0524 - Mags

The benevolent Post Office in Anguilla has procured a Dallas, Texas Post Office Box where all Anguillians (for a fee) can have their mail sent to a U.S. address. This works fine, or at least it works fine for U.S. sellers who are not too lazy to walk to the Post Office (many insist on UPS). For magazines, the charge is EC$2 a pop, and the same for catalogs. The OO immediately subscribed to a lot of new magazines at cheap rates. Our Steward ordered assorted stuff like long-nose pliers, and other life essentials. Then, the unwanted mail began to stream in.

The first insult was a demand from one Tom DeLay, not our model legislator, to get up the money for his local party, an obscure and warlike group that gerrymanders. Then, Readers, no one ever said the American merchandiser is lazy, and the flood of catalogs began. Every conceivable lump of merchandise was covered, from automatic watch winders to Victorian mahogany bath fixtures, to some really offensive fabrics, furniture you wouldn’t put in your garage, and thousands of outdoor grilling gadgets of no earthly use. Each catalog costs us that EC$2 fee, which is adding up, and the Postmistress has begged us users to stop the flow. The OO has printed a terse message which goes back to the sender of the catalog, urging abstention. We shall see.

Meanwhile, the magazines stream in, to the delight of the Staff, which needs to be kept up to the minute. But, bear with us, the magazines are nearly unreadable. It is not just the “blow-in” subscription cards, abut five an issue. It is the heavy fold-out front and back covers which prevent you from even accessing your text. It is the stiff cardboard full pages or even brochures, bound in, that prevent you from opening the mag to your destined page. It is the dozen or so bound in reply cards for every advertiser, all ready to tear out and mail in – try to tear out and your magazine disintegrates. One recent page even contained a rotary dial gizmo for changing the color of the roof on the displayed Mini Cooper. Thanks for the toy.

Worst of all is the practice of binding in special advertising sections We don’t mind ads, but these sections are not paginated. Just try to find page 128 when there are 15 or so unnumbered pages before and 8 after. And then, particularly at this time of year, the magazines are so anxious to sell the (probably expensive) early pages for ads, that you are lucky even to be able to find the Contents. In a recent fashion issue of The New Yorker, there must have been 25 pages of undies and impractical shoes. Exhausting.

We must note, for non-Anguillian readers, that this island is greener than it ever has been in recent memory. We have had six solid days of rain, heavy rain, almost unheard of here. This morning, the sun was briefly glimpsed, and small children were heard asking parents “What’s that?” Unfortunately, this was the time that some gift money came in from Europe, and all the roads are torn up for rebuilding, and have become impassable mud holes. If you come visit, and you should, you really should, we will be dried out and re-surfaced. All surprised plants are blooming like mad, and all will be fresh and new – except our ideas, of course.

A final word to those who didn’t like our noting the results of the current Iraq policy (like worldwide anger at the U.S. for cowboy-ism and phony WMD excuses, not to mention a Muslim jihad). Thanks for your comments. You are, regrettably, dead wrong.

Next time: Cross-Border [OO #525]

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