An annoyed East Boston resident files a 311 complaint about festering Globe Direct circulars:

Boston Globe Direct marketing is all over my neighborhood! Opting out does not stop the delivery. Also, their plastic bags are just as bad or worse as plastic shopping bags, which Boston already banned!

Marty McCabe lives in an apartment building with a courtyard in Central Square. And every week, somebody from Globe Direct throws 12 copies of the circular in the courtyard. And he and his neighbors are getting sick of it.

The State House News Service reports state Rep. Denise Provost (D-Somerville) is sponsoring a bill to fine Globe Direct and other direct marketers up to $1,500 if they keep sending their stuff to people who ask them to stop.

[Provost] unloaded a heap of Globe Direct mailers before the Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure, saying they had accrued around her doorstep after she attempted to be removed from the distribution list.

The Globe recently began switching Globe Direct from private deliverers to the postal service.

Sure, I could send e-mail to Globe Direct about how their circulars keep winding up on our porch (this morning, lovingly placed underneath some pruning shears on our porch - wouldn't want it to blow away, eh?), but I've taken a fancy to calling 888-MY-GLOBE because at least that way I get to cost them some money for the privilege of ignoring all my previous e-mails and phone calls about how I don't want their circulars.

Yeah, there is the annoying fact you'll be put on hold for a couple minutes, but, hey, that's why God invented cell phones that turn into speaker phones when you flip them over.

Garrett Quinn forwards this photo showing that whoever delivers Globe Direct fireplace stuffers in East Cambridge isn't going to let the fact that a building caught on fire and got boarded up stop them from delivering the things every week.

H/t Kevin Franck for the headline.

Officials from the Boston Globe and the company it hired to distribute its advertising circulars told angry city councilors at a hearing today they're willing to try to keep Boston from being papered over with the circulars.

A City Council committee next week attempts to bring Globe Direct to task for its unceasing efforts to plaster Boston's porches, sidewalks and shrubs with its advertising circulars.

The hearing, by the council's Committee on City, Neighborhood Services and Veterans Affairs, starts at 4 p.m. on Thursday in the council's fifth-floor chambers in City Hall.

City Councilor Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) called for the hearing. In a statement, he says:

City councilors from across the city said today their constituents are complaining about the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of plastic-sheathed Globe Direct ads.

"These bags are everywhere," City Councilor Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) said at a council meeting today. "Lawns, hedges, porches, steps."

When a resident of Lamartine Street in Jamaica Plain complained about this Globe Direct mess, the city sprang into action:

Case Resolved. Ticket was issued on 6-6-14 by officer donovan.

I've been married long enough to know the importance of communication. So I probably should have told my wife why I was letting Globe Direct bags pile up on the porch, because then she might not have made the (usually correct) assumption I was just being lazy and so threw them all out - which means I have nothing to deliver to the Globe on a trip to Dorchester today. Globe Direct still sucks, though.