Filed Replies, Vol. 6
From T. Okafor, Lagos:
I submitted a photograph of my uncle's prize-winning pumpkin for consideration last October. Nine months later, nothing. Is the catalogue even accepting submissions?
The catalogue is accepting submissions. The catalogue has always been accepting submissions, which is, if you ask me, the core of the problem. Your uncle's pumpkin, however, requires routing through the Atlantic Giant Decision (March 2009, Precedent 2009-03), which established that cultivated and selectively bred subjects are eligible under Section II.4, provided the cultivator can document intent to maximize girth rather than, say, flavor. Nine months is not, by any standard, an unreasonable wait; Teddy has been working on the Saturn V brief since 2011. Filed a routing note to Teddy's desk, which he will refile somewhere else, and we will all be here again in October.
From P. Blumenthal, Cincinnati:
My neighbor insists his riding lawnmower qualifies as a thiccc vehicle. I say it does not. He has asked me to write you for a ruling.
Your neighbor is wrong and I say this without reviewing a single photograph. The riding lawnmower is a narrow machine, purposefully so, designed to pass between obstacles; its entire engineering premise is the avoidance of girth. If your neighbor believes the rear-deck housing constitutes qualifying volume, he is welcome to submit under the Silhouette Test (Amendment 1991-08, /about/documents/amendment-1991-08/), at which point the submission will be evaluated, held to the lateral-plane standard, and declined. The 1996 Buick entry, for reference, passed Amendment 1991-08 on the first review. A lawnmower is not a 1996 Buick. Filed a form rejection pre-notice to the submissions queue so the paperwork is ready when he writes in.
From D. Achterberg, Portland:
The ficus in your lobby has its own entry in the catalogue. I saw it listed. I just wanted to say I think that's charming.
Nothing about that ficus entry is charming. A houseplant is not, by any defensible reading, a Subject, and the entry in question was filed without my knowledge during a period in November 2019 when I was on mandatory leave (see Personnel File, Grievance No. 41, and Constance's response, which opens "Hi Bart!" and uses the word "perspective" four times). The entry has not been removed because the Publisher, Bertram Whitmore, is reachable by post only, currently via the Margaret IV, and the letter I sent in February has presumably not yet cleared the Panama Canal. The ficus itself is, I will grant you, a large ficus. That is not the point.
From R. Voss, Brussels:
The European Union has proposed new regulations on the labeling of "oversized" goods for cross-border transit. As a cataloguing authority, do you have a view?
The EU's proposed framework, as reported, defines "oversized" by a three-axis measurement standard with national variance permitted at the member-state level. That is not a standard. That is seventeen standards wearing a single standard's coat. The Thiccctionary resolved this question in 1974 via the Founding Charter, which establishes a single silhouette-based criterion, subsequently refined by Amendment 1991-08. What Brussels has produced is the equivalent of allowing each cataloguer to maintain a personal style guide; I have seen what happens when you allow that, because Teddy did it, and now there are two active Saturn V briefs and no one can locate the original. The EU should contact this office. We will not respond quickly, but we will respond correctly.
From G. Fairweather, Halifax:
I understand the coffee machine has been broken since March. Has it been repaired?
March of this year, you mean, or March in the general sense, because the machine has been nonfunctional since March 2023, with a brief and disputed window in August 2024 when Constance declared it "operational" based on one successful cup produced for a visiting advertiser. Filed objection to the records desk that same afternoon (Personnel File, Grievance No. 47). Constance's response, dated three weeks later, indicated the matter had been "parked for Q3 review," which is what she said in 2018 about the previous machine, a Bunn NHBX that I maintain is still under warranty. I have been using the gas station on Meridian. It is a four-minute walk in any weather. I have made my peace with none of this.