be healthy in austin – whether you like it or not!

i think the austin health-concious folk have finally gone too far…

…it was only a matter of time, i suppose.

first came the smoking ban. that one i didn’t really care about as i don’t smoke. as i recall it started with restaurants, then moved to bars. a couple places were “grandfathered” in because they had totally separate areas with separate ventilation systems and what not…then those got yanked as well.

again, i didn’t care…i’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, and while i do have a twenty-plus year cigar habit they rarely allowed those in bars anyway, which i always found ridiculous.

then came the bags – as in single use plastic bags. this i guess wasn’t for health reasons, and has led to a tremendous spike in shoplifting (so now i HAVE to carry a large bag that carries lots of shit into a store and i have a criminal tendency? awesome!). i’m used to it at the austin-area grocery stores, but i always forget that it means EVERYBODY (wal-mart, target, etc) so holiday shopping will be extra shitty this year for the austin folk…

…fuck them – i’ll buy online or in a city that does bags. just took my money out of my birthplace…no biggie.

but now they’re going after fat kids and trying to take away fast food. per usual, the teaser running during SHIELD or CSI or some other abbreviation show on my dvr was ominous – “good-bye, wendy…so long, ronald, see ya later, jack – austin looks to ban fast food…at ten!”

not quite.

the concern is childhood obesity (a valid one) and, per usual, they don’t blame the parents (i guess nobody ever blames the parents since they’ll take the brunt of it on therapists’ couches for years to come) so they’re looking to eliminate fast food places within x-number of blocks of schools and playgrounds and other places kids hang out like they’re sex offenders.

taco bell is a pederass? who knew…

it’s just in the beginning stages and hasn’t gone to a vote yet. could it happen? in a word, “no fucking way”. this is a free country, with free enterprise, and while businesses can CHOOSE to do the right thing (there’s an exxon right across from my Mom’s old high school that doesn’t sell beer or wine due to it’s proximity to a high school) they don’t have to (there’s a 7-11 right across from a middle school with a liquor store nearby next to the shop and nobody cares) but making it a law? that steps on all kinds of constitution shit, and that is strictly reserved for state government (abortion, anyone?) and federal government (everything else) but won’t trickle down to the local level…at least i hope.