Spamphlets

Having lived for three years as a student I am now suffering an unpleasant multifaceted comedown. When the end of University was nearing I was filled with eagerness and a sense of pending elation as of a wearied grizzly at the approach of hibernation. Now, filled with the knowledge that there are no employment opportunities to be had and peering nervously into the unremitting veldt of time, I am lost as to how to fill my days, or more importantly perhaps, how to fill my days constructively, preferably in a way which will bear the fruit of financial income.

A couple of notes, here, about the last paragraph. My mind is clearly malfunctioning as I was unable to summon the word “hibernation” to my mind, spending about a minute staring blankly at the screen cupping my ears, I then typed ‘bear’ and ‘winter’ into Google, which had the word in the sample of the first hit. This is either an example of internet-savvy lateral thinking or yet another step for humanity on the slippery (and lazy) slope to utter vegetation. Also, I chose to use ‘grizzly’ in that comparison as I deemed other hibernating animals too feminine. In the animal kingdom, only the bear reaches the required standard of masculinity in order to be used in a comparative way to me. Ironically, the term ‘bear’ also has another meaning, which, while not undermining the masculine nature of the comparison, certainly suggests other, unfounded, reasons for me choosing that particular animal. Though I am indeed a large, hirsute gentleman.

I am yet to come to a conclusion on how to make money from nothing, and there is no lead available to turn my hand to alchemy, and so the only options available to me this night are either to eat or lose my mind to an internet site. Having exhausted my tolerance of other websites I have decided to, instead, to have an outpouring of premature nostalgia, in what people are never going to call ‘electronic reminiscing’. I am mostly proud that I have constructed a sentence containing both the term ‘outpouring’ and ‘premature’ without being vulgar or base, although I have now done that to some extent by alluding to the possible double entendre that could be taken from that sentence. If you are a childish sod. Which you are, clearly. No, not you.

Whilst I was still in my halcyon days as a student (roughly 3 months ago) I had noticed that if you lived in rented accommodation you would often receive a huge amount of post. There were two types of post usually; letters for other people and rubbish you don’t want. Now you would think that I would not be interested in either of these types of mail, well, you are mostly right, but also, to a smaller extent, wrong.

My favourite type of mail is letters for people who used to live in the house. This is because I am slightly anal and enjoy putting these away in a box for safekeeping should the people ever come back to the house to collect them, which they don’t. It was only in the brittle and shimmering final days of my studentship that I struck upon a brilliant idea. I delved into my memory bank in order to procure for myself a name that had often come posted through the door. I then typed it into Facebook. To my surprise, delight and nausea, he/she came up (not a hermaphrodite I am merely anonymising the person)(anonymising isn’t accepted on Word as a real word, though maybe it is an attempt to make the word more anonymous). It quickly became clear that this was definitely the correct person, due to them having affiliations with the University I was attending. I had the nagging feeling that I was undertaking behaviour of a creepy sort, especially after typing the fifth name. It is perhaps fortuitous then that the majority of ex-housemates had set their profiles to private, though mayhap less fortuitous for the housemates who hadn't. I didn’t do anything horrible, nor did I get in touch, though it is good to know that the people who’d lived in the house previously were both better qualified than me and married with children. It is good to know that the house has a strong pedigree that I can follow in the footsteps of. The ease with which I had discovered them was actually a bit frightening, and certainly spells the end of days for James Bond films. Sorry, 007. I also briefly considered a Dave Gorman style challenge of meeting everyone with un-reclaimed mail in the house and delivering it to them, although whether giving unwanted and out-of-date spam (mail not meat) to strangers would be difficult to beat into a coherent and ultimately uplifting narrative. Still, if you do undertake such a challenge and receive any sort of acclaim for it, I would like to be duly accredited, thank you.

I also enjoyed the spam and pamphlets, or spamphlets, that were addressed to me. It was in this period of my life that I discovered there were three things advertised in pamphlets; pizza, kebab and god. Now these three things fall on a sliding scale of enjoyment for me, I really enjoy a pizza, and if you offered me a kebab I would have to vehemently turn it down, whilst screaming “My body is not a temple but I would rather anal beads than kebab”. And god is even worse than that. The main difference between these three things is that when you eat a pizza it eventually becomes shit, kebab probably has shit in it, while god is complete and utter shit.

I have, however, discovered that there are more kinds of spamphlet than this. Having moved from a student town to a smaller, approaching rural, town the spamphlets which you receive are 1) fewer and, 2) less food-orientated. The three new types of spamphlets available to homeowners in towns are for: charity, fetes and racism. There’s a sliding scale here as well, with charity being good, fetes looking promising but being ultimately disappointing when you walk home with no money and a flyaway football, and racism being bad. There are also catalogues and god being advertised in these towns, but they have the nerve to knock on your actual door, on the actual front of your house, where you live, and talk to you about things (shopping and god, mainly). I had to turn a Jehova’s Witness lady away because she didn’t have an interesting hat on, I said “Madam, if you wish to waste my time with your fanciful fripperies I suggest you at least make purchase of arresting headwear”. I, of course, said no such thing, and I took a sample of her magazine in order to read it and make fun of it in public.

So I’m sure there’s something constructive for door-to-door bastards to take away from this; if you want to talk to me, bring a trilby.