Toy for Tots

Every year the company that pays my salary collects toys for needy children through the Toy for Tots Foundation. Some nameless drone from HR puts a box in the lobby and then a month later calls the Marines and they send a guy to pick up the toy.


There's going to be one happy kid this holiday season!!! It's Thomas the Tank Engine!!!


Calling All Engines! Thomas is in trouble and he needs all his friends to help him! Don't cry, Timmy. I'm sure you can help Thomas. It's not like he's in real trouble -- like he's gotten his coal tender preggers. He's in a little trouble -- like he's forgotten where he's placed his kippers and doesn't want crumpets for breakfast. You'll be able to help your friend Thomas.

You're crying because it's a a video tape? You want one of those new fangled DVDs instead? Shut your trap, you ungrateful, needy, little bastard...

It has only been a couple of weeks. Even with all the pretty lights and piped in Christmas music, I'm not really in my full holiday depression mode yet, so the tots might still have time.

I know you're saying to yourself something like, "Instead of cracking wise skinflint, go to Toys R Us and buy a frickin toy you cheap, half-Jew, joyless, cranky f-tard!"

That would require me to get up out of my chair (work) and/or couch (home).

An aside:

The Toys for Tots Foundation has been around since 1947.

The mission:

The mission of the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute a lethal barrage of 40 mm Bofors cannon fire at a rate of 30 rounds per second to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.

The poster:

This poster creeps me out. I would have gone with the happy American-style Santa, you know, the guy that hangs with Ronald McDonald, not the Norman Rockwellian German-style Santa that is scary in a killer clown sort of way.

And the poster implies that Santa was in the Corps. Once a Marine, always a Marine. When was Santa a highly trained killing machine? He's pretty old. No way was he killing gooks in Nam. Krauts in the Big One? Krauts in the not-quite-as-big-as-the-Big-One? Confederates during the Civil War? Mexicans in Montezuma? Barbarians in Tripoli? Don't worry Timmy, Santa only kills when he has exhausted every other possible option.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Semper Fi!