Do Something Good Every Day

This morning, in the spirit of giving (and well, caffeine) I responded to one of those Starbucks emails I usually delete (I signed up for a card to get free soy milk - what of it?!) because it told me that if I bought a coffee today, it being World AIDS Day, the coffee behemoth would donate a few cents to the cause. So out I went & when I was buying my tasty toffee nut hoo haw, I found out I could start using a (Product)Red card instead & continue the little donations all through the year. OK!
So here I was feeling all inspired & warm inside, with my little Red pamphlet on display by my computer, reminding me (and passersby) to DO SOMETHING GOOD EVERY DAY.
Then something started to nag at me. Didn't I hear the words RED and BONO in the same sentence on my clock radio this morning? I was half asleep but, hold on a second...
Oh, great. A few wiki reads later & I suddenly feel like garbage. Well, not total garbage. I mean, contributing to a very small donation to a good cause is better than a punch in the throat, but as I perused the (Product)Red - man, it's hard to keep up those parentheses - with all its ads for GAP, Nike, etc. I started to feel a little creepy. I mean, I was just buying a coffee, for crying out loud. I wasn't actually doing much good for the world. But do lots of people out there switch off the potentially philanthropic portions of their brains once they buy their "Red" lattes, thinking, I'm all set!

And then I found this. Instead of allowing multinational companies to make even bigger profits by simply turning out even MORE stuff, albeit with stylishly "charitable" themes, to continue to use dodgy means of production & avoid fair living wages and to donate questionable portions of said massive profits - WHY DON'T WE ALL JUST GIVE? That's the idea behind BUY (LESS) - as in BUY (LESS) CRAP.
I love it.
Like I said, if you're gonna buy a €4 cup of gingerbread joe, you might as well have Starbucks donate 5 cents in the process. (only 5 cents?!?!) BUT don't forget to donate to real charities who need it most. And donate all that extra blood you're not using while you're at it.
Seasons greetings!