraphy? Many people think this means one specific style of writing, usually some form of italic or maybe even a German fraktur. In actuality, calligraphy is much more general than that: it's the discipline of very neat handwriting.

That handwriting can come in a variety of forms, which people call fonts, typefaces, or "hands" in casual conversation with other calligraphers. The accouterments that come with rigorous calligraphic execution are numerous and intimidating, and the thousands of hours of practice it requires may be off-putting. Yet at one time, penmanship was considered so essential for a civilized society, especially for anyone intending to do any kind of business, that the Palmer method of handwriting was mandatory in a young student's courseload.

Calligraphy really isn't as intimidating as all that. Once you reconcile yourself with the meditative discipline it requires--an increasing awareness of your own slight muscle movements, a calming focus in your mind--you may begin to understand and appreciate it as a world entirely of its own. And it's not difficult at all to practice, once you realize that handwriting actually comes up often in your life. Any time you're putting pen or pencil to paper, exploit that as a few more seconds for disciplined practice: addresses on bills, shopping lists, postcards, Post-It notes to coworkers, &c.

Image: The Atlantic

When I began teaching myself calligraphy (I had a miserable desk job with lots of downtime, so I started practicing drawing evenly spaced loops across a pad of paper), I tried to plunge into an "advanced" font, a very elaborate one that came much later down the timeline. But as I blundered through it, got control of it and then too familiar with it, my "hand" started slipping backward through time and I saw its predecessor fonts appearing on my page. This was a fascinating and magical process for me! Not only was I personally touched by the history of handwriting, I was able to begin to develop my own personal font--not one I'd use for writing checks, but something that would look nice on parchment and with certain acrylic inks.

Oh yes, you develop your own tastes for writing implements, inks, and papers as well.

Now it seems there's an iPad app, Typography Insight, designed to help people who work with fonts appreciate the subtle differences between fonts. I have no fear of technological culture, and I think an app like this only stands to reinforce this hobby of mine (if tidy handwriting is only a "hobby").

Typography Insight: iPad App Teaches Fonts Like Never Before