#1 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 20:20 EST (UTC -5)

Here are 10 creative responses to junk mail.

Good list.

send direct mailers bricks (that right, bricks.)

Yeah, I do this. Be sure to recycle boxes and get your bricks for free. You regularly find both dumpster-diving, along with startling things like hundreds of dollars worth of silver, five kilos of neodymium magnets, and perfectly-good cans of soup. Seriously, dumpster dive.

Put [the brick] into those blue mail boxes, the parcel dump at the post office, or in your mail box.

Nope. Not any longer. This costs the USPS time and money, because, under new policies, they have to arrange for the safe destruction of every piece of mail exceeding 13 oz. (368 grams.) You need to hand this to a mail clerk. The potentially bad thing about this is that the clerk will absolutely know what you are up to.

This creative response to junk mail is probably one of the most practical – make paper from it!

Damn, I thought I was the only person who came up with that.

I first did it as a protest in junior high. We were sent home with the equivalent of junk mail every day: photocopies from the administration, frequently on expensive colored paper, adding up to tens of kilos at the end of the year.

The gardeners would also rake up all the flower petals that fell off the greenery and throw them into landfills.

I collected paper and flower petals over the course of a year, separated the paper into colors, and made different hand-made papers impregnated with different flower petals. I gave them to my teachers, telling them where I had gotten the papers and trying to get them to raise awareness about the huge amount of trees being killed to send messages home with students.

#3 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 21:00 EST (UTC -5)

I have no idea. I had my commencement ceremony and never followed up on it. Sorry.

I was rather well-regarded by the faculty and student body: "Most Likely to Succeed", "Student of the Year", and "Science Student of the Year" (each of which was awarded to one boy and one girl, so I shared each award). I also presented the commencement address. So it's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that my words were heeded. But I don't really know, and I suspect not.

Today, perhaps, there's an email option, but this was before even a significant minority of families had computers at home.

#5 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 21:31 EST (UTC -5)

Yeah, but. How do you really do this, as a school? You can't just have the computer-free homes have uninformed parents. But if you have to have people opt out of this because they don't have a computer at home, what's supposed to happen? One kid in the class is handed a paper, and everyone goes, "Oh, he's poor," presumably.

Kind of tough. :-/

Far better might be to have an intranet website for teachers. Each week, the teacher would go and put in paragraphs under his or her name and class (Mr. McGee. 2nd Period: "Research papers on meteorites due", 4th Period: "Midterm on oxidation reactions 2008-11-03", etc.) Administration would add stuff for "all students", "just tenth graders", etc. Then on Fridays (or whatever) customized printed fliers would be generated for each student, and put on a website. If the family has no computer, OK, they have the paper. If not, then just one or two sheets of paper are wasted per student per week.

One could probably market this to schools, actually (or if one of us did it, give it away....)

#7 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 21:41 EST (UTC -5)

A simpler idea would be to keep giving out papers but have the kids to give them back to the school so they could be recycled.

Right, but recycling takes nonzero mechanical energy, nonzero chemicals, nonzero money, and creates nonzero pollution. Conservation via computerization just takes time and electrons, and not much of either. Take all the money you'd spend recycling the paper and order sufficient cheeseless Vegetable Lovers pizzas from Pizza Hut for everyone (which would be vegan [and maybe even kosher and halal too, I don't know] and would encourage Pizza Huts to maintain their vegetable and cheese-free offerings, along with vegan pie crusts....)

#9 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 21:50 EST (UTC -5)

Yes! Bravo! McGee’s First Law is “Everything is more complicated than it at first appears to be, even when McGee’s First Law is taken into account.”

(McGee's Second Law is "The two greatest lies in the English language are 'All things being equal', which they never are, and 'All things considered", which they never can be. McGee's Third Law is "Don't maintain the pretense of enumerating laws if you only have two useful offerings.")

#10 by Joshua McGee: Mon Oct 20, 2008 21:56 EST (UTC -5)

(McGee's Fourth Law is "McGee's Third Law is especially true if McGee's Second Law is actually a corollary of McGee's First Law.")

#12 by Robert Chatham: Wed Nov 12, 2008 22:07 EST (UTC -5)

I stumbled across this entry while googling my book's title - and thank you, thank you so much for posting this. I've shared the book via legaltorrents and posted it with the Creative Commons license - just because it was fun to write. But so far, I've been underwhelmed with responses, other than from family and friends. Thanks for linking :-)

#14 by Robert Chatham: Tue Nov 25, 2008 17:59 EST (UTC -5)

I was flipping through a Bible and came across the phrase "Noisome Beasts." I looked up the word "Noisome" and realized it described the book perfectly.

#15 by Joshua McGee: Tue Nov 25, 2008 21:12 EST (UTC -5)

I was flipping through a Bible and came across the phrase "Noisome Beasts." I looked up the word "Noisome" and realized it described the book perfectly.

As it happens, it also describes the Bible perfectly. :^)

#16 by Sarah: Thu May 28, 2009 13:59 EST (UTC -5)

Hey, I'm 7 months late! But I just read the book at work today in three hours and I love it. I want to play Eleanor! Count me in for a movie. Also, I know someone who would make a great Edgar.

Robert's my brother-in-law by the way, and I found your (Jordon) site when he sent me this link... 7 months ago. Ha. Well, better late than never.