I'm so glad TV is shittier than usual from April until October. My mind says, "Thank you."

Like some people I could name.

Oh, and jameyb, you probably wouldn't be surprised, but the people who's job it is to actually deliver these tree-killers do exactly that as well.

About a zillion years ago, I briefly had a job delivering phone books, and I figured out the routine pretty quick: 1.) find all the office complexes on your route and leave 2 - 3 times the required number of books based on business occupancy; 2.) deliver residential books, one set per household for about two hours of your scheduled time; 3.) dispose of the remainder in a convenient garbage dumpster (this being in the days before paper recycling was mandatory); 4.) lather, rinse, repeat.

By the time the phone company figured out what you'd done, you'd already cashed their measely checks and moved on to a more lucrative job.

You don't need a website to be on the web, that is why google is so great. I wonder if phone book companies can be fined or sued for wasting precious space in landfills. Can you recycle a phone book? How much waste is created by these companies a year.

While the traditional paper phone book is quickly becoming obsolete in the hipster internet world, there are a lot of people who are not particularly internet savvy, or don't have access. My parents still use the phone book as much as they did 20 years ago. They'll probably continue to use traditional phone books as long as they keep appearing on their doorstep once a year.

But Ken, seriously, probably half or more of your precious phone books get tossed or recycled without ever being cracked. That is a lot of dead trees for nothing. Time to catch up to reality. Dex needs to figure out a new distribution system. Figure out how to get paper phone books to the people who want them without deforesting half the state printing all those fucking books that people don't want. Opening one of those tomes once a year does not justify printing them.

And quit with the bitter act. Your revenue relies on justifying your fees to businesses. You justify your fees by telling them how many bazzilion phone books you print and distribute (without mentioning that half of them get tossed). If you were truthful about your real distribution, you couldn't justify your fees. You have a financial incentive to print and distribute as many phone books as you can crank off the presses, regardless of what a waste it is. Environmentally, that is a shitty business model.

I don't think they should be BANNED, of course (my internet was down for three days last week, and I still needed to order a pizza. Thanks, Dex!).

Weed for lunch again. Sorry.

There's probably two dozen phone books in my apartment lobby that have been sitting there for 3+ weeks. Can he dump them at the Verizon/Dex/MaBell door for me?

"• Those books that he is so annoyed about where referenced over 15 billion times last year by US adults..."

Am I weird or is that a misspelling of "were?"

Now, he's probably right that there are 21 million households that still use dial up. My parents do, but they're 60 and 62. I have a feeling that the majority of those 21 million households are the same, and I really, truly, sincerely doubt that most industries want to hitch their wagons to that demographic.

That's where whitepages.com & yellowpages.com come in real handy. I don't think I've had to use a phone book, except perhaps at a payphone or a non-internet savvy relative's home since about 1993.

What a load of bullshit. Can Clarks claim that the Dex phone books are typeset by hand with a straight face? Nearly every modern book today is in electronic form before being printed. It's called data conversion, Ken. I could do it with a Dex CD. Books don't start as paper anymore, they start as data.

"With 40% of small businesses still without websites"

...there ought to be a huge market for setting them up with ones, so that they can get with the 21st Century, because they're going to suffer without that exposure, if they don't already.

This is true.

"I'm SOMEBODY! I'm in the PHONE BOOK!"

...Who needs to call the corner market, though? "Hi there. Haven't run out of cigarettes today, have you? Okay, I'll be down later..."

aren't you all a little late on beach season... but always right on time with bitch session.

I would have to wait in line forever for our order without the phone book.

Everything was ready and tasty for us without having to wait thanks to the phone book.

Neither of us have cellphones, so we don't remember phone numbers off of our heads.

Thank you for phone books, please don't stop!

To all of you sanctimonious cellphone users... FUCK YOU!!!

My books (trees) are still sitting on my steps in their plastic bag (oil) because my lazy ass doesn't feel like picking up the now-spider-infested bag and opening it to remove and recycle the books and trash the bag. Tragic, all of it.

The rest of us sanctimonious fuckers want to be able to at least refuse a copy (or in many cases, multiple copies) of the phone book. It is something that we never use. Distributing such a large tome to so many people who just dump them in the bin is incredibly wasteful. We find this waste of resources upsetting, much like you do when waiting "forever" in a line.

Dummy.

Can you imagine what kind of weekly numbers the Stranger could charge for if it were distributed by leaving piles of 20 on the doorstep of every building in Seattle, its unused copies never picked up?

I think phone books can be useful on occasion, and I'd like to see a system where they first come a leave a notice at residences asking something like "Check Yes or No if you'd like a phone book delivered", then when they return, the appropriate number of books are left, or they could just do mass mailers of a number you can call to get one.

If they want to keep wasting paper by carpet bombing whole cities with their publication, maybe it's time the Audit Burea took a look at the circulation numbers they purport.