Filed Replies, Vol. 7
From P. Okafor, Lagos:
I submitted a photograph of my uncle's cassava harvest last month. Three hundred and forty kilograms, grown over eighteen months. I have not heard back. Is the catalogue accepting submissions?
The catalogue is accepting submissions. Whether the catalogue is accepting *this* submission is a different question, and the answer is no. A cultivated crop is eligible under Precedent 2009-03 only if the subject's girth is attributable to selective breeding or deliberate cultivation of the variety itself, not to volume of harvest. Three hundred and forty kilograms of cassava is a *quantity*. A quantity is not a Subject. It is an inventory. Filed objection to the records desk, specifically that the submissions form does not currently make this distinction plain enough, which is a problem I identified in 2014 and which is documented at /about/documents/submissions-freeze/ for anyone who cares to look.
From D. Szymanski, Gdańsk:
The United States has imposed a 34% tariff on imported goods from over ninety countries simultaneously. Is this a cataloguing matter?
A tariff is a girth criterion, applied by a government to a shipment instead of by a cataloguer to a Subject, and the procedural failure here is the same one I see in the submission queue every Tuesday: no methodology stated, no precedent cited, no silhouette test conducted. The Silhouette Test, adopted under Amendment 1991-08 and available at /about/documents/amendment-1991-08/, exists precisely so that a cataloguer cannot simply point at something and declare it thiccc by fiat. Ninety countries at once is not rigorous; it is a first draft. Filed formal notice to the records desk that any policy affecting this many subjects simultaneously requires, at minimum, a methodology memo, and I would refer the relevant parties to November 1999 as a model, available at /about/documents/methodology-memo-1999/, though I recognize they will not read it.
From H. Ferrante, Rome:
I understand there is some kind of office dispute about a stapler. A colleague forwarded me a memo. Is this accurate?
The Swingline 747 stapler on the credenza in my office is not in dispute. Its location is in dispute. Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations, sent a memo on June 3rd stating that the credenza itself "may need to be re-evaluated as a shared resource," which is a sentence that does not survive contact with the Founding Charter, Section II, which addresses the Senior Cataloguer's physical workspace with what I consider adequate clarity, available at /about/documents/founding-charter/. The stapler has been on that credenza since 2009. The credenza has been in that office since before Constance was hired. I have filed a formal grievance, Grievance No. 47 in the Personnel File at /about/documents/personnel-file/, and I expect it will be parked alongside Grievances 14, 22, 31, 38, 41, 44, and the original 2018 complaint about the coffee machine, which has now been broken for sixteen months, not that anyone is counting.
From T. Brannigan, Cork:
My submission of a 2003 Volvo FH16 was rejected on the grounds that it failed the Silhouette Test. The rejection letter said it was "borderline." Borderline seems unfair. Surely it either passes or it does not.
"Borderline" is a legitimate administrative finding under Section IV of the Style Guide, available at /about/style-guide/, and it is not a rejection on the merits so much as a flag for secondary review. The 2003 Volvo FH16 is, I will say without joy, a vehicle that sits in an uncomfortable corridor between adequately proportioned and certifiably thiccc, and the Silhouette Test was designed for exactly this ambiguity. Compare the 1996 Buick entry, which passed by three-quarters of a panel inch and remains one of the most contested approvals in the catalogue's history. What I will not do is pretend the test is imprecise when the test is not imprecise; the *subject* is imprecise. Resubmit with a full lateral photograph taken at ground level from no closer than fifteen meters, as specified in Appendix B of the Style Guide, and the panel will give it a second look.
From R. Lucescu, Bucharest:
I heard your junior cataloguer has been working on a single brief since 2011. Does the publication not have deadlines?
Teddy Whitmore-Adjacent joined the staff on a provisional basis in 2009 and submitted the first draft of the Saturn V brief in 2011, which I returned with corrections. He resubmitted in 2013, 2016, 2019, and again in March of this year, each time with at least one section refiled under a heading it did not belong to. The Saturn V is an unambiguous Subject and I have no objection to the rocket; I have objections to the brief, which continues to cite Precedent 1986-04 for structural girth when 1986-04 applies specifically to vehicles operated under their own propulsion at ground level, as any reading of the Liebherr memo at /about/documents/liebherr-memo/ would clarify. The publication does have deadlines. Teddy is aware of the deadlines. The brief is, as of this writing, back on my credenza, underneath the stapler.