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I'm unemployed and bored

Tryphena Absent

13:34 / 21.08.02

Right I have £20 left, certainly until Tuesday, I have no chance of any more money until then and I'm suffering from a very boring lifestyle. The only things I can think of to do revolve around London and I can't afford to be there (except on Thursday). Anyone think of anything I can do considering I can't write, all I do is read or post here, I can't buy any alcohol and most of my friends are going to the Reading festival? I'm screwed.

13:42 / 21.08.02

Whereabouts do you live? Can you ponce things off your parents/other relatives?

There's always vandalism, and two quid will get you a bottle of White Lightning.

13:45 / 21.08.02

One word: masturbation.

13:48 / 21.08.02

Have you heard of it?

13:50 / 21.08.02

for six days solid?

even in my student days I never went to those lengths

14:04 / 21.08.02

Damn t.o.d.d. you beat me to it. Six days, no problem, when my arm gets better.

You have a computer and a World Wide Web of fun, acctually pretty boring. Teach yourself HTML and brighten it up.

Tryphena Absent

14:04 / 21.08.02

My parents have gone away and I'm screwed, I couldn't let my mum leave her card, I would have gone through £100 easily in 6 days - I told her to just go. I could be in trouble, I think I should cut up my credit card except I love nicotine.

t.o.d.d. - I'm not masturbating for 6 days straight OK? Got a problem with that - maybe you'd like to mail order me a vibrator considering I can't afford one? That would make it slightly easier to get off for that long.

14:05 / 21.08.02

Err. Go for a run? I don't know you so you might laugh your head off at the mere suggestion, but it's free and would make you feel good.

Bake? Though that assumes you've got some ingredients in the house. But you can make cakes and flapjacks and things pretty cheaply. And they'll taste good after the run!

Make things out of paper mache? You just need newspapers, flour and water.

Go and volunteer to help out somewhere?

Sorry, this is all turning out very worthy and goody-goody but I can't think of many wicked self-indulgent things that you can do for free. Not without agreeable company, at any rate.

14:17 / 21.08.02

Busk. Jobhunt. Learn to meditate. Write non-stop for a week. Go to London and do all the free stuff (street performance, galleries, etc.) Cook something interesting and new out of very cheap ingredients.

Masturbation works too, of course.

14:23 / 21.08.02

Make a cup of tea, put a record on.

Repeat until death.

(and if you don't have records or tea .. may as well go straight to death..)

14:28 / 21.08.02

How about drawing? Drawing's fun, and all you need is a pencil.

14:29 / 21.08.02

go on the dole. make a zine. make some music. write a book. read some second hand books.
i have been unemployed nearly all summer (just bagged me a job) and it's been fun. go forth and thrash.

14:34 / 21.08.02

If you're gonna be out of work for a bit, go for the voluntary thing- get thyself down your local bureau - there's shit loads of stuff you can do and most of them will cover your travel.
Other than that - get creative and do whtever it is you've been puttin g off - or start a new thread in the gathering suggesting we all buy you a drink. I'll shout you a pint! If we're all feeling generous we'll cover your train fare as well

ps. and it's Carnival this weekend, buy some cheap beer and geddown there. Free music and scary costumes all day.

14:40 / 21.08.02

Reading, listening to music, drinking tea, eating and masturbating.

6 days? Give me 600!!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:03 / 21.08.02

Read. Write. Listen to the radio. (or you could do what me and a couple of friends did a few years back when we moved into a place where the electricity took a week to come on... although after the third day the rules of charades had become stretched to a point where they were no longer recognisable. We realised we were starting to lose it when we spent an evening taking turns to pretend to be TV through the serving hatch into the kitchen...)

Or my personal favourite, really cheap booze and sleeping a lot.

OR... as has been pointed out, really cheap booze and carnival!

