TGIF

I arrived at work today to find that I had written a headline for a brief yesterday that read: "Accident destroys spotlight."
In fact, it was a STOPlight that had been destroyed.
Oops.
This, two days after I mysteriously deleted the date from the flag of the paper on the front page. (Luckily it was fixed for the second-run papers.)
Following this embarassing discovery, I had to endure a budget meeting that lasted an hour and 10 minutes. I was about five minutes away from gnawing my arm off or faking a seizure in an attempt to escape. (For non-newspaper people, budget meetings are when we decide which stories will run where in the next day's paper; or on Fridays, which stories run where in the Saturday, Sunday and Monday papers. Still, the meeting should never be that long.)
In other disturbing news, they've come out with self-destructing DVDs that you can watch for about 48 hours before they become unusable and you can throw them away.
As if we need more disposable things in this world...
Alabama residents recently took a vote on whether to delete langugage from the state Constitution that mandates racial segregation -- and it failed! (The segregation is obviously not enforced, but still...) The vote was close and so there will be a recount at the end of the month, but why is this even a close vote?!
And finally, there were a number of ABC affiliates around the nation that chose not to show "Saving Private Ryan" on Thursday, Veterans Day. They said it was because of the violence and language. While I understand the desire not to offend people, especially with the chilling effect of the FCC's overzealousness lately, couldn't you just put a warning on it that tells people it contains graphic violence and language and then let people and parents decide for themselves if they want to watch? It's considered one of the most realistic portrayals of war, but some stations felt the need to shield ALL of their viewers from that. Wouldn't a better way to honor our veterans be to show the hell they endured for our liberties, rather than to stymie artistic expression and speech?