Frank Georgalis – Writer

Legislative Satire I

DON’T PULL MY LEG!

NO BUTTER IN RESTAURANTS! NO TOYS FOR KIDS! THE NEXT WILL BE THE AIR FROM LOS ANGELES

By Frank Elias Georgalis

Part 1 of 2 part article: part 2 will be published next week.

Please understand that one big part that played a major roll in the failing of Ancient Greek Empire was that the leaders tried to make a perfect society. It is virtually impossible to make a perfect society, beings made up of imperfect people. It’s also impossible to make perfect people by using severe discipline methods and putting together unjust and illogical laws. The politicians think that can do it. They think they can fix anything with the nod of the head and the stroke of the pen as warlords think they can do it with the swinging of the sword.
In my opinion, the government should do its best to make its citizens contented and not contained.
As it seems now, this is not an article about Ancient Greece and Greeks; neither a literary masterpiece; this is an article about American laws and lawmakers.
I strongly believe that we humans are governed by the laws of nature, and I fear, we are as cruel as nature. The laws of nature govern humans with an iron fist: therefore we tend to become as wretched as we are taught to be. Copying nature’s way of governing the earth, leaders of the world are making laws to govern the people. Nature passes down to humans her wishes, which are her laws. Nature has no mercy; it has no remorse and never repents.
Now, look at the laws that humans have designed, not alone some are merciless and contradictory but some of them are also silly to say the least.
I will never be able to understand, how serious minded people with families and friends that look up to them, can sit and pass silly and insignificant laws and expect people to obey them. That’s what this article is all about.
About five years ago the law makers of New Jersey, persuaded by the then, Surgeon General, who had some bones to pick with eggs, to pass a law prohibiting the serving of sunny-side-up fried eggs in the restaurants. The law was passed with flying colors, making it a health violation for restaurants to serve sunny-side-eggs, including the serving of Caesar’s salad, because it’s made with raw egg. If the restaurateurs would be caught breaking the law, they were subjects to stiff fines and the chance of losing their license to operate and cause many people to lose their jobs. I have always said that the legislators make laws without taking the consequences into consideration. The state went ahead and hired several additional inspectors who knew zero about food and food products. The costumers, being refused sunny-side-up eggs and Caesar’s salad, became so heated up, threatened the restaurant employees with violence and some restaurateurs resorted into closing their places of business for breakfast. Listen to this: The costumers didn’t go wild for being in love with sunny-side-up eggs, they felt their rights were being stepped on by the big foot of the law. Restaurant owners, many of their employees including waitresses and cooks, a lot of sunny-side-up egg lovers and some others citizens, seeing their rights being pulled from under them, marched into Trenton, the state capital of New Jersey and protested the law, to the point where it seemed the whole situation was critical. While they protested they showed signs of madness with violence, threatening to burn Trenton to the ground and to turn it back to farm land; it was impossible to guess the outcome. If they weren’t promised by the governor that the law would be abolished and off the law books a bad thing would have turned to worse. Incidentally the law was abolished and the cost law came to over two million dollars. Is this any way to run a state?
Another New Jersey Law 2C-34-! It reads as follows; a sexual activity with another person in exchange of something of value is prostitution and the house where the act of sex takes place is marked as the house of ill-repute and is a subject to governmental confiscation. Up to this point the law may be understood and acceptable, when but the lawmakers attempt to make an effort to define the something of value, then the law becomes sticky to say the least. The way the law reads, most of the women who live with men, have sex with the men even after a men paid for dinner and who have not taken out a marriage licenses, are whores. It seems to me the greed of monetary value of the law makers, which stands out like the donkeys ears, aided them to write the law that is disregarding any feelings of bond or mental attachment for one another, which may be called love and puts the emphasis on their favorite object which is money . Do you know how many whores are in your town, according to the laws of prostitution? I would say thousands.
Listen to this, I am not making this up, it is a law in the books. The law says that if two people are having dinner in a restaurant, one pays for what they consumed and both go to the same house or hotel or motel not even to have sex, or to touch each other they are guilty of prostitution. Listen to this! They don’t have to be caught touching each other or having sex, if the lights go off and stay off, over fifteen minutes, according to the law, it is a proof of sexual activity is taking place in there and the law enforcing agents including the traffic cops have the right to break down the door to get in and arrest the persons and charge them with prostitution Thank God they passed the Privacy Act in 1974 and stopped some of the law enforcement agents intruding without a warren which is not hard to get. I would like to invest some time and follow a daughter of a high ranking politician and her lover from the restaurant to their house, wait for fifteen minutes after the lights go off, call for a search warren, go in with a police and have them arrested and charged them with prostitution and it should stick according to the way the law is written. She is not above the law and she should be prosecuted convicted and go to jail like most prostitutes. Oh, the high ranking politician, who is saying that, nobody is above the law, would have another high ranking politician to pardon both of them like the presidents do on their way out, pardoning criminals in favor of political donations.
In my opinion, one of the most fascinating books that’s ever been written is Doctor Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelly when she was only 19 years old. The fascinating plot of it is Doctor Frankenstein stricken with mega-mania, like most politicians and scientists, created a monster, stronger than he was that eventually killed him. If anyone puts together all the laws we have in the books, will end up with a monster capable of destroying all of us.
The Kinsey report says that if all the laws that are written and are in the books of city, state and federal government are enforced, 35% of the American population would be in prison.
There is a law in the law books of the State of New Jersey, that prohibits the use of elephants pulling the plow. That makes as much sense to anyone as Aunt Ely saying, when asked if she would like a piece of stake or to get married, her reply was that she had no teeth to eat a steak. I wasn’t aware of the elephant population in the state of New Jersey until one day, while I was driving south on the Garden State Parkway I saw a bunch of elephants, some sitting by the side of the road and other were standing, as if they were hitch-hiking and going south. I am being a little silly right now but not as silly and ridiculous as the people who wrote and passed the law.
I don’t think there is anybody who has seen a loose elephant in the State of New Jersey in the last 5,000 years.

