The story that this man has is that for 30-years he has been drinking milk. Finally, he ended up with a stroke. Naturally, the milk that he has been drinking all these years had to be the cause of all these problems. All that milk he drank apparently plugged up his arteries thoroughly. Therefore, he has now decided that the dairy farmwers are thoroughly evil people as are the stores that are lax enough to sell milk to just any wacko that happens to waltz into the place without checking for ID or anything like that. Because of that, he is suing the store and the dairy farmers for an undisclosed amount of money for punitive and personal damages.
In addition to this, this lawsuit seeks to impose a ban on all milk advertisements and to impose a warning label on every milk carton. We can only imagine what kind of warnign label would be put on milk cartons: "WARNING: Although a large amount of scientific evidence points to the contrary, one lawsuit-happy scapegoat seeker has decided to sue us and demand that warning labels be put on milk cartons that he got addicted to the stuff. Be warned that this could happen to you unless you had half a brain." Of course, the ilk companies would just love having to do this. More annoying would be the advertising ban. Maybe then all that valuable advertising space that is being used to warp and twist impressionable young minds into milk addicts can then be used for less dangerous and addictive products, such as alcohol or cigarettes. In the not quite immortal words of some guy somewhere, "'Scuse me, I don't think so."
Still, this lawsuit is going to make some waves, as milk addiction is a problem that one takes lightly, and is rarely discussed. This lawsuit is a kick in the pants for awareness of milk addiction, however. If this problem is not addressed soon, we are in for a whole lot of trouble. As I mentioned previously, from experience I know how lax the stores are about selling milk... In fact, I am quite sure that a two-year old could obtain this dangerous substance without any problem! If allowed to go unchecked, we could be raising a whole generation of milk addicts without even knowing it! The effects could be disastrous. Do we want our children to be out on street corners as beggars, living between glasses of milk? The social costs of rehabilitating milk addicts could skyrocket! In reaction to this, there would be groups such as Milk-drinker's Anonymous forming to help rehabilitate the milk addicts.
What about the cows in all of this? As the demand for milk grows as more and more milk addics need their daily fix of the stuff, What will happen to the cost of the stuff? Pretty soon, the government is going to jump on this and start taxing the stuff left and right. Pretty soon, it's going to cost us $15 just to have breakfast in the morning! There will be a black market of dairy farmers, and before long, the government would have to call in the special forces to dispatch the cows, infected with mad cow disease in order to defend these illegal dairies. In fact, cow tipping will not only be legalized, but encouraged. The army will be holding daily cow-tippnig drills. The whole thing will turn into a nice little mess after a while.
The scary part behind all of this is that the milk industry is encouraging all of this runaway milk-drinking (all it means to them is money, right?) and is in fact quite bold in their quest to make sure that every man, woman and child in the country is using their product three times a day. For proof, turn to their Website and you will see that this is true. In fact, they have enough chutzpah to cmoe out and claim that milk is actually healthy! The milk purveyors are trying to destroy society and take it over for themselves by controlling the milk-addicted populace with clever manipulation techniques. Pretty soon, money will be replaced with milk, and the milk companies, controlling the supply of currency, will eventually elevate this to the point of totalitarian rule. In other words, we're all hopelessly doomed to oppression and rule by despots all because we're addicted to milk.
That is, of course, unless the judge in this lawsuit has any common sense, and realizes that the whole idea of milk being addictive is nothng more than another cow chip in the pasture of frivolous lawsuits.
Ok, since I somehow feel obligated to include a little more computer-related stuff somewhere in here (and because this week's column still seems just a tad short) It appears that the VRML soapbox is about to come out and recieve a little more use. Having a job in tech support, one realizes quicvkly that people don't know the first thing about computers out there. There are literally people out there who know so little that you often have to wonder how they ever managed to dial (or even identify) the phone for tech support. With some of these people, trying to teach them ahything is in one ear and out the other (these are commonly the ones known as "consultants" and "managers") but there are others who are actually trying to learn how to use the things. The best approach if one of them needs some help is to give them just enough to figure it out for themselves. Maybe by doing this, the users can pick up a few thigs on their own. More on this next week.