Flesh-Fascists and Nico-Nazis
I've been a professional musician off and on since I’ve been 17. These days, on a typical Saturday night, you can find me belting out a Deep Purple or Nazareth tune at some local pub in and around the Toronto area. And let me tell you, as someone whose been doing this for nigh on 30 years, I really enjoy the new smokeless environment in Ontario bars. Hats off to the nico-nazis and the marvelous smoke free society they are so generously creating for us.
While the poor, oppressed, social-lepers huddle in the freezing cold, sucking on their cancer sticks, I get to prance around on a smoke-free stage, breathing in clean pure air. I feel sorry for them but, hey, what’s more important, eh – their right to smoke, or our right to have the government stop them? Any good Canadian knows the answer to that question.
So, now that our government has almost finalized legislation to outlaw smoking anytime and anywhere - except immediately after sex, in a month starting with the letter J, on an odd numbered day of the week, during a full moon – I guess they will soon be turning their attention to more things to meddle in. (They never look for fewer things.)
Well, I have an idea for them.
Tomorrow, I’m going to drive around till I find a bar with big neon signs advertising naked women. I’m going to read the signs and examine the posters closely. Then I’ll walk inside the bar and promptly start screaming that all the naked chicks are offending my sensibilities. I’ll call the Mayor and Premier and demand that all bars provide a flesh-free environment so everyone can enjoy their beverages without getting accosted by the unwelcome sight of some strange women’s bare buttocks or naked breasts. I will rally like-minded people around me. We will be called the flesh-fascists. We will be awesome. Before long all the nico-nazis will join together with us to fight this plague of protudinous flesh. After all, our causes are virtually the same. We both want the total elimination of unhealthy offensive stuff in public businesses. Soon all bars will be flesh-free. After all, this is a health issue, same as cigarettes in bars. The sight of a naked woman rubbing her body all over some fat, sweaty, slobbering drunk is as much a threat to my mental health as second-hand smoke could ever be to my physical health. Hell – it’s ten times worse.
I need protection.
We flesh fascists will not stop until all bars are expunged of this silicone scourge. The law is on our side. After all, the strip club owners can’t rely on the excuse that they posted signs warning me about the nudity. That doesn’t work for bar owners and smoking - why should it work for strip joints? Government protection is not about giving me the choice to avoid what offends me – it’s about taking away the right of anyone to do anything that could harm or offend me, even if they warn me to stay away first.
If I want to have a drink in a smoke free bar, my right to do so overshadows the rights of any stupid smoker and any bar owner. And anyone who disagrees will have a big fine laid on them. After all, bar owners only own their businesses as long as they pay their taxes on time. If they don’t pay, the government takes the business. See? The government really owns the business. The so-called owner is really just borrowing it from them for as long as he can afford to pay taxes. So why should he have any rights at all? The impertinence - the utter ungratefulness of these people.
Imagine if these leeches - these parasites who live off the businesses that government generously lends them - were given the right to decide for themselves whether they would allow smoking or not in their establishments. Potential patrons would actually have to make a decision whether to go in or not. Clearly, the stress would be too much for them to bare. (Bare - get it?) Thankfully, sanity prevailed amongst our politicians and they rightfully decreed that these mountainous decisions should not be left up to business owners or patrons. They are, after all, much too important and complex for mere citizens to handle.
As I said at the top of this piece – I really do enjoy smoke free bars. And maybe, if the choice were left to business owners to make, there would be both smoking and smoke free bars in our society that people could choose to work in and drink in at their discretion. Then we, as a society, would not have had to give up a little more personal freedom and the government would not have claimed one more aspect of our lives to control.
Oh well, we can still smoke in our own homes. At least for now.
While the poor, oppressed, social-lepers huddle in the freezing cold, sucking on their cancer sticks, I get to prance around on a smoke-free stage, breathing in clean pure air. I feel sorry for them but, hey, what’s more important, eh – their right to smoke, or our right to have the government stop them? Any good Canadian knows the answer to that question.
So, now that our government has almost finalized legislation to outlaw smoking anytime and anywhere - except immediately after sex, in a month starting with the letter J, on an odd numbered day of the week, during a full moon – I guess they will soon be turning their attention to more things to meddle in. (They never look for fewer things.)
Well, I have an idea for them.
Tomorrow, I’m going to drive around till I find a bar with big neon signs advertising naked women. I’m going to read the signs and examine the posters closely. Then I’ll walk inside the bar and promptly start screaming that all the naked chicks are offending my sensibilities. I’ll call the Mayor and Premier and demand that all bars provide a flesh-free environment so everyone can enjoy their beverages without getting accosted by the unwelcome sight of some strange women’s bare buttocks or naked breasts. I will rally like-minded people around me. We will be called the flesh-fascists. We will be awesome. Before long all the nico-nazis will join together with us to fight this plague of protudinous flesh. After all, our causes are virtually the same. We both want the total elimination of unhealthy offensive stuff in public businesses. Soon all bars will be flesh-free. After all, this is a health issue, same as cigarettes in bars. The sight of a naked woman rubbing her body all over some fat, sweaty, slobbering drunk is as much a threat to my mental health as second-hand smoke could ever be to my physical health. Hell – it’s ten times worse.
I need protection.
We flesh fascists will not stop until all bars are expunged of this silicone scourge. The law is on our side. After all, the strip club owners can’t rely on the excuse that they posted signs warning me about the nudity. That doesn’t work for bar owners and smoking - why should it work for strip joints? Government protection is not about giving me the choice to avoid what offends me – it’s about taking away the right of anyone to do anything that could harm or offend me, even if they warn me to stay away first.
If I want to have a drink in a smoke free bar, my right to do so overshadows the rights of any stupid smoker and any bar owner. And anyone who disagrees will have a big fine laid on them. After all, bar owners only own their businesses as long as they pay their taxes on time. If they don’t pay, the government takes the business. See? The government really owns the business. The so-called owner is really just borrowing it from them for as long as he can afford to pay taxes. So why should he have any rights at all? The impertinence - the utter ungratefulness of these people.
Imagine if these leeches - these parasites who live off the businesses that government generously lends them - were given the right to decide for themselves whether they would allow smoking or not in their establishments. Potential patrons would actually have to make a decision whether to go in or not. Clearly, the stress would be too much for them to bare. (Bare - get it?) Thankfully, sanity prevailed amongst our politicians and they rightfully decreed that these mountainous decisions should not be left up to business owners or patrons. They are, after all, much too important and complex for mere citizens to handle.
As I said at the top of this piece – I really do enjoy smoke free bars. And maybe, if the choice were left to business owners to make, there would be both smoking and smoke free bars in our society that people could choose to work in and drink in at their discretion. Then we, as a society, would not have had to give up a little more personal freedom and the government would not have claimed one more aspect of our lives to control.
Oh well, we can still smoke in our own homes. At least for now.
1 Comments:
Ron..If you ever want to know what makes an American different from a Canadian you can see it in your own perpective of government. Americans believe that government rules because of the consent of the governed..not the other way around as you suggest. Maybe this is why everyone hates us Americans but it is the reason our republic which practices democratic principles has been such a success. In our country it is the community standards which are set by "our nazis" that would cause a business to allow this or prohibit that. And the government doesn't own the businesses..they can go bankrupt by themselves just fine on their own.
Keep up the great writing!
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