Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who have fallen from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.
Nothing echoes like an empty mailbox.
There are no letters in the mailbox And there are no grapes upon the vine And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore And there are no diamonds in the mine
Jace perched on the windowsill and looked down at him. "You really don't get this bodyguard thing, do you?" "I didn't even think you liked me all that much," said Simon. "Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer things?" "I thought it was keep your friends close so you have someone to drive the car when you sneak over to your enemy's house a night and throw up in his mailbox." "I'm pretty sure that's not it
And before you ask, no, you're not driving, Myrnin. I remember the last time." "That accident was not my fault." "You were the only one on the road, and the mailbox actually didn't leap out in front of you. No arguments. You sit in the back, too.
That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.
To his amazement, he could already hear Henry snoring in the backseat. That guy could fall asleep on a car trip to the mailbox.
Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.
One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.
the garbage cans and mailboxes on the sidewalk would stay the same, but the people would be just a beautiful blur of motion.
Of course, the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank.
There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.
The level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.
I find that getting something on the screen as soon as possible really helps focus the problem for me. It helps me decide what to work on next. Because if you're just looking at that big to-do list it's like, eh, I don't know which one I should do—does it matter which one I do? But if there's something you can actually look at, even if it's just the debug output of your mailbox parser, it's like, OK, there!
By about a week before the big day, you will have received less than half of your invitation response cards. Panic sets in when it occurs to you that everyone invited will actually show up. You couldn't have made it easier for your guests. You have included a card that had boxes for 'will attend' or 'will not attend.' You included a pre-addressed, stamped envelope. How inconvenient could it be for them simply to check it off and drop it in in a mailbox? Very inconvenient. You, evil bride-to-be, are confronting two basic human fears. A terror of correspondence and the dread of decision-making.
Paste magazine has served as a tremendous window into culture for my house. I can think of no other publication that provides such critical yet entertaining thoughts on music, movies, books and gaming as Paste. My mailbox would be a dark place indeed without it.
When I was a kid, the high point of the day was to go to the mailbox and see if any mail came for me, and I'm still stuck in that mode.
There's a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day.
You know, the fact that every morning you get a script in your mailbox, that's going to stop. All these little pedestrian, mundane things. And the cash.
'You've got mail!' exclaims the cheery automaton at America Online. The flag on the mailbox icon waves invitingly on my computer screen. For a second, I'm 10 years old again, waiting for the postman's whistle to slice the stillness of an Australian afternoon.
or simply:
