The World of Stuff .com

Git-r-carded

For those of you who don’t know, I volunteer with Get Carded, a student group that promotes organ and tissue donation. (The name comes from the organ donor cards we used to hand out, but these days there’s an online database for that sort of thing.)

Anyway, I’ve always been good about going to their events until recently, so when they asked for volunteers for their next event, I obliged. With this one, they decided to branch out from their usual target group of students at the university. Instead, they were going to have a table at a charity concert in Levy County.

Today, three of us went out to Bronson (which, despite having less than 1,000 residents at the last census, is the county seat). The concert was the third annual “Bark-N-Purr” Charity Concert, put on by the county humane society on some field. We had received a map showing us where exactly to set up. We were shown on the map as “Get Corded!” In fact, the letter and everything else they sent were made out to “Get Corded!”, including the exclamation mark.

It was raining a bit, and we didn’t have our tent, so we called one of the co-directors of the group and asked him to bring it. He did after a little while, but he didn’t stay. Then we set up. We were near booths for the Army, the Future Farmers of America, and a John Deere dealer. We were next to the Tupperware booth.

In general, there was a carnival-like atmosphere, with some bounce houses for kids, a sort of choo-choo train, and a few games. There was also a stage that had been set up, for the actual concert. They started with a prayer, I think, and then the national anthem.

Oh, and there was food. Hamburgers, hot dogs, corn dogs, wings, pulled pork sandwiches, french fries, other kinds of french fries, and… fried Oreos. I had to try some. They were surprisingly delicious: warm and breaded, with the Oreo inside kind of melted. I liked them so much that I got some more. That wasn’t actually a good idea.

I spent most of the time manning the booth. The other two spent some time checking out some dogs that they had doing tricks in an area near the stage. The police also showed off their dogs, apparently. I didn’t see. Ironically for a concert to benefit animals, pets weren’t allowed, but I could see where they were coming from. I wouldn’t want to have to clean up the field.

What we were really there to do was to talk to the people about organ donation. They were people with trucks, people wearing various types of camouflage, people with Confederate flags, people with American flags sticking out of their pockets. They were old, middle-aged, and young. One was even a beauty queen, the Clay County Miss Outstanding Teen or something like that. (She had a sash thing and a tiara.) They were also nice, for the most part (the Tupperware man helped us set up our tent).

We ended up giving out lots of swag. We even gave some to the Future Farmers of America for them to use as a door prize at their upcoming dinner. And before the headliner, some country singer, came on, we packed up and left.

I had been thinking of staying here after I graduate, but I’ll have to think about it some more.

With Google phasing out support for the horrible Internet Explorer 6, a mock funeral is planned for Thursday. (Via Lifehacker).

Yahoo! Answers is full of stupid people asking stupid questions. Here are 20 of the dumbest. (Via J-Walk Blog)

And finally, a parody of Rachel Ray’s show 30 Minute Meals.