Mary Jo Blige or Josh Groban will Hyde Park Style straight up tell you that well over 1/2 million people will die of cancer-related causes this year, or put more straight up style, of cancer.
If you read the New York Times online, the bald kid will take a mere $19/month to save, through the services of St. Jude Hospital.
Bee Pollen stuns cancer, by the way, lately proven.
Just a day's worth of cancer at 4:25am. One day of a guy with cancer trying to not be a guy with cancer thinking about cancer while doing things not to think about cancer. Read paper, watch television, surf online, listen to dance music, and everything has cancer.
So, if you're reading this and you don't have cancer, clear paths are being forged by the American Cancer Society, et al, for you to participate in, revel in, loll in or depress into cancer nation at your leisure. Were I now to have the choice, I would choose my involvement with cancer to be $19/month. $19 is likely about how much it costs for a nurse to empty my urinal duck.
I will sound snarky and ungrateful in this little blog post read by 5 people and I apologize upfront if that is annoying or honest ingratitude. I just know that the development officer who came up with the persistent giving campaign at (insert charity name here) is making more money that I will ever make, and the place of the bald child in the Times is not just a coup, but an expensive coup, one that will recoup money for St. Judes but also bonus money for that officer or group or ad agency or ad buyer or all of them.
Disturbing as he is, cute as he is, tragic as he is, there will always be a bald child with cancer and it sucks. There will always be one who will donate his image--whose parents will authorize the donation of an image--and they'll be placed particularly, and strategically for those 318,000,000 of us who will not die and might believe that $19 a month is not too much to pay to prevent bald children from dying of cancer.
The American Cancer Society will rightly point out that a substantial percentage of cancer related research will not be funded this year. They will not have time to point out all of the titles of the research going unfunded, but it certainly sounds as if some of the 575,000 Americans who will die of cancer will do so because we did not study leisure options and practical recreational programming for Stage 4 Esophageal Cancer Survivors: Lessons and Indications for Success. Or, for that matter, that we did not decide to study why pink was so effecitve a ribbon color for the Komen Foundation.
I don't doubt that among the papers detailing unfunded possibilities for new knowledge is the one that leads to revolutionary treatment for a guy just such as me. And I'm now officially f u c k e d. But let me assure you this will not be the first or only moment at 4:37am that I believe that to be the case.
My purpose is so much less than theirs, really, and I own my narcissism. I want you to know that something happened to me that was profound and I felt it deeply. That I engaged in it as a manifestation of something I've done wrong, or happened in cruel happenstance, and i didn't care which applied. That if you cared about me, or it, or the fact that it happened to me, that you should know how much it made me more of who I am. That I am scared, tired, and would be willing to fund every research study if it might give me five more minutes of love.
And importantly, that I do not mock you if you do or don't give $19 to anyone. For the sake of outing myself, I give to Greenpeace and the Southern Poverty Law Center monthly. I'm thinking that if it will shut that singer up, I'll be doing something for animals any day now, too.
Just know that I will never ask you to be like me.
Hi Mark! I wanted to let you know I read your blog every day, and if I miss...I catch up the next. Forgive me for not writing much, but your writing skills are awesome! and my comments seem so booooooooring! and lack creativity! Just want to let you know that I always am thinking about ya! Jill
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