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Connecticut Approves Mental Junk Food Ban
Connecticut lawmakers have decided that people who read People are not, in fact, the luckiest people in the world. The state has voted to ban the sale and consumption of mental junk food in public buildings, in an effort to curb rising rates of human vapidity.
Commentators say the legislation would be the strictest mental nutrition bill in the country.
"I just hate it when I'm trying to meditate on the commuter train and the person next to me is reading something other than Plato," said Trina Doch of the Pure Mind Society (PMS). Doch had hoped the ruling would ban all reading materials unconnected to the Platonic Triad of Beauty, Truth and Goodness. She remains optimistic, however, that the measure will stem second-hand junk exposure.
Public buildings affected by the legislation include government buildings, schools, mass transit and doctors' waiting rooms. Prohibited materials include celebrity gossip magazines, true crime paperbacks and all books in the "Chicken Soup" series. Also banned from public buildings are television infomercials and amplified pop songs featuring fewer than four chord changes.
During the eight-hour debate, some lawmakers confessed their personal problems with thought poverty, stunted imaginations and the tendency to speak in advertising slogans. Others openly watched Dr. Phil on portable television screens and then shrugged off the long-awaited vote, saying, "You Decide."
Restaurants lobbied against the bill, worried they would lose customers if the steady drone of pop music wasn't playing in the background. "Patrons might be required to have conversations," complained Chet Dearth, owner of The Ambiance Cafe chain. "And that would be a disaster."
Airlines opposed the bill as well, fearing that without a steady diet of celebrity golf, romance novels and slasher movies, passengers would become irascible - or even threaten to jump - on long flights.
Other states are considering similar measures. California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he too would push for a ban on mental junk food as long as it didn't prohibit "Terminator" movies or body-building magazines.
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