Yo, Floyd County Health Department, your invoice is ready. Cash only, please. I'm not sure I trust your checks.

In some ways, it's too bad the health department opted out last night at the Carnegie Center. We'd taken the time to prepare an invoice for them (above).

It had been decreed yesterday afternoon that in order to ensure the department's absence from an event it shouldn't be monitoring in the first place (Carnegie is a 501c3, and the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission regulates alcoholic beverages -- not Doctah Tom), we'd have to certify beer, liquor and wine pourers as being volunteers. I invite readers to peruse the enabling ordinances for this ad hoc definition. It eluded me, but maybe you'll have more luck.

Thus relieved of the obligation to obtain a control mechanism that the department has no legal right to demand, I was able to devise one of my own making. After all, what does it matter? The penalty for not having a permit is 50% of the permit's cost, and the permit's cost is zilch (for beer-as-food vendors, as opposed to food-as-food vendors).

See you in the funny papers, Tommy Boy.