Once Were Worthy

A nasty, heavy thump on the front porch drew Riley and I from our peaceful slumber on Saturday morning. About 3kg of the past was hand-delivered by some begrimed striding labourer into my present.
Eventually, when we had recovered from the rudeness of someone encroaching uninvited into our personal space so far as to be nearly upon the front steps, and I had brewed some coffee with which to fortify my responses, I peered from behind the curtains sideways out at the evidence of the encounter.
"Shock" is a little too strong a descriptor. Let's say rather that it took a few shifts of consciousness to come to terms with the resources bought to bear very early (before 9am!) on a Saturday morning to physically hand deliver to me, at my house, a phone book.

You may not be familiar with this concept. It is a large, alphabetical (by surname) index of all persons (in this case, although it could also be businesses) who have a telephone and who live within an arbitrary radius of a large city or, indeed, town. It is supplied printed on paper. Paper. It is not available for download. Not even as a PDF. It includes many many dozens of thousands of people, comprises hundreds of pages (more even than Infinite Jest!!) and asks to be let into the house and kept for a year or more. How very cheeky. I drew the curtain again and left it on the porch in order to ponder this request.

Pros
* I do have a phone. Conceivably I may wish to use it at some point in the next 12 to 18 months to call someone I don't currently know. This reference may help to source their number.
* My sister is about to move house and she may need a large amount of wrapping paper for her glassware.

Cons
* I feel it likely that anyone I am welcome to call will provide me with their preferred contact mode and the details thereof.
* My sister has completed wrapping her glassware, as she also received a delivery.
* It is large, ugly, poorly bound, and has nowhere else to live other than the drawer currently colonised by the mouse/mice and I feel it would be interpreted as encouragement to their expansionist ambitions.
* The house is already somewhat cluttered with books.

I feel slightly put-upon by this assumption that I want or need this reference tome.

There was no "tick the box" to opt in or out, no consultation, no other strategy, just presumptuous delivery. Another physical manifestation of the parochial concept of "service" that pushes down from the echelons what it is we plebeian suburbanites apparently want and need. For the same energy and carbon, perhaps I would have chosen a nice fresh (and blank) 8gb flash drive, or even a plain unbranded dvd full of data of my choice, or even better a bale (probably bales plural in relative terms) of mulch straw to bolster the efforts of my neophyte vegetables. So many options. So little consultation or inclusion.
But I digress.

I use the back door to leave the house for the errands in order to postpone the inevitable confrontation, athough I know the final outcome already. It just seems a little rude to put it into the recycling bin immediately. Let the poor doomed thing have a few pitiful hours in the sun, feeling the breeze and hearing the neighbourhood thugs practise their gansta cant before it begins the dark and unknown journey through the big yellow-lidded bin of second-chances to be reborn as thicker paper, light card or perhaps a box.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.