WWWelcome to the Society For The Preservation Of Useless Objects
Official Home Page on the World Wide Web!
This page is very much under construction, but will eventually contain a full range of information about the activities and aims of the Useless Society, as it is colloquially referred to. Meanwhile, there follow a few excerpts from the Useless Society FAQ which is currently being compiled by Mrs Mandeville.
We are very grateful to Mrs Mandeville for devoting her time and energy to this project, despite her many work commitments, and look forward to receiving the fruits of her labour sometime soon.
A Brief History Of Uselessness
Some Particularly Useless Objects
Constitution of the Society (extract)
Useless Links (nb, some of these may not work)
The human race has been making useless objects from the very earliest times. Few of the prehistoric artifacts that have been recovered from archeological digs seem to have any particular practical function, while many of them clearly had no clearly discernable use whatsoever.
You can imagine the conversation:
"Honey, I just found a weird shape stone. Look."
"Not another one. Put it over there with the others."
"You bastard."
"What?"
"You never take an interest, do you."
"Jesus, it's only a fucking stone."
"It's not the stone."
"Huh?"
"Never mind."
We are very much looking to Mrs Mandeville to fill us in on the best way of explaining our motivation and ambitions, as a Society, but suffice it to say meanwhile that a clear lineage of uselessness seems to run through all cultures at all times, and we feel it to be our human duty to celebrate this common factor, and to recognise and raise awareness of the immense contributions uselessness has made to the world today. Since she is one of the most learned experts on the subject in the world, we are very much looking forward to receiving Mrs Mandeville's input on this matter.
Useless objects are the one true common thread binding all humanity together. There follow a few examples from across times and ages.
This Roman artifact, for example, is clearly broken, but nevertheless clearly didn't do anything in particular even when it was whole. Unusually for a useless Roman object, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of thought that has gone into it.
This Egyptian thing on the other hand, shows clear evidence of a certain sophistication being utilised at the design stage. Compared to the Roman object above, there are so many more situations in which this object would be of no use whatsoever, yet it still looks as if it would get in the way a lot.
We look forward to finding out what Mrs Mandeville's approach to the history of Uselessness would be, and are particularly interested to know what her views are on the dangers of functionalism, an issue that, I know only too well, particularly concerns many of the more pessimistically inclined members of the Society.
There are so many examples one could give at this point, and I am wary of treading on Mrs Mandeville's toes, so I shall refrain from attempting any more than the most cursory explanation of her famous Theory Of Uselessness. This explanation may be found in the following section, wherein each type of useless object is linked to what I hope Mrs Mandeville will agree with me is a relevant and clear example of each case.
As I understand it, and the following are, I stress, to be taken as no more than the early glimmerings of a basic outline, Mandeville's General Theory Of Uselessness divides all objects as follows:
Each of the above types of useless object is linked to a suitable example from another website.
The Society For The Preservation Of Useless Objects as we know it today was founded in 1863, by Major G.P.Stokes and the Reverend H. Parker as they shared a particularly unlikely train journey from Poona in India to Vladivostock in Siberia. Since they had to wait, in many cases, for actual lengths of track and station platforms etc. to be built, the journey took an extraordinarily long time, and both men became extremely bored, founding the Society as a way of passing the endless hours sitting in the stationary train in the middle of nowhere.
Since the journey took over ten years, and neither one had any particularly urgent business to attend to, for they were both men of some means, Stokes and Parker had a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for others to build on later. Sadly, it is only Major Stokes whose contributions are still in the possession of the Society, for the Reverend Parker, while undoubtedly a brilliant and assiduous scholar, seems not to have actually bothered to write down the results of any of his investigations.
The original manuscript of the Society's Constitution was sadly lost to us in 1867, after it sustained damage through an accidental vodka spillage. According to Society tradition, it was the Reverend Parker who actually set fire to it after his attempt to replicate a rather crude childhood practical joke went hideously wrong.
During the inevitable recriminations that followed, a certain coldness came over the relationship between Stokes and Parker, which had always been strained at the best of times, and the two finally broke over the subject of whether or not Parker could borrow a pair of Stokes' trousers. Parker maintained that it would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, but Stokes just kept saying, "Harumph, Parker, ye'll not set fire to my trousers too, demmit," over and over again like an automaton. Parker left the train at this point, and returned wearing a pair of locally made pantaloons, which made Stokes laugh uproariously until Parker felled him with a swift and unexpected upper-cut to the jaw.
What happened next is not clear, but we know from records that the membership of the Society remained at a steady 1 until 1895, when it briefly reached an all-time low of 0 after Stokes, by then Colonel Stokes, was desperately unlucky to be the only man killed in the Battle of Bodd's Water, one of the least important disasters of the Crimean Campaign.
The battle had been arranged for the Monday, but, for tactical reasons, the British had secretly decided not to turn up. Unfortunately, Stokes neglected to pick up his mail that morning, and trotted down to the arranged location, Bodd's Water, expecting to find the rest of the British army there already. Instead he found himself alone in front of 50,000 enraged locals who were particularly upset about the British claim to be imposing a superior civilisation when *their* bars stayed open till 4am. His body was never recovered, though there was a cryptic note in Cyrillic lettering which nobody understood, not even the Crimeans. Recent forensic tests have shown that this was Stokes' attempt to surrender peacefully, but his lack of language skills had once again let him down. The nearest thing to a translation of the note that modern scholars can agree on is 'Cabbage Licence', which, it can be seen, is less than helpful.
