What I really wanted to say to them was, "Give Cancer a chance, bitches! What did that constellation ever do to you?"

There's a little mountain range in Antarctica that's one of the best places in the world for scientists to collect meteorites. This is because the ice shelf is constantly moving, albeit slowly, towards a small valley between the mountains. The combination of the moving ice and the small valley acts as a funnel that moves all the meteorites that have fallen over a large area into one easy to survey concentrated icy area of space rocks. The other day I was at Wal-Mart in Florida and I saw a similar phenomenon in operation as two women were positioned squarely in the center of the exit doors asking people to donate money for the fight against cancer. They even had pretentious little peppermints to give out for donations. God I hate those people.

I was able to avoid them on the way in but I knew they would have me on the way out. I started to think about all the possible ways I could tell them no without looking like a heartless asshole. But then I figured, hell, I'm here on vacation and I'll probably never see those women again in my life! Why should I worry about how I'm going to tell them no? Then I started thinking of mean ways to say no to cancer research. I came up with about five as I walked aimlessly around the store:

1.) What did you guys do with the dollar I donated last year? There's still cancer!
2.) I don't care about cancer. Only Kryptonite hurts me.
3.) I don't care about cancer. Only the Autobot Matrix of Leadership hurts me.
4.) Give cancer a chance. You may like it!
5.) Who cares about constellations? You should try fighting something worthwhile like diseases!

None of them were very good so I punked out and used another charity avoidance technique I have perfected over time. I walked beside an older-than-me lady, effectively making us both one target for the cancer beggars. This way if we look like a mother and son couple or maybe a hot old lady and her young virile pool boy sex slave, they'll usually pick her as the easier mark and ignore me. I have a 50/50 chance of being asked when I do it that way instead of being a guaranteed target walking alone. Depending on the charity I am trying to avoid I adopt different techniques. I have a nuclear option available to me that is so karmicly horrible I don't usually employ it for fear of being struck by lightning or meteorites, smitten by an angry God in various ways depending on the weather. But hey, I was on vacation and Florida's a great place to die.

So I was at the maximum allowable distance that would indicate to unknowing onlookers that we may be together and yet still not make the older-than-me lady uncomfortable. Then just as we walked out the door and were dead in the sights of the cancer panhandlers, the older lady bumped into me accidentally and said, "Oh, I'm sorry!" The gig was up! We were obviously not a couple and the cancer extortionists knew they could ask us both for money independently! Then in my moment of ultimate brilliance, before they could ask me anything, I went with the nuclear option and said, "Hi, I already have cancer and I wanted to say you're doing a great job!" Then I took a peppermint from them and winked and gave them a thumbs up. I ran off feeling lucky to be alive in the absence of rocks or electricity from heaven. I guess even the Antractic scientists miss a meteorite every now and then.