OK, Carrie, drop the mask
   I’m mad at MADD. The organization of justifiably angry moms that began as Mothers Against Drunk Driving has morphed into a mob of Mrs Grundys denouncing all alcohol consumption. By anyone. Ever.
   I’ve always accused the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of sailing under false colours by not calling itself the Women’s Christian Abstinence Union when what it really wants is a return to Prohibition. In the same way, I argue that MADD should admit its full agenda and simply call itself Militants Against Demon Drink.
   I’m all for combatting drunk driving, and for that matter drunkenness itself, but the sale of alcohol doesn’t automatically promote inebriation any more than the sale of food promotes obesity.
   It’s true there are people physically unable to tolerate alcohol. There are people physically unable to tolerate peanut butter. For some, Skreech can be as deadly as Skippy. But for most people peanuts are a highly nutritional food source just as alcohol, in moderation, is a useful social lubricant with modest health benefits — red wine’s good for your heart, etc.
   So while I’m happy to go along for the RIDE, I’m agin MADD turning into a League of Carrie Nations.
   I’m mad at it at the moment because its powerful publicity machine is opposing calls to allow the sale of beer and wine in Ontario grocery stores, calls which I heartily endorse — and which, having taken a vow of brevity in these rants, I’ll have to take up another time.

Stop being a lout (Part II)
      Lots of us want what we want when we want it (the ones too impatient to wait their turns are a topic for another time), but many of us, our wants once met, feel no impulse to tidy up any leftovers. The drift of detritus at left, which includes discarded clothing, empty food wrappers and a torn-up Bible, is a puzzle for an urban archaeologist, and maybe for a psychiatrist as well.
   The bench is on the northeast corner of Dundas and Clarence streets. On the northwest and southeast corners are litter boxes, on the southwest a recycling station. Some social defective could not be bothered crossing the road to reach any of them.
   He is at one with the dolts who drop their drink cans or fast-food cartons wherever they happen to empty them — or, to be even more obnoxious, set them up ostentatiously in the exact centre of a flight of steps somewhere, or in the exact middle of an intersection (‘making a statement’). Someone else, they know, will clean up after them eventually. The rest of us will pay to have it done — the rest of us who object to having our city made a sty, and who object to the few behaving like pigs.

Stop being a lout (Part 1)
   There will no doubt be many parts to this series; the forms loutishness can take appears to be boundless. Today's example is the tendency of the relatively young to park their feet on unsuitable surfaces. The ill-bred boor on the left, for example, is sprawled on a London Transit Commission bus, his none-too-clean footwear fouling a fabric-covered seat on which someone else will shortly be sitting, undoubtedly wearing a dress or a suit that will show every mark and stain. The boor has no thought that he may be causing the next person expense or embarrassment; he has no thought at all of anyone else whosoever.
   There must still be families in which children are raised to know that putting their shod feet up on bus seats, park benches, restaurant chairs, café stools and the like is rude, unsanitary and inconsiderate. But clearly there are not enough.