#180 Listener Dump

A listener called the station the other day. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an ultra-liberal complaining about me being too conservative or an ultra-conservative complaining about me being too liberal. That’s the problem with being a reasonable, middle-of-the-road, moderate, human being. All the extremists and zealots think you’re a pansy. Fine with me. I can’t remember the last time a pansy strapped on a belt full of explosives and suicide-bombed a wedding.
In any event, this listener had a beef, and he wanted to see if perhaps he could implore Funny Guy to word bomb it a little. To wit. Why is it that we condone the local newspapers dumping off a boatload of trash on our lawns every Wednesday?
Now I can’t say I suffer from a similar problem. But I remember from when I lived closer in that indeed, come Wednesday morning, a free “special” issue of the newspaper would be unceremoniously dumped off in the front yard of my humble abode. The special issue wasn’t a full-bore paper in those days. The bulk of said “special” issue was advertisements, or as they say in other English speaking countries, AdVERTtisements. By the way, newspaper getters, I get the same thing by mail every Wednesday. Without even an attempt at a pseudo-newspaper wrap.
But the effect is the same. I briefly look at the “have-you-seen- me card” to make sure my Alzheimer’s hasn’t kicked in again, establish that there are no pizza coupons I’m likely to use and then pitch the whole thing directly in my recycling, which is conveniently located in my garage on the way into my back door. What a waste of valuable trees.
But my listener is right. At least when they mail it they’ve paid some socially acceptable surcharge for giving me a boatload of trash. Dumping it on my lawn smacks of vandalism. Who and/or what gives them the right to dump a bunch of soon-to-be-sodden newspaper on my lawn that I have to then go out pick up and arrange transportation to the dump for myself, adding to my waste stream and possibly tipping me over the edge of my pre-assigned trash bucket space limit? Cause it couldn’t go in my recycling cause one of my neighbor’s free range Rottweilers decided once in his life to use his house training and leave a dump of his own on the only available newspaper in sight, namely the one on my lawn dumped there by the ad prostitutes that flatter themselves with the name keeper of the public trust.
Not a very community-minded newspaper thing to do at all, and not, as my listeners put it, a very class act. One, in fact, that may call for a little class action.
America, ya gotta love it.