Giraffe-a-licious vs. Kipple (coming to a cinema near you soon)

It was Philip K Dick who first coined the term 'kipple'. It appeared in his book 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?', later to become known as Blade Runner following Ridley Scott's 1982 film version. Dick writes:

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's home page. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more. No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot."

I feel his pain. Kipple is my enemy. I fought a great battle yesterday against the forces of Kipple-dom and gained a draining but exhilarating short-term victory. Kipple holds a number of substantial advantages over me. Firstly, my lack of energy. To stand your ground in the face of kipple requires CONSTANT VIGILANCE! Forgive me the Harry Potter quote but it seems appropriate. Such watchfulness is tiring itself, let alone when you take into account the numerous calls to arms. I fear that my M.E. is in league with the kipple. They have joined forces to take over my room and with it my sanity. I am powerless to stop it. As I lie on my bed in the mid-afternoon, during the 2 hour nap necessary to get me through the rest of the day, I can hear it spreading. Bank statements, junk mail, hospital radio application forms, receipts, jiffy bags from Amazon, hair bobbles... they conspire against me and procreate to produce more and more kipple. This brings me to my second problem. This kipple reproduction has been going on for 17 and a half years in the same space! We moved to our current house in March 1990 and my room has been my room for that whole period of time. I haven't been out of it for more than 2 weeks at a time. I haven't been able to go to university or move out of home. I have 17 and a half years worth of kipple in that place! Not just kipple either. Kipple and M.E. have another cohort in their attack on my mental and emotional well-being. Odds and Ends. Brrrrr...makes you shiver doesn't it? All those silly, pointless, little ornaments that I've picked up along the way. I should just be able to merrily dispose of them into my only ally in the kipple war - the wheelie bin. But that's when Odds and Ends plays its trump card: sentimental value. I curse my memory! What would I give to not know precisely who bought me what and when. But alas, it cannot be and that is why I shall never win the war on kipple.

I mentioned a short-term victory earlier. Basically, I'm sticking a load of it in the loft! No doubt one day I'll have to face it again as it becomes too much for the attic and starts to burst out of the roof. Until that day however, I will keep fighting the good fight against the present kipple. As Mel Gibson once said, "They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!"