People--I could use a little help here.

I'm running around like a one-armed paperhanger, putting out economic fires (and mixing metaphors left and right) and you go and buy "forever" stamps to hedge against future postage increases.

Do you know what a looming overhang that's going to create for the U.S. economy? My children, your children, my goldfish--all of our pets will be paying off today's promise of forever stamps tomorrow.

Take just one sheet of these little fiscal time bombs. You pay $7.38 for eighteen 41 cent stamps. You can use them forever, no matter how much the price of a first-class stamp goes up. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that in 2010 the price of a stamp is $125,000. Don't laugh--it could happen.

That same sheet of stamps is now worth $2,250,000! It's true--I used a calculator!

But instead of pocketing that much money, all the U.S. gets is a lousy $7.38. While our bridges and highways collapse, fighter planes fall apart in the sky, and patients in federally-funded alcohol detox programs go to bed sober. I mean drunk.

It's all about you, isn't it? You want to save a few lousy cents, so the U.S. economy crumbles. Next time, think about somebody other than yourself.

Me.

Put that money in a savings account at your local community bank where I can get my cut. Open a new account and you'll get a toaster over. Apply for a mortgage while you're at it, and you get a choice between a golf umbrella, a picnic set, and a portable set of socket wrenches you can keep in the trunk of your car.

As for your lousy stack of cards and letters? Put 'em in your toaster oven and set it on "High". Then turn your computer on. You haven't heard of email?