I'm in a New York state of mind today it seems. But an item in the New York Times' regular Monday feature Metropolitan Diary (I was catching up on my newspaper reading at lunch) is too good not to share.

The Diary contributor tells of obliviously putting some old stamps on this year's tax return envelope until the mail room clerk pointed out a potential problem.

It wasn't the validity of the stamps. They were still good and would have gotten the 1040 to the IRS just fine.

But they might have sent the wrong message about the veracity of the return inside the envelope: "I had almost sent my returns to the government embellished with an attention-getting row of Pinocchios."