divine angst

My Fair City just passed a smoking ban.

For weeks, I’ve been listening to these stupid radio commercials, running up to the election, implying that the smoking ban is a way for Big Government to control our lives and restrict our choices (particularly our choices in where to drink and hear live music).

And now that it’s passed, I’m sure we’ll hear lots of noise about Big Government and the Damn Red Staters controlling our lives and telling us what to do.

So isn’t it interesting that smoking bans originated because of concerns over public health? Which is a particularly Blue State issue?

I didn’t vote on this issue, primarily because we’re leaving and I don’t really think it’s right for me to vote for or against something that I will never have to live with. But if I were voting, I probably would have voted for it. I’ve been a waitress; good friends of mine have been bartenders. When I waited tables, I smoked. Many of my service industry friends smoke. And most of them get sick and tired of working an eight-hour shift in a smoky bar. I agree—it sucks, quite honestly.

This is the South, for goodness’ sake. If you can’t smoke in the bar (and you already can’t smoke in restaurants here, or bars that make more than 50% of their revenue from food sales), you can walk the heck outside. It’s not going to be snowing or icy. It might be raining, but hey, weather is weather.

Basically, I’m sick of these people who, in every other polictical situation, would be raving liberals, but in this case pull the libertarian card! Before you go mouthing off in the public arena, figure out what your actual political ideals are.

And if I hear ONE PERSON bitch about this ban being a Red State blight, I might have to go postal.

At a January wedding, in the Catholic Cathedral in my hometown, a guest wearing white linen pants, a white linen backless top (one of those handkerchief-with-strings tops) and a BLACK THONG. Totally visible.

One of my cousins so drunk at the after-rehearsal-dinner party that he actually messed himself.

Eighty-five wedding guests gathered outside the hotel at 6 o’clock in the morning because one of the guests couldn’t wait till he got outside to have a cigarette, so he lit up in the elevator and triggered the fire alarm.

The groom’s name misspelled on the program.

The food running out 20 minutes into the reception, before the bride and groom had even arrived from taking pictures.

The maid of honor repeating mindless phrases out of some “wedding toasts for dummies” book because she so strongly disapproved of the groom.

Champagne being passed out to ONLY THE FAMILY during toasts. (We had a bottle of Crown hidden under our table, so we were OK, but still. Tacky.)