Classic
Postman
The Best of the Early Issues of
Shouting at the Postman
If you happen to find yourself on I-78 near Shartlesville, Pennsylvania (exit 8, 'bout an hour west of Allentown, and an hour east of Harrisburg & York), be sure to stop in at Roadside America, "The world's greatest miniature village".
Upon entering, you are confronted by a gift shop which sells all manner of Roadside America souvenirs, such as Praying Hands napkin holders and salt and pepper shakers inexplicably shaped like owls, all stamped with the Roadside America insignia. Below the huge photo of Laurence Gieringer, who built it, is the ticket booth, and the door to The Village.
After paying your entrance fee (around $10 I think), you are greeted by this enormous warehouse-sized room filled with an O-scale train set. It's not just any train set, though, because it has rivers, waterfalls, lakes, mountains, houses, a circus, churches, cars, and all manner of people and animals. It is truly an amazing sight. Check out the churches with hand painted stained glass windows, which, according to the guide book, each took hundreds of hours of meticulous painting by members of the Gieringer family. There is a burned down house, and the brochure offers possible explanations for this: "Possibly some careless children or sparks from a passing locomotive". There are all sorts of things you can operate by pressing a button, such as the circus parade, coal cars, and my favorite, a pen full of donkeys whose heads move around ($100 to anyone who can steal the sign that says "Press button to operate donkeys"). Please heed the dozens of signs about throwing pennies into the rivers and lakes, because it kills the huge, bloated goldfish. There's beautiful landscape scenes on the walls, and an unexplainable Statue of Liberty with lights at the ends of the spikes on her crown.
Be sure to stay for the Nighttime Pageant, where they simulate nightfall, and lights go on in all the houses. Then they shine a spotlight on an American flag on the wall (with a fan making it wave) and they play "God Bless America" while they project slides of patriotic scenes and images of Jesus on the walls (I couldn't make up stuff this weird). In all, the tour takes about an hour, but it's well worth it.
Unfortunately the Lady of Lourdes chapel that was in the basement isn't there anymore, but you can still buy a postcard that shows the grotto, complete with plastic rocks and fake flowers, and a huge garish Mary. This was where the Rev. Aloysius J. Schmid held mass every Sunday.
Stop at the nearby "Gift Haus" if you like the other gift shop because all the stuff they sell is identical to the stuff in Roadside America, just more of it, and there's a snack bar where you can relax from the excitement next door. Be sure to buy lots of postcards, and send me one.
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I first heard of mail art while I was in college, at Penn State University. I heard strange rumors of a group of people who shared artwork by way of the postal service. Odd, I thought. I had been participating in this practice for years, creating segmented postcards with artwork including collage and rubber stamps on the back (I was obsessed with rubber stamps for some reason). I had never suspected that there was a name for what I was doing, let alone a whole group of people who did these things.
For one of my classes, 2D Design, we had an actual mail art project, to create a piece that was to go into an exhibit, and eventually into a time capsule which would be opened 100 years in the future, supposedly. It was kind of a neat idea that sparked my interests in such pursuits.
A few years later, I started ASKalice, which began as a series of collages, changed into a T-shirt company and finally a sort of recording label, before changing into it's current manifestation. I posted flyers and sent out dozens of postcards to get people to exchange "collages, drawings, photos, Xerox, etc.", but success remained elusive. Some artists seemed so attached to their ideas and artwork that they wouldn't send me any for fear that I would exploit them for fame and fortune, and others had no concept of what I wanted them to send me at all. This was going to be harder than I thought.
I finally found the network, via a guy named Oliver Squash who puts out his own tapes, and was a rather enthusiastic network participant. Oliver put up these little slips of paper in music stores at Penn State. I found one and gave it to my friend Herr Brine, who sent Squash a tape. To make a long story short, Squash sent Brine a chain letter, which Brine (after letting it sit around for six months) sent to me.* It had the address of one Ashley Parker Owens, mail art goddess and all around central hub of a large percentage of networkers. I sent Ms. Owens two stamps and a letter about my mail art woes. She responded with a postcard that said "the mail art scene will surprise you beyond your wildest dreams", and she was right. There was an ever-changing network of people who were doing exactly what I had wanted to do. The fact that I had remained ignorant of it for so long led me to believe in the possibility of any number of other networks, outside of this one.
So how do I define "mail art"?
-15/02/1995
*The same day I sent out my 10 copies of the chain letter, I won $5000 in the state lottery. This really happened.
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His name isn't really Steve, it's William, but there are a million Williams in this world.
