I know what you mean. Our local library always had a waiting list for the new atlases, and you had to open them with a thick pair of rubber gloves because some bastard always came on the good maps before you got to them. The older maps were just disgusting with layers and layers of jizz, but what else could you do? It’s not like you weren’t going to crank one out to the new Soviet borders after waiting 6 weeks for your turn. Fuck, I still remember when Kosovo was established in 2008. Some poor teenagers waited months to see the new Serbian border, but by the time they got the new atlas the pages were so soaked with bodily fluids that you couldn’t even make out Prishtina.

When South Sudan split off in 2011 the library was so backed up that some of us started jacking off to globes, but for the most part that fad died off by the summer of 2012. You can still make some money selling old globes to collectors, but they’ve got to have some weird shit on them like The Democratic Republic Of Yemen (only lasted for 45 days in 1994). However, most people don’t get into anything that hardcore. Sure, you’ll hear about freaks that get off to violent annexing, but most people are perfectly content to discipline the bishop to the natural border movement that occurs due to the shifting cultural and geopolitical landscapes.

Nowadays people just spank it to Google maps in the privacy of their own homes. Nobody will appreciate how hard it was for teenagers to find good aerial photography of major cities in 1970. I think we all knew that asshole who ‘had an uncle’ that made maps for Rand McNally, but he was full of shit. He was just stealing National Geographics from his dad’s night stand. The saddest part was that kids would pretend to be his friend so they could borrow that one map. You know the one, it showed the British decolonization of Africa, and they didn’t censor anything.

Random side story. I used to date a girl in college that called her special area the 49th parallel. I could tell when she was in the mood because she’d ask if I was feeling British, since the British swung south around Vancouver Island, if you know what I mean. It was fun but eventually we broke up because she kept drawing the pre-1967 Israeli border on all our maps in green pen. I understood the reference but I’m sorry, that shit was overridden in both 1979 and 1994 and I was tired of living in the past.