[Vision2020] New Rules from "Real Time With Bill Maher" (April 20, 2007)

[Tom Hansen]

All right, bloody New Rule: Blind people can't go hunting. To have to even
say this. Texas just passed a bill permitting blind people to use laser
sights so they can hunt with a friend who tells them where to aim. Why not
just pick up the phone and pay some goombah to have a deer whacked? Or,
better yet, just let the blind guy shoot your gun, and tell him, "Wow, you
got one!" You know, there's a name for someone with no vision who fancies
himself a hunter: Mitt Romney. 

New Rule: If you see the word "Compact" on a parking space-it's not a verb.
It doesn't mean, take your SUV and compact it in here. That is annoying.

New Rule: Kenyans have to stop coming here to this country and winning our
marathons. They're pouring over our borders and winning the marathons
American runners could be winning. And I hope nobody does anything about it
so we can all watch Bill O'Reilly get really mad and punch Geraldo in the
face. 

And, finally, New Rule: From now on, Earth Day really must be a year-round
thing. And...and in honor of this Earth Day, starting Monday, supermarket
clerks must stop putting the big bottle of detergent with the handle on it,
in a plastic bag. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but you see
that handle you just lifted the detergent with? I could use that same handle
to carry the detergent to my car. 

And while we're at it, stop putting my liquor in a smaller paper sack before
you put it in the big paper sack with my other stuff. What, are you afraid
my groceries will think less of me if they see I've been drinking? Trust me,
the broccoli doesn't care, and the condoms, they already know. 

So, here's a quote from Albert Einstein. He said, if the bee disappeared off
the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.
No more bees, no more pollination. No more plants. No more animals. No more
man. Well, guess what? The bees are disappearing in massive numbers all
around the world. And if you think I'm being alarmist, and that, "Oh,
they'll figure out some way to pollinate the plants." No, they've tried. 

For a lot of what we eat, only bees work. And they're not working. They're
gone. It's called "colony collapse disorder," when the hive's inhabitants
suddenly disappear and all that's left are a few queens and some immature
workers. Like when a party winds down at Elton John's house. Queens imagery.

But, I think we are the ones suffering from colony collapse disorder.
Because, although nobody really knows for sure what's killing the bees, it's
not Al Qaeda, and it's not God doing some of his Old Testament shtick. And
it's not Winnie the Pooh. It's us. It could be from pesticides or
genetically-modified food or global warming, or the high fructose corn syrup
we started to feed them. 

Recently, it was discovered that bees won't fly near cell phones. The
electromagnetic signals they emit might screw up the bees' navigation
system, knocking them out of the sky. So, thanks, big mouth guy in line at
Starbucks. You just killed us. 

It's nature's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?" 

Last week, I asked, if it solved global warming, would you give up the TV
remote and go back to carting your fat a$$ over to the television set every
time you wanted to change the channel. If it comes down to the cell phone
versus the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will
we continue to tell ourselves that we don't have to solve environmental
problems, we can just adapt? Build sea walls instead of stopping the ice
caps from melting. Don't save the creatures of the earth in the oceans; just
learn to eat the slime and the jellyfish that nothing can kill; like Chinese
restaurants are already doing. 

You know what? Maybe you don't need to talk on your cell phone all the time.
Maybe you don't need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100
billion plastic bags a year, and they all take 1,000 years to decompose.
Your children's children's children will never know you, but they'll know
you once bought batteries at the 99-cents Store because the bag will still
be caught in a tree. Except there won't be any trees. 

Sunday is Earth Day. Please educate someone about the birds and the bees.
Because, without bees, humans become the canary in the coal mine. And we
make bad canaries, because we're already such sheep.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)