You can now get a ticket in Cleveland
for driving a motor vehicle while smelling of alcohol.
No matter if you pass the Breathalyser with flying
colors, they can and will fine you.
So what’s next? Cops arresting people for
grand theft auto because they smell of gasoline?
You may have noticed that drinkers are the last
freely-oppressed legal group of citizenry. Even
while we’re locked in a life-or-death struggle
with terrorism and are forced to endure creepy commercials
featuring Tom Ridge’s gigantic head telling
us to brace ourselves for attacks upon our very
dwellings, you most likely won't come across any
random roadblocks set up to catch terrorists.
You will, however, on any given holiday weekend,
find thousands of roadblocks set up to snare drinkers
who are driving too well to get pulled over (or
get into an accident for that matter).
Nor will you find roadblocks set up to catch those
who talk on their cell phones while driving. Which
I find ironic because, according to yet another
study, a driver talking on a cell phone (including
the hands-free variety) is more dangerous than someone
driving while legally drunk. I’m willing to
bet that Wendy Hamilton, MADD’s current commandant,
has a cell phone. Busy as she is wielding supreme
power of her vast army of nogoodniks, we can assume
she receives calls while driving her car. And I’ll
bet you top shelf to bottom of the well that she
talks on that goddamn phone while driving. I can
picture it very easily.
Ring! Ring!
“What? What? Whaaat!”
“S-S-Sorry to disturb you, Madame President!
But the numbers are in from the weekend round-up
and —”
“What! Tell me!”
“We captured three percent fewer drunks than
last year.”
“We—you—you traitor! I
knew you were a spy all along! You stink of booze!
I can smell it through the phone! Hooch Crime! Hooch
Cr—HOLY SHIT!”
“What is it, my President?”
“I hit something! You distracted me and—oh
my God!”
“What’s wrong, my—”
“For a second there I thought there was
a decapitated human head in my lap. Oh my God! It’s
still there!"
“Madame President? Hello? Should I—should
I call the—”
(Sound of a human head being shoved out a
window.)
“Call who? Why? It was just a . . . squirrel. Just
a squirrel.”
