The Color of Money

It all started with postage stamps. The purpose of a postage stamp is to pay for the delivery of a piece of mail. When I was a kid our family always had a roll of postage stamps in the family desk. They were the little American flag stamps. That’s the only kind of stamp I knew for most of my childhood. To me, that’s what stamps were. And stamps meant America. Something about that stamp represented the American dream to me. It looked official. It was used for official business and important things. Money went into envelopes, taxes were paid… the engine America was fueled by that little square tab you had to lick. It was, quite literally, the glue that held us together. Then I started noticing different designs--flowers, trees, astronauts and later, Elvis. The stamps changed, not only in denomination, but also in size, there were oversized rectangular stamps now. There are as many postage stamps designs as there are crappy postage stamp designers.

Why?

I mean, I get that some people like to buy stamps that reflect their personality, or collect them as a hobby (I don’t understand that either). But it’s just a stamp. It’s a tax--or if you’re Governor Tim Pawlenty… a “user fee”. I don’t need my governmental fees to be pretty; I just need my cable bill to arrive on time. I wouldn’t say it bothered me, it just seemed so unnecessary.

But apparently, stamps were just the beginning. Remember money? You know, the good old greenback? It’s iconic. But for some reason we keep changing it. First it was making Ben Franklin’s head gigantic. To me, it looked like a giant-headed baby. All these dead presidents suddenly needed an enormous picture of them on the money. Then came colorful swirls of orange and red and pink. Holy shit… my money is pink!

It keeps changing. I understand that it’s designed to minimize counterfeiting, but you know what? The old money is still good. It still works. Our money has changed so much that no one would be able to tell if that purple and orange $4 bill with a giant picture of Ed Asner on it is real or not. To be honest, it almost looks like Canadian money now. Have you noticed that the Canadian dollar is now the same value as the American dollar?

Coincidence?










Now there’s a different quarter for every state. Is that really necessary? I mean… really? Comparing the old style of currency to the new is like comparing a glass of bourbon on the rocks to an apple-tini. One of them has a silent, dignified sense of class. The other is kind of gay.

That brings me to license plates. License plates are not a forum for you to express your personal beliefs; they don’t define you as a person and they sure as hell don’t make North Dakota seem like a cool place to visit. They are there so that if you run a red light and t-bone a busload of handicapped girl scouts someone can report you. They need to display a series of letters and numbers. That's it. I don’t need to know you support the fucking environment or that you “Remember Columbine”. I shit you not, there’s actually a Columbine flower remembrance license plate in Colorado. Great, now people can associate Columbine with traffic fatalities as well.













Michael Moore, you magnificent bastard, where’s your indignant outrage at that one?

Finally, I have seen at least 4 different versions of the MN driver’s license over the last 10 years. They seem to change almost as frequently as postage stamps. They’re chock full of holograms and secret reflective coating invented at Area 51. Most people need a fucking de-coder ring see how old you are.

“You see, you just need to tilt the license away from the Sun at an angle of incidence perpendicular to the square of the moon’s apogee on the autumnal equinox.”

I like my government documents, legal tender and instruments of control and taxation to be simple and stable. I guess I am a bit of a traditionalist. Put another way, I abhor change like nature abhors a vacuum.

I think I’m getting old.