Due to a curious mix-up which has never been fully explained, the various papers and effects belonging to Colonel Stokes eventually ended up in the possession of the Mandeville family, who refounded the Society in 1937.
As for the modern history of the Society, it is my very strong feeling that it should be none other than Mrs Julia Mandeville herself who should outline the very great strides that we have made in the last sixty years, and we await with interest for her reply to our email.
There are so many useless things in today's society that we are at a loss to know where to begin. Things are moving so very quickly at the moment, particularly with the influx of new information technology, which is revolutionising the sphere of uselessness, as it is so many others. There are more ways that more objects can be useless than ever before, and those plucky members of the Uselessness Rapid Response Reporting Team have their work cut out keeping up. They will be posting their regular updates to this section on a fortnightly basis, but for now you will have to make to with the following examples of some of the most useless things we have discovered in the last decade or so.
This, for example is completely useless.
I wouldn't want one of these blocking my hallway, either.
We are currently negotiating with Visa and Mastercard to implement their new secure on-line credit card payment system here on our fledgling website, and are looking forward to them returning our phonecalls.
In the meanwhile, membership of the Society can still be purchased at the following rates:
Life Membership - £150
Associate Membership - £100
Student Membership - £50
There are no differences between the levels of membership, apart from the price, and the exact wording of the membership card. However, only Student Members may join the Rapid Response Reporting Team, which, incidentally, is currently urgently seeking volunteers.
Cheques, in sterling only, and drawn on a UK bank, should be made payable to:
The Society For The Preservation Of Useless Objects
and may be mailed to the following address:
Hon Membership SecretaryPlease allow us 28 days to process new applications, and bear in mind that telephone enquiries are generally not welcome during the hours of darkness, since we have a problem with our neighbours.
Members receive a membership card embossed with their name, and a list of one anothers names and addresses, so they can get together and share useless facts, or bitch about how we don't actually do anything.
Article One
The name of the Society shall be 'The Society For The Preservation Of Useless Objects.'
Article Twenty-Two
Membership of the Society shall be given at the discretion of the Hon Membership Secretary, who shall have been a designated Member of the Society for not less than fourteen full years prior to the time of their nomination by the outgoing Hon Membership Secretary.
Article Forty-Seven
Members of the so-called 'Uselessness Circle', the 'Useless Objects Preservation Society' and the 'North London Useless Objects Action Group' shall not be permitted to join the Society until they can prove to the satisfaction of a full meeting of Society members that they have officially repudiated all links with these and any other splinter groups that may be founded in the British Isles or abroad.
Be warned. You may come across propaganda from other groups purporting to represent the interests of uselessness research that makes all kinds of false and malicious accusations of our noble Society. We would like to emphasise that the so-called 'Uselessness Circle', the 'Useless Objects Preservation Society' and the 'North London Useless Objects Action Group' are not true uselessness activists. In fact they are very shady organisations indeed.
Our investigations have clearly shown that they exist solely to take your money via extraordinarily expensive membership tariffs, and then do nothing, a practice which we deplore wholeheartedly, since we thought of it first, and wish these others wouldn't try to muscle in like this.
(nb, some of these may not work)
Naturally, this is only the beginnings of what we hope will eventually become a one-stop shop resource for useless sites and information. From small acorns, extremely large oak trees grow, though what that has to do with the development of a set of web links I cannot for the life of me imagine. Oh well.
International Federation Of Useless Societies
Useless Links To Useless Links
Link That Does Work But Takes You Somewhere Where Nothing Works
You may contact us by email, telephone, fax or regular mail.
The email address is honsec@useless.society.org
Our telephone and fax numbers are strictly private, and we will give them to you if we feel you will have something sensible to say when you ring us. We are sorry to have had to take this step, but we have actually had to change both of the numbers that were posted on an earlier version of this page due to a barrage of what were, quite frankly, crank calls, which we soon became bored with.
However, you may feel free to post us a letter at the following address:
General Enquiries SecretaryPlease mark your envelope with the exact name of the committee member that you wish to deal with it, otherwise I am afraid it will be returned unopened. Please also note that Mrs Mandeville is no longer receiving mail at this address, and we cannot cope with any more, so please stop sending it.
Mrs Mandeville has not been seen in New Cavendish Triangle for some years now, and it is rare that any of us have the time to go and visit her in Cambridge. Post for her should be addressed directly to her pigeon-hole at Fulsome College, though it is our understanding that she does not get on well with the porters there, nor indeed with the pigeons, and so much of her mail is mysteriously lost or found in puddles.
If you do manage to get in touch with her, we would appreciate any news she may have to tell you with regard to the progress of the manuscript version of the FAQ she is so kindly compiling for us. We have not heard from Mrs Mandeville for some time now, and regret to say that she seems to be a difficult woman to get hold of. Nevertheless, we are confident that she will soon come up with a definitive text explaining the full nuance and detail of our noble pursuit of uselessness, which we will be posting onto this site as soon as it arrives, if not before.