I don’t want anything for Christmas. No presents. No gifts. Nada.

After spending another year at DCFS reading about kids getting screwed over by grown-ups, I’m asking folks with any inclination to spend money on me to stop, change direction, and send the cash/gift to a child-related charity. If it’s an organization that’ll help a little one recover from a negative life-changing event, all the better.

Yes, I’m serious. Not joking. I’ve been where those kids are and they need all the love you can show them.

So please go out and do the right thing.

(Except for chocolate. I’ll take the chocolate. I’m not totally crazy here.)

This article states there are more than 200 members of the military hiding from service in Canada. In wartime, “absent without leave” (AWOL) is punishable by long prison terms at hard labor.

Why do they run? The reality check is after the jump:

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Another geek thing about me is I think the English language is fun. I got no ear or talent for any other (believe me, I tried), so this article from the Los Angeles Times tickles and alarms me. It explains how a “liberal” use of keywords can change one’s perception of a situation, policy, or program. The danger is the dust kicked up by these obscure cliches is clouding and minimizing the importance and severity of the problems being described.

Here’s a partial list. The “old” is followed by the “new”:

“Retreating in Iraq” vs. “Redeploying”
“Enemy Combatant” vs. “Imperative Security Internee”
“Suicides by Enemy Combatant” vs. “Self-injurious Behavior Incidents”

And maybe the worst offender: the Agriculture Department replacing the word “hunger” in their reports with the phrase, “an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity.”

Continuing the tradition of the PostCard of the Week, courtesy of PostSecret:

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A parody of those 1950s and 1960s safety films…or is it? Could have used this decades ago.

One clip after the jump.

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