Thanks to about four dozen of you who've sent in suggestions about how to solve the Tech Problem in the preceding message. I apologize that I didn't say "I've scoured the Internet and tried everything I could find online" because a lot of you did similar scouring and sent me links to things I'd already tried. You folks out there are a tremendous resource…even the ones who wrote that the machine is a piece of garbage and I should just throw it the hell away.

I got thirteen years of service out of it and it only cost me $230 in the first place so I'd say I got more than I paid for. I'm disappointed that the video business has moved away from physical media to the extent that there is no replacement — no new DVD player I can buy that holds 400 of 'em. It was such a great way to store 'em and such a great way to watch 'em…especially to "binge-watch" a whole run of a show that came to me on multiple discs.

I'm going to let the machine sit unplugged for a few weeks and then give it another load of attention. Maybe the Magical Hardware Fairy will swing by in the dead of night and do one of her miracle repair jobs. If not, I'll decide what to do about it then. I appreciate all the suggestions…even the ones about throwing it the hell away.

I have this antique 400-DVD carousel player, the kind they don't make no more. It's the Sony DVP-CX995V.

It worked great until the other day when I tried to program it. I dunno what I did but it locked up and none of the controls work. I unplugged it, waited, plugged it back in and now I get a "Please Wait" message and still none of the controls work. I tried holding down the Power button when I plugged it back in and it didn't make any difference. Does anyone have any idea how to unfreeze it, do a factory reset or just get my DVDs out of it without dismantling the whole thing?

Hey, here's Seth Meyers' "Closer Look" segment for tonight. I configured this embed to skip the first 92 seconds so you could get right to a really good explanation of what's going on with the post office situation…

As any fool can plainly see, I do a lot of video embeds on this blog. Almost every time I do one, I get one (and only one) e-mail from someone who says, "You have the videos mixed up! The Randy Rainbow one is in the space where the John Oliver one is supposed to be!" Or something like that.

Once in a while, I do put the wrong video in a space but 97% of the time, the trouble is not that. It's that the cache on your browser is full and it's getting confused about what video goes in what space. If you clear your browser — which you should do every so often anyway — everything should appear in its proper location.

Kevin Drum, who is maybe my favorite online pundit, thinks Trump's antipathy towards the postal service can wholly be explained as a revenge tactic against Jeff Bezos and Amazon. And at first, that's easy to believe because Trump does often seem motivated by irrational desires for revenge against anyone who doesn't smooch his tuchis.

But Trump is hardly the first prominent Republican who's had it in for the post office. So I tend to think there's more to it than that.

It's Randy Rainbow. Yes, it's Randy Rainbow. Definitely Randy Rainbow. Here's Randy Rainbow with a song about Joe Biden's newly-crowned running mate. This is Randy Rainbow…

I'm thinking Donald Trump's going to lose badly on this post office thing. The U.S. Postal Service has long been America's favorite federal agency. In polls, it usually comes in around 90% positive and this is a country where I don't think anything except chocolate and puppy dogs can top 70.

Folks may curse the long lines at their local post office or the fact that some letter took way too long to reach its destination. Still, everyone is also grateful that certain pieces of mail arrive as reliably as they do…and for a tiny fraction of what they'd cost with a private, profit-oriented carrier.

All Joe Biden has to do is say, "Republicans are always attacking it, trying to sabotage it so they can justify handing it over to one of their wealthy donors to run…like the guy Trump appointed to run it into the ground." I would think Congressfolks and Senators who are on this year's ballots would have a hard time defending the ruination of an institution that the Founding Fathers enshrined in that Constitution that Trump has never read.

Give or take a point or two, it has a 90% approval rating. That means even most of the folks who'll vote for Donald Trump like it more or less as it is.

The National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York (birthplace of Lucille Ball) is doing online symposiums about comedy. Here's a chat with three friends of mine who were part of the editorial core of MAD magazine for many years…

A number of folks have written me to say that mailboxes are locked in their areas, too. I don't know when or how this started but I wish people would remember that the Founding Fathers wanted the government to run the post office — as a service, not as a profit center. Saying it loses money is no more an excuse to close it down that it would be a reason to shut down the Defense Department…which also is not profitable. Actually, the post office would be very profitable if they didn't keep saddling it with limits on how much a stamp could cost and this ridiculous notion that they must set aside funds for pensions far into the future.

The sabotage of the post office is one more reason to toss Trump outta there. Would someone please tell him we have enough already? We don't need more.

Running errands this morning, I drove over to a large post office and went through their drive-thru to drop a few letters and bills into the big mailbox they have outside for just such a purpose. I've mailed hundreds of pieces of mail that way over the years but today was different. Today, the big mailbox was padlocked closed…

I don't get this. Presumably, there's some way to mail a letter at a United States Post Office and if I go back there tomorrow when it's open, they will accept my gas bill and put it into whatever the system is that will eventually deliver it to the Gas Company. Why make me make another trip back here? Why couldn't I drop it off today as has been the norm at post offices for several hundred years?

I think Eric Levitz has the answer here: Destroying the U.S. Postal Service would help Donald Trump a lot in the upcoming election and also result in soaring profits for some of his wealthy donors. Either reason is reason enough for these people.

As you may know, I have loads and loads of food allergies. I cannot even begin to list the foods I cannot eat but it probably includes many that you love, especially if you favor the spicier treats.

Once upon a time, I picked up a lady to take her on a First Date. Once in the car, I gave her her choice of two or three restaurants I liked. To my horror, she said, "I love adventurous eating. Let's pick a strange-looking restaurant that neither of us has even been in and tell the waiter to bring us anything he thinks we'll like — the spicier, the better." That was when I knew it was an Only Date. There are very few things in this world I am less likely to do than have dinner on that basis.

