Food Police

Alcalde Martin Chavez of Albuquerque has decided that vending machine food is bad for city employees. He wants the Cheetos taken out of the machines in favor of nuts and berries.

In a true demonstration of the Law of Unintended Consequences of Action By Idiot Politicians, this will take away the livelihood of blind people with no other skills to recommend them for re-employment. First, as you may guess, nobody is going to buy nuts and berries (healthy food) instead of a bag of Cheetos. When you want vending machine food you are not thinking how healthy you want it to make you. So nobody will buy the healthy foods. In fact, they are already right in there among the Cheetos, and nobody wants them now.

Second, the vending concessions are run by the local commission for the blind. So bingo, you have the Food Police (aka Martin Chavez) driving blind people into bankruptcy.

And what about the Alcalde? We haven't caught him yet eating nuts and berries, or riding his bicycle, for that matter. But he has been seen with his dog. We would like to know whether his dog would pick Cheetos over nut bars.

Stay tuned for a ban on trans fats. Pass the lard.

Left of Center

So many people drive left of center in New Mexico that it should have sister state status with the United Kingdom. Besides the spate of left of center accidents leaving dozens of people dead or in the hospital just this past summer, there is a more subtle tendency of all kinds of vehicular traffic to drift to the left. The highest propensity is among bicyclists using lanes painted on the right side of Albuquerque city streets. However, right turning motor vehicles often drift left of center as they turn right. Swing those Honda Civics wide, boys, they might not make it around that sharp corner. There's also that tendency among people driving extended cab, jacked up pickup trucks to drift left and hit median curbs, thereby rendering the front suspensions useless and causing any number of rollovers.

Too many people in New Mexico drift to the left. Perhaps this is a reflection on their political state, but these drivers deserve the Bit Off New Mexico salute.

What is the Bit Off New Mexico salute? You bite the tip off a green chile and hold it in your right hand with the bitten tip pointing up. You then gesture with your right hand as if you were going to stuff the chile up somebody's nostril.