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?

"The hardest job kids face..."

Fred Astair lived from May 10, 1899 to June 22, 1987. For the purposes of this post I'd like that 1987 to be a bit earlier (no offense Mr. Astair), but it will do.

At some point during his life, he said the following:

"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."

It's important to realize that he died in 1987. So at the very latest, he must have been talking about "kids" in 1986 or 1987. Given this, the "kids" he was talking about would now be between 20 and 40 years old (roughly ages 0-20 in 1986). Again, this is assuming the latest possible date he could have made this comment.

Why is this important? Well, next time any one between those ages tries to tell you about the lack of "manners" kids have these days compared to their day, keep in mind that Fred Astair thought the same thing about them way back when they were kids. And any time some one over those ages tries to tell you how parents don't set good examples for their kids... well... guess who was "not setting" a good example for all those kids Astair is talking about.

Just another example of how things really aren't worse today than they were back then. The good old days weren't always good, and (today or tomorrow) ain't as bad as they seem.

The true meaning of Christmas

From the song Christmas Shoes, which I'm sure you've heard (and R. hates):

Sir, I want to buy these shoes
for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight
Bridge:
I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about

Soooooo.... extending this all the way out... God gave a little boy's mom a fatal, horrible disease so that he could teach this poor schlub "what Christmas is all about?" Here's an idea: How about, occasionally, you do a little self reflection and figure it out on your own so that no one needs get cancer for you to "remember" what Christmas is all about.

Now, I know the retort will be that either A) I'm overthinking this, or B) the kid's mom had cancer anyway, and God merely sent the boy to remind the guy, no one was the worse off, so no harm no foul.

As to A: I think its pretty hard to overthink the important metaphysical questions of life and our existance, their impact on our lives and actions, and what that means for our future conduct and morals. If thinking too long and hard about morals and how to live life is wrong, well, count me as guilty, I guess. I've done worse, and probably will in the future, and its a guilt I'll willingly take. And recommend to others.

As to B: I guess its possible the boy's mom was sick anyway and not made sick specifically to teach this guy a lesson. As I said, the result is really "no harm, no foul," under that formulation. As to the lesson, the shopkeeper surely seems to have missed the point since he didn't put in his own money or just put the item on "sale." So, we have to assume I guess that God was spending his time specifically lining up these events to teach this solitary man a lesson. I think its more likely the guy did a bit of self-searching in those moments, but whatever. It seems pretty selfish to think God directed this disease-striken mom's kid to the mall to teach this guy a lesson. I have no problem with Objective selfishness, but for a group of people repulsed by the idea of selfishness, its an odd formulation.

I'm just saying.

More News of the Odd coming later this week.