This would have been up sooner, but those YouTube self-tasering videos are like salted peanuts. Warning: profanity in the title. But the video is proof that Fitzgerald was wrong: there are second acts in American lives. I'm just disappointed the guy didn't say "Hold my beer" first." Anyway:

GOODBYE MAILBOXIn Soviet Russia, you go to mail! No, that's not it. In United States, postman is you! Better. CNN says:

Why? It costs $353 per house to deliver your mail, says the article. I presume that's annually. If it's daily, you can understand why they're losing money. Another interesting stat: "Delivering mail is the agency's largest fixed cost -- $30 billion. Ending such door deliveries would save $4.5 billion a year." So it costs $25.5 billion a year to do the things best described as "not delivering mail." Wow.

"Cluster boxes" will be a new term for anything overstuffed and ignored, because not everyone will run down to the box to get their mail. It's snowing out, it's raining, it's hot, whatever: do you want to trudge down to see if you have another envelope full of coupons for window blinds and closet shelves and $10 off that restaurant on the other side of town? No. So it'll sit there. In a few years you'll look at a itchen drawer that's brimming with junk and think "what a clusterbox this thing has become."

NEWS Provocative headline from Quartz: "If you're younger than 28, you've never experienced a month of below average global temperature." To which I would add: if you're older than 48, you've never experienced a year of above average global temperature, inasmuch as one cannot experience global temperature.

Elsewhere: did you hear about the Chinese airport bombing? Fox News:

That he did. This video shows the explosion, but not the aftermath:

Reports say he survived, and was taken to the hospital.

POPPIN' DEATH A reader writes:

I think I do. For some reason I remember it as an SNL skit, but nothing comes up on YouTube. This site has more info; the piece appears to be lost to the mists of history. Ah well; there's plenty of happy Doughboy about. This one has a surprising end; I guess the Lizard was off that week.

Happy as the Doughboy on his way to a baking convention? You'd think the prospect would fill him with dread, like a human on his way to a meeting of the American Association of Cannibals. Unless it's understood by all not to cook the sentient dough. Also: did you know he was once on the Magic Circus, in puppet form?

All you really need to know about mass culture in the early 70s can be found in that clip. Enjoy.