Let me break the ice....

It's a good thing I don't have any programs for editing or the time/patience to do something so complicated. Because I just had the best worst idea for a Benton Fraser vid set to a Britney Spears song.

Yeah. Oh yeah. The horror!

Would have been hot though.

I am so poor, but I still do it...

(And in the words of Mel Brooks, you do it, everybody does it, I just did it and I'm ready to do it again...)

From Charity Navigator, an online site devoted to researching and reviewing charities in the US. Some facts to consider while planning your donations this holiday season:


1. During Hanukkah, it is traditional to give children gelt, chocolate coins, as presents along with real money. Children are then encouraged to give a portion of their money to charity.

2. Zakaat (alms) is the name for what a believer returns out of his or her wealth to the neediest of Muslims. Muslims are encouraged to assess and pay their Zakaat during the month of Ramadan.

3. A majority of the more than 9 million children without health insurance in the United States live in two-parent families, according to a new report released today. In most of these two-parent families, both parents work.

4. Around 168,000 American troops will spend the holiday season deployed in Iraq.

5. In Iraq, 1 in 12 children is underweight and the UNHCR lists the chronic child malnutrition rate at 23 percent.

6. About 2 million subprime borrowers will lose their homes to foreclosure through 2009, costing them $71 billion in housing wealth.

7. Now entering its fifth year, the Darfur crisis continues to be one of the world's largest concentrations of human suffering. The sheer enormity of the crisis is almost unimaginable. 2.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes and are living in vast, crowded camps in both Darfur and across the border in Chad.

8. 88 percent of shopping malls will be hosting charity events this holiday season. The most popular activities for mall to raise money or merchandise for charity are toy drives, Festival of Giving, and Giving Trees.

9. States with the highest rates of food insecurity (meaning their access to enough food is limited by a lack of money and other resources) include New Mexico, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina and Arkansas.

10. Only 265,000 of New Orleans' pre-Katrina 465,000 residents have returned to the city after the hurricane.

11. 50% of all charitable giving is done between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. In 2007, Charity Navigator predicts that this will amount to at least $100 billion.

12. Of the more than 5,000 charities evaluated by Charity Navigator, the vast majority spend at least 75% of their budgets on the programs and services that they exist to provide, 10% or less on fundraising fees and 15% or less on administrative costs.

13. Any parcel post packages sent to loved ones serving overseas need to be mailed by November 13th in order to arrive in time before Christmas.

14. The cost of homes destroyed by the Southern California wildfires is likely to top $1 billion in San Diego County alone.

15. Each year, nationally, more than 1,000 people typically die during Thanksgiving to New Year's in drunk driving crashes and more than 2,000 are killed in drunk driving crashes and/or crashes where safety belts were not used.

16. Areas with the highest rates of poverty are concentrated in DC, Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico and Alabama.

17. The USDA estimates 96 billion pounds of food are wasted each year in the United States.

18. One of every three homeless males in the United States is a veteran, and each night as many as 200,000 men and women veterans go to sleep with no place to call home.

19. A contribution to a qualified charity is deductible in the year in which it is paid. Putting the check in the mail to the charity constitutes payment. A contribution made on a credit card is deductible in the year it is charged to your credit card, even if payment to the credit card company is made in a later year.


So, in other words, WTF people, GIVE already.
:)