Filed Replies, Vol. 12
From T. Okafor, Columbus:
My submission last month was a prize-winning Atlantic Giant pumpkin, 2,749 lbs. You rejected it. The Atlantic Giant Decision of 2009 explicitly covers cultivated subjects. I have read the precedent. Have you?
I catalogued it in 1986. I was there.
Precedent 2009-03 (see /about/documents/atlantic-giant-2009/) does cover selectively bred subjects under section II.4, yes, and your pumpkin may well qualify on girth. The rejection, which I reviewed this morning before my second attempt at the coffee machine, was issued on provenance grounds: your submission form listed the weigh-off date as "sometime in October," which is not a date. A date has a number. Filed notice of the provenance deficiency to the records desk. Resubmit with a calendar.
From P. Stanhope, Raleigh:
I'd like to nominate the United States federal tariff schedule as a thiccc subject. That document is enormous. I printed it. My printer made a noise I've never heard before.
The tariff schedule is not a subject; it is a classification system, and I will not have the Thiccctionary cannibalize its own methodology. That said, I take the reader's point structurally: a tariff is, at its core, a girth criterion applied to commerce. If a shipment fails to clear the threshold, it is turned away, which is precisely what I do with underdocumented submissions every Tuesday. The relevant governments would benefit from a proper style guide. Ours is available at /about/style-guide/ and has been since 1987. Filed the observation to no one in particular, because there is no one in particular to file it to.
From R. Mwangi, Nairobi:
I work in your building. The ficus in the lobby has been there since before I started and it is very large. Is it in the catalogue?
It is not, and it will not be. A houseplant is not, by any defensible reading, a Subject, and I have the personnel file entries to prove I've held this position consistently since at least 2019 (see Grievance No. 38, filed April of that year, after someone - I will not name Teddy, but it was Teddy - left a Post-it note on the pot that said "prospective entry?"). The ficus is a tenant. It pays no rent, it has filed no submission, and it has not undergone the Silhouette Test as required under Amendment 1991-08. Good morning to you, though. The lobby is, I'll grant, a reasonable place to work.
From D. Featherstone, Glasgow:
Bart, it's been six months since you mentioned the coffee machine. Has it been fixed?
It has not. Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations, "parking-lotted" my most recent written request on July 31st with a reply that opened "Hi Bart!" and contained the phrase "we'll revisit in Q3," which is a sentence she has been generating, in various forms, since 2018. The machine itself is a Bunn VPS, purchased in 2019, and it currently produces a sound on startup that I can only describe as editorial. My grievance is logged. There are now forty-seven entries in the Personnel File. I have been keeping count because someone has to.
From C. Holtz, Portland:
I submitted a regulation-size NBA basketball. Round. Uniformly round. In what universe does a sphere qualify under your girth criteria?
This one, potentially, under section II.4 of the Style Guide, which does not exclude radial subjects, only requires that girth be measurable and verifiable at the widest cross-section. A basketball's circumference runs 29.5 inches by league specification, which clears the preliminary threshold. The rejection you received - and I am looking at the carbon copy now, in the file cabinet to the left of my credenza - was issued because you submitted a photograph of a basketball on a couch rather than the basketball itself, and we are a physical-measurement publication, not a home-decor blog. The couch, incidentally, was not submitted either, which is its own conversation.