Star Wars Stamps: May the First-Class Be With You
Oh my god, the whole world has gone geeky. Even the federal government.
Have you come across one of these R2-D2 mailboxes? (Apparently there's only 400 of these geeky mailboxes around the country, so count yourself geekily blessed if you've been in the presence of one.) Didja wonder what the heck was up? Yeah, me too. Turns out the good ol' stodgy United States Postal Service will be issuing a series of 15 new First Class stamps (at the soon-to-be-new 41-cent rate) on May 25th to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.
Man, I feel old. I remember being scared to death as an eight-year-old by Darth Vader and those skeleton-looking stormtroopers, and now I'll be able to buy Princess Leia stamps to slap on my obscene credit-card payments.
No, actually, I pay all my bills online, and I only buy cool postage stamps these days to decorate my laptop -- cheap stickers! -- but you know what I mean.
The official Star Wars site is very excited about this joint marketing endeavor -- of course it is, imagine the fees Lucasfilm must have raked in on this deal -- and the USPS is really into it, too: it even registered the domain uspsjedimaster.com to promote the new stamps. Hey, you can "become a Jedi shipping and mailing master" at the site. ("Mail, or mail not -- and pretend there is no email, mmkay?") Oo, baby: will you be in line at midnight on May 25th to snap up prepaid Express Mail packs featuring Yoda, Darth Vader, and the Ewan McGregor Obi-wan? (Not Alec Guinness -- he'd probably spin in his grave ... oh god, I hope they paid poor Ewan a lot of money for the use of his face.)
At uspsjedimaster.com, you can vote for one of the 15 stamps, and the winner will get its own sheet. I voted for the one with Luke Skywalker looking off into the sunset. What? Of course I voted. That image has always been the one that encapsulates for me the spirit of Star Wars, which is "please don't let me turn out to be merely a poor, anonymous farmboy in the boonies, and let me actually turn out to be the savior of the galaxy, and stuff, cuz that would rock."
Since I have falled to turn out to be the savior of the galaxy at my advanced age, I guess I'll just have to buy some stamps.
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MaryAnn Johanson
minder of FlickFilosopher.com
