i swear the post office is toying with me

One of the perks of my job is having an APO address, which pretty much functions just like a stateside address, except for the odd Web site that can't handle military addresses (why do you hate America, Paypal?). The only downside is that the military postal system can be wildly unpredictable. Mail can take three days to arrive from the States, or it can take four months. You just never know.

That makes subscribing to weekly magazines a bit dicey, but I can pretty much count on Entertainment Weekly showing up every Tuesday to feed my pop-culture cravings.

Which issue of EW will show up is more of a crapshoot.

I almost always get a magazine, but they arrive in no apparent order. This week I got the March 21 issue, on the heels of the April 11 issue. The week before that, Feb. 15. But March 28 showed up right on time.

I'm convinced someone in the MPS is hoarding the magazines, and doling out one a week, at random. There's no other logical explanation. Not that that's a logical explanation, but knowing DOD, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Getting the magazines late hammers home the lightning-swift pace of American pop culture. The copy I got this week is only three weeks old, but it's already as out-of-date as a 1996 copy of Time in a dentist's waiting room.

It's also a reminder that with every passing week, I slip a little bit further behind the cultural curve. This weekend I watched "There Will Be Blood" and "Enchanted" -- movies I would have seen on their opening weekends back home. I finally understand the finer points of using "I drink your milkshake!" as a catchphrase, but I also know it's long since passe. (Thanks to Ken-Jen for cluing me in to that.)

Pop culture -- especially TV -- is one of the things I truly feel deprived of here. On the flip side, not having to keep up with 20 shows has freed up a lot of spare time that I now spend doing things like "studying Japanese" (I'm finally learning some verbs! Hooray for complete sentences!) and "interacting with other humans."