I was at the post office yesterday on a Saturday. I had to get some additional postage stamps so I could mail out our wedding invitations. There was a line of about eight people in front of me and one postal worker. In fact, I never saw another employee working for the entire time I was there. I waited patiently like everybody else, and I asked for 60 seventeen cent stamps when it was my turn. Seventeen cent stamps may sound obscure, but that's the price the post office set for each additional ounce.

The postal employee looked in her own drawer, then all the other drawers where no one was working. After an unsuccessful glance, she said she would have to give me 10 cent, 5 cent, and 2 cent stamps. I agreed. She then had a difficult time finding enough ten cent stamps, so she gave me more five cent stamps to compensate. I agreed again. I had to get these invitations out. As I put three or four additional stamps on each invitation, I realized how bad things had gotten. The post office had run out of stamps.

I know the post office is in bad shape, and they are talking about stopping Saturday service altogether. But running out of stamps at a major post office? That's awful. If a post office can't give you stamps (something they created), what can they do effectively?

But before I get on the post office too much, I'd like to extrapolate this 'things are getting worse' concept. Remember when you were a kid, and you thought cars would fly and look like bubbles? Maybe you don't, but you probably assumed cars would be better. They aren't. Pedals are sticking, tires are shredding, and we're still using that good ol' unleaded gas to run almost all of them. Sure, you can have gadgets in your car and it can talk to you, but do your really need or want what your car might say? I don't. It just sounds like an electrical malfunction waiting to happen. In my view, you still can't top the simple and slick cars made in the 60s and 70s, and that was a long time ago.

The post office is lame, cars are a hassle, so what's better? We have the Internet, cell phones, and social networks. We can find out information at the click of a button, we can have conversations with people in front of us and far away at the same time. Isn't that great?

Not really. The Internet is as unhelpful and predatory as it is a research tool. Cell phones use is causing more accidents in cars, and watching people text while they're talking to me is downright rude. Even though we advanced the communication ability, I can't say it's improved our lives. I still don't have a cell phone, and I don't think I've missed out on anything important.

Social security is running out, health care is up in the air, and pretty much every government from federal to state to local has spent far more than they had. It's always amusing that the government stresses that we all stay in school and get an education when the people running the country can't balance their checkbook.

So what have we improved? We eat so lousy as a nation that obesity is rampant. We have so many channels on television that they have shows that talk about what other shows are doing. We have so much journalism that any and every viewpoint is both validated and ridiculed. We have tons of new novels but no new great literature. We have wars with no victory, thousands of institutions of higher learning and no jobs, and the same services we had fifteen years ago cost a whole lot more today.

Someone told me a weak dollar is good for the economy and a strong dollar is bad. It's a topsy-turvy world, I tell you.

So that's it. I'm sure I sound like an old timer pining for the old days, but it's not like that. I don't really want to go back to the past, but I just wish we were visibly better than when I was a kid. It just doesn't seem that way. When the post office runs out of stamps, you know something has gone wrong.

Guess what? The post office is out of stamps.

Chris Jungle doesn't believe in the future.