Disturbing Ad Campaign

on a conceptual level - our local birdcage liner, the Orlando Sentinel, is running an ad campaign in which the "most important story" is "The story of you."

Okay, that's just really fucking creepy, on a narcissism as a cultural norm level. The Story of You is the one your momma saved in your baby book. It's the Dear Diary you kept throughout grade school. It's the journal/blog/scribbled to do lists you keep today. It's the shoeboxes of photos you keep intending to put into an album one of these days.

The Story of You is NOT a newspaper. The newspaper is not supposed to be the story of YOU. The news is supposed to be what happens in the rest of the world. The one where the sun doesn't rise out of your ass, the one where people have different (and, I know this is a tough thing to grasp, but more important) issues than your relationship with food or your boss. The newspaper is supposed to be about actual NEWS. Politics. Issues. Local Politics and Local Issues. Am I the only one in town old enough to remember when that was the purpose of newspapers?

The entire concept of a newspaper doing an ad campaign that makes the news unimportant unless the reader feels like it's all about him is just...really fucking weird. Is this a national ad campaign, sold to third-rate newsrags around the country?

Oh, and I also disapprove of those creepy rear window memorial stickers to dead friends and relatives. Like, I'm sure your intentions were good, at least I really want to think they are, but it's still just weird. Especially when you stick it between a RonJon's surf shop and a "Save a horse, ride a cowboy!" and right below the classic Calvin-child-pissing-on-rival-truck-manufacturer-logo, it tends to lose some...I dunno...dignity?

Dudley now does down much more regularly, but still doesn't see the point.

Higgins had a most excellent adventure (NOT). I put the trash out last night, and to do this I must open the garage door. I close the Cat Flap to the house, and for the past nearly 10 years, cats inadvertently left in the garage have always respected the open garage door, by shrieking and running for cover in the back of the garage when it is raised, as if the sound of the garage door going up signaled a nuclear attack. These are really, really indoor cats. They want nothing to do with the great outdoors shit. When they occasionally wander out it is by accident and followed by a shriek and a hasty retreat.

But apparently last night, while I was putting out the trash, Higgins, who has an assigned seat on the feline short bus, slipped out. I had no idea. We didn't get a clue until Girl dished up Wet Food at 6 p.m. today and only Boris reported for duty. (Natasha thinks Wet Food is gross.) We went outside, we called, and an orange blur hid from us in the shrubbery. Girl lured him in with patient, sing-song calling and an open can of Wet Food. She had to coax him into the house, because he was not entirely sure this really was his house, just because a human he has known all his life approached him with an open can of the food he has been eating all his life. It Might Have Been a Trick. Higgins needs a small tinfoil helmet. Someday I will tell the tales of his midnight running fits through the house, screaming - we call them the Nam Flashbacks. Girl persevered and lured him to the door, he came back into the house he's lived in for nearly 10 years, ate most of a can of the glorious Wet Food, and is none the worse for wear.

And it's only Monday. It's going to be a long goddamn week.