7.19.2011

Exhibit 1.3.16

Things That Confuse Me about the Paperboy Universe



(This is about the Nintendo video game Paperboy not, like, the real paperboy universe which features fewer tornadoes yet considerably more angry dogs. You can play the game here if you're not familiar).

* The audience for the obstacle course. Note: not the obstacle course itself which, somehow, I can fit into my conception of the world. No, it's the people who rise at 5:30 a.m. to sit in bleachers and cheer the rare paperboy who completes his route that make me question the verisimilitude of this game. Too far, I say.

* The newspaper's coverage of its own paperboy hirings and firings. I mean, I can see something in the Community section, but front page? Day after day? When there's breakdancing in the streets and Death roams the city?

* The house painting. I mean, I get deciding to unsubscribe from the local paper is a big decision, but it's not the War of the Roses, here. A good paperboy can avoid throwing papers to yellow houses just as easily as red ones. It's, like, days two through three of the training.

* Housewives chasing paperboys with rollingpins. What is it about the paperboy that turns everyone into this city into Mrs. Capp? And these are subscribers, too. The unsubscribers don't really seem to give a damn, even as you're breaking their windows. Of course, they might get cut down like a bunch of dirty Lancasters, so they probably just don't leave their houses at all.

* The tombstones in the front yards. It just sends a bad message to the breakdancers.

4 comments:

jimStock said...

Look forward to the millennial version in which the paperboy must troubleshoot senior citizen ipad newspaper subscriptions.

"Where do I click again??"

A. Peterson said...

I'm not sure I understand this Ayn Rand reference, Jimmy.

jimStock said...

'Anthem' really lost me.

jimStock said...

Remember how you can knock the car off its jack and mercilessly crush the shady-tree mechanic?

And who takes their paper in their mailbox?
People from Florida that's probably who.