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When I added the donation button last week to allow people to contribute toward buying more bananas for the monkeys, little did I know how literally some people would take it.

Not only have cash donations through PayPal come in, but one smart — or smart aleck — fan of the monkeys sent this donation through the mail. Despite the trip of about 800 miles, this bunch of bananas arrived in pretty good shape.

Just after the picture was taken, the bananas were split up and eaten by hungry monkeys, who would be happy to swear that I never feed them. So they would like to thank their anonymous benefactor for keeping them alive another day. If this person wants to “out” himself as the one behind this act of charity in the comments, he’s welcome to do so.

In the meantime, the monkeys will be scouring the web for Tuesday’s news.

If you’re ever optimistic about our odds of changing society through persuasion and voting, take a look at what people outside of your own circle of friends believe. In some cases, even those in your own circle are scary enough. Sunday, I ran into a guy who’s convinced that the way to get rid of illegal narcotics in this country is to have a “10 to 20 year war with Mexico.”

For me, there’s no issue that touches on as many infringements of personal freedom as the “drug war” does. It violates people’s right to decide what to consume. It costs everybody a tremendous amount of money every year as governments — federal, state and local — pour billions of dollars down the rathole of “eradicating drugs.” And in the zeal to prosecute this “war,” innocent people (and even family pets) are being killed pretty regularly, but it’s shrugged off as necessary. Maybe worst of all, the fight against drugs is being used as an excuse to erode more and more of our freedoms. And even if you think recreational drugs are good — which I don’t — the problem isn’t getting any better. It never will.

Some people can’t accept that, though. On Facebook, a friend of a friend was blaming cocaine for the death of Whitney Houston. He said, “Cocaine sucks!! So do the nations and organizations that pump it into the U.S. May the iron rod of Jesus come down on the narco-nations now. In Jesus’ name. She might have done more cocaine than anybody in history; even though she might have kicked it recently. Know who brought cocaine to the U.S.?”

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A friend who lives in another country sent me a note Friday to let me know that he’d listed my name and phone number on his application to the U.S. government for a tourist visa. We joked back and forth for a couple of minutes about him coming to recruit terrorist agents or set off bombs or something, but I suddenly realized something I didn’t like.

Even though these were private messages we were exchanging and we were clearly joking in the context of him having to answer stupid questions on a visa application, I realized that I felt just a touch of nervousness. It wasn’t quite fear, but it was close. I found myself hesitant to make completely innocent jokes — simply because of the insanely paranoid police state that’s sprung up over the last decade in the name of fighting terrorism.

There was a time when I had confidence that the things I said in personal online correspondence were almost certainly private, because I didn’t fear being targeted for any reason. But given the increasingly paranoid attitudes and actions of politicians and bureaucrats, I no longer have that confidence.

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