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Buy The New Band Aid Charity Single &#8212 And Destroy It, Web Site Urges

BandAidDilemma.net offers charity links, CD-demolishing tips and photos.

Sure, you want to help those less fortunate, especially during the holidays. And when a group of the U.K.'s biggest rock stars decided to re-record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to feed hungry children in Africa, you figured that would be your chance. You purchase the single, feeling satisfied with the knowledge that you did your part to help. There's only one problem: The song is terrible.

So what do you do? If you're one particularly tech-savvy Brit, you start a Web site, www.BandAidDilemma.net, encouraging music fans to buy the Band Aid single (see [article id="1492897"]"With Coldplay And Darkness On Board, Band Aid Is Revived For Charity Single"[/article]), thereby benefiting the hungry -- and then destroy it. Brutally. Viciously. By any means necessary.

"Why destroy the CDs?" the site's webmaster, "Greeba," asks on the site. "Because they suck. This site only condones the destruction of CDs that have been purchased by legitimate means, thus giving the funds to the charitable cause at the heart of the Band Aid project.

"I grew up in the '80s. I remember the original Band Aid fondly. Fast forward to now, and we have Band Aid 20," he continues. "There's a catalog of U.K. talent weighing in as they should be, but the result lacks 'oomph' ... and some African friends of mine think the lyrics are really dumb. Of course there won't be any bloody snow in Africa this Christmas time ... except maybe atop Kilimanjaro."

Greeba's own methods of CD destruction include "The Red Hot Poker," in which he roasts the single over an open fire, and "The Marcellus Wallace," where he gets medieval with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch (a la Ving Rhames' bald baddie in "Pulp Fiction"). Other contributors to the site have destroyed the CD via barbeque grill, bow-and-arrow and boiling it in a pot of ratatouille.

The single is the odds-on favorite to land the coveted Christmas #1 on the U.K. singles charts, so much so that a British bookmaker reportedly received an offer of a £1 million bet on it. But according to Greeba, that's not going to happen. He argues that the name of the single should actually be "Do They Know It's Awful?"

"I'd prefer it to be a way to vent the cynicism I and others like me feel, in a positive way. Let's buy some CDs and click on some donation links, and have some twisted fun while we do it," he writes. "Charity. Violence. You know it makes sense."

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