Filters...

Just a minor rant, again about the US Postal Service...

On both my personal and work emails, I have a host of filters set up that automatically route and file away routine emails that I get so that I may read them later.  For some emails like automated bill notifications and payment receipts, it just makes a lot more sense to have the system do the filing than for me to have to read each and every one.  Additonally, my email providers do a great job at capturing spam email.  Like my filtered emails, the spam goes into a folder that I can look at later to see if anything important got caught.

What I'd really, really like to have is a similar way to filter the real mail that arrives in my real mailbox in front of my house.  Wouldn't it be nice to have everything addressed to "Resident" or "Our Neighbors" or some similar, impersonal moniker to be discreetly deposited into some trash bin?  Weekly advertisements to stores that I do not patronize, once- or twice-a-month auto sales advertisements that seemingly scream as loud as the salesmen on television, or the one I got today addressed to "resident" from some church in Tulsa, Oklahoma?  Come on folks, do you REALLY think that some single guy, who's name you do not know, in a small Mississippi Delta town hundreds of miles away, was waiting for your offer for a "blessed-by-prayer Bible Faith Cross of Prosperity?"  Yeah, I'm sure it can be source of great spiritual, physical, and financial blessing to me, if I simply return the enclosed postcard and a small donation to your church.  Not only did they offer the cross, but on the reply card, they ask me to check if I need prayer for:

• My finances
• Finding a new job
• My blood pressure
• Me to receive a continuous money blessing
• Or just because I'm worried

I've searched the US Postal Service's website high and low for some way to ask them to stop delivering mail to "Resident", becuase no one by that name lives here.  But then again, we're talking about a financially insolvent government "business" that has to maintain some degree of relevance.  I assume their job now is to deliver a hard-copy version of what my email filters do a great job screening for me.