24 July 04
This afternoon, as I sallied forth from my residence, I tripped over a short barricade of bound paperbacks. Three shrink-wrapped packages of phone books were waiting for me, some ‘Real’ Yellow Pages generously donated by Ma Bell’s least favorite demon child, Bellsouth.
Package one contained two complete mini yellow pages and one larger A-G yellow pages. Package two contained one complete mini yellow pages, one larger A-G and one larger H-Z yellow pages. Package three contained two larger H-Z’s and a larger A-G. Each package also contained a handful of refrigerator magnets, some OTC medications, and random scraps of paper.
Each yellow pages book is labeled “Do Not Discard Before November 2004″, as they are the November 2003-04 publications. I’m mildly confused by this, since I already own my very own larger A-G yellow pages and larger H-Z yellow pages.
To sum up, I have three smaller mid-size complete yellow pages, four larger A-G’s and four larger H-Z’s. The mid-size edition has maybe 1750 pages. A-G has about 1300 and H-Z has about a thousand (A-G has the white pages for those of you still reading). That’s over 14,000 pages of phone numbers and advertisements I’ll never read. Fourteen thousand pages and I don’t even have a land line. I feel sorry for anybody who has two working lines installed. They probably had to get out of their house through a window.
I dread November 2004, when these tomes are scheduled for demolition. I envision a dreary British alleyway, drunken fools stumbling over cobblestone, chamber pots emptying overhead, and, of course, volunteers for the public heath department. They’d push barrows overflowing with dust-covered phonebooks. “Bring-out-your-books,” they’d say. “Nine-pence-a-piece,” they’d say. “What the hell were we thinking, delivering so many extra copies of books that aren’t even needed since they are immediately outdated with the creation of realpages.com website, which interestingly enough, is advertised right on the cover,” they’d say. And in the background, Terry Gilliam squeezes a Mexican Hairless between Motels and Movers.