Another Announcement - Project Valour-IT

I'm not usually a fan of fundraising. I'm always getting those ludicrous calls asking me if I'll support the local sheriff's department with their bid to help unwanted lemurs get the medical treatment they need to prevent teen pregnancy. I usually hang up on them, but only after I mess with them a little and cuss at them for my own sheer enjoyment. I love when they go, 'so, can we count on my support?' and then I go, 'no, but if you can count to two, you can count on my ballsack.'

But today I got a different kind of request, one that was not only personalized (the guy's a fan), but actually hits home a little. The reader who contacted me was asking if I would like to add a little blurb about fundraising for Project Valour-IT, a charity that drums up money to supply wounded vets with stuff they need to get better. I was skeptical - I would rather donate a cup of warm urine than buy a 'support the troops' ribbon magnet and put money into the pocket of some opportunistic vulture capitalizing on American patriotism. But this one was for real. I checked it out, and it's a good one.

The three things that I see that they do, primarily, are laptops, Wiis, and GPS devices. The laptops are voice-activated (super-handy if you've had your hands blown off), the Wii systems go to hospitals to help with physical therapy (if you've ever played Wii Boxing, you know it's a workout and a half), and the GPS devices go to troops with head injuries who can't find their way back from the 7-11 because of the shrapnel in their heads, and are therefore smoking the entire pack of cigarettes they went out to get in the first place and then having to wander all the way back and get another one, and in the meantime, the milk goes bad.

Part of the reason this particular charity made me slow down long enough to notice is that my old man is a disabled Army vet. He got the back of his head blown off in 'Nam, and the metal plate they attached to keep his brain in his skull gives him migraines when it rains. He's still alive and kicking, and one tough son of a bitch, to boot, but he had to fight tooth-and-nail to get the 100% disability he needed to retire, and I thought that was a load of horse crap. He got it, but we should have just given it to him. He busted his hump for his country, got the crap blown right out of him, and he deserves whatever he can get. And so do these busted-ass vets coming back all effed-up, getting half-assed treatment at Walter Reed and then trying to get back to work as functional members of a society that has absolutely no idea what it means to sacrifice in times of war.

So join me in dumping a couple bucks into Project Valour-IT. There's an ad right over there on the left, and if you click it, you can donate to a remarkably worthy cause. Plus Team Navy is getting its ass kicked, and I'm ex-Navy, so do me a favor and make the Marines look bad. You know, by doing something other than administering an IQ test (that's a surefire way to make a Marine look bad. If they were smart enough, they would have gone Navy). The money goes to a common fund - the contest is just for fun and sport and to give me a reason to mock the Marine Corps. But hurry up, because this contest ends on November 11, and then the ad comes down and I go back to pretending I don't care about anything but board games, alcohol and hookers.

Man, between all these special updates and announcements, nobody is ever going to get to read actual game reviews around here.