Today, a set of phone books was delivered to us for the THIRD TIME since we moved in to this apartment, which was about five months ago. It's no longer one book like when I was a kid. It's THREE.
There's the O‘ahu Yellow Pages, the O‘ahu White Pages, and something that I've never heard of called the O‘ahu Mobile Companion. You can tell which one is the Mobile Companion because instead of being 8x10x1, this one is about 7x8x1.5 which, if my math is right, makes it BIGGER. Together, they're about eight inches thick, and I estimate you can probably get around 20 sets of them from one small tree.
The books themselves are a marvel of marketing overload. They come in a nice big plastic non-biodegradable bag which advertises various things, including an insurance company that carries one car, two motorcycle, and one renters policy for me, which is all the things I can possibly insure. Each book is full of the regular type of phone book ads, but these also have little detachable fridge magnets stuck to the covers with ads on them. There are ads stamped on the sides of the pages, so when the book is closed and the pages are stacked neatly, there's an ad. There are ads printed on the spines of the books. The backs are full-page ads. The fronts have little ads too.
The bag touts "environmental responsibility" and tells me to recycle my old phone books. That'd be a good idea, except Hawaii does not have recycling as part of its waste management services. There is a recycling center on our block, but I think they only take cans and bottles. So, in order to do the environmentally responsible thing, I need to throw these things in the car and drive them somewhere, burning probably the same amount of fossil fuel that was used to get them to me in the first place.
I haven't used a phone book since, I estimate, 1997. That's when I first got a dedicated internet connection in my home and could look up stuff more easily. Now, I know not everyone is on the cutting edge of technology, but for fuck's sake it's almost 2010. Just about everyone I know has the ability to look up anything that you'd find in the phone book, in a third of the time, on their phone. They can then have the phone dial the number for them, and in some cases have the phone hold a conversation with the person who answers.
Also - and here's the sweet part - I DON'T HAVE A FUCKING PHONE LINE from the phone company. I have a cell phone and I have a number on Skype which rings to my laptop. I don't even know if this apartment has a phone jack in it anywhere.
This is like junk mail times 10,000. So annoying.
This isn't over, Hawaii Telecom. If I have to drive these things anywhere, it's going to be to your office, and they're going to be on fire.
