Get Us to 500 Donors, Or That's the Last You'll See of Lobster Girl
Take a good long look at this blog post. Do you notice a woman kissing a lobster? For longtime readers of the site, Lobster Girl is a familiar, even comforting presence. Now move your eyes to the upper right-hand corner of the main blog page. See that little gray-scale crawling up the torch? If that doesn't reach the top within eight days–if we don't total 500 donors to the Reason Foundation at $25 or over throughout the course of our webathon–then Lobster Girl will be swept into the steel trap of history.
It's that serious.
This pitch goes out to some of our most loyal and beloved customers: You, the readers, refreshers, and serial commenters at Hit & Run.
You love to love (or love to hate) a site-within-a-site that has been called one of "five winning political blogs" by Playboy, the "No. 1 Libertarian Blog" by WebPreneur, and "Best Weblog" (on multiple occasions) by the Los Angeles Press Club. You take full, hilarious, and profane advantage of the fact that we value you highly enough to open all our content to comments. Ask yourself: what other political magazine or website has encouraged commenters, wart(y)s and all, for most of this decade? And of that tiny subset, how many actively participate within the comments, instead of standing miles away in full radiation gear?
We hat tip you when we use your suggestions, promptly correct mistakes when you bring them to our attention, make bets on how many comments certain threads will last before sinking into the deepest muck, and (most importantly) talk hella-trash about you in the office. (Vanneman, you have no idea….) We even invite you to parties (brotherben, I'm looking at you), debate over the finer points of asking politicians the hard questions and uploading their answers to YouTube, and occasionally talk shop with you at Spring Training games. For all of this we ask nothing in return.
UNTIL THIS WEEK.
Look, besides the sometimes grim task of tracking liberties lost or threatened, besides tallying up isolated incidents of unspeakable abuses of power, besides arguing free-market economics in age of FDR nostalgia, we're trying to entertain you here. Where else are you going to see creepy NRA swimsuit gals from the '30s, or creepier child art depicting Waco? Who else is going to give you mice in transparent high heels? And don't even get me started about the alt text….
So here's the deal: You want Lobster Girl, and all the random acts of freedom she represents? Pony up a little cash.
Twenty-five bones gets you a "Free Minds and Free Markets" bumper sticker, and a clean conscience. A C-note buys you a bumper sticker, a subscription, and either Brian Doherty's comprehensive history Radicals for Capitalism or Peter Bagge's hi-larious collection of Reason comics, Everybody is Stupid Except For Me! Two-fitty gets you even more schwag, and $1,000 buys you access to things even Ron Bailey hasn't contemplated.
And if we don't reach our goal of 500 donations, then, well, expect more like this.
