Washington, DC - In a stark break from its long standing tradition of offering only free T-shirts to blood donor, the Red Cross has begun offering donors an assortment of alternate clothing items, including socks, gloves, and underwear. "You see, many of our most loyal donors are college and graduate students", explains Jerry Wang, head of the Red Cross's department of Free-Give-Aways. "And I can't tell you how many letters I get from them complaining about how they have so many new T-shirts, and how they would really like something else for a change." So after many brainstorming sessions with focus groups, it was decided to include non-T-shirt items in the donor menu. "If it will bring more donors, and more precious blood plasma, why the hell not?!" concluded Wang.

"We're now in the process of evaluating the inclusion of higher-end items like jackets and shoes. Of course you will need to give more than one pint of blood to get those - we'll need to establish frequent-donor accounts, but it's definitely doable. Who knows, if we manage to pull this off, we may see an end to twenty-somethings walking around with holey socks and underpants as well as our blood shortage."  HSP