Write Your Congressperson (Yeah being politically correct)

Some laws are just so stupid. Did you know that in certain places, it's illegal to walk across the street on your hands or carrying a bee in your hat? (Okay, I heard them on the Internet so they may not be true, but they're pretty phunny anyway.) But for real, what kind of law prohibits jaywalking? A pointless one. We decided to make up pointless laws of our own and see if we could get people fired up for the cause of either passing or not passing these laws.

Our first experiment was with a law mandating carpooling during rush hour. Specifically, you would have to have at least 2 people in the car weekdays between 8 and 9 AM and 5 to 6 PM. We told people that this law had already been past in the lower house of our state government and would be heard in the upper house sometime this month. We did not want this law passed because it seemed impractical for people coming into the city from suburban areas. Of course, all of this is complete bullshite. Muahahahaha (evil laff).

From the hours of 10:30 to 4:00 we managed to get 52 people to sign our petition against this law. Some of our favourite responses are:

• "I think it's a restriction on my personal freedom" to which we replied "To kill?" and this silly person replied "My freedom to move about the country" and we said "Like the cell phone plan!"
• "What would they do if they caught me?" and we said "If they had another offender handy, you two could ride in the same car. If not, you would have to wait until they caught someone else." Then they said, "But what if I was late to work?" and we said "That's the penalty for breaking the law."
• "Is that Constitutional?" to which we replied "The Constitution doesn't outlaw mandated carpooling, only mandating horse-drawn buggy-pooling."
• "No, I won't sign that petition! That's a great law that will cut down traffic and save the environment. It should have been enacted years ago." Our reply: "Damn environmentalists."

We decided to rip off a law from a long-running popular TV show. The Good Samaritan law would mandate helping any citizen in need. Illegal aliens would, of course, be excluded. In one hour of trying, we got no signatures and only one response:

• "What, like on S*infeld?" Of course, copyrights prohibit us from naming the show. You'll just have to use your imagination.

Next we posed as a human rights group advocating the end of women's suffrage in the fictional land of Kwana. As the more scholarly reader would know, the term "suffrage" means "right to vote," not suffering. We wanted to see how many less-schooléd folk didn't know that. Apparently, 26 of the 41 didn't. They all signed our petition. Favourite quotes:

• "What are they suffering from?" We said, "Fair voting practices."
• "Oh, I heard about that on 20/20!" to which we said, "You must enjoy tabloids as much as we do."
• One woman told us to go buy a dictionary and look up "suffrage." We concluded she must be one of those horrible male chauvinist who just wanted women to continue to suffer.