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My sleep cycle is silly (again)
For the past two nights I've found it actually difficult to get to sleep before 2:30 or 3 in the morning, which appears to be because my personal time zone has been slipping gradually over my two weeks of holiday. Yet tonight I was sitting in the pub and practically fell asleep, so I came home very early on the grounds that it's a better place to do so.
In other news, today's achievement was that I finally got round to printing up a sign to stick on my front door saying ‘NO FREE PAPERS PLEASE’. When I went to the pub I found a free paper on my doormat, which was annoying. I stepped over it, shut the front door from the outside, and discovered what appears to be the problem: the notice is barely even visible – let alone legible – when it's dark, which it is when the news distribution operative comes round.
Not sure what to do about this. Solutions include self-illuminating paper or getting the porch light fixed (it hasn't worked as long as I've lived here but never seemed very important before), although I'm uncertain that the latter would actually light up the sign owing to the wall casting a shadow. I wonder how other people solve this problem.
(What I really want is a semi-permeable letterbox which simply won't allow free newspapers or blatant direct-mailed adverts to be pushed through it, but will let through proper letters. I often think that being a programmer and an SF reader both contribute to my general impatience with the rather feeble limitations of real-world physical tech. I still want my stasis fridge and force-field saucepans, too.)
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Ah, Maxwell, is there any problem you can't solve.
Someone else was pondering this problem, and having difficulty because the paper distributors changed constantly. Perhaps one should hide the letterbox where the postman can find it and ranodm people can't. Or have a really narrow one. Or have a recycling box by the door so getting rid of the paper is zero effort.
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Narrow letterbox: mine is already too narrow to fit mail-ordered DVDs through, so if anything I'd like it wider.
Recycling box: I really should get round to arranging to be sent one of those, now you mention it. I currently batch up recycling until it's worth shoving it all in my car boot and dropping it off at Sainsburys on my way home from work.
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... which would cause light pollution and hence be bad, of course...
I have a label on my letterbox saying "No advertising or free newspapers please", made with a Dymo labeler about 4 years ago and still sticking/looking fine. And I hardly ever get any advertising anymore, and the free newspapers stopped ages ago. Putting it right above the slot of the letterbox was a good move, I think.
However, it still took the people who deliver these things a couple of months to cotton on, so I think that you may just need some patience, because they probably don't go round reading whatever's on every house/letterbox.
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You're still dependent on the delivery kid being literate, of course.
There was a post-free envelope delivered by the postie on Wednesday with a Royal Mail logo and "An apology" written on the outside. Oh good, I thought, they're apologising for poor service. Nope, it was from the NSPCC apologising for bothering me with a letter I didn't want to read. And then they send me an identical letter today, stamped through the mail, apologising again. I've recycled them both without reading them and am now cross with the NSPCC.
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I used to support the NSPCC with a regular monthly donation and a bequest in my will, but their "Full Stop" campaign (basically they are trying to make it illegal for a parent to smack their child at all) made me stop all that. I wrote to explain my withdrawal of support and got a form letter back saying "Gosh, we're sorry you've decided to stop supporting us, especially at a time when we finally have a real chance of making it illegal for parents to smack their children, but we understand your decision and appreciate your past support." Bah.
Anyway, this more recent letter started off along the lines of "I'm sorry to have to ask you for money because I hate doing that and never know what to say. First of all I wondered whether I should try to shock you by telling you about the story of poor little Snotleigh, who suffered [appalling catalogue of violence elided], or poor little Bratson [ditto], but then I decided not to do that because some people don't like to read that sort of thing. So then I thought I'd tell you some statistics about child abuse, like [random load of stats elided] but I decided not to do that either because many people don't understand statistics."
At this point I stopped reading and threw it in the recycling so I don't know what it said after that.
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So, in the interest of balance, I demand pro-poverty and pro-torture wristbands. (All proceeds go to the Project for a New American Century.) I shall wear them with pride.
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Wrote long ranty post that never made it as far as being posted about the stupid letter.
Am rather glad it isn't just me.
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