The road to hell is paved with canned goods

I'm a bit of a contrarian at heart, and I love when "common wisdom" is wrong; when doing action "A" has a perverse, unintended affect. In fact, I love unintended consequences altogether. Not that I love when they happen, only when I spot them.

Meanwhile, at this time of year, plenty of offices and groups are doing canned food drives. And plenty of people are feeling good about dropping off that can of tuna or soup.

Turns out your good deed might be done better a different way, and might actually do some harm.

All that food can overwhelm food banks. Not to mention that they now have 700,000 cans of high-sodium food to distribute to people who may have high-blood pressure, or jars of peanuts that can't be given to people with allergies. Or some godawful can of creamed something or other that no one knows what to do with.

Not to mention, apparently the food banks can buy the food cheaper than you ever could. Like $0.10 on the dollar cheaper, so it makes much more sense to simply send them a check that they can use to buy food they actually need for their clients. As the article says, eat the can of tuna and donate half its value to a food bank and you've done a much better deed.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

UPDATE: The original title of this post was "In a canned pickle". Like either one better?

I never assist slavers

Yesterday's post got me thinking about the way I play video games. I thought I had posted on this before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here goes:

No matter my intentions going into a game, I always play the "good" guy.

I play a lot of games that permit choice - you can rob, kill, help out the bad guys, or run errands to help a town whose water supply is poisoned, a person held captive or cursed, what have you. Pretty much no matter the setting - outer space, post-apocalypse Washington, New Vegas, or mythical land - I choose to help out the good guys. Sometimes I do it with a gruff attitude and with little leeway for what my character will put up with and little remorse for negative consequences, but I almost always chose to try to help. Sometimes I'm what you might call a reluctant good guy, but I'm always what you would call - I think - a good guy.

- I never assist slavers. In fact I relish in wiping them out.
- I never provide comfort the the bad guys. I don't always actively wipe them out (until they turn actively hostile), but I don't help them.
- I usually donate money to the poor, and though I usually suspect there is some "in game" angle, I do so even when there isn't an obvious end game in the game.

This isn't to toot my own horn. I actually think the behavior cuts both ways - its a pro and a con, in other words. It shows both what is best and what is worst about me. And sometimes, it reflects the moral black and whiteness that composes the gray of my real life, as it did with Boone. Because although he had murdered woman and children, he regretted it now and I took him on as an ally. I helped him kill the person who sold his wife into slavery (the laws of good and bad are a little loose in post-apocalyptic worlds missing a court system, in my estimation). I genuinely wanted to help him wipe out the Legion who had taken his wife. And I was sorry to see him die.

And its not just companions in general - I got a second, a robot, and lost him in the first mission with little remorse. I'm now on my third companion, mostly because I know want a companion in tow. Partly for the company, partly for the help carrying stuff and partly because I'd like to replace Boone. But she's kind of annoying.

Another example: I freed some slaves from the first batch of Legion I happened upon. Boone was in tow, though I had stowed him away up on a cliff. This was both to prevent him from dying in a battle against unknown forces and also benefited his style. But as the family fled a soldier I missed started shooting at them. I killed him, but not before he took out the mother. That broke my heart and I kicked myself for it. I couldn't find the other two, so I assume they got away. But I honestly wished I could have protected her.

It's an interesting psychological study, I think. Or maybe I just don't get out enough.

Boone has died

... and with those words I had a very weird experience.

Boone, I should explain, was a companion in the game Fallout III: New Vegas. He had been with me for about half of the game at that point. He was quiet and personal and conflicted: not only had he participated in slaughter as a military man, his wife had been sold to slavers and he killed her to save her. His was a sad story of regret, loss and the resulting demons.

My affection for him was heightened because he had helped me out of several tight spots in the game and I gave him all the scavenged stuff to carry, effectively doubling my carrying capacity.

But then I made a bad decision and we ended up in the middle of a pack of wild dogs. Close combat where Boone's sniper rifle skills amounted to very little help. And then he was dead. And I was actually a little moved. Not to tears; I wasn't really sad. But I certainly felt a sense of loss. I felt enough that I ceremoniously dropped a hat he had given me with his corpse and placed his sniper rifle in an unused locker in the shack I use as home base. Then I took a moment and moved on. He had just gotten finished telling me that he felt bad things were due him because of the bad things he had done. I guess he was correct.