My Sunday paper will arrive in five hours. Using my psychic powers, I will predict its contents.
The Sunday paper will contain 60% advertisements, 10% comics, 3% “Parade” and local weekly magazine, 5% TV section, and 22% news content.
The ads
Aaron Brothers is having a 1-cent frame sale. For unexplained reasons, I will receive three of these sales flyers.
Clump o’ random ads #1, aka “SmartSource magazine” – coupons for highly-processed breakfast cereals, highly-processed luncheon meats, highly-processed bread condiments, porcelain collector mugs (for those without access to eBay) and various cleaning supplies.
Clump o’ random ads #2, aka “Valassis” – Dietary products using Enron accounting practices to tabulate calories, fat and carbohydrates; feminine hygeine products; porcelain collector statuettes; herbal supplements; the United Airlines VISA card
JC Penney Ad #1 — 25% discount prices on stuff I don’t need right now.
JC Penney Ad #2 — huge, mega bonus sale, one day only!!
Large drug store chains (Rite Aid, Walgreens, Longs Drugs) — I honestly can’t tell these ads apart without looking for a logo. They’re too busy and employ a 3-point font. Each has a loss-leader like milk or epsom salt.
Big box electronics vendors — Best Buy, Circuit City, and three others I can’t think of right now will all have large TVs with crudely-Photoshopped screens depicting, oh, football or some cultural reference that sails right by me. (This isn’t hard to do.)
Michael’s will have a “40% off one item” coupon, just like last week. Considering everything they sell is imported and has, I’m guessing, a 90% gross margin, they’re not worried I’ll buy just one item a week. When I took the photography class, I was seriously considering getting a matte cutter. These puppies are in the $100 range.
Sears features the million-piece Craftsman toolset. I don’t know anyone who’s bought one, but I will gaze longingly at the page before skipping through the appliances.
Comics
Berkeley Breathed is (still) back, and again, I won’t get it. Dilbert has something funny about schedule chicken or marketing. I don’t recognize most of the other comics.
TV section — dedicated to the telethon.
News
The election is still going on, George leads John by 43 kumquats in hyperbolic ancestry whiel John leads George by 37 watt-yards in thermoplexiglass. Margin of error, +/- 19 horsepower.
The economy three months ago looked better or worse, depending on whether you’re employed right now; the budget deficit is $400 billion dollars (more than the GDP of Finland and Sweden combined); the airlines are all going to default on their employee pension plans; Intel’s earnings will be scrutinized further.
Jobs
Will feature some career requiring three generations of family nepotism or a declining industry.
Today’s paper was 75% advertisements because of the extended weekend holiday.
Michael’s had a 50% off coupon, good for this weekend only.
There were numerous excellent deals at the grocery store: milk $1.89/gallon (regularly $3.99), organic peaches $0.99/lb (normally $2.99), and eggs three dozen for $2.50.
As expected, all of the big name electronic stores had poorly Photoshopped images of football or stock families.