well, today i am officially going to sign up for the marine corps marathon through the charity team of the lombardi cancer center. looking through their registration forms, i see that they charge you an entrance fee of $100 fricking dollars. what, me raising $2,000 through sweat and tears is not enough for you? couldn't you like, waive the whole silly $100 part? but anyway. i digress. i am here to do good, not to bitch excessively. i am bringing this on myself, after all.

and so now that i have a target goal of $2,000 to raise by october 22, 2004, the begging will commence...now. i would be so happy and pleased if everybody who read this blog, be you friend, enemy, anonymous lurker, somebody who found the blog through a search for naked benjamin mackenize/jessica cutler pictures or for random italy tips, could donate $10. i understand that almost everybody i know is excessively poor and paying student loans and rent and nightly beer tabs and what have you. but i do hope you can afford $10. and if you can afford more, i will be extremely grateful. in fact, perhaps i can offer sort of a tiered-compensation thing for bigger donors. a la bush ranger/pioneer crap. yeah, i'll cook you dinner or something if you donate $50. free food poisoning for fifty bucks! lucky you. we'll see about that one.

i do want to remind everyone that i didn't pick the lombardi center randomly; i really do care if you donate money to them, because the center is where my mother received excellent treatment for breast cancer back in 1996-1997. i remember going along with her to her chemo treatments, and the staff there was always incredibly kind to me, a teenager who was scared out of her wits, but who wanted to pretend to sort of be strong and not worried as the oldest kid in the family. the doctors were great; my mother had an oncologist who would call her constantly during treatment and afterwards to check on her status. just, overall...i mean, if you've got to go through something like cancer, the lombardi center is probably a good place to do it. later on, i might have my mother write up an experience of her time there so you can better understand what makes the lombardi center so wonderful.

and no matter if you decide to make a donation or not, maybe you can do me the favor of forwarding this link through email or trackbacking it on your web site. the more people i can beg from, the better! and anyway, if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that cancer is bad.

so here it is: the paypal button. please, do what you can. $10 really does count.