He believes that his uncle tried to kill him when he was ten by telling him to lie down with his head in an oven. Someone came home and his uncle got scared and took him outside. This was the first of many attempts on his life.
He moved to Canada when he was fourteen and was almost killed working in a dry-cleaning shop when his head was caught in the door of a machine.
He tried to join the Canadian Army at the age of fifteen, but he was caught and kicked out.
His family moved back to the USA and he joined the US Army at the age of sixteen. He got to the Philippines just in time for the end of World War II.
He fought in the Korean War for two years, but was never injured. He was almost killed in a bunker when a machine gun went off while one of his men was cleaning it. He believes it was not an accident.
He served in Germany for several years and was kicked out of the army for returning to base late one night. He thinks they wanted to get rid of him so they made a big deal out of an incident that was only minor. He is disillusioned with patriotism now, and regrets ever having joined up. "Here I was fighting communists in Korea when there are communists in America who are allowed to be there. It's a lot of bullshit."
He divorced his wife after he got out of the army in the 60's because she was unfaithful.
He went out to Los Angeles in the 70's to find work, but he ended up homeless and penniless without any way to get home. He hitchhiked around California and eventually his daughter wired him some money for a bus ticket. He spent three days on a bus without any food, and was extremely grateful for a tangerine that was given to him by another passenger.
He was a maintenance man for an apartment building (that was when this picture was taken) in the 80's, but lost his job.
He worked as a cab driver for a while but quit when he was robbed at gun point.
He worked in my dad's newsstand and he earned $50 a day, but he gambled between $30 and $60 on lottery tickets. Every day he would swear that he was going to quit or cut down. Whenever he won any money, he always played more until he lost it all back. Even though he doesn't work any more, he still gambles beyond his means and is forced to borrow from people to keep playing.
One of his daughters is an actress and country singer, and she has appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, as well as on several television series. He takes a great deal of pride in her, and has a whole envelope full of magazine clippings about her.
He gets a pension from the army that pays for his rent, and any other money he has is gambled away. His only coat is a thin windbreaker he got while he was a cab driver, when a guy couldn't pay his fare. He only has one pair of shoes, which are cheap sneakers. He refuses all gifts of clothing from us because he doesn't like to feel like he owes anyone anything.
He refuses to eat in restaurants because he fears that people are trying to poison him. He only eats canned food or food on a buffet, because that way he can pick the food he wants.
He always brought us coffee on days when he wasn't working, and he was always eager to do us a favor. He was pleasant to work with, although his paranoia did act up once in a while. He always thought people were thieves or con men.
Whenever he wins any money in the lottery, he gives the lottery place a tip, sometimes $50.
He is afraid of doctors and hasn't been to one since the 60's. He believes they will try to kill him because he has a mark on his forehead which makes him a "marked man." He won't go to dentists either, and he pulls his own teeth with pliers. He only has four teeth left.
He goes to the Casinos once a week and plays the slot machines, sometimes losing upwards of $200 in an afternoon. He swears that they can control which machines pay off, and he believes that if he pesters them they will let him win because "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." He keeps trying to contact a man named Gomez, whose name appears printed on the form letters that he gets from the casino.
Steve used to like to pick up lonely old ladies at the casino and have sex with them. Usually he claimed that they were the aggressors in the relationships, despite the fact that he has no teeth. He said that he doesn't do it much anymore because he's got some sort of "problem with my pecker" that has rendered intercourse as well as urination painful. He said that his penis has a crack down the middle of the top of it. I didn't press him for details about this.
Steve's old roommate was truly an offensive man. His name was Irv and he didn't like to bathe too often. Steve said that Irv used to come home from work, take off his socks and put them on the oven to dry them off, making the whole place smell like his feet in the process "and his feet really stank!" insists Steve, who isn't exactly "Mr. Hygiene" himself.
Irv liked to call phone sex lines. Steve said there were hundreds of dollars worth of these calls every month. One time Irv fell asleep during one of these phone calls and it cost him around $300.
Once, Steve caught Irv having sex with a fuzzy rug that they had in the living room, and Steve threw it out the next day. Irv flew into a rage and demanded that Steve get the rug out of the dumpster.
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(The following is political satire and should not be taken seriously, especially by the CIA, or any other government patsies of the corporate power structure)
The Netland Liberation Front (or NLF) is a loose organization of people working for the sovereignty of Netland. We use all non-violent means at our disposal to enlighten the masses to the plight of the world under the Corporate Power Structure (or CPS). There is no internal hierarchy in the NLF, each branch is an independent entity with the power to issue press releases and proclamations. There will be no leaders in Netland, for leaders are the source of most of the problems we have. All citizens must act for the greater good of Netland. I do not run the NLF, and I am not responsible for the actions of any individuals acting in the name of the NLF. I just came up with the idea.
