Close to me

What? Oh, sorry. I tend to forget that you might not all be familiar with this column's rather bad habit of occasionally dropping names. In any case, 'Paris Hilton' is the moniker I have given my long-suffering letter box... for reasons which are not entirely unrelated to the unfeasibly large quantities of assorted junk routinely inserted into her person every other day.

And I need hardly add that, years after I first publicised her pitiful plight, passionately pleading that there is a natural limit to everyone's capacity to be postally penetrated (Paris being no exception, despite various suggestions to the contrary) - and more to the point, even after sundry international celebrities (including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Pamela Andersen and Claudette Pace) all agreed to pose naked for a billboard campaign under the slogan "Why is it called Junk Mail? Stick it up your own hole and find out!")... well, the situation seems to have got infinitely worse.

I mean honestly: how many special offers from 'Home Improvements, Inc' do these people feel compelled to distribute, anyway? And how many times do you have to studiously ignore such offers, before they finally get the message that you're really quite happy with your home just the way it is?

Likewise, how many mail order catalogues must you spectacularly fail to fill in, before the 'Bargain By Post' (or whatever) decides you do not actually fall within the profile of 'likely to respond', and accordingly strikes you off its mailing list?

Oh, Ok, I suppose that would entail a tiny smattering of this obscure branch of science called "market research". And yes, I am perfectly aware that it's all the rage in other countries. Small snag: we are not living in 'other countries', but in Malta... where the official definition of 'The Market' is: "anyone who cannot physically stop you from imposing your unwanted, unsolicited and utterly unreasonable harassment on their person (or into their letter-box), 24-7 ".  

As for 'customer satisfaction', this is defined as... erm... hang on, since when are customers even allowed to get into the picture? And who gives a toss what (or even if) any of them think? Fact is, there are 9,000 leaflets to be delivered in Ta' Xbiex this morning, and by hook or by crook - mostly by crook -all 9,000 of them will be thrust into every unsuspecting postal orifice the neighbourhood has to offer... regardless of whether they are wanted or not.

So in the end it doesn't matter how many stickers you stick on your letter-box, politely suggesting a variety of alternative cavities into which such leaflets can be unceremoniously thrust. Nor does it help much to actually catch one of the culprits red-handed. For no matter how seriously you scare the willies out of the spotty little brat, you can rest assured that another thousand will rise to take his place. Indeed I am now more convinced than ever that there is a secret laboratory somewhere, which mass-produces the little runts at a rate faster than other laboratories can produce junk mail for them to distribute. And they're all the same, too: all cloned from a single DNA sample taken from the original prototype teenage mutant letter-box rapist... each given a little red uniform (complete with little red backpacks), as well as a daily quota of junk mail, and the clear, unequivocal order to... "go forth and penetrate".

As for myself - but one of their several thousand victims - I am now resigned to throwing away untold quantities of such leaflets each week: admittedly wiping away the occasional tear, as I pause to contemplate at the sheer waste of arboreal life that must have gone into their production.

And yes, I admit it: occasionally even I pause to glance at the odd specimen of flyer/brochure here and there... you know, just to remind myself of all the unforgettable, never-to-be repeated, one-time only, unique and utterly irreplaceable offers that (strangely, seeing as they're all so bloody unique) also happen to have been proffered, with equal drama, to everyone in the entire country.

And a good thing it is too. For otherwise, how on earth would I have ever have found out that Leo Brincat (no less) had requested the pleasure of my company at a coffee morning organised by... drums rolling... the 'Friends of Leo Brincat'? Or that Francis Zammit Dimech thought fit to remind me that he 'holds the country's best interests to heart' (which is just as well, for let's face it: I would never have worked it out otherwise). Oh, and look: it seems that George Pullicino suddenly wants to have me (and everyone else in the neighbourhood) for breakfast...

(Huh? What? Ah yes, that's what all the neighbours thought he meant, too. I suppose it also explains why they never actually came back from that particular event...)

But wait! Maybe I'm getting my MPs all mixed up. Such is the mind-boggling quantity of printed nonsense that I am currently receiving - strangely, seeing as there is no general election brewing that I am aware of - I am suddenly doubtful as to whether it really was the 'Friends of Leo' who invited me to that coffee morning. It could just as easily have been the 'Pals of Pullicino'... or the 'Mates of Muscat'... who knows, maybe even Austin's Accomplices (his 'friends' being rather thin on the ground of late...)

Either way it doesn't really matter. What all these invitations have in common is that they always somehow manage to converge upon a single point - yes, you guessed it: deep inside Paris's pudendum - and so, too, have their original creators somehow coalesced in my mind into a single, formless mass of its own: a sort of walking, talking, breakfast-guzzling, coffee-morning-organising epitome of all the political platitudes and inanities that have ever been printed in the form of political propaganda.

And guess what? It's not enough that this gelatinous, many-headed mass of MP-spawned magazine material wants to 'be my friend'... to meet me, greet me, possibly also eat me... Oh no. The latest is that it also wants to listen to me, too. (At a coffee morning, please note. I mean honestly: how noisy a coffee drinker do these people think I am?)

Hey wait, it's about to get a whole lot worse. For if that were the extent of the problem, I'd say... fine. Listen to me all you like. It's not as though it's ever made much difference in the past. After all, I've been asking you to keep your grubby literature out of Paris Hilton as long as I can remember... and just look at the pitiful state she's in right now.

But this, I fear, will very soon be the least of our problems. For in a speech he gave to the PN general council just last Sunday, the Prime Minister (no less) informed all the members of his political family - i.e., roughly one half of the aforementioned formless mass - that he expects them to get 'close to the people'. That's right, closer than they already are...

I don't about you, but the very thought kind of gives me the creeps. I mean, is it not enough that political minions now besiege and bombard our private residences with all manner of unsolicited messages? Does it not suffice that you can no longer switch on a TV-set without all 69 members of Parliament spilling out of the screen and onto your living room carpet?

In fact, so ubiquitous have our politicians now become that there is not a single, solitary item on the national agenda - be it ever so unrelated to party politics - that doesn't somehow get to also involve a dozen or so politicians when actually discussed in public. So when, each year, the nation pauses to observe that annual festival of gloriously irrelevant kitsch - otherwise known as 'the Malta Song For Europe festival' - it invariably gets reported as: 'Prime Minister wishes Kurt Calleja good luck" (followed within days by "Kurt Calleja pays visit to Joseph Muscat ") And so on and so forth.

Well, we now have it from the PM's mouth that... none of this is actually enough for today's breed of omnipresent politician. They evidently want MORE.

Which leads me to the rather inevitable question. How much more of us do they want, exactly? And how much 'closer' to us do they intend to actually get... before we turn around and suddenly find them all tucked in our beds?

Brrrr! Sorry, that last mental image sort of gave me the heebie-jeebies for a moment. So - no offence intended, or anything - but might I suggest a small change in policy direction? Instead of getting 'closer to us'... how about maintaining a respectful distance for a change? You know, allow us all a little room to live and breathe, without this constant involvement in our everyday affairs? A little like a restraining order, perhaps... you know: keep within a minimum radius of around 15 miles per individual... failing which we let loose the Rottweilers?

Just thinking out loud, that's all...