Random Good Fun

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger.

In part, because I admit, I’ve been short on creativity.

So I’ve been thinking, both to improve the regularity of content and to add a little more happy to the often bleak interwebs, that instead of just hi-lighting my dalliances at being, well, kinder, to profile anything that falls within the ‘kind’ genre that I find on the internet.

I’ll start tomorrow.

Sometimes we make love with our eyes. Sometimes we make love with our hands. Sometimes we make love with our bodies. Always we make love with our hearts.

It’s very simple; it’s not complicated. If you want to go home and complicate it with the mind and say, “Oh I can’t do this,” then you’ll never do it. But if you simply accept the truth and do, then it will come very quickly. Don’t let the mind complicate your life; always be simple. Start off by doing simple acts of love. To people and friends whom you haven’t said, “I love you,” to in a long time, send an email out tomorrow: “How are you? I’m just sending a loving thought to you.” You’ll see what happens. When you leave a shop, turn around and tell the person, “Have a nice day.” Then you’ll see how you change that person’s point of view and how happy they feel. Wear a smile on your face when you walk the street and see how many people will smile back at you. Have a wilful feeling that everybody should feel love today in a small way. It starts by you doing something in a small way to make someone very happy. If you know something is going to make someone happy, then go out of your way and make them happy. That is our duty as human beings. Can you imagine if everyone lived with this principle? Everyone you talk to would be trying to make you happy. How beautiful is this?
~Swami Sai Premananda

When I was five years old, my mom told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “Happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.

This idea was launched when we realized that the best pick me up is a secretly gifted cupcake…or brownie… or pie… or cookie… or freshly baked loaf of bread… or, well, you get the idea.

The general premise is this: you find someone in need of a boost, or someone who is just all around great, or maybe someone who is a sour puss but still deserves a nice thing or two, and you (anonymously) surprise them with a plate, basket, or bowl of awesomely baked goods.

How?

There are two ways to handle this.

The first method, which we employed, works best if you live in a small community without crazily suspicious people.  For those of you in Cityland where homemade goods left unattended on a doorstep will be more likely be thrown out then consumed in sheer bliss we’ve created a modified second method.

Method 1

1. Identify your target(s)
2. Make a bountiful plenty of baked goods. Some of our favorites include these Dark Chocolate, Walnut and Golden Raising Cookie, Chocolate Caramel Crackers, and these to die for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies the recipe which we’ve reproduced way down on the bottom of the blog because we can’t recall where we got it from (if it was you let us know and we’ll happily link!)
3. Unless you’re 100% sure of the person’s dietary habits we recommend avoid making anything with nuts, peanuts, or soy as it would be terribly tragic if your act of kindness killed someone.
4. Attach a card listing the full ingredients of everything that you’ve made.
5. Attach another card saying (to the effect):
   “Because of your general awesomeness you have been tapped by The Bread Campaign.  Enclosed are tasty treats that we hope delight your taste buds and tantalize your senses. If you’ve enjoyed your surprise, may we suggest you pass the effort forward.”
6. Deliver your gift  without getting caught. Like all RGF the essence of this is to not get caught. This may mean enlisting third party help for a secret delivery. The idea is to get the baked goods to your target in a manner in which they trust the basket enough to eat them.

Method 2

In big cities, steps 1, 3,4,5,6 are identical. What changes is step 2: making the baked goods yourself. Because many times city dwellers are a bit more paranoid, the easiest way around this is to order from and get it delivered by a bakery. This ups your cost a bit, but reduces your risk of getting caught.  In New York, we love Crumbs Bakeshop for Cupcakes, but you probably know the best bakeshops where you live.

“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.”
~ Brendan Gill

Let’s face it sometime life is rough.

Sometimes, the pick-me-up of good friends, good food, or even mediocre beer just isn’t enough.

Even kind words from a loved one doesn’t always do the trick because we can shrug off gentle words from friends as mere fluff from someone who cares but doesn’t “get” how horrible/stuck/terrible things really are.

It’s at times like this, that we can lend our friends a helping hand through a bit of divine intervention that we at Random Good Fun like to call “PostCards from God.”

It’s really simple.

1. Buy or make a postcard (If you want some tips on making postcards Photojojo has a great tutorial on making photo postcards)
2. Block print (to disguise your handwriting), get a friend to write, type, or use a printer to write an uplifting and helpful quote to your friend. Some of our favorite quote websites include BrainyQuote and  Wisdom Quote though we’ve found if you just do a google search for your theme (for example quotes on happiness) great things turn up).
3. This is the key step. Sign your postcard “From God”
4. Mail the postcard to said friend.

Voila!

You’ve just sent them a postcard from God. Worse case scenario you get found out as your friend continually pesters you to figure out if it’s you and they smile because you thought to reach out to them. Best case, you’ve given someone an anonymous pick me up. It’s a win-win .

Notes:

• If you’re living in a city that would easily identify you as “God” it helps to have a third party in on the plan, and get them to remail your postcard from their city. For example, if you’re living in Dubai at the moment, and you’re the only person your target would know in Dubai, but your friend knows loads of people in Iowa City, mail the postcard (in an envelope) to a different friend in Iowa City and get that friend to remail the postcard to your target. Makes you less likely to seem to be the culprit.
• We don’t like lying, and ultimately if it’s a choice between lying and getting caught we always pick getting caught. We do not, however, mind playing dumb. For example,  a friend received one of these postcards and asked us directly if we were the culprit. The friend had already stated that the card had come from New York City, and at the time, we were living 7 hours away from New York City. So we simply asked, how could we have sent the card since we were not in New York City and had not been in months.