The Cull

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The Cull

The Houston Chronicle is, on Sunday within the margins of The Twelve Days of Christmas anyway, a somewhat intimidating pile of newsprint. Even on non-seasonal Sundays it can be pretty impressive. This is not a recent phenomenon and would probably not be mitigated even if Houston Still had the Post to compete with the Chronicle. In my opinion, a big-city daily should have a little competition, but that's another subject.

"And you are keeping the Macy's add because..." my wife leaves the sentence unfinished, waiting for me to complete it. This is a form of turning a statement-like structure into a question taht has come into vogue in the last few years, most often encountered in the snobbish "And you are..." by was of seeking the identity of a party to a conversation with the snob with whom the snob is not yet acquainted.

"Well...because...I don't know exactly," I answer. How am I to know why I kept an ad that I haven't seen yet? I could perhaps speculate that sometimes I just like to thumb through the upscale department store ads to keep from being absolutely (as opposed to apallingly) behind the times in fashion. I am reminded of a visit to Lord & Taylor or Macy's or someplace in the Galleria a few years ago to browse for a gift for my wife. I actually asked a salesgirl where the other colors were. I thought it was a departmental thing, and maybe I was on the wrong floor. I was mistaken. The salesgirl had that treble look on her face: she wasn't sure she understood my question, but it was so simple she knew she had not misunderstood. She was confused because I had asked her something simple and she knew that she should know the answer, but just couldn't put her finger on it. And, lastly, she suspected that perhaps I was a troublemaker and she should call security, but really didn't have anything to tell them yet. After the treble and othere emotions washed quickly over her translucent complexion for a minute, sshe seemed to grasp the depths of my ignorant simplicity and told me, as if to a four year old, that black and white were the colors this year. Ah, I see. I felt giddy as an off-season finch-finding birdwatcher because I had also seen some red and gray somewhere else in the store, though I couldn't remember just where. But I digress.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 14, 2003

Answers

[Hey, quit that. This time, I know I didn't hit "submit," my hand wasn't even on the mouse. I overreached for something on the bottom row of the keyboard and, viola! submitted! Hmm. Well, to continue:]

My practice is to deal with the monster newspaper initially by dividing the beast into two piles, the keep and peruse later and the toss without further consideration. It seems easier for me to explain why the items in the cull pile are there than why I retain (at least temporarily) those that I keep.

The cull pile today contains the Jobs section (Headline" Hiring students to tackle holiday traffic) for obvious reasons. My current self-emloyment, though not lucrative, is sufficient and easy. Actually working is hard. I'm not interested. There go 18 pages. Likewise 12 pages of the Classifieds. I like to look at the boat and antique car listings, just for fun, but the first section of the Classifieds is always full of dealership ad's and cars I'm not interested in, with rare exceptions. Also to the floor go the 34 pages of the two Homes sections. We just added onto the house and looked at other houses earlier in the year, finally deciding we couldn't afford new home taxes, much less a new home. The 32-page Zest entertainment section goes. I might read a review ore ad if the rest of the paper weren't so voluminous. But the size of the remaining pile makes my eyes feel tired even now.

The AT&T wireless ad--gone. We've already got sufficient cell phones and service. Likewise the Maytag air conditioner ad from a local mechanical contractor. Comp-USA goes on the pile. Several years ago, I went into a Comp-USA store and needed to use the restroom. I was kind of in a bad way, but the salesman and his boss wre unsympathetic. I could watch the horde of young salesmen come and go, but I would have to go elsewher to some unspecified other store in the shopping area to find one that I could use myself. I've bought four PC's since, but have never again darkened Comp-USA's door and dont intend to.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 14, 2003.