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:15 / 21.08.02

as a full-time dolescum, a few suggestions...

grab the few interesting people, books, music and food and head off to parks, forests, nice countryside and enjoy the weather.

or if not a sun-body, gather friends for cooking/eating stuff at home and hide from the sun in cool house...

do you smoke rollies? if not, you could spend the weekend learning.... saves you bags of cash and keeps you occupied as your addiction keeps you going through endless appalling efforts until the moment of joy when you can make your own lovely cancer sticks - advantage, aside from obvious, that you can then buy fabulous coloured papers and get all poncey about the whole business.

and that if people endlessly ponce fags off you in Soho (thanks, hon) you can afford to be generous...

sign on? take a while but you could claim a weeks worth, you'd then know you'd have £45 coming your way... uses up plenty of time, though you may want find yourself driven into a murderous rage.

make interesting alcholic cocktails/homebrew experiments with what you've got in the house...

have a swopping sesh with mates - i do this every so often and unload loads of my dodgy crap onto my dear friends while acquring new books, records, clothes, stuff...

arnival, as people have mentioned, is a cheap day out...

phone/email mates you haven't phoned for ages, have a good catch-up/bitch/gossip?

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:15 / 21.08.02

as a full-time dolescum, a few suggestions...

grab the few interesting people, books, music and food and head off to parks, forests, nice countryside and enjoy the weather.

or if not a sun-body, gather friends for cooking/eating stuff at home and hide from the sun in cool house...

do you smoke rollies? if not, you could spend the weekend learning.... saves you bags of cash and keeps you occupied as your addiction keeps you going through endless appalling efforts until the moment of joy when you can make your own lovely cancer sticks - advantage, aside from obvious, that you can then buy fabulous coloured papers and get all poncey about the whole business.

and that if people endlessly ponce fags off you in Soho (thanks, hon) you can afford to be generous...

sign on? take a while but you could claim a weeks worth, you'd then know you'd have £45 coming your way... uses up plenty of time, though you may want find yourself driven into a murderous rage.

make interesting alcholic cocktails/homebrew experiments with what you've got in the house...

have a swopping sesh with mates - i do this every so often and unload loads of my dodgy crap onto my dear friends while acquring new books, records, clothes, stuff...

arnival, as people have mentioned, is a cheap day out...

phone/email mates you haven't phoned for ages, have a good catch-up/bitch/gossip?

15:26 / 21.08.02

Join your local library and make idiosyncratic mix tapes/CDs from their CD library. Can take as much time as you like it, and look, pretty music to dance around your house to when you're finished.

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:30 / 21.08.02

ooh, on wicked and self-indulgence, you could splash a little of your £20 on favourite booze and relaxing bath salts/bath, and spend an entire day in the indulgence bath of a lifetime.

Basically get everything you'll need for a few hours within reach of your tub: bottle of wine goes down nicely, i find, fags, books, music, (charity £1/shop for amusing bath toys?!) magazines, phone, dressing gown toasting on radiator/airing cupboard+slinky comfy clothes for after... get creative - chocolates, whatever it'll take to make it seem ultra-decadent and luxurious... especially if you're starting work on Tuesday, you won't have time for this again for ages...

15:34 / 21.08.02

Sleep.
Watch TV.
Become obsessed with an internet site.
Write a manifesto.

Tryphena Absent

15:43 / 21.08.02

I don't know what I'd write a manifesto about... my ideals have been destroyed by years of tory safe seat existence. I kind of like the baking idea, cooking's great, I've been reminded that I meant to take my friend to the wall gardens in Hampstead sometime this holiday- of course that means petrol money (grrrrr!). I must learn to budget in a more productive way.

16:21 / 21.08.02

Well was on the dole for quite some time until last year, still have occasional bouts of it now and then.

Are you near a high street of some sort, you could wander round charity shops and do some serious bargain hunting. If you have no money and lots of time, this is the best time for it.

Walks in parks or the countryside, if you can borrow a digital camera this is even better because you can get photos for free, well at least in an internet sense.

