Ban politicians, not plastic bags

What's with all the banning of stuff?

Our politicians seem to have this false sense of confidence, now that they've been able to tear the cigarettes from the yellowed hands and wrinkly upper lips of smokers.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for a smoking ban in areas where non-smokers collide with smokers, like on a train or in a restaurant or office space. I still remember having to choke through a shift in a newsroom while an oldtimer hacked up a lung at the next desk. Indeed, it wasn't pretty.

And I often wondered to myself how anyone could believe you could have a smoking section in a compressed cabin on an airline.

But I do feel for the poor smoker who isn't able to light up a butt on a park bench or on an open air patio. What are we afraid of? That the seagull trying to take a guy's sandwich is going to succumb to lung cancer?

I'm somewhat in favor of a smoking ban, but a plastic bag ban? Please.

That's what's happening in Toronto. If you want to get your groceries, you'd better make sure you have six pilly bags from Loblaws to carry them home. Carry alls that Galen Weston is making money from by the way.

Here's the dilemma: Say you get to the store, you have your list and you've done your shopping. Then you see this big-assed turkey for sale for ten bucks which would normally be thirty bucks. But you don't have enough bags. What then?

Do you put back the milk and the bread and family sized Doritos?

Or do you try to carry home that slimy freezing turkey and hope it doesn't slip through your fingers, fall on your foot and break your toes, requiring an emergency visit to the hospital foot factory?

This plastic bag thing will have huge environment consequences. We, the dog owners of Canada, will now have to buy those little bags from the pet store, the ones that are only made for squeaky little dogs whose poos are the size of pebbles. A responsible dog owner simply cannot pick up the poo of a dog, even the pug Gordie's size, because the damned shit won't fit in the bag.

Grocery bags are ideal crap catchers. And they hide the evidence.

Nobody walking their children wants to see the contents of those bags, particularly when one is walking one of the large breeds.

If grocery bags disappear, then you can bet even some responsible dog owners will refuse to pick up after their canine companions. This, my friends, is a certainty.

Aside from the illogical stupidity of the plastic bag ban, I object to the city hollers telling me what to do unless, of course, I am committing a criminal act. If I'm murdering someone or smoking crack cocaine in the park, then come for me. I deserve the punishment.

But how is it fair for a bylaw officer to give a hundred dollar ticket to a guy taking a drag on a park bench, or to a kid who's in the park after house doing what comes naturally -- drinking and fornicating.

Our generation didn't need to do the nasty in parks because we all had cars and parents with big-assed basements. So where do we expect the kids to go?

Instead, our bylaw officers fine them for just being kids and we, the parents, have to pay the freight.

I think a dude should be allowed to smoke on a park bench. I mean, where do they expect the hobos to go to smoke?

Sincerely, I hope this plastic bag thing doesn't come to my town.

And I hope I can still get a gigantic smoothie at Starbucks or the Seven Eleven after a night at the bar without the sharp shooters coming after me.

This is still Canada.

We have rights. We have a Constitution. We have a Charter.

Not that you would know it, this being the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of Rights. Stephen Harper has kept that little occasion under wraps; he prefers to celebrate the War of 1812 where people got murdered.

I don't understand the world.

I'm going back to bed.