Dude, Cancer sucks. I will prove it to you.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

9/1 Foundation #1: Okizu

Okizu is a non-profit organization that runs a kick-ass summer camp for pediatric cancer patients, their siblings, and their families.  We have been to their family summer camp and both Cole and Logan have been to sleep away camp for the last two years.  The staff is amazing, and they will bend over backwards to help to make sure your kids get the best camping experience possible.

This is a great outfit because they are able to perform a small bit of magic for these kids.  They bring a bunch of kids together, all of whom share this horrible set of experiences.  The magic is that they have set up the camp in such a way that despite the fact that the kids are all there because they (or their siblings have cancer, it is not the focus of camp.  If you were to go and watch for a day, you would just think that it was a regular camp for regular kids.  For those of you who don’t have to go through this on a daily basis, regular is good.  Regular is the ideal. 


Check out their website at www.okizu.org.  Right now they have a triple matching campaign going so if you donate $100, they get $300.  If you give to Okizu, I will, for purposes of my internet embarrassment, honor the triple amount.

September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month

Dear Facebook and Internet,

Please share this with the rest of your friends and ask them to share with theirs:

This month is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. Pediatric Cancer kills more kids than any other disease; however it only receives about 4% of the total funds allocated towards cancer research. For that reason, outside fundraising is of paramount importance. As you all know, my oldest boy has been fighting a form of cancer called neuroblastoma for over 5 years. And since we are still fighting, as opposed to the awful alternative, I consider us lucky. Others have not been so lucky.

There are a great many organizations and foundations out there that raise money for research, family assistance, and the like. I ask that this month you please, please, please, consider donating some money to one of them. In order to help you, I will do two things this month. First, each day this month I will highlight on Facebook and Twitter one foundation or organization. Second, if you prove to me that you have donated this month, or if you send money to my paypal account, I will thank you by embarrassing myself on the internet. As the total dollar amount increases, the amount of embarrassment of the thing that I will do on the internet will increase. At the end of the month, I will take all the money received via paypal and make one donation to an organization that our family most likes.

The email address that you can send paypal money to is aric44@gmail.com. If you are concerned that this is some sort of a scam you can 1)ask my wife, Elisa (who is nearly incapable of lying) or 2) check out my blog to learn about our family history in dealing with this. The blog address is www.http://aboutcole.blogspot.com.

Here is the current donation/embarrassment tier: If we get lucky and get a bunch of donations, I might add some cool, funny stuff. *Note that if you prove to me that you have donated $1,000 in one shot, I will let you pick my embarrassment (within legal and loose moral bounds).
$1: Photo of me smiling
$10: Photo of me with excited smile
$100: Video of me dancing
$500: Video of me dancing without my shirt
$600: Video of me signing
$700: Video of me acting like a My Little Pony Character
$1000: Video of me swimming in the freezing Bay water
$5000: Video of me swimming in the freezing Bay water with as few clothes as possible without the video being porn
$10,000: Internet’s choice
$20,000: Me playing 1 on 1 with Steph Curry (assuming I can convince him), and made to look like a fool as he cross me over, breaks my ankles, and drains a three on me.