Diary of a Mad Grrrl

sure my body's a temple, i'm just burning incense...

The headmistress of my junior high school was a beast of a woman, she hated me because of my tendancies to dye my hair purple, fight with my teachers, steal all the school dictionaries, defy the dress code, and of course, for smoking in the girls room. I hated her because she had no neck, no sense of humor, was a staunch bully supporter, and had a poster in her room stating "Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Star Trek."

Question: What does New York State have in common with Sister Mary Motherfucker? HAH. They will both kick your ass if they catch you smoking.

Its going over real well too! Been out to a bar lately? Driven past one, or at least attempted to? People are flowing out into the streets. Bars without an outside area where people can smoke are practically dead, and the ones with an outside area are empty inside. Why? because people, like myself, want a damned cigarette while they're sippin' a cosmo.

Supposedly this is supposed to improve things for the employees. Mind you that I highly doubt that any of the people who voted on this law actually ever worked as a server or a bartender, or had any kind of menial job. For those people, I would like to clarify this: we work for TIPS. Servers make less than minimum wage, and so all of our money comes from tips. If there are less people coming to bars, if people are unhappy when they're there, then the servers make less tips. Tips, even to a nonsmoking server, are more valuable than a smoke-free environment, because thats what pays the rent. If someone wants to work in a smoke-free environment, there are plenty of non-smoking restaurants to work at. There are hazards with any job- second hand smoke is among the least harmful (sorry, but compared with some drunk guy trying to grab your ass, it is). If there were a need for non-smoking bars, there would be more of them, and people would have gone to them. DUH. This is a choice that the owners of the bar should make, not the state. The whole law is completely ridiculous. Sure, it worked in California, but guess what? California is just a wee bit warmer in the winter than Rochester is, I mean, we could live in igloos for chrissake! Its frigid! You can barely leave the house without a snowsuit! I sure as hell am not going to bother going out to a bar in the winter if I have to risk frostbite to have a cigarette! No one asked for this law, and from what I've heard from people- the only people who think its a good idea don't drink anyway!

No one goes to a bar to do anything healthy to begin with. If you want to lift weights and be all healthy, go to a gym. GRRR!

(for more of my ranting, political and nonpolitical, check out my salon.com blog at http://blogs.salon.com/0002816)