Filed Replies, Vol. 15
From P. Okafor, Lagos:
I submitted a photograph of my uncle's Peugeot 504 wagon, which is extremely wide and has been extremely wide since 1987. The catalogue rejected it on silhouette grounds. My uncle is offended. I am offended. The car has not changed its position on being wide.
The Peugeot 504 wagon is a handsome vehicle and your uncle's loyalty to it is, frankly, more than most subjects receive. The rejection, however, is correct. Amendment 1991-08, which adopted the Silhouette Test, requires that width be legible at fifty meters without supplemental context; a wagon body, regardless of its personal history, presents a profile that tapers at the roofline and therefore fails the test at the rear quarter. Filed the rejection notice, with annotation, to the records desk. If your uncle has documentation of lateral expansion since 1987, he may resubmit under Section II.4, though I would not encourage optimism.
From D. Lemaire, Montreal:
Your entry for the Atlantic Giant pumpkin (catalogued March 2009) lists an average circumference of 490 centimeters. I grew one this summer that measured 541 centimeters at the equator. I would like this noted.
It has been noted, in the margin of the Atlantic Giant Decision binder, in pencil, as is appropriate for unverified field data. The 490-centimeter figure cited in the entry represents the catalogue threshold established under Precedent 2009-03, not a ceiling, and your pumpkin's achievement, while respectable, does not alter the entry. If you would like formal recognition, submit the circumference with three independent measurements, the name of the measuring instrument, and a photograph in which the pumpkin is not assisted by favorable perspective. The Atlantic Giant Decision is at /about/documents/atlantic-giant-2009/. I mention this because Teddy has been known to refile the printed copies in the Saturn V drawer, and I cannot guarantee what you would find if you came in person.
From H. Bryce, Tucson:
The coffee in your lobby tastes like it was brewed in a different decade. I visited last Thursday for a tour and the machine was making a sound I can only describe as structural.
That sound is the Bunn-O-Matic failing to complete its heating cycle, a condition first documented internally in March of this year and logged as Grievance No. 47 in the Personnel File. The machine has been in that condition since March. Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations, acknowledged the grievance in an email that used the phrase "parking lot this for Q3," which is now, by my count, the third Q3 in which the matter has been parked. The tour, I hope, was otherwise informative. The ficus in the lobby is not a subject and should not be photographed as one.
From W. Sundaram, Singapore:
I note that the United States has again revised its tariff schedule on imported goods, adding new rate tiers based on country of origin and product weight. As a longtime reader, I wonder what you make of it.
A tariff schedule is a classification system with a girth criterion baked in, and the United States government has, by adding weight-based rate tiers, done something the catalogue has been doing since 1974, which is to say it has acknowledged that mass is a meaningful variable. My concern is methodological. The country-of-origin modifier introduces a provenance clause that the Founding Charter explicitly declined to adopt, on the grounds that a subject is assessed as encountered, not as originated. I filed an opinion to this effect with no particular body, since there is no body that would receive it. The Standing Order on External Bodies, last revised 2024 and available at /about/documents/external-bodies/, does not authorize the catalogue to correspond with trade ministries. I consider this a gap in the Standing Order.
From C. Varga, Budapest:
I would like to submit the concept of confidence as a thiccc subject. It takes up a great deal of space in a room and cannot be ignored.
Confidence is not a subject. Confidence is a behavioral property of subjects, which is a distinction that Section I of the Style Guide draws with some clarity and which I will not re-litigate here. The catalogue assessed a similar submission in 2009 involving "presence" and reached the same conclusion in under four minutes. I understand the intuition; a person with significant confidence does alter the spatial dynamics of a room, and there is a version of this observation that is almost interesting. That version requires a body. Submit the body.