Of Boobs
One of the most onerous items of our early history was confusion of our sincere literary effort with those of a bust-and-fondle magazine out of Australia --- also named RALPH --- funded, in part, if you will believe it, by Bill Gates.
Readers would go online seeking a recent volume of Buddhist 16th Century poetry or a history of English seafaring or a study of 17th Century Anti-Reformation Purges and would often found themselves confronted with shots of ladies in dishabilles lounging naughtily back in a hot-tub somewhere in the outskirts of Perth.
Our complaints to the management of this other RALPH had little effect ... although they were kind enough to feature us in one issue ... sans lace, stockings and those topless do-dads so favored by the twenty to thirty-five-year-old booze-and-lust gang. Our hits quintupled during that particular week.
Fortunately, this other RALPH went bust. An item that contributed to their demise was a loss of what they explained to the press as "130,000 boobs," afloat somewhere in the vasty reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
This was the news item that we recently discovered online, with this headline:
The story went on:
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More than 130,000 inflatable boobs have been lost at sea on their way to Australia. The missing booby booty is estimated to be worth about $200,000.
Men's magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue.
The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3 billion of debt.
The shipment of plastic boobs from China had been missing for more than a week after Chinese officials lost the paperwork and put them on the wrong boat, a Ralph magazine spokeswoman said.
She said the container left a dock in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week.
The magazine has put out an all-points bulletin to shipping authorities to see if they have the container, but if they don't turn up in the next 48 hours it will be too late for the next issue, she said.
Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine.
"Unless Somali pirates have stolen them its difficult to explain where they are," Pintado told AAP.
"If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know."
There was, as there always is in Fondlelandia, a happy if somewhat moist ending.
News.com.au reported:
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The shipment of plastic boobs from China had been missing for more than a week after Chinese officials lost the paperwork and put them on the wrong boat, a Ralph magazine spokeswoman said.
They had been due to dock in Sydney last week, but have since turned up at a Melbourne dock, where they've been sitting for a week.
Workers are now frantically working to put them in bags to go out with the December 15 issue.
Ralph editor Santi Pintado said the incident had cost the magazine $30,000.
"If we'd found them a day later, it'd have been too late to get them on the next issue," Pintado said.
"You'd think the Chinese economy was in enough trouble without misplacing 130,000 pairs of boobs."