To truly understand boredom, you have to be flat broke. Sure, rich people can get bored, what with their vacuous lifestyles and large amounts of recreation time, but it’s nothing compared to the tedium of having no money and nothing to do.
Lists of best chicken wing joints and guides to what's happening this weekend aren’t of much use when you haven’t got a buck in the bank, so we’ve compiled a set of suggestions just for you.
Here are 15 ways to pass the time when you’re penniless:
- Throw empty Solo cans at people on hoverboards.
- Dress up a cat as your favourite character from Making a Murderer. If you don’t have a cat, borrow one from the neighbourhood.
- Try to decode the satanic messages in every episode of The Cafe.
- Call your dottiest older relatives and wish them a Merry Christmas. Within a couple of days you should receive Christmas cards with money inside.
- Make a doco about the possums that hang around your house. Add your own voiceovers, giving them all British accents. Try to sell it to Animal Planet, pitching it as ‘a furry, feral Game of Thrones with double the humping and fighting’.
- Draw dicks on a newspaper. If you can’t afford a newspaper use one of the ones at Coffee Club.
- Sit on the floor at Whitcaulls and read an entire novel. If any of the staff give you grief tell them you work for The Urban List and are researching for an article.
- Set up a lemonade stand and wait for the big bucks to start rolling in. Advertise lemonade for 5c but charge $20 for cups.
- Start a scandalous rumour about yourself then write a 1000-word Facebook post denying it and expressing your disappointment at those who believed.
- Hold a sham chook raffle at your local pub and spend the profits on booze.
- Read a dictionary cover to cover then impress strangers with your cleverness by shouting random words at them.
- Take up whittling. People will start approaching you for advice because it makes you look wise.
- Catch a wild pig. Roast it. Have a Sunday roast—gather and hunt style.
- Start an Instagram account dedicated to #sideboob. Wait until GQ magazine offers you a job as sideboob correspondent.
- Take yourself to the palm prom. Rough up the suspect. Badger your witness. Shake hands with the unemployed. Relish your hot dog. Etc.