straight from delivery to recycling

so today . . . i realized that the plastic bag our new telephone directory was delivered in was more valuable than the telephone directory itself. i am not kidding.

there are sooooo many things wrong with this picture!

first of all, who even uses a telephone directory anymore? you have to KNOW how alphabetical order works in order to find anything. and even if you know your abc's (as anyone over the age of five should,) where does the name mcdonald's fit? does it go after the words that begin with mb and before the words that begin with md? (hey, we live in l.a.--trust me, it could happen!) or does it go at the very beginning of the m's? or would i find it right after the mac's? and if i'm using the yellow pages, would it be under restaurants? or fast food? or hamburgers? or shortcuts to a heart attack?? and if you are looking for psychiatrists, remember that the word starts with a silent p--don't go looking for it in the s's. unless you are looking for surgeons. but wouldn't they be listed with the doctors? you see??

and it is time-consuming. a lot of page flipping goes on to find what you are looking for. do you want doctors or physicians? cars or automobiles? dentists or masters of torture? lakers or devil's spawn--no wait, that was a different blog . . . and then, if you don't know exactly how to spell what you are looking for, there is even more page turning--is the correct spelling jewelery or jewelry? because if you are using the phone book, you had better know! it will not ask you did you mean jewelry? like google does.

we all have the technology in our pockets to find whatever we are looking for, and either order it to be delivered right to our house or find a map that tells us how to get to it. even elementary school kids have cell phones with internet access and are probably much more adept at using the apps than i am. all of this makes our need for an actual telephone directory kind of obsolete--unless you just want to show how strong you are by ripping it in half (which, according the the myth busters i just watched, is not all that hard. although, i haven't tried it yet.)

but what i really want to know is this--why is our telephone directory delivered in a plastic bag? when was the last time it rained here? ok, the ground was damp in the morning a couple of weeks ago, but that was the result of night time rain. when was the last time it rained during the day? hmmm?? and since the phone books are delivered during the daylight hours, the plastic bags seem a bit unnecessary--unless they are worried about fading or dust. it just seems to me that if the plastic bags are the environmental evil they are purported to be, putting one on every telephone book delivered to every household in the l.a. metropolitan area might not be the best idea.

especially since they are now illegal in the state of california . . .