Filed Replies, Vol. 8
From T. Okafor, Nairobi:
I submitted a photograph of my uncle's Peugeot 504 last spring. It is very thiccc. The wheels alone. You never replied. Is the catalogue still operating?
The catalogue is still operating. Whether it is operating well is a separate question I have filed with the Personnel File under Grievance No. 47, where it will age alongside its predecessors. Your Peugeot 504 submission - if it arrived via the submissions portal and not, as several recent ones did, addressed to "The Thiccctionary, Somewhere in London," which is not our address - is in queue. The wheel flare on a 504 is not nothing; I will say that much publicly. However, "the wheels alone" is an observation, not a measurement, and Section III.2 of the Style Guide requires dimensional confirmation before any vehicular subject clears initial review. Resubmit with documentation. Include a reference object for scale. A Swingline 747 stapler is acceptable.
From D. Pilkington, Norwich:
My neighbour insists his new hot tub qualifies as a thiccc subject. I maintain it does not. He has started showing people a printout he says is from your website. Please clarify.
I cannot clarify without seeing the printout, because there is a non-trivial chance your neighbour printed something from the website of a different publication - this has happened, and the memory sits in the credenza in my office in a manila folder labelled "The Norwich Incidents (2019-present)." A hot tub fails the Silhouette Test under Amendment 1991-08 for the same reason a bathtub fails it: what reads as girth is, on inspection, negative space. The volume of the object is water. Filed objection to the submissions desk, as a standing note, that hot tubs be added to the pre-screened rejection list alongside trampolines and most yurts. That note is from 2021. It remains in the queue.
From P. Strand, Oslo:
The G20 nations appear to be in an extended dispute over trade tariffs. As a Scandinavian I find the entire spectacle undignified. Do you have a view?
A tariff is a girth criterion applied to goods at the border, and a girth criterion, properly applied, requires a methodology. What is being applied here is not a methodology; it is a sequence of announcement-sized press releases with no supporting documentation, no dimensional reference, and no Section II.4 analysis of whether the subject was cultivated or selectively bred to achieve its current size. The Atlantic Giant Decision (March 2009, Precedent 2009-03) resolved exactly this kind of ambiguity for the catalogue, in fifteen pages, with three appendices, and it was done once. The G20 has been resolving the same question since 1999 and charges considerably more for the privilege. Filed note to myself, in the credenza, second drawer: nations that cannot produce a style guide by the third meeting of a dispute should be placed in provisional status, same as late submissions.
From A. Kowalski, Chicago:
Why is there a ficus in your lobby? I visited last Tuesday. It is very large but I would not call it thiccc. It seems out of place.
The ficus is out of place. I have said this since 2017. The ficus was placed in the lobby by Margie Whitmore, Travel Editor, who sourced it from a market in Lisbon and had it shipped at the publication's expense under a line item Constance Pribyl approved as "ambient editorial investment," which is not a budget category that exists in the Founding Charter at /about/documents/founding-charter/ or anywhere else I have been able to locate. A houseplant is not a Subject. The ficus is not under review. It is not in the catalogue. It sits in the lobby because no one with the authority to remove it will answer a memo in fewer than six weeks, and Bertram is reachable only by post, which buys the ficus another month minimum. I have noted my position on the ficus in Grievance No. 41, Grievance No. 44, and, after the incident with the watering can and the 1996 Buick entry binder, Grievance No. 47.
From R. Fenn, Bristol:
I understand the coffee machine has been broken since March. This seems like a solvable problem. Have you considered simply purchasing a new one?
March of this year would make it four months. The machine in question has been broken, in various configurations, since March 2022, and before that was broken from November 2019 to February 2020, and I have stopped tracking the intervals because the tracking itself was consuming more time than the coffee would have recovered. Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations, promised a Q3 review of the machine in 2018. Q3 of 2018 ended. Q3 of 2026 is three weeks away, and I have prepared a one-page summary document, cross-referenced to the Personnel File, in the event she would like to revisit the commitment. The suggestion to simply purchase a new one is noted, is logical, and has been made by me, in writing, on seven separate occasions, each time parked in a document Constance refers to as the "parking lot," which is, as far as I can determine, a folder on a shared drive that no one has opened since the methodology review of 2019. The coffee is from a petrol station down the road. It is not thiccc. It is barely coffee.