Return to sender

Do not check your mail; it’s only going to make things worse.

It’s 2007 and everyone wants some of your time. How can you possibly keep up? Every day it begins again. People send you things they expect you to read. Banks post you fifty-page booklets explaining the finer points of some fantastically boring yet legally binding contract. Insurance companies want you to understand they care, foisting glossy lifestyle infotising on you. You really should get down to the transport office to renew your rego but first you must deal with your email; read and reply—or else it snowballs.

The phone rings.

‘Are you happy with your current service provider?’

‘Can’t you find a better job?’

Beep. Text message.

‘Bro, u gotta check out this shit on eBay.’

You try to reply, but there is a knock at your door.

‘Hi, I’m here to talk to you about my homeboy, Jesus.’

‘Sorry dude, I’d love to talk to you but I’m a bit behind on my information assimilation for today. I have to read and reply to all my Facebook messages.’

‘Damn! That’s what I forgot,’ says Sheepeyes and runs off.

‘Hey buddy, wait! You forgot your bible!’

‘You keep it bro, I’ve got heaps…’

You put it with your display pile—books you wish you'd read, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Bertrand Russell.

Shit, something else to read.