You can form your own arm of the Netland Liberation Front. I will provide you with a NLF letterhead bearing your address, or you can make up your own. Please observe the following rules, however:
You are in Netland right now. Netland is a decentralized, ever-changing group of individuals who participate in something known as "Networking." Netlanders occupy most countries of the world, and participate in communication on the most essential level: artistic expression. The Netland culture seeks to break down the barriers set up by conventional cultures: religion, race, language, and nationalism. In short, Netlanders seek to accomplish everything conventional culture can't or won't. It is a culture based on understanding and cooperation rather than ignorance and competition. Its members seek to learn more about themselves by learning more about others on a one-to-one level, by way of one of the few enlightened contributions of the nations of the world: the postal systems. Like most nations, Netland is not a place, but a concept.
There has been a growing rift between Netlanders and the rest of the world, due to certain political, environmental and philosophical issues. I believe we should consider declaring Netland an autonomous entity, subject to it's own laws and government. Every Netlander's property would become the physical place of Netland, much in the same way an embassy is considered property of the country it is from. We already exist as a separate nation in ideology, now all we have to do is let others know about it.
Netland has always meant communication and cooperation, equality, artistic freedom and acceptance. No competition, no laws, no hierarchy of control. I feel that the nations of the world have let the corporations become too powerful. We all have let them go too far.
The corporations of the world, through their greed and negligence, have brought the human species to the brink of disaster through financial exploitation and harmful environmental policies. The people of the earth have been manipulated by corporate and governmental propaganda into complacency in the guise of "progress" or "patriotism," and have stood helplessly by as this planet is polluted and decimated in search of more raw materials and larger profit margins. At one time, one country would invade another to sack the cities and carry off the wealth, but now by way of commerce, this messy practice can be accomplished by selling the residents of another country sugared water that they think will make them "cool."
Corporations are like viruses. Their sole purpose is to make money, as much as possible, and at any cost, and to continue the corporation. There is no regard for philanthropy unless it can be exploited for a marketing advantage. These viruses have infected the governments of the world to the point where the prevailing ideology is the so- called "free marketplace" where large corporations can dominate due to their higher efficiency level and greater economic power. The people have been brainwashed to believe that their sole purpose on this planet is to accumulate as many things as they possibly can, regardless their actual needs. We have to slave in the factories to afford products that are supposed to save us time. Does this make any sense? Is it progress? Were things really that bad when we had to gather our own food?
Fortunately we have an effective weapon against corporate domination: stop buying their products. What have they really given us? It has become impossible to live as we once did, to return to a time before money and factories. They have polluted the lands, waters and skies, altering the natural cycles of the planet. They have given us cancer, but also cures for cancer... if you can afford it. You have to pay to be cured of a disease that is the result of industrialization. To get the money to pay, you must work within this system and make it more powerful. It is a vicious cycle that only enables the corporations to become more and more omnipotent, and free-trade pacts that have recently been enacted by governments will aid this expansion into areas with vast populations of impoverished peoples. The U.S. trade agreement with China stressed that piracy of recordings must be stopped, but human rights issues fell by the wayside. Just as long as the companies are protected from copyright violation, it's business as usual.
I admit my hypocrisy in participating in the corporate world. This computer that I write this on was made by a corporation, the gasoline in my car, and other things I buy are corporate in origin, even the electricity we all use is the result of burning fossil fuels or nuclear power, both pretty bad for the planet. We need to be aware of these things so we can stop using them or demand that they cease the most dangerous of policies.
ANLF communiques are available via E-mail.
Secret Coded Message to Liberation Front Members: My monkey sits on the magpie's nest. Do not pick the blue marigolds, but the flamingos fly on the morrow. The grapefruit has grown quite moldy in this hemisphere.
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I always look at the hands to learn the true character of a person. The face tells you what someone thinks or feels, but the hands tell you what they do. This man's face was rugged and leathery but his hands were delicate and smooth, like he was an actor or a musician. I don't usually trust guys who have smooth hands because they didn't do any real work to earn their money, or they spent all of their time trying to figure out how to get other people's money away from them.
Leaning back on my stool, I looked at my own hands, callused and yellowed with tar and nicotine. My fingernails are tan and the cuticles are enormous. There's a scar between my middle finger and pointer on my right hand from this awful habit I have of falling asleep while smoking, often right on this very bar stool. I take pride in my hands because I feel that they speak of a man with an interesting life, not a soft, easy one. I took the last drag of my cigarette and put it out in the half-full ashtray.
