Absolutely Hilarious

Rodney Dangerfield has always been one of my favorite comedians.  Even if you didn’t see his bulging-eyes and his totally surprised expression, he had that special timing and voice-inflection that made his deliveries funny.  That is my humble opinion.

With Rodney gone to the Great Beyond, I have been searching for an equally amusing act that would make me laugh almost as much.  Throughout the years I have been big fans of the Three Stooges, and the Marx Brothers, alike, which round out my top three funny bone ticklers.

Alas, all are now deceased.

Fortunately, I have discovered a hilarious bunch of comical showmen that can be seen both in-person, on television, and in print.  And most of them are still alive.

Help me welcome the Ocean City, Maryland, Town counsel, and Maryland environmental groups.

This is where all you readers must applaud, and stand, if you feel it is deserved.

In my local newspaper, I noticed a true – as opposed to fake – news story about drinking straws in the April 11^th edition.  Yeah, those plastic tubes that are used to sip liquid from your drink.  Drinking straws.

I quickly decided to check to see how well Ocean City, Maryland was being managed, and here is what I found:

When looking at violent crimes, Ocean City, MD has 168% higher than violent crime rate than Maryland average, while remaining 227% higher than the national average. In property crime, Ocean City, MD is 558% higher than the average of Maryland and is 513% higher than the national average.

Wow!

I’m not going to try and quote an on-line story from foodsafetynews.com about waiters and waitresses handling drinking glasses and dirty dishes and money, alike.  Something boring called cross-contamination is mentioned therein, which should be avoided to prevent serious gastrointestinal illness.  But I digress.

Still, in a front page, above-the-fold article, this newspaper proudly touted ardent efforts from environmentalists to eliminate drinking straws from Ocean City, Maryland.  Their brain trust claim “a lot of resort towns that have done this program” could have an impact on the beaches.

Yeah!

This is the part of the story where I throw a knuckleball.

It seems as though these self-appointed buttinskis are not only annoying, but also phonies.

While the Town of Ocean City cheers the elimination of dinking straws, thereby curtailing dire problems clearly affecting the environment, they sing a decidedly different song when it comes to really helping the environment.

In the April 19^th edition of this same rag, a guest columnist writes about countering the Town’s desire to kill the placement of common sense, clean, renewable energy.

For years, we have heard all the propaganda about how the pious environmentalists among us are yearning for ways to reduce CO2, smog, wildly using irreplaceable fossil fuels, and intentionally crippling the nuclear power efforts in America.

Maryland offers financial incentives for electric and hybrid car purchases, too.  Maryland offers an Excise Tax Credit of $125 per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity up to a maximum of $3,000 for Electric Vehicle or Plug-in Hybrid.  Pretty sweet if you want to succumb to guvment wrangling.

But now that wind turbines being placed in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Maryland – within view of Ocean City – those all-important environmental issues are deemed null and void.

The reason these Town phonies are lying across the proverbial railroad tracks to stop this clean energy initiative is that these windmills would simply spoil the view for vacationers and residents.

That sounds pretty selfish to me. And funny.