Dear Friends,

In the paper of record you will read today that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's protege is continuing his forefather's crackdown on impure fun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/09/nyregion/09SMOK.html
Mr. Giuliani, you will recall, banned adult bookstores, novelty shops, and video stores within 500 ft. of a church or school. He also banned topless dancing and oversaw the more lenient anti-smoking law. But now Our Mayor will end smoking in all restaurants and bars. Combined with the $7.50 per pack cost of cigarettes, these laws continue to liberate New Yorkers from their vices.

The dangerous corollary to the doctrine that we need to preserve the work atmosphere of restaurant and bar workers is that tobacco use may be substituted with something smoke-less, like LSD. But, thankfully, Senator Biden (the same who brings you the sham "hearings" on the "inevitable" war with Iraq) has proposed legislation to outlaw raves as well. Senator Biden reminds us that rave venues (night clubs) promote dancing and drug use.

More discrete stupefaction is available. The use of addictive medications that are prescribed by doctors (at the request of their patients who have seen advertising on TV) is a marvelous new path. There is a pill, it seems, for every nagging doubt about the course of world events. True, it may be discovered soon that these drugs also cause brain tumors, like Prozac, but the pharmaceutical corporations have learned to form their subsidiaries as limited liability corporations, so that in troublesome cases they can re-emerge with new names -- not unlike the terrorists and presidential daughters who have falsified their identities to circumvent the rule of law.

The effect of Mr. Bloomberg's new law will be that in addition to walking around talking on cell-phones, thousands of New Yorkers will be wearing back-packs to free up their other hand for smoking. Given the exhilarating nature of walking among the New York taxis, many of these new Homo WalkingTalkingSmokersapiens are bound to meet their ends beneath the wheels of a cabs. But this is actually a good thing, because it will save the Health Maintenance Organizations millions of dollars in care for elderly cancer patients. This will, in turn, free up money that is desperately needed to finance the skyrocketing executive salaries of America's health industry CEOs. God bless America. Let us go forth and shore up the good in this world strewn with evil. Amen.

- Pastor Purity of the Church of No Mercy


Sep-30-2002