October 24, 2007
The automobile has been singled out as a major contributor to obesity in Western nations, mostly by tweedy intellectual blowhards rich enough to live exactly where they want – within an argyle-sweatered walk to the organic squash market and work – who feel the need to criticize folks who’d rather not add the misery of a long bus ride to the day’s complaints.
In Ontario, Canada, where a government monopoly on the sale of beer and liquor puts a quest for a case on a winter’s weekend somewhere near the level of one of the early polar expeditions for those without a car, a service called “Dial-a-bottle” has stepped in, offering delivery of all of the essentials – beer, cigarettes and condoms – to your front door for a nominal fee.
Such services, however, are also popular in places where liquor stores are on every corner block (in less toney neighborhoods generally) and fetching one’s hooch would involve only a short stumble down the road. In these cases, unless one is disabled or seeks to avoid social interaction with anyone outside of their inner circle of lay-about friends, using a vehicle to procure one’s booze, or having it delivered, is indeed quite slothful. If nothing else, the walk to the liquor store helps circulate the blood in your legs for a brief period, buying you more time later to laze about and get blasted without fear of muscle atrophy.
A Welshman set a new standard in sloth and quite possibly a record for the shortest DUI run ever when he decided to drive the 30 meters from his home to the suitably named “Bargain Booze” completely blotto. Staff members at the store, despite what one might infer from the name of the place, are circumspect when it comes to refusing to serve the visibly inebriated and would not sell him any more booze. When they saw the man stumble out to his car bleary-eyed, they phoned police.
The man was arrested a mere five minutes later at his home address and told police that he couldn’t be bothered walking. Whether the sentence he received was fair – three months in jail and a suspended license for three years – is debatable. Given the short distance between home and liquor store, the odds were against him doing much harm (unless little Johnny Appleseed next door happened to be out on his new two-wheeler at the time) but on the basis of sheer laziness, perhaps the sentence was fitting. (Full story here)
October 24th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Cars wouldn’t contribute so much to obesity if we were allowed to run down fat people. Just sayin’.
October 25th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
You make a very valid point diesel. What’s more, our portly friends tend not to move too swiftly, especially on hot days, making it all the more tempting to gun the gas when one conveniently saunters on by.