From: megazone@realsoon.WPI.EDU (MegaZone23)
Newsgroups: alt.suicide.holiday
Subject: Senseless
Date: 12 Nov 1992 11:25:04 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: realsoon.wpi.edu

I've been meaning to do this....

        Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

>Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall a
>hundred miles from her home.  When it stayed on her mind for days, she
>gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down.  "I thought it was

Huh? If it stuck in her mind why'd she have to go back?

>"Here's the idea," Herbert says.  "Anything you think there should be
>more of, do it randomly."

Hmm... Great for the unbalanced. "Gee, more death's would be cool!" Personally
I feel there should be more civil disobediance.

>Her own fantasies include: (1) breaking into depressing-looking schools
>to paint the classrooms, 

Oh, nice... Yeah, lets break in. Vandalize the place. I bet the school would
end up paying to have it repainted. Damn good idea. Yahright. 

>(2) leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor parts of town, 

This is just wonderful. Violate the sancity of their homes. Take away that one
bit of security. Let them know they have no privacy. Make sure they know there
are others who pity them, great for the pride. It is important to be able to
feel secure in your residence. Without that it is just a place to crash, not a
home at all.

>(3) slipping money into a proud old woman's purse.

And how do you know she needs it? I have elderly relatives who drive beat up
cars and were old clothes, etc. And they have plenty of money. They just choose
not to use it.

>of letters and business cards.  And as it spreads, so does a vision of
>guerrilla goodness.

Why not organized kindness? A focussed effort can do more good than 
disorganized random events.

>mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a rundown house and clean it from
>top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling.

Or they might get out the old shot gun and tell 'em to leave. Listen, if you
want to do something like that go and offer to do so. Just don't show up. I
know my grandmother would flip, she doesn't like strangers at her house. She
is nervous in general.

>It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance.  A woman in Boston
>writes "Merry Christmas!" to the tellers on the back of her checks.  A

Thanks cool. Unless the teller doesn't do the xmas thing. Howe about Happy
Holidays?

>man in St. Louis, whose car has just been rear-ended by a young woman,
>waves her away, saying, "It's a scratch.  Don't worry."

Yeah so? If it was just a scratch than that was probably easier than dealing
with insurance.

>Senseless acts of beauty spread:  A man plants daffodils along the
>roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars.  In

To remain until the roadcrews mow them down with the grass...

>likewise, you can't commit a random act of kindness without feeling as
>if your own troubles have been lightened if only because the world has
>become a slightly better place.

Actually most of those things would make me feel like a fool.

>And you can't be a recipient without feeling a shock, a pleasant jolt.

Want to bet? I know plenty of people would at least be annoyed.

>later?  Wave someone on in the intersection?  Smile at a tired clerk?

I do that anyway...

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Newsgroups: alt.suicide.holiday