May 29, 2013
Longtime readers (of which I may or may not still have one or two that I have not yet alienated) might recall that back in 2011 my apartment building was buried in an avalanche of telephone books, taking up the entire lobby and leaving us to climb over the huge piles and drifts of not just one but FIVE different brands of phone books. What was the difference between the brands? Some had ads for malpractice attorneys on the cover, and others had ads for slip and fall attorneys on the cover. Ironically, this blizzard of phone books appeared right in the middle of an actual blizzard of snow. The phonebooks got through but did my bill payments arrive on time? Of course not.
I went on a bit of a rant- OK, a rampage, about the complete and utter uselessness of the phonebook in the internet/iPhone/Goggle glasses era. To sum up, I managed to pinpoint the last remaining uses of the phonebook in the 21st Century: smashing bugs and looking up old friends’ names to see if they are still alive.
I was attacked by – who else? Some tool of the phone book industry, who, in the comments section, tried to prove that the phone book is used by literally a kabillion people each hour and that it is a vital engine of our nation’s economy.
I did not believe him.
Meanwhile, I kept ranting until The New York Times (YES! The Old Gray Lady herself!) took up the fight and sided with- wait for it… me. Using the same journalistic integrity that keeps them from printing a single critical word about President Obama’s handling of Benghazi, the IRS scandal, or the AP wiretaps (Their Motto: “Blaming George W. Bush since 1776”) they used time tested reporting tactics, like quoting people, to prove that yes, I was right and the phone book is useless.
Want to catch up on the amazing and hysterical story that was the blog-fueled Watergate of 2011?
Click the links for:
PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR
I must have really had an effect on the phone book industry since last year, 2012, I noticed that the number of phone books had dropped significantly. However, there were still way too many. Whereas we used to get dozens and dozens of bundles of books we only got about ten. Let’s just do some very simple math that even Amanda Bynes can calculate. (Yes, I am going to make Amanda Bynes the new Lindsay Lohan of my blog. At least until Lohan escapes rehab.)
My building has 6 floors X 9 apartments per floor = 54 apartments.
Phone books come in bundles of 12. We had 10 bundles. 12 X 10 = 120 phone books.
Assuming that no matter how many people live in an apartment you still only need one phone book, we had 120 – 54 = 66 too many phone books.
And don’t forget- we were getting up to 5 different company’s books. 5 X 120 = 600.
SIX HUNDRED phone books for FIFTY-FOUR apartments.
And now 2013
We had ONE bundle of twelve books left in our lobby.
12 phone books for 54 apartments. Uh oh, sounds like they went too far in the other direction this year.
No they didn’t. After a week there were still 2 phone books left unclaimed.
54 apartments and demand for only 10 phone books.
Validation. Vindication. Victory.
And the ultimate irony? On the cover was an ad for the phone book’s iPhone app.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
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