Tales from the land of the odd

Here’s some examples of the kind of craziness currently running around where I am:

On Friday I bought toilet paper at the store. This is a regular occurrence, as you might imagine. I have not yet gotten to the point where I can nix the toilet paper. Last year at this time the brand of toilet paper I buy was $0.98 for a package of six rolls. Over the past year the price has gradually climbed to $1.27 for the same package. But now something else has changed. They have thinned the paper itself dramatically –to the point where it now takes a handful to equal one or two sheets of the old stuff. It is now the crappiest toilet paper I have ever seen. (Bad pun intended.)

Second incident. I was fired from one of my odd jobs doing yard work a few weeks back. This work was for an old-school aristocratic woman who was basically the boss from hell. I only kept working for her as long as I did because I needed the money. She only had one real complaint (aside from the fact that sometimes when she called me, the phone went to voicemail because, gasp, I was unable to answer the phone): I did not have all the leaves raked and bagged before Thanksgiving. She wants someone who can work on a tighter schedule than that. Well, that is fine. I understand. Except for one thing: The vast majority of her leaves did not even come down until the week right before Christmas! All the leaves around here were late to fall this year, but apparently nature is supposed to work on her schedule too. ;-)

Final incident. Last week I attended a talk by the head of the local food bank. His talk was on the increasing need for food donations and so on. (By the way, before the economy started tanking they all ready serviced nearly 10% of the area’s population. That number has increased dramatically.) A good portion of his talk was concerned with the intense desire of the food bank to start handing out healthier food because most of what they get is junk food. He put out a call for people to donate healthy food. After the talk, I asked him about the possibility of some of the gardeners in the area (myself included) donating fresh, excess produce next year). He refused point blank because ‘it is too hard to distribute’. They welcome produce, but only of the canned or frozen variety (store bought of course). How is this helping the people? More and more people are going hungry and the industrial food system is breaking down. And yet this madness persists.