Thirty feet from my work station is a "Giving Tree" for the Christie School, a local organization that helps troubled kids. For the past two weeks, I've passed and tried to ignore the following tag:

Girl: 15.
Would like CD: "White Stripes: Elephant"
Edited version only please

The deadline is Friday and there's about four tags left on the tree. The others are for extravagant items like in line skates. Tags for similarly inexpensive items like Bratz dolls and CDs by Linkin Park, Little Kim and Disturbed were snatched up weeks ago.

It'd be a shame for this girl to be punished for having a modicum of taste, thus the moral dilemma. The deadline is Friday. At this point, if I don't do it, no one will. The cheeseball that sits behind sure isn't going to come to her aid, especially given the Winamp tracklist on his laptop which he insists on a playing at a barely audible level during business hours. It breaks my little black heart to think the girl might go through the holidays without the aid of Jack and Meg White's bombastic domestic squabbles.

Getting the girl her CD would require $14, at least a minimal amount of effort and, worst of all, a side trip to ear-to-ear smiling hell world that is human resources (where the gift box sits).

Further complicating things is the "edited version only" request. Funk 'dat! I've never paid money for an edited CD in my life and I'm not going to start now. I don't think Elephant contains a single obscene word but, if it does, the authority figures at the school might take it away.

Is "charity" always this complicated? Screw it. That $14 is better spent on pain pills. Or Ice Cube. January 3rd, Westside Connection, Crystal ballroom, y'all!