Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Yellow Pages offer strange new services

The new Hawaiian Telecom phone directory is out, and you'll be happy to know there are separate books for the White and Yellow Pages, not the one massive book of years past that created its own gravitational field and took a team of muscle-bound piano movers to get into your house.

As regular readers know, I scan the Yellow Pages each year to find out what weird services are available. I do this by looking at the category headings on the top of each page, which contain the first service or business listed on the page and the last. The unintended consequences of grouping two diverse services together causes the imagination to run wild. For instance, the top of the first page of the new Yellow Pages lists "Abdominal-Accountants." I guess these are for people who can stomach regular accountants.

The strange thing is that no matter how many new businesses are listed each year or how the number of pages vary, some of the same page headings continue to be created. Some of our old favorites still found in the new phone book include:

» Burglar-Buses (for those big break-in jobs).

» Fireproofing-Fish (to keep your carp from bursting into flames).

» Funeral-Furniture (when you don't take death lying down).

» Tattooing-Tax (like the taxes on everything else, but it just hurts more).

The new Yellow Pages offer some great new services. Here are some actual page headings and a guess as to their uses:

» Cellular-Cesspool (the deep digital mess telephoning has become. Can you hear me now?)

» Childrens-Chiropractors (when your kid needs to be straightened out)

» Demolition-Dentists (for those really tough tooth extractions)

» Escrow-Excavating (for digging yourself further into debt)

» Hair-Handyman (puts a few extra "shingles" on the old noggin when needed)

» Hurricane-Hypnotists ("Your house did not blow away. Your house did not blow away ...")

» Invalid-Investigators ("Let me take a look at those crutches, Mr. Jones.")

» Leak-Lecture (annual rant by the head of the Board of Water Supply)

» Liquor-Loans (It's about time.)

» Manapua-Manufacturers (Dim sum great builders!)

» Marine-Market (where to go when shopping around for a few good men)

» Needlework-Noodles (the finest in handcrafted saimin and fettuccini)

» Nursing-Nuts (They're just crazy about the medical profession.)

» Oil-Ophthalmologists (They can see when a barrel of crude is going higher.)

» Party-Pathological (abnormal social gatherings to swig margaritas and wear lampshades on your head)

» Pizza-Plant (Don't you wish you had one growing in your house?)

» Pneumatic-Podiatrists (I have no idea what these guys do, but it sounds like a pain in the foot.)

» Social-Soil (the dirt dished on friends at pathological parties)

» Rubbish-Safes (where to keep those valuable cans and bottles until you turn them in for cash)