Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia guitarist Dave Mustaine

I have a lot of things to be thankful for today. I have a catalog of flesh-shredding tunes, my custom guitar designs, my reputation for insane licks, my recognition from Thrashtopia Magazine as the #4 greatest metal guitarist of the past 1,000 years, my children, my fans and my Irish Setters. Most of all, I am thankful for the work I get to do here in the Wikipedia offices.

As one of the largest and most influential websites on the Internet, a lot of people come up to me and say, "Dave Mustaine, you must work in a really posh office." The truth is that we don't. We work in a basement with fake wood paneling and a bunch of farted-up couches that Jimmy Wales hauled down here with his brother Donnie.

We're not a big company. We don't waste money. There's only eight people working down here: Jimmy, Brandon Harris, Tony, Big Johnny and Little Johnny, the Mexican guy who is part time (sorry I forgot your name my man) and myself and Riki Rachtman.

Scott Ian from Anthrax used to stop by and shoot the shit but when I hung the poster about abortions he stopped coming down here. By the way people, life begins at conception. Think about it. The real Megadeth is legal in the USA.

Jimmy has been going around the office talking about our annual fundraising. He's been asking me to play some minor chords, some slow ballady stuff, just keep the atmosphere somber, but you guys know I want to set these frets on fire. There's only so many times I can play A Tout Le Monde and any day I'm not assassinating chords with the dexterity of a cybernoid is another day I don't want to wake up and look at my ten years sober coin.

Do you have any idea how much coffee it takes to replace cocaine and speed? The stains are so dark between my teeth I have cartoon mouth, but nobody has noticed because I haven't been smiling. Things are dire, guys. We really need your support.

If Wikipedia can't get at least, like, 30 million dollars, we're going to have to starting shutting some stuff down. We'll start with the pages for individual Metallica songs, then albums, then the main Metallica Wikipedia page. After that we might have to start taking down something somebody will miss. HA! Just kidding, Lars, James, my prayers are with you always. Congratulations on the "Rock and Roll" Hall of Fame.

If we can't get at least 10 million dollars, I don't know, man, like, no greatest hits box set this year of Megadeth. I just can't support fans who won't support Creative Commons and free information. Right?

You think I don't do anything down here? I was the guy who drew all those weird porno pictures for sex stuff. Straight from memory, man. All I did was inhale some pure air from our oxygen bar and then go into the nap room and do my meditations and I came out in a heightened state of awareness and I understood vectors and how to make pictures.

If you people won't even foot 5 million dollars that is seriously, majorly effed up. How many weird foot diseases and types of machine gun do you people look up every year? You want to trust some random web site to tell you about how awesome owls are?

No way, man. We are legit. We are peer reviewed. That's how we do it. If you want to know about types of rock or like what is the Japanese word for that little curlicue hair that anime characters have then you know at wikipedia at least one or two other dudes checked out what the first dude wrote so it's not just one random guy's observation.

I'm not about politics or whatever. But man, we need at least a million dollars or we're going to have to shut it off.

At least a new couch my dogs have been peeing all over this one Jimmy brought down here. Pay up, nerds. Let's get this done!

Dave Mustaine

Guitarist, Wikimedia Foundation

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)