WHO thought of this stupid idea?

There really is an awful lot of stupid going around lately, isn't there?  I'm not sure how it has reached such a pandemic.  Is it transmitted by a mosquito, like so many deplorable viruses of late?  And like those viruses, stupid is not good for one's health.  Well, at least it's not good for my health because the accumulation that has assailed my eyes and ears of late makes me feel compelled to go and bash my head against a brick wall.  If nothing else, this action will render me as moronic as many of the  sufferers of the latest wave of stupid, and I will have some company. 

I'm starting to worry the World Health Organisation, for whom I normally hold the utmost respect, have contracted a lethal dose of this insidious disease.  They must have; how else could they seriously expound the arsehat idea of having movies that feature smoking be rated 'R'?  The concern is that a child might see a cool character smoking and decide to take up this habit.  You know what?  I hate smoking.  I really, really detest it.  There is nothing to be said for it.  It is expensive, detrimental to the environment, hazardous to the health of the fool puffing away (together with innocent passers-by who end up breathing in that noxious shit), smells grotesque, and in my opinion just looks plain slovenly.  But guess what I hate more?  These clown ideas that encroach on creativity and artistic expression.

I'm an author.  I have no obligation to take a moral stand against anything in my work.  My obligation is to entertain my reader.  Therefore, if I believe a character is going to light up a ciggie, then by God I will have that character light up a ciggie.  If you read my stuff and decide to take up smoking because I had a character do it, then be that upon YOUR head (or lungs).

I applaud the laws that forbid smoking inside pubs, and point out that when these laws were introduced there was no decline in people going out drinking.  People still like to go and drink, and watch a band.  They just have to smoke outside, that's all.  Pubs found new clientele: those that had always avoided attending because they could not stand smelling like an old ashtray the next day, along with the wheezing and itchy eyes.  These laws offer bar staff as safer work environment, too.

But slapping 'R' ratings on films?  Is 'Pinocchio' going to receive an 'R' rating because Jiminy Cricket smokes?  I'd be more concerned if my child played with explosives in the erroneous belief that a misfire would result in nothing more than a sooty face and an afro hairdo, a la Wile E Coyote when wielding a defective detonator, instead of the realistic result which would be chunks of flesh flying around like pulpy snowflakes in a blizzard.

Let's slap an 'R' rating on Pepe Le Pew in case some kids carry out sexual assaults because they see this stinking rodent doing it to the cat with the white stripe painted down its back.  That skunk personally annoys me because of this, but I haven't started up a lame-arse change dot org petition yet. 

Or, and this is a little idea I came up with that's slightly left of field but it just MIGHT work: let's just educate our kids about the dangers of smoking and explosives, and the antisocial behaviour of some characters in television shows and movies.  How does that sound?  And let's leave different expressions of art alone.