1. Today there is an ad for Mother's Day jewelry that includes the saying, "God couldn't be everywhere, so he created mothers." For people who believe in God, this is just offensive (if they think about it), and for people who don't believe in God, it is irrelevant and silly. So why would you say it? I believe it relates to the creepy mother/nuclear family fetish our country has. It's the same thing that led churches to cancel Sunday morning services when Christmas fell on a Sunday, because "people should be with their families." Christianity is not a tribal, not a family-centered religion. It is, in fact, a faith that openly pulls us out of our families of origin by expanding the family to include others. More to the present point, I bet if I asked the person who ran that ad if they really believe that God isn't everywhere, they would be shocked at what they'd done. Just shocked.
2. Today and yesterday, there were ads (for different agencies) that talked about how people "serviced" the community. I'm pretty sure they meant "served". Because as far as I'm aware, "servicing" someone connotes a very particular kind of action, and it isn't something local non-profits want to be associated with. Even non-profits ought to be able to find someone to proof-read their ads. Heck, I'd do it if they asked!
3. Finally, and most importantly, there was an article in our paper yesterday about the country's stockpile of chemical weapons and the progress we're making in getting rid of them. The original deadline was 2007, but it was pushed back to 2012, a date our local facility is supposedly going to meet but others are probably not. (Yes, here in my Heart of Dixie town, we have a chemical weapons incinerator, and no, I'm not going to link the article in an illusory attempt to maintain my anonymity.)
The truly scary thing about the article was the part where it said that "60 percent of the declared US stockpile of chemical weapons has been destroyed." Did you catch that? The DECLARED stockpile. Implying there is an undeclared stockpile that we're not even trying to destroy. Or at least, that they're not going to tell us whether it's being destroyed or not. Doesn't that sort of make any kind of chemical weapons destruction treaty moot? Grrrr. These people make me so angry. I will grant that the Cold War make people crazy in such a way that they maybe really did believe they might "need" these weapons. But I would bet my eye-teeth (since I don't know what those are) that we're spending money right now making something we'll never need that we'll have to waste more money on later getting rid of because it's a risk to our own people.
Just to be clear... There are lots of things I like about my hometown paper. They do good work. It's the news that's annoying. (Oh, and the ridiculous ads.)
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I am a member of a community who requires servicing. I would like to inquire about that, and any specials they might be offering.
In CO we have a fair number of legacy horrors, such as chemical weapons (RM Arsenal, now a wildlife refuge--maybe we shipped some of our leftovers to you?), nuclear waste from nuclear weapons production (Rocky Flats -- also now a wildlife refuge, and contaminated with plutonium; I wonder how the birds like it), and of course Cheyenne Mountain, the nuclear bomb-proof facility featured in the movie Wargames. Even it is no longer in use.
You get the sense they put all these things here because the state's eastern plains were notoriously hard to settle, so they assumed it would be desolate and remote; but civilization overcame the obstacles and intruded on the government's dirty little secrets.
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