By Cap'n O

MARCH 9, 1998:  We should be grateful that legislators failed to pass laws that would close this state's drive-up liquor windows or allow citizens to vote to shutter them. Grateful because in terms of protecting the public safety, these measures were horribly inadequate. They weren't half steps or even baby steps; they were the stiff, lurching, minuscule steps of someone with a severed spinal column trying to walk.

The cowards in the legislature have shown us that when it comes to protecting the public they simply don't care. They prefer to leave us naked and unprotected against the ravages of life.

So does the anti-drive-up window crowd. They think that drunken driving and the windows that serve inebriated motorists are the only reason that our emergency rooms and funeral homes are overflowing. Had bills to close drive-up windows passed, we still would have been defenseless against the thousands of other things that can kill us and our precious children.

What's needed is a comprehensive legislative approach to saving us all. It isn't just drive-up windows that should be banned. Everything that can hurt and kill us should be legislated out of existence.

Start with milk. We know that arteries clogged by milk fat cause heart attacks. More people are killed by heart attacks each year than by drunken drivers. When will we wake up to the destruction and misery that dairy cows cause? How many children are orphans today because the greedy milk profiteers got to our pantywaist legislators and convinced them to ignore this gigantic health problem?

There is a difference between drunken drivers and the vile milk producers. Drunks usually run into us on the road. We don't go looking for them. But the health-wrecking dairy industry advertises its killer liquid and targets our children with its ads. Milk for a strong body? How about milk for fat-laden arteries and a satin-lined coffin? If we can't ban cows, let's at least stop the milk merchants from advertising their white poison to our children.

More people die in car accidents that aren't caused by drunks than do those who are killed by boozers. The ugly reality is that cars kill people. Let's shout together in a unified voice and urge our lawmakers to outlaw motor vehicles. The carnage on our highways must stop. Ban these steel, killing machines.

Shoe laces must go. So should belts. Prison inmates, depressed teenagers and wrinkled oldsters use these articles to hang themselves. Do we not have a duty to protect society's weakest and most vulnerable members? Of course we do. No one is more vulnerable than prison inmates and geezers in funks over busted hips. If we save just one life, it's worth the inconvenience of having our pants fall down and shoes flop off our feet. Legislate shoe laces and belts into oblivion.

The most sinister killer is one that masquerades as our beneficiary: exercise. Every day someone drops dead while jogging or lifting weights. The exercise pushers have led us to believe that daily, vigorous physical activity will bring us health and immortality. They sell us their treadmills, weight benches, home gyms and spandex clothes on the promise of hard bodies and extraordinary sex. But when many of our good citizens use these devices, they crumple to the ground with chest pains.

We need a law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of exercise equipment in this state. But we should go further to protect ourselves. It's illegal to engage in disorderly conduct. Why can't we make it illegal to engage in conduct that kills us? Away with exercise!

Men's underwear must be banned because some day--maybe, possibly--some enraged man who is angry at the world or his boss will remove his shorts and strangle someone with them. We should act to prevent this outrage before it occurs. Close down the boxer shorts and brief factories.

History's most merciless killer seduces us with the promise of sustenance and refreshment. But water has drowned too many millions of our brethren to ever be a true friend of humankind. When put in bathtubs and swimming pools, water becomes a horrifyingly efficient killer. Shut down water companies and criminalize bathtub ownership.

Finally, we must outlaw life and kill off the species. For only by killing ourselves can we prevent ourselves from getting killed by the things that can kill us. We need a law.

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