Is this what you get for trying to help the less fortunate?

Minus thirty-degree winds and dustings of light white snow swept into my foyer as I entertained the jumpsuited door-knocker. Adorned in a fluorescent one-piece, he looked like either a convict collecting trash in a highway ditch or a homeless man freezing to death under a bridge, but there he was at my suburban doorstep, moustache frosted over with baby icicles, asking with the friendliest smile a frozen man could smile for a measly $20 to help kids with shitty legs pretend like they’re normal, or at least as normal as MechWarriors.ⁱ

In a moment of weakness,ⁱⁱ I handed the gloved hand a greenback,ⁱⁱⁱ for which I received an even warmer smile, a bar of Italian chocolate,^iv and five “unlimited use” deal cards for local reheaters of Sysco sludge. Except not only did the cards turn out to be redeemable at but single location for each franchise, although this point was conveniently elided by the jumpsuit, but one of the locations was located in motherfucking Ottawa. 3`500 km away! Ahem.^v

But he meant well, right ? It was an innocent mistake, you say ? Give him the benefit of the doubt!! How about no.

How about you stop being so surprised when you “try” to help those who “need” it and things don’t go quite according to plan, and that the tables somehow always tip in the direction away from you and towards the soi-disant purveyors of repentance. Hm ?

You can’t buy your way to heaven. No matter what the jumpsuit says.

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1. Remember Activision’s MechWarrior titles from the 90’s ? It was only of the early 3D desktop video games to go balls deep on the polygon rendering. It sorta worked! The scenery was incredibly bland but the machines had a reasonable amount of detail even if they moved quite unnaturally. The low-gravity effects on the pieces of other blown up robots were quite memorable. Now if you’re too young for the reference, think Mitsubishi MK-6 Amplified Mobility Platform (AMP) suits as seen in Avatar (2009). That’s pretty much what “Embracing Bionics” is trying to turn these feeble-bodied kids into. Not that that’s enough to make them worth much more than 1/10th of a “terrorist,” but even 1/5th is a step in the right direction, if an awfully expensive one. For what else is being the formerly richest continent on the planet if not bringing to life 23-year-old video games ? ↩
2. The preponderance of my philanthropic efforts are necessarily – for the good of humanity – aimed not at the less fortunate but at artists deemed worthy of a voice. ↩
3. Unlike US Federal Reserve bills, not all Bank of Canada notes are green, you know. Fives are blue, tens are purple, twenties are green, fifties are red, and hundreds are brown. ↩
4. The exact 3.5 oz Perugina 51% cocoa bar retails for $3, just slightly less than the “almost $20 value” advertised by the jumpsuit. What are the chances ? ↩
5. Not like I’m going to eat at any of them anyways, but it’s the principle of the thing. ↩