Wednesday, November 14, 2007

I'm really glad the New York Shipping Association put up this ad for the ports of New York and Newark, because I used to load and unload my dry shipping all on my own, with the cargo ships dropping anchor in my driveway and holding the steel shipping containers in my front yard, but it looks like contracting that to an outfit that's not twelve miles inland, and with stevedores and giant cranes, will be a lot more efficient. Now if I could only find someone to deliver my mail for me and a place to land my 747.

In my first reading of the ad, though, with the foreign couple and the line "From brides to bulldozers..." I thought the port was advertising their smuggling operation for mail-order brides and eastern European prostitutes into the U.S. Turns out they're just talking about importing wedding dresses and silverware, but I have little doubt that the Port Authority has more skill with shrinkage and political graft than they do with wordcraft.

2 comments:

Mike said...

Port Elizabeth actually has serious competition from other eastern ports like Baltimore. It's not deep enough to hold the newest and largest container ships, and needs to be dredged. Of course, I'm not sure what good and ad is supposed to do about that.

Jay said...

Okay, that makes sense. The ad is supposed to encourage us to write our legislator in support of increased port funding. I'm thinking that it's not working too well.