A Trip To The Library...

[baddad]

I walked to the library this morning and as I passed the blacked out window of the sex boutique I noticed a beggar sitting in the narrow alleyway between the tattoo parlour and the riding tack emporium. At first I thought he was just an itinerant, so I prepared myself to pretend I hadn't noticed him, assuming a facial expression that would hopefully convey the impression of a man preoccupied with some internal philosophical or theological conundrum. But as I drew closer I realised he was not what I had assumed; neither seeking funding to support his crack-cocaine-stroke-industrial-strength-white-cider habit nor remuneration for a damp copy of the Big Issue. No. He was begging for friends. I was so surprised at this that I actually stopped, and in the next moment he was upon me, recounting the details of his sorry tale.

 

Firstly, he reached into his pocket, producing a small, white package which he held towards me. Initially I recoiled, fearing it might be a slim tract on the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard or some other scientological artefact, but when he flipped the lid I saw it was nothing more alarming than a very stylish mobile phone. 'It's very nice,' I ventured, 'does it play MP3s?'. He told me then that it did everything, but moreover related to me the details of the rental tariff he had innocently signed up for. It seemed with this particular model of phone, when purchased from this specific supplier, that the optional 'friends' tariff encouraged purchasers to list fifty friends or more, and that on so doing they would be rewarded with a monthly call rate so staggeringly attractive that regular texters couldn't fail to save money. He signed up immediately, certain that with all the people who had posted on his facebook wall and all of the people he saw at work or down the pub he couldn't fail to find the requisite number of friends, and with a cursory swipe of his credit card made his way home to transfer his existing sim directory to his new purchase.

 

Having done so, he quickly totted up the entries, but was stunned to find only thirty-seven. He double-checked facebook and the small flip-pad he kept by the dusty, abandoned static-line telephone, but was dismayed to find he had missed no one. He grabbed the Thompson's from a nearby shelf and added the name and number of the veterinary surgeon who had disposed of his cat after its unfortunate run-in with a Mitsubishi Shogun and the chiropodist he had once consulted for a particularly discomforting bout of athletes foot, but even after speed-reading some 750 pages of six point ariel text could find no other legitimate additions for his list. He toyed with the idea of adding random businesses, but the thought of doing so filled him with such a deep level of depression and self-loathing that he dismissed it immediately. He realised that he didn't want just name's - he wanted people. He realised that his entire sense of self-worth, his value as a human being, had - in his mind - become intrinsically linked with the notion of social acceptance and interaction, and while he knew that logically this was wrong he could not distance himself from that expectation and critical self-judgement. He realised also that of the thirty-nine numbers he had managed to accumulate only a couple of dozen or so were people he had actually spent any one-to-one time with, and that even among these were names and faces that he had not uttered or seen in years.

 

I have to say that at first I felt quite sorry for him. I asked him if an acquaintanceship would do. (I must admit I doubted my own abilities in offering the levels of commitment implied by the term 'friendship', and didn't want to burden him further with my own inadequacies and social phobias.) He reached, then, into the breast pocket of his t-shirt, producing a small laminated pouch from its nest beside his heart. He carefully unfolded the paper within: the terms and conditions of his rental agreement. I reached, then, into my own breast pocket, producing my reading glasses, and together we perused both the main text and the (very) small print, hoping to find somewhere an indication that the term 'friend' and 'acquaintance' might be interchangeable, but sadly no such evidence could be found...

 

Eventually, despite his protestations, wailing, weeping and suicide threats, I decided to decline his request. It wasn't that I took any personal dislike to him or wished him any sort of ill. It was just... well... It all seemed a bit needy, IYKWIM?

 

 

L&P Y'all

 

BD

 

[Kathryn]

Very clever, BD.

 

K x

[baddad]

and on the subject of awful advertising campaigns (are we?)...

 

have you heard

we're quite a hit

Selling tons

of frozen

######

food

Well, did you ever

What a cheap party this is.

 

Starving kids

In vietnam

Collect our prawns

By the kilogram

Well, did you ever

What a cheap party this is

 

Nothing here

Will go to waste

We'll grind it up

To a bright pink paste

Then wrap it in

A pastry case -

What a cheap party this is...

 

etc etc ad nauseum (and I ain't kidding with the nauseum)...

 

 

[mygifts1306]

Dear BD

Your encounter with the strange man was very interesting. I find it particularly touching that you actually stood to speak with him as most people would just pass by. Yes he appears very needy and will probably add up as full on, but BD life is not a straightforward predermined path wont you say? I applaud you for having taken the time to speak to him. What did you think about the whole thing?

[smiley]

:notworthy:

 

 

and a <'> or two <'> ><

[Mumble]

I'm assuming this is a joke based on the appalling ad for a mobile phone only available to 'popular people' right (where popular is defined as having 50 friends)?

 

All it does is perpetuate a Facebook style 'collect-a-friend' society rather than anything that might actually resemble friendship. A very sad reflection of our society that quantity counts over quality. At least I know which mobile company not to go to when I need a new phone.