Junk...

Junk - and by junk, I mean junk mail. By mail, I mean snail mail or email, and both annoy the daylights outta me. There are days when the email variety really gets me - because then I don't even have the luxury (?) of walking it to the recycle bin and bypassing the crap even getting into my home. Nope, this stuff has already made it to my desk and is right in front of me. Huh? I didn't ask for this shit!

Meanwhile, this being an election year, the fliers from both sides of the fence have multiplied like rabbits. Every day there is a pile of crap in my mailbox that is all of the following:  a) Nothing I'm interested in b) Nothing I signed up for c) annoying d) now my responsibility to dispose of. None of this seems right. It's also easy to lose important pieces of mail in the stack of things - so I do have to go through it to make sure I'm not throwing anything important away. Imagine a total stranger walking up to you on the street and handing you a stack of fliers. They tell you there might be something of yours that you want to keep in the stack, might be a thing or two you're interested in - then again, there may not be. The second the pile of crap is in your hands, they let go and immediately start walking away from you - goes a little like this:

You: Hey! I'm not sure I want ANY of this stuff

Stranger, turning around but still walking away: Yeah, neither am I...I mean I thought you might want to see some of it, maybe all of it, maybe none of it...there might be some important stuff in there - you know, a new credit card or an inheritance check....beats me.

You: No man, there's nothing here that interests me - I don't want this pile of stuff!

Stranger - yelling over his/her shoulder: Yeah, go ahead and throw it away then would you? Mind tossing it in a recycle bin? Go ahead and do the same thing tomorrow when the next shipment comes, k? Just take it, okay man?Thanks!

Why is a pile of junk that I didn't ask for to begin with suddenly my responsibility to do something with? If you threw trash on your neighbor's lawn and he saw you do it, he's probably going to tell you to clean it up and not to do that again. You should respect that. I get it - I'm not naive enough to think that anything will ever be done to stop this kind of thing and I suppose I get the whole logic of throwing a fist full of stones at a tree and knowing that at least some of them will hit it, but this is annoying.

Again, the email variety of this kind of stuff really bugs me - especially the numerous emails I received from The Catholic Association in the weeks leading up to the election. Dig how they start out:

Dear Fellow Catholic,

Who, me? You've got the wrong guy - you're way off. These emails had a very biased message that was blatantly trying to influence my vote - and like practically all things Catholic, there's a lot of guilt...implied/assumed...no thank you. The last email I read from them had them complaining about the mere possibility of government having any say in influencing who they might fire and/or hire - yet at the same time they were clearly trying to tell me who I should vote for. If that same complete stranger called out to me on the street, "Hey! Fellow Catholic...." if I even looked to see if he was talking to me, I'd walk the other way if he was. If he persisted, I'd tell him I'm not Catholic. If he asked me if I'd like to be Catholic, I'd tell him no...but if I did want to become a Catholic, I know where I could go to make it happen. Dear Fellow Catholic...really? You know what they say about assuming. I'm not trying to offend anyone here, Catholic or otherwise. Just saying.