On Doing Good and Whacking Bugs...

Sorry folks, but you are in for some cracker barrel feel-os-o-phee.

That was nice of me, I don't sneak up on you -- it's just like in the old days of tee-vee, when I was a young whippersnapper back in Poosah City: "...and now folks, a word from our sponsor". Then there was a commercial and then they said, "...now we return to our broadcast."

Of course in those days there was only two, then three, then four channels to choose from -- and the zapper had yet to be invented. If you wanted to change channels, you had to get off your butt. Today, depending on how closly you are interfaced with the audiovisual beast, you have at least 30, but more likely 500 channels of illusion to choose from -- and many of them are HD!

But what I wanted to talk about was "doing good".

It's good to do good. Heck, even the bloodiest dictators and tyrants will subscribe to that. Name me one of those mass murderers who wouldn't tell you that they were only trying to "Unite Europe", "Spread Democracy", "Baptize the Heathens", "Give Our Homeland a Place in the Sun" -- or whatever dollop of bullshit that suited the time and culture.

Myself, I like to see the big things in the small, minute daily things. One of my older paroles is: "The Third World War Begins At Home." That is, what is your connection to the holy shit even stoopid guys like me can see flaming down the tube?

I dislike killing bugs just because they are in the house. If possible, I try to escort them outside. Does that mean that I am doing a "good thing"? Well, the honey bee gets lifted outside because there is a serious problem with the number of honey bees here in the Happy Little Kingdom. Yellow jackets and the late summer and early fall get whacked with my little electric fly swatter.

Am I good? I don't know -- is the electric fly swatter really painless? It could well be that getting squished by a rolled up newspaper was the preferred way to go by yellow jackets -- it's hard to get a statement from them, though.

As for escorting little things like moths in my hand outside the house -- it sounds like a no-brainer. Of course it is a "good thing".

But I remember one time I threw a little night moth out the back door and, even as it landed on the tiles there, a little sparrow swooped down and graciously accepted the snack...
So, was there "good" here? I suppose the sparrow would say, "Yum!" And, when you get down to it, who really gives more than a half damn about a bittsy little moth?