Seems there is considerable pressure and lobbying of delegates to remove the helmet law. &uot;Why should the government hamper my freedom by forcing me to wear safety equipment on my skull?&uot; Here’s the answer, friend: if there is no brain inside the skull why bother to protect it? I’m with you, chuck the thing and take the risks, it’s your life and if you get your bell rung on a tree you can say you are a man. You don’t take no crap from nobody. And you may just assist in weeding out the ignorant from the population. Lord knows there is a plethora of them.

I’ve thought about going a step further and rip out the auto seat belts. They are a pain and a habit I can do without. Most folks in the back seat feel there is no need to belt up because they are farther away from the accident that might kill the two up front. That’s great thinking and the driver is absent minded, or worse, if he forgets there is the risk that the person behind him might come sailing into the back of his head. I clearly remember witnessing an accident back when I was a kid, before belts. A car hit an obstinate willow tree and the guy in the middle of the back seat was wearing the review mirror between his eyes when he came flying through the windshield.

Now the fast-food purveyors are admitting to some sort of guilt because so many hearty American eaters don’t know when to quit or want to. I saw a huge, huge man at a Chinese restaurant eating Alaskan crab legs so fast he must have thought they were becoming extinct. He wasn’t even taking time to squeeze out the meat, just stuffing the legs in as they were…looking like one of those yard chippers that chew up branches. Apparently he couldn’t shut himself off and the Chinese manager furiously worked his abacus.

That’s the trouble with buffets, fast-food outlets limit everything but the soft drinks and ketchup. The burgers may be big but the price nowadays fosters caution and only those desiring suicidal calories go for seconds. But because of the ACLU and those who have completely lost control of their wits there is pressure forcing the fast-food chains to pander to gluttons. Right now the hot avoidance subject is &uot;carbs.&uot; I’ve never seen one up close but apparently they do terribly disfiguring things to the human body. Inward curves expand outward, bathroom scales go to Goodwill and the textile industry puts on a night shift. The need for better nutritionists is obvious because most of them are overweight.

Cruise ship owners are seriously weighing either cutting back on the endless ponderous meals or determining the price of the cruise by weighing the passenger. Airlines are thinking too and considering the measurements of the human bodies as they did overhead carry-ons. Medicare brains meet monthly to determine how excess body weight affects medical costs. Liposuction will not be covered, nor ankle, knee and back supports.

About those 10-day weather forecasts…baloney. By the third day they are revising and pondering another 10 days they will be revising. I guess it’s OK to listen to their guesses, but don’t make any plans based on them. They make these wild estimates just to fill up airtime and to appear wiser than the other channels that will only gamble on seven. I’d settle for one day if it is so accurate I don’t have to look out a window to be sure. Surely we don’t have a shortage of hypothesizing meteorologists.

In case you didn’t see the news, you have an opportunity to purchase Tyrannosaurus Rex bones that a museum will soon dump on the market. You private collectors will now have the opportunity to own such a rare and precious item. I think it’s wonderful that the average Joe Six-pack can now adorn his mantel with something eye-catching instead of an ordinary duck decoy or slightly cracked Aunt Sadie’s slightly cracked teapot. I don’t think you should go for a whole leg or vertebra; you’d have to sell your pickup just to buy a pinkie bone. But it certainly was nice of them to offer.

Robert Pocklington is a resident of Suffolk and a regular News-Herald columnist.