[Aha! It's shift-tab. I'll have to remember that, especially since this doesn't seem to allow regular paragraph style. Hey, that colon- bracket thing looks like an idiot grin. Apropos. Onward:]

CVS Pharmacy is a cull. When the first one opened near our house (there are now several--lack of my business didn't deter them), I browsed and was impressed with their prices. Then the manager told me that I'd have to "join" and get a card, like at Sam's Club, to actually avail myself of he posted prices. I'm not too happy with my Kroger, Randall's, the now-defunct Gerland's and others tracking my personal buying preferences and habits and don't feel I need anothte observer on my paper trail. Interstate battery (don't need one) and GameXCrazy ads--into the pile. Likewise the Amazon.com ad. It seems strange to get ads in a newspaper for things one can only buy over the internet. Garden Ridge goes as well, the reason arising from its stigma a few years ago as a place several women in our church compulsively and rgularly went for worship of clay pots or something. Cull the AOL Broadband ad. Are they affiliated with the yellow pages so they can use the little yellow page guy?

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 14, 2003.


[Drat! (Shaking keyboard)]

Office Depot and Office Max both go onto the pile, though I use them rather indiscriminately for minor office supplies. There's a new Office Depot opening up the street to give the nearby Office Max some competition in our residential suburban setting. Go figure.

I toss a silvery metal folded snowflake hanging thing that advertises Absolut Vodka, but my wife retrieves it to see if my daughter might want it. It just looks like a decoration from a distance. And we don't drink and they do. More computer stuff--Gateway. Maybe I'll look when I need something. The Gateway LCD monitor on my office desk works fine.

Mattress Firm--have bought mattresses there. Don't need one now. Cull. Radio shack--cull pile. The neighborhood Shack had brain-dead but highly opinionated help who had everything except what I needed and asked for far too much personal information the couple of times I went there. I now buy specialty batteries at the new Interstate Battery store where they don't argue with you about personal information or their conviction that being on their mailing list will enhance your life immeasurably.

Old Navy--cull. I'd cull them for their apparently intentionally ugly ads if nothing else. Is it just me or does that ad with Fran Drescher playing the yucking mom of the little black kid in the white family just seem to reek of bad taste (wink, wink)?

The specialty store ads--cull pile. Ulta salon/cosmetics/fragrance. I tried them once, but they didn't have either of the colognes I was looking for. I now use a local fragrance discount store nearby that has what I want and also a lot of those little tabletop sculpture fountains to look at. PetSmart--gone. Our last dog died a few years ago, and we haven't taken the pet plunge again since. Pep Boys-- toss. I have bought things there, but they also hardly ever seem to have what I'm looking for. Toys-R-Us? My wife says we've bought the grandkids presents already. Rack Room Shoes--nah. I've tried the discount shoe stores, and they don't usually handle the running shoes I like, and my wife is hard to fit. Warehouse music, Pier1imports, Dillard's Fossil Watch ad--culls. The Olympus camera ad is strange. It shows cameras and prices, but doesn't say how or where to procure them. It dies, however have a rebate coupon on the back for use when you buy one of the items somewhere for some price (fine print on back: "Prieces may vary by dealer"). What a deal! Toss it.

The Great Indoors is out as are Linens & Things. World Market and Dell computers (which also sends peiodic pamphlets by mail).

So, having lightened the load immediately by about a third, the paper and remaining ads are more manageable.

I heard that Sadaam Hussein was captured in Iraq today, apparently too late to make the Sunday editions. Editors and publishers are no doubt gnashing their teeth nationwide. While writing this, an announcer during a break in the Titans-Bills football game reminds us to stick with his TV network tonight for news on the capture and for the next episode of Survivor. The two items get equal enthusiasm. War, it seems, ain't what it used to be--at least not to the noncombatants back home. Then a commercial comes on where a kid advertising Subway sandwiches is hit below the belt and doubled up by a thrown football. Makes me want a sandwich, how about you? Sometimes I think I am a "stranger in a strange land." Too bad we can't cull everything so easily as the newspaper.

[Whew! Made it without having to start over again! Ahm thuh man! (End zone dunce). Er, I mean dance.]

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 15, 2003.


Sunday papers must be the same the world over. TV also. The hot-off- the-press Iraq news was timed nicely to fit in straight after Survivor (kind of ironic really) :]

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 16, 2003.

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