Hold on to your hat. I heard that Arnold the California Governor is thinking of passing a law that bars BUTTER from being served in restaurants. To make life more interesting for me on this earth, I watch people, who are having expensive suits, neckties from Nemus Markus, and have people who love them and more who follow them, are making fools out of themselves. Listen to this: The New York State legislators, hearing what Arnold is preparing to do with the butter, put their heads together and now are working on a law to bar salt from the restaurants. Aren’t you laughing yet? The cripple pig can’t stop laughing. Please somebody tell me why are they doing this?
Some will say that is a good law for our health; we all know, they may say, that butter and salt is no good for us. That answer is brilliant. Another question must follow though; How about Sugar? How about French fries? How about red meat? How about bacon? How about cheese? Start learning to eat pizza without the cheese; pork and beans without the pork, cheeseburgers without the meat and cheese?. Turnips and cabbage, collard greens and green beans soon will be the only things we can eat without being punished. If they can move it an inch they can move it a mile. If they get away passing those laws they can starve us to death.
I tried very hard to figure out if there is some untold information that is revealing; the consumption of butter and salt would cause some outbreak of contiguous disease that could wipe off some the innocent population who don’t eat butter and salt. But there ain’t it. The closest I can come is to think that those serious minded people who called themselves politicians, think that they are mothers: my mother? I don’t need a mother who can be that stupid. Breaking the law would be a crime and crime is always followed by the punishment. Now they are going to insert into law that if anybody who is caught bringing salt and butter on his or her person is going to be subject to fine and for the repeaters of the violation is imprisonment. It’s in the history books that punishment always acceded the crime. Hammurabi, the Babylonian King, who had some good feelings and concerns about the poor and the underprivileged citizens, in the year of 1750 BC came up with the law called The Hammurabi Code, stating “An eye for eye and an arm for an arm.” The purpose of the law was not to allow the authorities to impose a punishment to accede the crime. But Hammurabi is dead, there have been many cases recently where the punishment was prodigiously cruel (That will be one of my future articles). Can you imagine you, going to prison for liking salt and butter? Just think, when you are walking around in the prison yard and you are asking an inmate why he is in for; which question is traditional in prison yards, the inmates would answer, for rape, or bank robbery, or assault with a deadly weapon, but when the inmate asks you why you’re in, what would be your answer? Bringing butter and salt into the restaurant? Don’t do it! These guys would think that you are pulling their leg. They are serious minded men too. They don’t like to have their leg pulled; they’ll pull your nose off your face, and your limbs off their sockets. Think now, is the liking of butter and salt worth all that pain. A bad act is made up of two parts, the thought and the deed.

Tune in next week for Part 2. You’ll read about silly laws, which can be damaging to the public. You’ll learn about dormant laws that can be deployed at a moment’s notice, which can infringe on citizen’s rights.