|
Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
|
That gigantic sucking sound is government
Welcome to the Tuesday Lite Notebook, where we throw caution to the wind and the baby out with the bath water but never throw in the towel in our quest to bring you the freshest, tastiest and most fat-free weird news.
» Why Government Sucks (Exhibit A): Los Angeles has banned fast-food restaurants in the city's poorer areas, inhabited mostly by Hispanic and African-American residents. This strikes me as something of an insult to two specific groups. It implies that they are too stupid to eat right and so the government has to make food choices for them. What's next? They don't get to leave the dinner table till they eat all their peas?
Psssst. Here's a dirty little secret: Places other than McDonald's and Burger King sell dangerous foods like butter, lard, fatty pork chops, mayo, ice cream, potato chips ... you name it ... if it's bad for you, these places sell it. They are called SUPERMARKETS. Look for the L.A. city council to start telling certain classes of people what they are allowed to buy in those dietary hell holes.
» Why Government Sucks (Exhibit B): China has banned most cars from the roads and ordered many factories closed in an effort to make the air there semibreathable before the Olympics start Friday. The air is so thick with smog in Beijing you can eat it with chopsticks. This could be the first Olympics where athletes run the 100-yard dash wearing scuba tanks.
The ban apparently is working just as well as the last ban that China tried, of reincarnation. Seriously. China banned reincarnation earlier this year. Now the souls of dead Chinese have to go to India or Taos, N.M., if they want to reincarnate.
» Why Government Sucks (Exhibit C): Robert Mugabe, the idiotic despotic ruler of Zimbabwe, has run his country so far into the ground that inflation has made tree leaves more valuable than paper money. Seriously. I mean, if they had trees. But they've cut all those down for heating and cooking. The organization laughingly called the "Central Bank" of Zimbabwe was forced to issue a $100 BILLION NOTE! And that note won't even buy a loaf of bread.
Ironically, the stuff laughingly referred to as "currency" in Zimbabwe is being sold on eBay as novelties. I'm not making this up. Bidding on a $5 BILLION Zimbabwe note reached $15 when I last checked. But the real deal was a $75 BILLION Zimbabwe note that had only been bid up to $9. The great thing about buying Zimbabwean money over the Internet is that you don't have to worry about being cheated. If the bill you buy isn't a real Zimbabwean bank note, it's worth about a million dollars more than the real thing. This Just In: I just checked eBay again, and bidding on a $100 million bank note has reached $1.04. I'm thinking of bidding it up to $1.08. Zimbabwe is the only country where a wheelbarrow full of cash won't even buy a wheelbarrow.
Buy Charles Memminger's hilarious new book, "Hey, Waiter, There's An Umbrella In My Drink!" at island book stores or
online at any book retailer. E-mail him at
cmemminger@starbulletin.com