New Day #25

Read the Yellow Pages today. The whole thing, starting with "Abortion" and ending with "Zoo."

I didn't mean to. Since the advent of Your Friend and Mine the Internet, I've come to resent the immense, unwanted waste of paper delivered annually to my doorstep.

Here's a picture of what I wished I'd done with them:

But since I'm looking for ideas for New Things, I thought I'd kick it Old School and let my fingers do the walking instead of clicking. As I opened up the neglected tome, I realized that I've never actually sat down and read the damn thing cover-to-cover.

I know, why would I? Still, it was fascinating. Some fun facts:

Categories with the most pages

Attorneys
Auto
Dentists
Insurance
Physicians
Restaurants

Much in the way you can tell a lot about a culture by its tallest building, these listings indicate we are a litiginous, car-obsessed nation with no universal health care and an obesity epidemic.

Categories it never would have occurred to me to look up

Archeologists
Artificial Eyes
Beekeepers
Grain Inspection ("Hello? I have some grain that needs inspecting...")
Meth Lab Cleanup
Nuts-Edible (As opposed to what? Nuts-Hazardous?)
Potatoes
Square Dance Apparel

Categories I have no idea what they mean

Bentonite
Crankshaft Grinding
Forgings
Ignition Interlock Devices
Refractories
Stevedoring Contractors
Terrazzo
Thermocouples

Of course, now I'm going to have research these to find out what they mean. So I guess it's back to Your Friend and Mine.