free crap

it's not possible to go shopping these days without being given a load of crap that you didn't plan to come home with.
Here we have some crappy stones that are especially designed to get stuck in the washing machine filter but have the added advantage of freaking out the kind of christians who think that the devil will get little children who collect and swap plastic "runes". These came into the house via an external child who thought we'd like them. Hell, we love them.
Here we also have a teeeeensy pot of jam. About enough for a quarter of a piece of toast. I guess it's to leave you wanting more. I got tricked into taking this as a nice lady suddenly said hello to me and I said hello back thinking how friendly she was....next thing I have a bloody pot of jam in my hands....
Next, some stickers to collect so I can buy a half-price suitcase or rucksack or other travel item. These stickers usually end up stuck the windows and I then spend ages scraping them back off....however, this time I am actually collecting them as I want/need a new onboard trolley-suitcase-laptop-holding-thingy. Once I have enough stickers for it (like, now) I will refuse them to avoid window problems (maybe they should do a Mac version?)
And then there's the BIG WIN - it's a big one....free music downloads with every card, a special code to win all kinds of stuff including 1 million Swiss francs in coupons for the COOP (that prize has my name on it, I'm sure) and a crappy collectable card with every one too. I seem to be "collecting" them. In that I'm not sure what to do with them....if I throw them away a child will suddenly decide that they do actually collect them so I stuff them into the little collecting box and add that to the general clutter that submerges our kitchen.
I don't collect things. I hate collections. But now I have lots of them. If this carries on much longer I might suddenly develop an interest in steam engines and start learning train timetables off by heart. It's a slippery slope and, to be quite frank, I'm terrified of where I might be in a years time.....perhaps heading for a stamp collecting convention with my new suitcase full of a complete set of runes and broken washing machine filters and small jam sample collected for the hotels of the world?