Am I evil? & Damn the man.

Evil -- yes. There's a kid at school who hangs around my kids, and he only uses one side of his mouth and I think of him (only privately) as "Stroke-boy." Also, the second most flaming gay high school student I've ever met (the first was my friend "Jobina-belle," who prided himself on his glorious Donna Summer hair) is playing one of the leads in our Aztec play. Originally, I had just cast the role as "Obsidian Snake" and double-cast it, meaning two kids playing one part. But then we changed it so that this kid was actually another character who needed a new name. I chose "Flaming Spear."


Also, I read three disturbing stories today all about the government getting all up in my food business. First, in CA they're passing a law that restaurants cannot pre-set the tables. If they do, they have to put plastic covers on the wine glasses and stuff. Because possibly maybe potentially some germs could get on your stuff. Not that it's ever happened. But it could.

Second, they're requiring vintners to add "contains eggs/fish" on bottles of wine if they were processed with eggs or fish. Now, I can see if you were a hardcore-crazy vegan why you'd want to know this, but apparently this stuff has been completely filtered out and no one has ever had a documented allergic reaction to wines processed in this way. So, because maybe possibly someday it could happen, winemakers have to say "contains fish" on their Petit Syrah.

And finally, because almonds can possibly carry salmonella (as most foods can), the USDA is going to require that all almonds be either pasteurized (heat-treated) or fumigated with a TOXIC, known CARCINOGEN. That's right. Salmonella vs. cancer. Worse yet, almonds that are pasteurized will require no label indicating that they've been heat-treated, and no almonds will require a label about the cancer stuff. Good times, huh? This carcinogen is actually banned in the EU and Canada, so the almonds we export can't be treated with the stuff. Because it's dangerous. And organic growers would have to adapt to the same standards, even though it's been proven that salmonella doesn't live as long in organic soil as it does in conventional.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound all Republican, but what happened to small government? What happened to stay-the-fuck-out-of-my-wine-and-organic-food? It's creeping me out.