3 contests later and roughly $80 poorer, I don’t really feel like I have accomplished much. Editing always makes me feel uncreative and boring. I need to re-start my thesis. But that probably won’t happen until after the production of Dreaming Darwin- which you all should see, BTW!!

Come flockdraw with me!! Collaborative art has never been easier!!

Many of you have probably heard of Barbara Hashimoto by now. She is a sculptor/artists that has recently switched to the medium of junk mail. Yes, junk mail. It’s abundant, available and using mass amounts of it can really bring awareness of how much paper is wasted every day/week/year on that crap. She states that the average person will spend 8 months of their life sorting through junk mail.
Don’t sort it- recycle i! And call any comment line you see to get removed from their list. My room mates and I get our internet through Cox. It felt like every few days I was receiving another envelope full of promotions for other services. I finally called Cox and told them to stop all snail-mail communication. Bingo! No Cox in my box! (Ha ha ha ha) Now to contact Food City, Fresh & Easy (you can get coupons form them via email), Sunflower (I would go their regardless of what was on sale) and Red Plum (whole big packet of crap).

Anyway, back to Barbara. She has been collecting junk mail for a few years now and has almost filled a room with the stuff. People are amazed at how many pounds of crap mail one small business can accumulate over a year. One part of her project was to cover a performing pianist in the stuff to show its suffocating and destructive nature.

Now what am I going to do about all this white trash? I’m going to collect the junk mail that comes to my house, and with the help of my handy-dandy shredder, fill this bean-bag chair and ottoman.

I started collecting junk mail on 9/21/09. Let’s see how long (or short) this takes!
Coffee will be on me for whoever gets it right!

Here are a few sites that can help you prevent the spread of junk mail (plus a few other fun sites):

YellowPagesGoesGreen: A site that claims to stop the unwanted arrival of a stack of new phonebooks every couple of months.

41pounds: A site that claims it can stop most junk mail from reaching you for a few years. I only glanced at the site, so take some precaution before you sign up. Hopefully it’s not a bunch of dudes sitting around, taking your money and not stopping junk mail. I think the best way is to just call the folks who are sending junk mail to your address.

ithinkihateplastic: a blog that debates the lesser of many evils in our day to day lives.

DYI Steps to Stopping Junk Mail: Some simple steps you can take to stop the flow of crap. Annoying yes, worth it, yes.