Monday, January 31, 2011

My Milkbone Mea Culpa

Going by some of the emails I got since yesterday, some of you think I was pretty "flip" in what I wrote about the Milkbone dog biscuit I've got. Flip, in the sense that I didn't sound sincere about it being my last resort/go-to food in the event that I ran out of other food and money to buy more.

Well, it's the last day of January, and I don't want this weighing on my conscience into a whole new month (February), so let me address the issue right now and hopefully get it over with. Let this be my mea culpa if indeed I have anything to feel guilty about, which really I don't think I do. Because I was 100% sincere.

I was, as I just said, 100% sincere, with this little side note, that I don't really expect to be completely out of food or out of money to buy more. Hence, I don't really expect to have to eat this Milkbone, and so, going by that, I guess I was a little flip, and for that -- mea culpa -- I'm sorry.

The issue some of you had, and I completely understand this, is that there are indeed lots of people out there who are either starving to death or close to it. To me, that's no laughing matter, and I'm 100% sincere about that. It sickens me that in a world where there should be plenty of food, there's not. That's no joke, that's really how I feel. But it's a matter of economics, problems with distribution. There's always some problem with distribution and that is a sickening reality.

This blog's stock in trade is trying to make people smile. If I can toss in a few jokes and make people laugh, that brightens my day ... and I hope theirs. So, let me try to do that, leaving behind the last paragraph, which veered off into a serious subject for which I have no solution. Make distribution better is the solution, but how I'm supposed to do that, sitting here as I am, one guy with a single Milkbone, I don't know.

If I'm ever that bad off, believe me, I'm not likely to think it's funny. Because it wouldn't be. If I'm down to one Milkbone and that's all I have to eat. I was thinking about this today while I was outside scraping some ice off my windshield. I was thinking, "If I'm ever down to one Milkbone -- literally one dog biscuit -- I may as well give it to someone less fortunate, because what good's it really going to do me? If I eat it myself, then die?" But then the question presented itself, "Why aren't I giving it away today? Or why aren't I giving away everything else I have today? Why should I wait till I'm down to it?"

The obvious answer -- which became obvious to me within seconds -- is that if I gave away everything I had, what kind of life would that leave me? Then I'd be at the mercy of the elements. Then I literally would wish I had at least a Milkbone, so I could eat it, then die. Or, as I said above, give it away, because really, what good it going to do me to have one Milkbone to eat, then die?" I may as well die today and spare the world its need to care for me, which it wouldn't anyway, thanks to problems with distribution.

The whole thing, you can see, raises more questions than it answers. Even now I'm sensing some mea culpa feelings again for having even brought it up. Because there's someone out there who would give their eye teeth (is that how the phrase goes) to have this thing. And that's sad, that the stinking distribution system in this world is so piss poor that people can't even have a bare morsel.

We need a world leader -- a benevolent one, not a crappy one -- to get this all figured out. Someone smarter than me, if such a creature exists.

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