Perforated Faith

What has happened to this country? There are numerous talking heads, here and abroad, who anticipate the fall of the Great American Era. Like Rome, some point to the Goths, Visigoths and Vandals who threaten our gates and seek to bring us down. Others point to internal decay, the detorioration of values or the imposition of fascist rule over the compliant masses that are causes for our end.

All of that is nice, but it has nothing to do with the real cause. These are simply symptoms of the real ill that is at the root of our malaise: we have lost the knowledge of how to perforate. Like previous civilizations that lost the most core ingredients of their societies; steel, glass, cement or paper, we have lost the ability to properly perforate. It matters not what material we are spealing of, they all suck.

Kitchen towel? When was the last time that came off in a neat clean line? Postage stamps? As the price has risen, the incidents of stamp tear have soared exponentially. The line separating individually packed string cheese, toilet paper sheets (quilted or sandpaper), spiral bound notebook paper, facial tissue box tops, fridge pack soft drink sleeves or 12-pack beer cartons. It doesn't matter.

Now many will point to the fact that many of these products are not even made in the United States anymore. That the sucking sound of NAFTA or the continued artificial exchange rate of the Yuan are to blame for America's perforation disfunction. At the start of this, and here I'm a little unsure as I was out of the country until mid-2003, but I put the date of inferior perforation becoming accepted as standard quality somewhere around January 20th, 2001, we could hardly be blamed. Only since then as we have continued to accept the semi-tearable as within tolerance that the blame has come to rest on the shoulders of Pennsylvania Steelers, Detroit Auto workers and the small percentage of California's documented migrant farm workers.

Even the definition has been changed to accommodate the fall in perforation expectations. The commonly accepted defintion today is:

1. A hole or series of holes punched or bored through something, especially a hole in a series, separating sections in a sheet or roll.

Absent is any reference to the holes allowing for separation of the sections. I began to think it was just me. Somehow I had come to expect more of perforation than a man should. My house, as many these days, is void of any hardcopy version of a dictionary, but that didn't mean Ma' didn't have one lurking next to the 1968 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. And sure enough she did. A sleek 1972 version of Webster's with one cover heavily stained and the hinge partially separated. Essentially what would be described as "Collector's condition" on Amazon marketplace. And there it was, page 273 just before "Perform".

per·fo·ra·tion (pûrf-rshn) n. : 1. A hole or series of holes punched or bored through something, especially a hole in a series, separating sections in a sheet or roll, for the purpose of separation.

So next time you are at the Supermarket make sure you let management know you are fed up and you aren't going to take it anymore- that and they should stop putting the sticker on the deli packages so that it makes a hole in the plastic when you open it defeating the purpose of the ziplock! Which explains much of our recent poor showings in international basketball competitions.