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(continued) Mail delayed due to war in Afghanistan

The VLC had issued a series of stamps that Herrman thought would help people collect on bills, and a friend used one of the stamps – it simply read “Pay or die” – on a letter to collect money from his recently-divorced wife.

The woman took the stamp to be a threat and contacted her lawyer, who placed the call to Herrman’s friend to cease and desist.

“He got out of that one okay,” Herrman says.

In fact, the VLC sent two emissaries to a tiny island in Palau to present the chief with custom made stamps.

“Palau was getting a lot of money from the United States back then,” Herrman explains. “And we imagined how much fun the chief would have stamping all of his letters to Washington with our stamps.”

In another issue of the newsletter, Herrman offered a free veal cutlet to anyone who purchased $100 or more in stamps. Surprisingly, several people took advantage of the offer and Herrman held a drawing to determine the lucky winner.

A married couple on the campus of San Jose State won the drawing and Herrman dutifully mailed off the cutlet, wrapped in tinfoil, via overnight express. A few weeks later, he received a newspaper photo of the winners dining in open-air splendor on their prized flank of veal.

These days, there isn’t much to the Visual Lunacy Society. The newsletter is ancient history and the board of directors has long since disbanded. Herrman no longer sells his stamps and he can’t say how many members are still affixing irony to their official documents.

Not that he’s the least bit wistful.

These days, he’s too busy making legitimate stamps, as in U.S. Postal Service, 37-cent, First Class postage stamps. Herrman works as art director for the U.S. Postal Service and has designed some of the most recognized stamps in the USPS over the past several years.

This lucky couple won a veal cutlet from the Visual Lunacy Society

Herrman, for example, designed the 37-cent Snowy Egret stamp, which was issued in 2003 and had a run of two billion. More recently, he designed the Dr. Seuss commemorative stamps which had a run of 172 million. “I’ve totally lost interest in doing rubber stamps,” he says, “because I’m too busy doing real stamps.” For now, those interested in novelty stamps will have to get their goods at any of the other rubber stamp companies out there. Unfortunately, Herrman says, none of them spoof the bureaucracy like the Visual Lunacy Society.

“There’re tons of rubber stamp companies and tons of rubber stamp magazines and I hate all of them,” he says. “They all have cute little happy smiley faces, teddy bears, and flowers and things.”

“Mine are meant to be taken very seriously, in a humorous sort of way.”

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Larry Knowles is the editor of Vyuz. He can be reached at lgkiii@vyuz.com