God Bless America..

.though we have some straightening to do with our priorities.

Here's a billboard funded by, wait for it, a Chicago-area divorce lawyer:


This is wrong on so many levels that it actually hurts my head to contemplate them all. Needless to say, marital decisions should not me made by organs that reside anywhere between the knees and the navel. I imagine that the appeal of the billboard is to people whose troubles revolve around the concepts the lawyers are advertising with.

Here's an idea instead:

Show a pudgy, balding man moving into a small apartment. It's all he can afford, now that he's paying alimony and child support. Sorry, chump, no hotties for you. You don't have the money.

Then show a woman, harried from working all day, then coming home to the kids, and all eating macaroni and cheese for dinner. Sorry, ma'am, no hunks for you. Even if you had the spare cash, If you hang out in the singles bars, custody of the kids will go right back to daddy.

Someone somewhere will get the clue that most divorces cause more problems than they solve.

Small Victories for the Vain

"You made my day! There's a new hope and a new spirit."
- Camden, New Jersey Mayor Gwendolyn Faison, upon hearing that St. Louis, not Camden, is now the top on the list of most dangerous cities in America.

Don't start planning the party yet, Gwen, Camden is still #5 on the list, and for good reason. Almost 1,700 violent crimes last year, and only 80K residents? Ok, minus the 33 that got killed last year.

If you're into spreadsheets, you can get the national scoop here:

http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/05cius/data/documents/05tbl08.xls

Now, Francis Slay, the mayor of St. Louis is duly crushed, and had not, as yet, found words to express his disappointment. I imagine that Ms. Faison's exuberance will not help much.

of Food and Marriage

Both are best with natural ingredients.

Food used to be a substance that one would make with raw materials, effort, and care. There was wheat flour, real sugar, eggs, butter, cream, salt, all of which you’d get at the grocer’s. In 2006, a trip to the grocery store is more like a trip to a laboratory supply warehouse, judging from the ingredients in the “food”. There are pre-fab meals that you just have to heat, no effort involved (just don’t ask about the ingredients), and foods pre-segmented in small portions, for those who cannot count their own portion sizes. Our food today is less nourishing, and in cases, more harmful than ever before. It’s because we got lazy and stopped caring for the work involved in our own sustenance.

Now we have marriage, which alongside our cupboards, has disintegrated into toxic convenience relationships. We no longer are content to serve each other without an exit clause in the contract, and it shows. Don’t forget to add pornography, artificial birth control, and rampant consumer debt. Marriage is just not the same thing as it used to be.

So, now people are willing to push the marriage recipe further by doing away with the heterosexual nature of the institution. They’re making soda with Sucralose now, instead of sugar, so what’s the difference? Our society has already stripped the other essential elements out of marriage, so why are we shocked when they clear away the last recognizable element? Marriage has become a legal maneuver, like an omnibus power of attorney, and homosexuals want that privilege.

So, instead, why don’t we throw out the Pop-tarts, pornography, Pepsi, condoms, frozen pizzas, birth control pills, Spaghetti-os, and pre-nuptial agreements. Start over again. Make it count. Both food and marriage are best with natural ingredients.

Not really food

Not really marriage