If I were running for president in the 2020 election I am quite confident I could win in a landslide with the following platform:

The bedrock of my platform would be turning the 4th of July into Independence Day(s).  Independence Day would take place on the first Friday of July or even better Independence Day(s) would either be the first Thursday and Friday of July or Friday and Monday of July.  The only thing more depressing than coming to work on a Monday after the fourth of July is the first work day after New Year’s when you realize the next thing you have to look forward to is Memorial Day.  I realize the fourth of July has some historical significance, but not enough to overcome the overwhelming support that would be garnered by suggesting a four day weekend in July.  We already do this with Thanksgiving by having it land on the fourth Thursday in November and Easter Sunday is a complete crap shoot it can either be in mid March or sometimes mid April.

The second plank of my platform would be doing away with US postal service.   If you are over the age of 60 you may have just crapped your pants with the notion of doing away with the mail.  My mom has turned sifting through her mail into a hobby, she actually has one of those official US Postal service bins that she puts her mail in and she actually took it with her as a carry on when she went to visit my brother in Seattle.  This along with every other trait my parent’s possess is why I try to avoid spending any meaningful time with them.  My genetics are derived directly from them and as much as I like to think I can avoid their “eccentric” behavior, its impossible for me to side step everything, granted I will never watch Fox News or listen to right wing talk radio, but my mom’s knack for disappearing and not saying good bye when leaving our house, a wedding, or any other social function is something I could see myself emulating.

Back to the mail.  There is one thing even more outdated with than the mail, it’s called a facsimile. Even the name sounds like something from the 1800’s, could you please send me a facsimile?  Granted, it’s been shortened to a fax, but it is still entirely useless.  I have two partners and we rotate having the phones forwarded to our cell after hours.  One time a Chicago number continually attempted to send a fax to our land line when I had phones.  It was maddening, and would be a great way to screw with someone.  Maybe this app is already out there, but if you could get a fax machine to attempt to send a fax to someone you don’t like every minute or every five minutes, they would need a straight jacket within an hour.  When people ask me for my fax number I don’t even know it off the top of my head and have to retrieve a business card or pull up my website to get it for them.  Instead of giving them my fax number, I want to ask them if they prefer wiping their ass with newspaper instead of toilet paper, because that’s about where things stand regarding the utility of a fax over an email.

It would be easy to get rid of the facsimile all together if everyone would agree to shut down their fax number.  This would leave people with no alternative but to email the documents instead of faxing them.  I could be missing something here, but I don’t believe a facsimile is any more reliable, and may be even less reliable, than email.  In fact, determining if your fax actually made it to it’s intended recipient can be almost impossible to figure out where as if your email bounces back you get an email telling you it didn’t make it.

There was a time when I thought the US postal service was going the route of Blockbuster (there is only one blockbuster store left, it’s in Alaska, seems fitting) but suddenly there is a resurgence to the point that I see mailperson(s) delivering mail on Saturdays and Sundays.  Why?  I don’t even like the mail I get during the week why do I need it delivered on the weekend?  I pulled out a stack of recently received mail and this is what I had:

• Consumer’s energy bill (I pay that online no need to get a paper copy of it in the mail)
• A safety recall from Chrysler for our mini van no way we would likely open the envelope let alone schedule an appointment to get it rectified and this information could be emailed.
• Coupons for Smokey Bones, that place fucking sucks.
• Bank of America credit card offer
• Fifth Third Banking statement (we do all our banking online)

Nothing that couldn’t be handled through an email.  Furthermore, you can’t make the mail stop, it just keeps coming and coming no matter what you do.  I wonder what would happened if I removed my mailbox and there was no place for them to deliver mail? My driveway is fairly long and I can’t imagine anyone who has a government job would be ambitious enough to put forth any more effort than what is minimally required to get their job done.  They would likely just throw it away.

My third plank would be outlawing singles at the golf course, not single people, can’t penalize them for making the right choice and not getting married, I’m talking about random golfers who show up and want to be paired with people who actually have friends.  Nothing is worse than having a threesome and getting stuck with some random golfer.  Sometimes I just book for four even though I know there will only be three so they don’t stick me with the rando golfer.  On top of that, how do you figure out who gets stuck riding with the rando?  Furthermore, golf is an activity that you pay for and it is quite presumptuous of a golf course to think that they can just stick some stranger with you for a four to five hour round.  Typically, by the time I have completed around with my friends I have had enough of them, when it’s a stranger my orneriness is exacerbated.

While the random golfer throws a monkey wrench into the enjoyability of a round, what is even more frustrating is the rando who acts like they have a ton of buddies they typically golf with but none of them were available so they decided to golf with three strangers.  I’m not falling for it, if you typically golf with friends you know it is way better than golfing with strangers and you wouldn’t knowingly subject yourself to the contempt and hatred of the other three golfers for being  “that guy”.  Your a loser, you probably go to movies by yourself as well.  I have rarely gone to movies alone, I can think of two occasions in my life, I went to the second die hard by myself when I was in high school (possibly the lowest point of my life) and to Hail Caesar.  There are two things that are problematic when you attend a movie alone.  The first is the previews, I have to discuss the previews with whoever I am with “Not going to that” or “That looks awful” is my typical comment.  Sometimes I figure out how many of the previews are worth making a trip to the theatre to see and say “2 out of the 5 are theatre worthy”.  The second issue, and this was particularly true with Hail Caesar, is that you have no one to discuss the movie with as you are leaving the theatre.  Hail Caesar was highly received by the critics, my belief is because it was a Cohen brothers movie and you have to like the Cohen brothers.  The movie was awful and I had no one to discuss it with which was quite frustrating.  I could have tried to run down one of the four other people in the theatre and attempt a post movie diatribe with them, but that would have been awkward.

I have only witnessed one occasion where the single golfer had it blow up in his face.  My brother-in-law and I were golfing with my Father-in-law, Big Al, and a rando showed up and had to ride with Al, he initially had signed on for 18 holes but after nine called an audible and was seen running with his bag to the parking lot.  That poor bastard had no idea what he was in for, Al is a great guy but he asks a lot of questions that have no need to be answered and makes fairly obvious observations such as “there’s a lot of cars at that gas station”.   I use to respond to these observations but now I am perfectly comfortable just letting the silence speak for itself.  Now that I have a platform I guess it’s time to start vetting running mates.