What's Green, Wears A Crown And And Gets Comped In Vegas?

"Only her hairdresser..."

Today is April 15 and our thoughts naturally turn to thinking about our government. Some of us can remember a time when we only thought about government a couple of times a year at most. No, really, I'm not making it up.

Back then, we still had this dreaded tax day for the minority of citizens and corporations who actually paid taxes; then, once in a while, we had to visit the DMV, which, in comparison, made paying taxes seem like fun; and, we occasionally had to go to the Post Office (we will not discuss the Draft Board). That's about it, and the DMV wasn't even the Feds! In my home state of New York, the DMV was the only reason we even had a state capital.

But, I am not thinking about taxes today; yesterday I dealt with the fact that Uncle Sam is the only one in the universe besides my daughter's co-ed private college (Cartier Institute for men, Tiffany College for women), who believes that I am wealthy. I am mad at my government today for infringing on my territory as a writer: the government is getting into the metaphor game.

By now, you all know about the Post Office gaff, in which they printed millions of Lady Liberty "Forever" stamps with a Wrong Lady photo. Using a fake Lady from a casino in Las Vegas on the official stamp seems like a perfect metaphor for what's false, cheap and shallow in our culture vs. what's truly valuable, honest, and hopeful. Caught with their pants down, did the PO apologize? Please. Their spokesman said that they would have chosen the same photo anyway even if they had know it was the wrong one....and then said they were reviewing their process. Oy.

We hear that Republicans have seized upon this gaff as a brilliant way for the PO to raise advertising revenue by actually selling "stamp-ads." I can't wait for my Wells Fargo mail to come with B of A stamps. You can make up your own bad combinations.

Dear Postals, please leave the metaphors and satire to writers and we will leave counterfeiting to you.

Not to be outdone by their postal cousins, the Air Traffic Controllers weighed in today as well. They must have been reading Steve Jobs biography to come up with this paradigm change: they are going to add a second controller to the airport tower night shifts to make up for the fact that current single-duty controllers take naps.

We are disrobing, being pawed and made to feel like uncommon criminals by the TSA (too long a story to tell here) in the security line so that we can climb to 38,000 feet and have the pilots all landing without guidance?

Dear Controllers, please stop making metaphors for government sleeping on our dimes and leave the comedy to Tina Fay, SNL and Rupert Murdoch's hair colorist!

We are about to launch into a protracted mind-numbing national discussion ad nauseam, not to mention really funny,  about whether or not we should spend $3.3 Trillion a year or $3.2 Trillion a year for these fine services noted above. This is basically about how many T-Bills the Chinese will buy before their fortune cookie says, "Man who tinkle into wind get wet and smelly."

As a road sign I recently read said so succinctly, "Buckle up, next million miles."

....and try to get Steve Jobs's private number. We need a good creative egomaniac billionaire perfectionist ( who isn't a whiny mayor) to tear it all down with one or two sensible, beautiful and totally outrageous ideas.