Learn long distance bus routes, or if you've ever riden a bike nows a good time to borrow one and start using it. I personally only ever managed the walking and bus/train thing, wonder if the dole/new deal still does the cheap travel card deal, that was the best thing they ever did for me as the North East was my oyster after I got it.

Oh yeah a big up for your local library, recently rediscoverd mine, usually I do this whenever I've been unemployed for more than a week.
Mine has a lot more cool CD's and books than I remembered, and what they don't have there they might be able to get for you from other branches. Its a life saver when you can just graze through books like me.

Oh yeah is there a place in your town where poor students, alternative types and the like 'hang'. Might be a good time to introduce them, at least some of them will be bareable and might know some cool cheap/free things.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:24 / 21.08.02

Write a manifesto about hats... I'm pretty sure the world's still lacking a decent one...

17:50 / 21.08.02

Has anyone ever written a book on The Philosophy of Humour?

17:56 / 21.08.02

Write a manifesto about hats... I'm pretty sure the world's still lacking a decent one...

Damn straight. We need more hats. Hats of quality. I'll never achieve my goal of becoming a dedicated flaneur without a good hat.

Goodness Gracious Meme

18:00 / 21.08.02

"Has anyone ever written a book on The Philosophy of Humour? "

unnow, but here's a book called 'On Humour', written by a philosophy professor. (btw Ellis, it's your new friend, Simon Critchley, spookily enuff)

18:06 / 21.08.02

invisible al is right. the town where i'm from is full of old people and young families, but there arejsbx, yo la tengo and biggie ceedees at the library. and one time they were selling royal trux and smog ceedees for £2 a pop, as well as videos such as election and happiness.
and that's before i even get started on the books.
dude, libraries rule!

18:19 / 21.08.02

Thanks Plums, will have to get that

21:03 / 21.08.02

Go out with a pack of tarot cards and offer to read people's cards for £10 a pop.

Spend £5 on six cans of Stella. Put them in a backpack and go and sell them someplace that's outside and people want beer. Sell them for £2- 2.50 a can, et voila! Profit!

This is assuming you need more money. Otherwise, maybe go out to a park with a good book. A nice park has always been one of my favorite places to go when I'm skint. And even when I'm not.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:31 / 21.08.02

If it's wet out: Go to your library, get a shitload of big comics-- sorry, "graphic novels". Find a cheap caff and buy tea. Sit in caff, read comix while making tea last for 2 hrs.

If it's hot enough for ya: As above, but go to a park/bus stop/traffic roundabout/graveyard instead of a caff.

23:58 / 21.08.02

I'm surprised nobody's suggested begging. I moved into a new street-front office and I've had two beggars walk in over the past two weeks. It seems to me that door-to-door would be more successful than street begging, and you'd do better begging door-to-door in a commercial district than a residential district. I've never seen a door-to-door beggar at home, so obviously beggars are finding the commercial districts profitable.

You've got two other people to help you. Plan this out so you each have a defined route, each route starting in the same location and finishing in the same location. If you don't feel safe, two of you could go together and each do one side of the street. Then you can all go together to enjoy your earnings in a retail district a few miles away from the commercial district.

You might want to wear special begging clothes for the begging and change into shopping clothes before you go to the retail district. The beggars here wear their clothes inside-out, too. It's all a part of creating the look that might incline people to be generous.

Generosity is its own reward and it's more blessed to give than to receive so you'd be doing the people a favor. The people who give will feel good about it and they'll probably just spend less on various frivolous health-damaging indulgences. Begging benefits individuals and society. It is also a means of redistributing wealth, so it has an aspect of political activism.

14:38 / 22.08.02

Mmmmh. Perhaps you should try tellybegging. This would allow you to beg from the comfort of your own home while still in your fluffy PJs. The advantage to the non begging population would be that we could get from the bus to work without being asked twenty times for the price of a cup of tea, the remainder of someone's bus fare or to buy a Big Issue.

I personally may start lobbying my MP to have the government set up Tellybegging centres up and down the country.