This guy was probably in insurance or something, judging from his very functional navy suit, or maybe he was a salesman of some sort. I could see him looking at me from time to time trying to get a conversation started so he could sell me something. I had a way of looking really interested in TV shows so people wouldn't talk to me if I thought they wanted my money. I stared at The Young and the Restless intently.
Jojo's Happy Hour bar seemed to attract a lot of salesmen in the afternoon for some reason, although why had always been a mystery to Charley, the owner of the bar. Whenever someone with a briefcase came in with that "hey, pal, howya doin'?" look on his face, Charley would slink to the other end of the bar and pretend to be occupied washing glasses or dusting the counter until the guy got brave enough to call him over and order the obligatory cocktail. Charley would try to get away as quickly as possible after taking his four dollars before the guy launched into the "Are you the owner of this bar?" spiel. If he got cornered into a conversation, he would weasel his way out by claiming that he was just the bartender and he wasn't allowed to order a CD jukebox or ten kegs of the new hip beer that nobody would drink. Some of these guys just won't let up, so sometimes he would just tell them to get the hell out before he called the cops, and that usually did the trick. Even then, on their way out they usually tried to give him a business card.
This guy wasn't in the bar to drink, that was for sure, because he had been nursing the same gin and tonic for thirty-five minutes now. I was on my second Bud of the day. I don't usually drink during the daytime, but I was home from the factory this week and I was bored to death since my wife was at work and I had finished fixing all the things around the house that needed fixing, so I headed over to Jojo's. Unfortunately, all of my friends were still at work too, so the place was empty. It's strange to be in a bar during the afternoon because it seems so empty and quiet, almost like a funeral parlor. You'd never know this was the same place I spent most evenings in- at night this place is full of regulars and kids from the university, all talking and having a good time, dancing and playing songs on the old jukebox. Maybe it was the music that made it different. While I was thinking about that, the guy on my left was starting to get antsy, and I knew he was going to speak to me any minute now.
"It's a doggone shame, that they got all these guys around trying to sell you things all the time," I said, nodding at the commercials on the TV. Always caught them off guard if you complain about the very thing they're trying to do.
"Yes, it is," He replied, "especially because most of it's garbage anyway." Now, all I had to do was not respond and he didn't have a casual way to keep the conversation going.
There was silence for a couple of minutes, while Charley wiped the same shot glass for the tenth time over by the window. The light coming from behind him made him hard to see, but I could still tell that he was avoiding any kind of eye contact with this guy. I went back to watching the doctor on TV tell the pretty woman about how her half brother had some rare disease. She seemed rather upset about it, and I tried my best to look concerned. It's so much easier to dodge these guys when there's a ball game on. I don't really care for sports, but every guy in the world knows that it's considered a sin for a man in a bar to talk during a game. I could sense his mind working on how to get me talking again.
"My name's Frank. Frank Perkins. What's yours?" he asked me, as he moved to the stool next to me and held out his hand. Oh hell, here it comes- the introduction.
"Jack," I said and gripped his hand awkwardly. I've had trouble with my handshake because of that Tunnel Syndrome thing I got at the factory back when I was in the assembly division. Back then, it wasn't a "syndrome" yet, so I couldn't get worker's comp for it.
"Well, Jack, I gotta tell you, you're one handsome man. I'll bet your wife hates to see you at the bars in the afternoon." Oh god, I thought, I hope he's not trying to pick me up. If you ever feel bad about yourself, just spend a minute talking to a salesperson and they'll make you feel like Paul Newman.
"She knows I can't hardly handle one woman let alone two. I took the week off for personal reasons," I replied. I know nobody can resist the old "personal reasons" thing. The object for me now was to keep the conversation on my terms so he couldn't get started on his pitch. Sometimes, if you keep them going long enough, they forget all about it and have to leave because they're late for a meeting or something. Seems like all these guys do is go to meetings and harass people like Charley and me. I guess at the meetings, they discuss how to get people like me to buy more stuff.
"What was it, if you don't mind my asking,"
"I had to take care of something back home."
"Where's that?"
"Over in West Falls. My uncle passed on and I was the only family left in the area, so I had to settle all of his affairs."
"You took off a whole week for that?"
"Well, I had all this vacation time coming, and I sure don't have the money to go anywhere, so here I am drinking beer on a Thursday afternoon," I said and took out a Winston Light. I fished for my lighter, but settled for the matches by the ashtray. Someone always left matches on the bar. I put the match in the ashtray, which was a little on the full side, but Charley wasn't coming anywhere near us to empty it.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Was he old?"
