I’m convinced that the post offices in this country are mystical portals to a magical land of cardboard, linoleum and clinical weirdness.
   For the record, I don’t think that “clinical weirdness” is a legal medical term, but it definitely exists, as everybody I have ever encountered while trying to send mail, has it. Occasionally, you’ll get the conversationalist, who decides that their wait in line is the perfect time to dial up their best only friend on their cell phone to publicly discuss their cat’s non-hypoallergenic feetie pajama-induced anal rash (which also probably explains why they have nothing better to do than dress their cat in feetie pajamas in the first place). More commonly is the philanthropist, who is on a missionary journey to share the benefits of whooping cough. And there always seems to be that one guy who doesn’t seem to have a realistic grasp on his size and likes to stand reallyreallyclose to you, not seeming to mind at all if his junk gets pressed up against your body.

   I swear that one of these days, I’m going to cave and buy one of those gigantic $20 tubes of bubble wrap, just to use as a defense weapon.

  

   Today I had a couple things to ship out that I had been putting off for days, because L.A. County has been pouring for like a week and I was saving my packaging tape just in case I had to start building an ark.

   Well, I waited ten minutes for the lady in front of me to methodically stare at each and every one of her cat stamps before packing her stuff up and going home (IDK, I think she might have been checking them for anal rashes). When I finally got up to a register, the cashier told me that I couldn’t actually ship my stuff via the regular post office, because I was using some weird pre-paid shipping labels I printed out online, and the regular post office may tolerate weird, but not shipping label kinda weird, so she directed me and my weirdly-labeled packages right next door, to the UPS/Fed Ex post office.

   So I ventured next door to the UPS/Fed Ex center. I’m sure that all UPS/Fed Ex branches aren’t like this one but just so that readers have some frame of reference, this place was like the mangy lovechild of an Office Depot and a foreign flea market, complete with weird smells, bulletproof prison windows with speakers and several ominous locked doors which probably led to negotiation rooms for the drug cartels and arms dealers which I’m pretty sure accounted for at least half of the people in line with me. First, I was greeted by an overwhelming cloud of smoke from the corner of incense products, which is something that I’d definitely expect from a t-shirt shop on Venice Boardwalk — not so much from a hole-in-the-wall postal center in a strip mall somewhere between a fried chicken restaurant and a smoke shop (but to be fair, I guess it’s nice to know where I can buy packaging tape, novelty keys and patchouli all in a single shopping trip).
   I took my place as the third person in line behind a lady mailing packages and another lady mailing letters, and hoped for the best. I should have taken it as a sign that things might not be all rainbows and puppies when a crabby Korean lady pushed in front of me with a truckload of paperwork in her arms after five minutes of writing at the desk-island in the middle of the store, but she was foreign and here on vacation, spoke broken English, was several times my age and had technically been there before me, so I didn’t make an issue of it.

   The lady with the package took a good fifteen minutes getting rid of her one item. I don’t know if it was because she got sidetracked by the random stoned woman who came in and started raving to the cashier about how the change machine actually worked or if because she was shipping cats in her package (I think you have to scan them for anal rashes).
   A scraggy-looking kid with a large, long box came in while the first woman was still at the counter. I clutched my stuff tightly (and probably growled at him subconsciously like a lion with a freshly-dead zebra, because shipping centers that also sell hookahs do that to a person), but he pushed to the front of the line immediately after package!lady left, anyhow. In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t make an issue of it, because the cashier immediately let him and his gigantic box in through one of the drug cartel doors, so I’m pretty sure that he was carrying an AK-47.

   The lady with the letters also took a good ten minutes getting rid of her stuff, even though she was only shipping something like two letters. In fact, I’m not even sure why she was in the shady opium-scented Fed Ex/UPS/cocaine center to begin with, instead of just shipping her letters at the U.S. post office, like normal human beings. Maybe her letters had weird labels.

   By this time, I was getting pretty thirsty and eye-undressing the vending machine like it was Isaiah Mustafa. The foreign lady was up at the counter trying to communicate to the cashier how urgent her paperwork was because she’s only here on vacation for a week. I have no idea what she was talking about, partially because she didn’t speak English very fluently and partially because I was debating whether or not I should get a drink from a vending machine that possibly contains traces of lead. The vending machine only contained water and energy drinks. I really wanted the Monster on the bottom shelf, but there were three rows worth of this canned “isotonic” thing called “100 Plus” which I had never heard of before. I decided that I’d be adventurous, so I grabbed a can. It was manufactured in Malaysia, distributed in South Africa and at least a third of the can was in Arabic writing, the nutrition information was missing about half the key points that I think are required by the FDA and I’m not entirely sure that it was legally imported to America… but I bought it anyway, because that’s how I roll.
   After about thirty-five minutes of waiting in line to deliver packages, I finally got up to the counter and wound up paying only a buck for my soda, because my labels were pre-paid. Take that, USPS.

   When I finally left the shipping center, there was an elderly lady in a raincoat over a bathrobe over a moo-moo, outside the smoke shop next door asking the owner, in a thick Appalachian accent, if she could tie her dog to the door while she bought cigarettes.
   …And I wonder why some people never leave their houses.

  

   For the record, 100 Plus tastes like carbonated grapefruit. And it’s been about 8 hours since I consumed it, and I have yet to contract botulism.
   …I’ll update later if I contract clinical weirdness.