Calling all Denizens, lurkers, readers, or anyone you can beg, borrow, or steal from.

Get out ‘yer checkbooks, damnit.

Seriously.

For crying out loud, for me to get a mailer from the organization begging me for cash is a deplorable state of affairs because I have so little and many have given so little. I’m a grad student. Jess and I live on $14000/year. We live in a dinky one bedroom apartment in central Indiana, have a 15 year old car we only drive to the grocery store while using public transit to get every where else (which I absolutely hate doing), and eat pretty low on the hog(Cricket would never eat like this: ramen, instant oatmeal, TV dinners for a treat, 2 hotdogs cut up into instant mac n’ cheese once or twice a week, and brown label vitamins to cover micronutrient deficiencies.). And, tack on the money I’ve been spending since my friend Yujiro died to take care of his widow, Emiko? Paying two rent checks summing to 1200 bucks each month and immigration attorneys is not cheap and definitely not easy on our monthly income. Yet, I’m still able to kick in some when asked.

I’ll be honest. It isn’t much. What I’m able to give probably only paid for postage to about 20 bigger givers. But it is something.

So what about you, pilgrim? Are you feeling good about how charitable you’re being right now? Gawd knows I’m not. I’m feelin’ pretty guilty I don’t have more to give. That I was stupid and bought a playstation last Christmas, using up quite a bit of our discretionary funds, makes me angry right now because there is something bigger and more important than The Wife having a new shiny toy to play with while I sleep on the weekends. So, if you feel like you’ve done all you can you should put that checkbook away. If you don’t feel like you have then it’s time to start. Make with the pen motions (or clicking on the links on the right border) already.

You want a reward? Fine. If we get $5000 by next this coming Wed to flow in from this website or otherwise confirmed to either Soldiers’ Angels or the subsidiary, and FbL’s baby, VALOUR IT I’ll do one of two things: option a is get John to take a picture of him leaning his knee on my neck while he holds one of the Castle’s working(but unloaded) firearms to my head to post here and option b is to make a shooting range target in gollum’s likeness to be posted here. You guys get to choose in the comments what you want. Oh, option C is to post one of the most embarrassing pictures in existence of me as a kid. We can do that one too. Put the confirmation number you receive via email in the comments section or email John(his email is on the right sidebar with “ry’s challenge” as the subject and he can forward all of that to me for totaling).

But either way, make with throwing money SA’s way. It is the right thing to do.
ry

aHEM. *koff* *koff* Izzis thing on? [taptaptap] Good.

Readers are free to suggest other forms of penance we can put Ry to. The Castle pond might need some de-mucking this summer... oh, say, August, for example. -the Armorer