Thursday, July 12, 2018

Whither The Mails?

(Not that Postal Service, silly.  From here.)

Someone asked me last week, seeing this theme on my website, what I meant by "the mails."  Being the sort that likes to say shit like "the mails," I just thought it was a formal or probably English way of saying "the postal service" (although my friend thought I meant the US Postal Service plus FedEx plus UPS).  According to Merriam-Webster, it does mean:

the system used for sending letters, packages, etc. : a nation's postal system

However, the definition is preceded by this: chiefly US, law, formal

Not British at all!  Somehow involved with the law!  But very, very formal.  I'll take it!

This week is a celebration of a service that nowadays gets stuff that you ordered on Amazon to you but used to be far more important in people lives.  You can still by books that are the "collected letters" of an author - I doubt anyone's going to want to read "the collected tweets" or "the collected texts" of someone modern.  But don't quote me on that!

Listen tomorrow at noon sharp, it'll be up at the Self Help Radio website, it should be tons of fun & there are lots of good tunes & goofy guests.

Do you need me also to remind you by email?  Damn it!

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