"He was sixty-seven. He was a plumber back in the old days, but he got in with the wrong crowd after he retired." I said. I was making that last part up. I like to tell outlandish stories to people I know I'll never see again, just so they'll have something to tell their salesmen friends back home. I just have this sort of gift for coming up with bizarre tales that seem sort of believable. Truth be told, my uncle did die recently and he was a plumber, but here's where I start embellishing.
"Wrong crowd?"
"He started hanging around with all these hot rodder kids from over in Birchtree. I think he met them at the liquor store when they were trying to find someone old enough to buy them some cheap wine. He was a little lonesome since my Dad, who was his brother, moved down to Phoenix. Couldn't blame Daddy after the stroke, really, what with the awful winters here." I said. In reality, my uncle spent all of his time playing pinochle with his old Korean War buddies. He had a heart attack in the middle of a really good hand and fell face first into a bowl of Chex party mix.
"Hot rodder kids?" he asked. He looked pretty eager to hear the gossip about someone he'd never met, and especially someone who had actually led a more boring life than his own.
"Well, I guess they hit it off and he started letting them hang around his place to do their work. It was a pumpkin farm at one time, but most of it had been sold off, so my Uncle had this house on about three acres of ground. He was always real friendly, that Bobby, friendly to a fault."
"They took advantage of him?"
"No, not really. They just needed a place to take their cars apart. He used to buy them beer and go out and help them a little, with what he knew about car engines, mainly he did welding for them. He loved all the company- made him feel like a teenager again. At first, they were just restoring old muscle cars that they got from the junkyard. I remember one kid had this '71 Charger that looked just like that car from The Dukes of Hazard, and I was over for something or other, and he's asking me if I know anything about electrical wiring. I tried to help him, but that thing was so backwards that the only way to get it started was to turn on the windshield wipers."
"So what happened to your uncle? Did they run him over or something?"
"Well, they started putting larger and larger engines in these things, seeing how fast they could make them go. They first one was a diesel engine from an old flatbed they got down at the scrap yard. Then on Bobby's farm they found a busted engine in a broken down crop duster in his barn, and it just kind of escalated from there. They'd take their contraptions over to the dry river bed and see how fast they'd go before they blew up. More than a couple of them lost an eye."
"That's DANGEROUS!" He was on the edge of his seat now, visualizing these juvenile delinquents and an old plumber flying through the canyon on souped-up death machines.
"Darn right. Those parents must have been dumb as dirt to believe these kids who'd come home with multiple fractures and third-degree burns got them riding their bikes. Anyway, they started going farther and farther from here to get bigger engines for their machines, and finally they found the biggest one they'd ever seen."
"What was it?"
"Well, out by where highway 173 hits route 22 there's an old army base. I think it was closed in the early 90's with all the military cutbacks. Anyway, they cut through a couple of fences found all of these ballistic missiles that had been torn apart. I guess the army guys kept them there for parts or something."
"Jesus!"
"Yep, they took one and tried to mount it on the body of an old Ford Country Squire station wagon frame. This thing must have weighed about five or six tons before the... well, it barely fit on the thing. The police were pretty baffled about that part, but they think the kids used a tow truck to drag it onto the car frame. So there's my sixty-something uncle out in the middle of the desert using his expertise as a plumber to mount a ballistic missile engine on the back of a family car." I said. Charley had determined that this guy didn't represent any sort of immediate threat and had moved in close to empty the ashtray and hear my story. He loves it when I string one of these guys along.
"He did it?"
"Yep. It maybe would have worked too, but Bobby didn't know too much about what kind of fuel one of those things uses, so he mixed a whole bunch of things up- turpentine, lacquer thinner, gasoline... whatever he had in his truck. Then he hooked up the butane tank he used for welding, and he wired it all up with an ignition system that he jerryrigged from an old gasoline generator. He wanted to be the first one to try it out because he put so much work into it and all, so he gets into the driver's seat, fastens his safety belt, checks his rear-view and flips the big red switch."
"What happened?" Frank asked. I took a slow drink of my beer to add to the suspense, and to try to come up with a good ending.
"The damn fool electrocuted himself. Turned out he knew less about electricity than he did about rocket fuel. The kids panicked and took off." Charley smiled and walked back to the other end of the bar. I wasn't sure if Frank bought it or not because he was just sitting there with his mouth hanging open.
After a few minutes, he gathered his thoughts and ordered another gin and tonic, no lime. Then he turned to me and said, "Was he properly insured? So many men aren't these days."
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