Run Up That Hill

Today I come to you, Dearest Friends, with a request to do some good by helping someone else to do good. To generate karma, or mindful action. To do the right thing. I'm sure y'all will rise to the occasion...

One of our Vancouver friends, Dearest Michelle, is preparing to run her first full marathon: the the San Francisco Nike Women's Marathon in October of this year. Her primary motivation for doing such a daft thing is to raise money for the Canadian chapter of the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). The LLS fights cancers of the blood both by funding research and by providing support services to patients. Yep, it's an undisputed Fine Cause.

Now Michelle is an emergency nurse by training, so she's used to doing these sorts of medicky-shmedicky good deeds. Indeed, it were she and her upstanding orthopod husband who helped get a sozzled Santa back to his grotto last December and made sure he wouldn't drown in his own effluvia. But recently the wisdom of charity choice for the run became much clearer when her sister's husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer for which there is currently no cure. He's gone through a round of chemotherapy, and had his first bone marrow transplant in March. So now it's personal.

Anyway, Dearest Friends, I implore you most sweetly to head over HERE, have a gander at the enchanting photo of Michelle and her most excellent dog, and (if you can find it in your hearts & wallets) make a wee donation. Her fundraising goal is $6,000 (gulp!), so every little, tiny bit helps. Tell her FiL sent you. Or not. Up to you. And you can leave her an encouraging comment below, even if you've no dosh to slosh her way.

On the off chance that you need some more enticement to support this worthy cause, then hopefully this themed pack of tracks will do the trick...

Blitz - Fight To Live (buy here or e-here)
Coz that's what it's all about, really. In-yer-face bolshiness. Oi Oi Oi!!

Thee Headcoatees - Run For Your Life (buy here or e-here)
A bit of garage grrrl power to spur things along.

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (buy here)
Telling it like it is, in a proto-punk, golly-gee-willikers stylee.

Belle & Sebastian - The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner (buy here or e-here)
Scotland's finest troubadours of twee keep you going when you're about to hit the wall.

Camera Obscura - Marathon Not A Sprint (buy here or e-here)
Just in case it wasn't obvious, Traceyanne & Co make the point in a fey, strummy kinda way.

Placebo - Running Up That Hill (buy here)
Betcha there'll be a fair few hills in San Fran. Good thing we've got gothy little Brian Molko to help evryone get up them.

Max Romeo - Chase the Devil (buy here )
You get the metaphor, do you not? A masterpiece from Lee "Scratch" Perry's Ark...

A Flock of Seagulls - I Ran (buy here)
Or to be grammatically accurate, "she will have run." Seagulls. It's a growing-up-in-the-80s thang. And I have a soft spot for cold synth.

Cake - The Distance (buy here)
Oh yeah, she's going THA DISTANCE!! She's going FOR SPEED!!

Mötley Crüe - Too Fast For Love (buy here)
Nope, methinks the LA heavy metal glamsters got it wrong this time. Here it's about both speed AND a labour of love.

And if you don't offer your financial and/or moral support? Well then, your pets will desert you, you'll become scrofulous, you'll develop chronic halitosis, romance will be an eternal alien to you, children will run screaming at your approach, and you will find you have a socially debilitating fondness for Christopher Cross. Probably. Maybe. Perhaps I exaggerate.