alt.fan.pratchett : The Best Of AFP

Adopt-a-Star


Date: 22 Mar 2000
From: AFPhantom
My local planetarium runs an "adopt a star" program.

I can see it coming in through my letterbox now...

****************

Adopt-a-Star

[insert picture of forlorn, bedraggled, under-nourished baby star gazing soulfully at the camera...]

DID YOU KNOW that there are NO LAWS preventing the mistreatment of stars?

DID YOU KNOW that there are literally billions of stars in the Universe that have never known parents or family, never known a home, that don't even have a roof over their coronas at Christmas?

DID YOU KNOW that elderly and infirm stars may SHRINK, becoming what are insensitively and cruelly known as "white dwarfs", or even suffer from a horrible but fairly common condition known as spontaneous heliocombustion, in which they EXPLODE, consuming WHOLE PLANETARY SYSTEMS in their agony?

DID YOU KNOW that more than TEN TIMES as much money is spent EVERY YEAR on researching ways to make toilet paper softer than is spent on discovering the cause of these terrible ailments?

DID YOU KNOW that from its very inception, the United Nations has spent LESS on relief for homeless stars than it has spent on paperclips, and has invested literally NOTHING on educational programmes of birth control for stars to help curb the increasing numbers of unhoused stellar bodies?

DID YOU KNOW... that YOU can HELP?

A small donation to the Star Protection League allows you to sponsor a star, improve its well-being and quality of life and keep track of its progress! Just LOOK how much can be done for so little!

Just £5 a year - that's less than a penny-and-a-half a day - will entitle you to an annual Adopt-a-Star Pack; containing tons of information about stars and their habits, a complimentary "I Luv Stars" bumper sticker and a postal address for you to exchange messages with your sponsored star. Your £5 will help feed and clothe your star, and will show it that YOU CARE!

If you can find it in your heart to give a little more - no more than you can afford - your money will be put to myriad star-supporting activities.

£10 a year will not only increase the quality of your star's life, but also help fund research into stellar dwarfism and spontaneous stellar combustion.

£100 a year entitles you to a Platinum Sponsor's Pack - including bumper sticker and 3'x3' wall chart of your star in full colour - and pays for a Vital Signs Monitor that checks on your star's health regularly every million years!

£10,000,000 a year will pay for 10^14 tonnes of hydrogen to be shipped anually to your star, granting it a comfortable level of fusion for as long as it lives.

Adopt a star today - and make the Universe a brighter place for all of us!

****************

*sigh* I was going to present an alternative brochure detailing an aid scheme for down-and-out actors, but it is long past my bedtime and I must needs leave the job to more talented hands than mine...

G'night all.


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