20,000 Dead

Seriously, Mother Nature, we goddam get it. We are sinners in the hands of an angry planet.

Entire towns gone. Millions homeless. Aid choked off in places because it's a political hot zone. Considering last month I blogged -- and we raised a fantastic amount of money -- for disaster relief in one of the richest countries in the world, for a disaster an order of magnitude less horrible than this, I've switched the sidebar over. As always, I'll match all donations. The only caveat is that I'm going to do a bit of research and find the most straight-line route to getting the money somewhere on the ground. It may still wind up being Red Cross, but we'll see.

Personally, I want to raise at least as much money for the Kashmir victims as I did for Katrina for a variety of reasons. However, knowing many of you went to the wall for the Katrina relief, I'm not going to hit you up harder -- I'm going to try to add even MORE value to the blog. It's incumbent upon me to squeeze a single buck out of the several thouand humans who visit here every month. We'll have even more screenwriting advice, more political writing, more sci-culture writing ... and I'm going to hit up some humans I'm working with for some very, very VERY cool geek auction items we'll toss up on E-Bay. I'm not promising a pair of Mark Waid's underwear, guaranteed worn at least once, but I think that's a very likely possibility. Particularly after our last party.

Now as I said, I'm pretty stacked for October so I wasn't expecting to produce much. (although The Crazification Factor has become ridiculously popular on the web, who knew?) This fundraiser will be open-ended, probably rolling into Novemeber.

So, back to work. And remember, as always, I'm not hitting you up. You find something amusing or interesting, drop in a buck.

Take care, and hope everyone within blogshot is safe and warm.