I explained to her about my food allergies and she said "I understand" in a way that made it clear she did not understand. A lot of people don't. They think, "Hey, if I enjoy eating it, you'll enjoy eating it." We went to a dining spot from my list where we talked and discovered all the many ways we were incompatible. I think we both had two arms and breathed oxygen but that was about it.

Every now and then, I've thought I ought to learn how to cook. That way, I would have absolute control over what went into the food that went into my mouth. The trouble with that turned out to be that I am a terrible cook and the more I attempt it, the worse I get.

The results are usually safe in terms of ingredients but it all sometimes comes out inedible for other reasons…like the last time I made a corned beef. I followed the directions and broke my electric knife trying to carve what wound up resembling a huge, misshapen hockey puck covered in coriander, peppercorns and mustard seeds.

So I gave it up and now, I occasionally watch cooking videos out of curiosity and also because I need to learn what's in some things I may someday find on a menu. I enjoy Alton Brown's because I enjoy seeing him explain anything and also because he helps convince me that you need a B.A. in Chemistry in order to prepare meals properly. Since I do not have a B.A. in Chemistry and was brain-dead stupid about the subject when I took it in high school, he helps convince me to give up this recurring urge to cook.

I am not joking about this. When I watch this man make a meat loaf, I think, "Well, I guess I can forget about ever making a meat loaf," thereby saving myself the time and cost of attempting it and having it turn out like that corned beef. If he ever does a video about the right way to spread Skippy Natural Super Chunk Peanut Butter on Ritz crackers, I will probably discover I've been doing it all wrong and will stop doing that forever.

Mr. Brown is always saying to let something chill overnight or to let it rest a while after you take it out of the oven. He says, "Your patience will be rewarded" and I might have that patience if there was a chance of the end result turning out the way it does when he cooks. Unfortunately, it keeps coming out the way things come out when I cook…and that is not worth waiting for.

And even he loses me when he talks, as many of the food video chefs do, about adding a little "heat" to their makings. The second they say that or "Cajun" or "Sriracha" or even "hot sauce," I know I'm not going to like it…and yes, I know I can just leave those ingredients out but those words tell me that what the chef thinks is tasty does not align with what I think is tasty.

I used to watch a lot of the cooking videos posted in frightening quantity by Chef John of foodwishes.com. The trouble was that he thinks everything needs Cayenne Pepper. Well, almost everything. Here's the first video I've seen of his in a long time that was Cayenne-free and it's kind of an interesting one. I thought there was only one way to make lemonade without a mix and when I watched this video, I had the urge to try his way.

I won't but it does intrigue me and I thought it might interest some of you. I won't be making it because I've given up all beverages except water. And also if I made it, it would come out like the corned beef, only more difficult to slice…

I have a friend who's going to vote the Biden/Harris ticket but he said to me last night that he wishes it was the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ticket. My pointing out that Congressperson Ocasio-Cortez is too young to serve in that capacity did not put a dent in my friend's fantasy.

I would favor Bernie over Biden in the White House but I think I favor Biden over Bernie as a candidate. The Republicans were going to try and paint whoever the Democrats nominated as a crazed, America-destroying radical and we didn't need to make it easier on them. Mike Pence is now out there claiming Biden/Harris would stop the eating of animals. That's how hard it is to make Biden out to be a left-wing looney.

And once again, though it rarely works for me, I'm going to try to not think too much about Trump or the election this weekend. One reason it's hard is because Friday night is when you try and release news you don't want to get a lot of notice.

People keep asking me what I think is going to happen with DC Comics. Given that some of these people are in a much better position than I am to know that, I conclude that I could not possibly know that.

And a reporter just e-mailed me to ask for a quote for an article about when comic book conventions will return in full flourish. I have the same answer: I don't know. That's a very good answer for most questions these days, especially since nobody knows. I continue to believe that the secret to living in the present is learning to live with a lot of big "I don't know"s in your life. Right now, I'll be happy if I have a good idea of what time my groceries will be delivered.

As I mentioned, next Tuesday at 7 PM Pacific Time, I'll be doing a one-on-one Conversation with my pal Kurt Busiek, who has written a lot of the better comic books I've read in the last decade or two. He's also a pretty knowledgeable guy about the comic book industry and how things work in it.

As I haven't mentioned but am mentioning now, next Thursday at 7 PM Pacific Time, I'm turning my little webcast series over to a guest host. Sergio Aragonés wants to interview me for 90 minutes or so. I have no idea what about but tune in and we'll find out together. We may swap recipes for an hour-and-a-half.

• At this very moment, Trump probably has his staff crafting an Executive Order that says mail-in ballots will be restricted to registered Republicans…and everyone else if they want to vote has to stand in the line at the one polling place in their state, no masks allowed.

Several people — including some I thought were my friends — have sent me info on a new Frankenstein's Monster of a candy from the Brach's company. I shall quote from that company's website…

NEW to store shelves: A full course meal presented in a unique mix of candy corn flavors. BRACH'S Turkey Dinner includes all of the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. From roasted turkey, green beans and stuffing to ginger glazed carrots, cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie. Flavors include Green Beans, Roasted Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Ginger Glazed Carrot, Sweet Potato Pie & Stuffing.

It has been a long time since I ate candy corn and instantly wised-up to the fact that it tasted like neither candy nor corn. Given that it can't taste like what it's named for, I have a hard time imagining it ever tasting like roast turkey, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, etc. But if you want to try it, go ahead. Don't let me stop you. Just understand that everyone you know will assume you're also one of those people who injected themselves with Lysol or bleach when Trump suggested that might be a cure for the coronavirus.