Here in New York, we're celebrating the official start of Mayor Bloomberg's ban on sodas larger than sixteen ounces. Restaurants are now prohibited from serving mop buckets of soda. I assume if I walk around with a two-liter bottle of soda, I won't get slapped with a ticket for open container, but who knows?
Most of us will adjust to the smaller size, never realizing that we've grown accustomed to super sizing due to the fast food industry, which creates an illusion of higher value with its seemingly generous, yet incredibly cheap, portions. The rest of us will buy two sodas, which creates more profits. McDonald's and Coca Cola aren't going to suffer, believe me.
I'd like to suggest some bans of my own to Mayor Bloomberg. Your Honor, you might need to wangle a fourth term to get all this done. But with your pushing through the pedestrian plaza in Times Square with no oversight, you can do anything.
Several states have passed a ban on smoking in a vehicle with a child. Do we not care about our youth? We need to pass this and go further. What about smoking in the back seat while the child drives? What if the child smokes?!? There's no telling what horrible things might happen that we haven't legislated against yet. Uneven application of sunscreen, momentarily forgetting to bolster the child's self-esteem, providing sugary snacks and non-educational toys? Also farting and country music, although I expect those two would be difficult to enforce.
I think we can agree mother love is a beautiful thing. No one would want to curb any expression of that wondrous miracle. That said, why not charge a corkage fee for women who breastfeed in restaurants? People who bring their own bottles of wine have to pay it. Why shouldn't the earth mother who brings her own boob (byob)? This would lead to more revenue or to fewer women exposing themselves in public. I know it's natural but so are many, many things one wouldn't want to share on the six o'clock news. Women have been doing this privately for a long time. Holster that thing or pay the price.
Speaking of birth, it's high time we regulated the placenta industry. There must be some way to tax the jerky and pills produced from dehydrating and grinding up afterbirth. It's a cottage industry in Brooklyn. January Jones claimed in April she'd been eating her placenta since giving birth last September and she's almost an actress: we need to pay attention to this trend. She must be out by now. Would she eat someone else's? Slap a label on and call it a cleanse and we're in business. Maybe we could promote it by having Alicia Silverstone chew and spit it into patrons' mouths after she's done bird feeding her kid, who must be one well-adjusted little tyke.
Finally, I think we should follow the lead of New York's Downtown Alliance, which has brought cutting edge technology to Trinity Wall Street Church. Thanks to the Alliance, the church, founded in 1697, offers free wi-fi in its graveyard, a quiet place for harried New Yorkers to check their email as they wolf down a hot dog atop the bones of Alexander Hamilton and John Jacob Astor. Mayor Bloomberg, I urge you to install wi-fi in all city cemeteries. Let's face it, it's the only way we're going to get our children to visit.
Labels: Alicia Silverstone, Bloomberg, humor, January Jones, placenta, sarcasm, satire, soda ban
