Two frazzled housewives walk into a bar.
One turns to the other and inquires, “Are you going to dust the living room today? Been almost three years, hasn’t it?”
“Two years,10 months to be exact,” says her friend.
“But it can wait another day.
“This afternoon I am marching in the Ban Plastic Bags Parade down Sepulveda Boulevard. Plastic bags are the scourge of our world, don’t you know. A blind fish in Fullerton nearly swallowed one last week. He was sick for two hours. We must reverse this outrage.”
I was reminded of this scenario twice during the week:
• Amazingly, it came up at Wednesday night’s otherwise serious Democratic Club Candidates Forum and
• When two Orange County communities, Laguna Beach and Dana Point, passed ordinances forbidding businesses from providing single-use plastic bags to their customers.
When did Sesame Street and Mr. Snuffelupeguss take over city councils?
At the Dem Club forum, all five City Council candidates dutifully answered in the affirmative when moderator Gary Walker unbelievably asked if they would back a ban.
They want to get elected.
I don’t blame them.
I would agree to support mandatory polka dot diapers for all left-wingers if I were running for office.
The Redevelopment Agency blew up last week, City Hall is limping under a staggering deficit, workers are being asked to leave early or face layoffs, Assad is shooting his fellow Syrians every day in the streets, more Americans are unemployed than at any time since 1980, 1.2 million discouraged Americans stopped looking for work in January, Imam (I Am a Christian, I Think) Obama is at war with Catholics over his latest religious crackdown, and raggedy robed busybody housewives, their thinning hair in dangling curlers, bulgy arms flailing, are running through our streets after dark, crying out “Ban plastic bags so we can wheeze more easily.”
How very sensible.
Why not prohibit brown shoelaces? Have you ever seen talapia gag when chewing on pale brown laces? I have. Now ebony shoe laces are far more palatable. And don’t forget, a month from Sunday, Feb.19, the swallows come back to Capistrano.
There is a march in south Orange County at 5 this afternoon by the popular environmental group We Don’t Give a Darn.Com. They are campaigning to have brown shoe laces prohibited at least for the month of March, until after the swallows have settled in.
We Feel Sorry for Victims
Let’s hear a cheer for the wise town fathers of Laguna. Displaying previously inconceivable compassion, they generously have ruled that they will not strike up the ban until the beginning of ’13 to allow businesses time to change over.
Small business owners in Orange County have complained about increased costs when the ban starts – alternatives to plastic bags cost more than plastic bags. So what? environmentalists said warmly.
Besides providing much needed amusement for busybody housewives, bored collegians, tens of millions of unemployed liberals and elders who don’t enjoy reading their days away, I am waiting for one straight-faced reason to ban plastic bags.
