The Yellow Pages arrived on my porch a couple of weeks ago. At first I wasn’t sure what brick of paper was blocking the top of my stairs as I thought the Yellow Pages had gone the way of the telephone booth. But no. Someone within the Yellow Pages organization still thinks a physical directory is essential. The Yellow Pages are published by the Yellow Pages Group, which proudly states on its website that it owns and manages Canada’s most visited online directories. Clearly there is a disconnect here. Maybe that’s why they recently booted out Marc Tellier, the CEO, but not before slipping him about $4.3 million in cash to smooth his departure. In case you are interested, the search for his replacement is now underway, as long as you are someone “who has had some experience with emerging technologies around digital media”. Good idea. I’m guessing that was not a major component of Mr. Tellier’s resume. Anyhow, we have a brand new paper version of the Yellow Pages and I think it is only practical and environmentally correct to figure out what to do with it.
1. The most obvious use is the time honoured tradition of using phone books as booster seats. But why stop there? How about pressing flowers and autumn leaves at the same time.
2. Feats of strength, especially at Festivus, are well suited to the Yellow Pages. Apparently it is easier to rip it in half if you bake it in the oven first to make it brittle. Let me know if that works.
3. Continuing on the fitness theme, you could also pitch in with your neighbours and duct tape a few books together to make an aerobics stair step. Just make sure you use it inside instead of outside.
4. Learn origami. You could probably recreate the entire Tale of the 10,000 Yellow Swans using a single book of Yellow Pages.
5. If origami is beyond your artistic ability, you could make strings of paper dolls. Or if that is also too much of a challenge, just make garlands of paper chain.
6. You should also be able to fashion at least one paper dress per book. They are currently selling vintage 1960s paper dresses on eBay for $422 dollars. Surely a brand new one would be equally as lucrative.
7. For ultimate hipster irony, why not create a papier mache version of the Yellow Pages out of Yellow Pages paper? You’re welcome.