Because my recent press release announcing the inception of The David Mack Misanthropy Foundation has been met with confusion, let me take this opportunity to clarify what its mission is all about.

Before the founding of the DMMF, my individual efforts to address the issues of handguns, the environment, and world hunger proved insufficient to effect meaningful changes in people’s lives. Consequently, I realized that making a difference in such global matters requires the efforts and resources of many people acting in concert. That’s why I founded the DMMF, using my name and fortune to create an international organization that hurts people.

Many responded to my announcement by asking, “Hasn’t someone already created the Republican Party?”  That’s the kind of self-defeating attitude we must avoid.  If suffering and misery are to be promulgated on a truly global scale, we must put aside politics and ideology and focus on results.  “But how can I participate?” you ask. “I don’t have your mounds of untraceable, laundered drug profits, your nigh-infinite capacity for creating toxic pollution.  How can I — the average, working-class misanthropist — make a difference?”

Sadly, one of the greatest hurdles to modern misanthropy has been a dearth of reputable organizations that could be trusted to use donations correctly.  Many so-called “uncharitable foundations” have been little more than fly-by-night operations that vanished with millions of dollars that were marked for bulldozing ancient landmarks, tainting drinking wells with Hexavalent Chromium, or teaching poor children to watch reruns of old television programs rather than waste time reading. That is why the DMMF has established, funded, and officially endorsed the following initiatives:

• Elementary Handguns — Americans talk a good game about protecting the right to bear arms, but who actually does anything about it? Our new program will provide free, loaded 9mm semiautomatic pistols to all children in grades one through six, nationwide. The NRA has struggled to teach us all the axiom that “an armed society is a polite society.” Aren’t you ready for a little civility in our nation’s schools? (Pilot programs to expand Elementary Handguns to Canada and the United Kingdom are in the works.)

• The Finleaf Foundation — Do you know how many trees are destroyed every year to print brochures imploring us to save one endangered species or another? Neither do we, but it must be a lot. The spotted pygmy lemur and the gay baby whales probably accounted for half the acreage lost in the Amazon Basin this year, not to mention how many tons of pulp must have been wasted trying to score a piece of ass for some overfed panda.

The Finleaf Foundation will put an end to this tragic waste of precious resources by placing a $50,000 bounty on the head of every endangered species with fewer than 1,000 members left alive; a $100,000 bounty on every specimen of a species whose total worldwide population numbers fewer than 250; and a special $1 million grant to anyone who can conclusively prove they fired the shot that drove a documented species to extinction.

Remember: No one sends pamphlets to save an extinct species. (Now, thanks to our Elementary Handguns program, your kids can help you collect those bounties in no time!)

• NicoFriends — So-called “hunger-relief” charities are quick to tell you that it costs less than 39 cents a day to feed a starving child in an impoverished Third World nation. What they don’t tell you is that it would cost only pennies a day to provide each child with a pack of cigarettes — more than enough to keep their tiny appetites suppressed until food (or the next pack of cigarettes) can arrive.

NicoFriends will provide you with a snapshot of your sponsored child and send you regular updates that include such information as what brand your child likes to smoke and whether he or she is keeping those hunger pangs at bay.

If you like the NicoFriends program, you’ll want to sign up early for NicoTeens, our high-school program that promotes cigarettes as a cool weight-control alternative to such dangerous illnesses as bulimia and anorexia. (The NicoTeens program is unaffiliated with the Los Angeles indie-rock group of the same name, unless they want to become our spokesmen and star in a few commercials.)

Last but not least, I plan to share my message with future generations. I want the leaders of tomorrow to share my passion for spreading pain, vitriol, and death. I am, therefore, pleased to announce the formation, at my alma mater, of The David Mack Misanthropological Studies Department, which will devote itself to the reasoned examination of the ways in which the human race sucks, and its seemingly infinite capacity for doing so.

I know, it’s not enough — but it’s a start. And with your help, I will make a difference.