With lashings of apologies to William Shakespeare, here is my sonnet number two:

When, in this smelly takeout stand with flies,
I all alone will eat the tofu plate
And forgo beef heaven and the soggy fries
And look upon my belt and all I ate,

Wishing me like to one with fish to cope,
Feasting like him, on tuna maki, pressed,
Desiring this ham sandwich that I could ope',
With what is most unhealthy, not possess'd;

Yet in these food fairs that I have been prizing,
Hap'ly I think on cheese, the cracker's mate,
Like to the oozing lava that's arising
From bubbling platters from the oven's gate;

For thy deep-dish pizza such health brings
That then I have to loose my sweatpants strings.

It has occurred to me that I don't write enough poetry. To rectify this woeful situation, I have decided to compose a series of sonnets. I'll stop at the first fatality.

Shall I compare thee to a stilton cheese?
Thou art more fragrant and more likely to melt:
Rough wax does bind the squishy lumps of grease,
And rounds of curds do fill the bloated belt:

Sometime too hot the oven glows,
And often is the pale complexion burned;
And other cheeses melt into wet floes,
By broilers or the bubbly pastas churned,

But thy eternal cheddars are not fatty
Nor lose the lovely waxiness thou ownest;
Nor shall Ronald use you on a patty
When in the line-up at McD's thou groanest.

So long as cows do milk or goats can baa,
So long lives this, and this makes you go "AAAAA!"

Vancouver bars and pubs are collaborating to install a new database system that tracks the actions of individual patrons. Customers will be photographed and their driver's license scanned, and a complete record of their purchases and behaviour will be recorded in a shared database.

Bar and pub owners are thrilled that the system helps them identify undesirable customers: staff can enter comments about customers that's available to all participating establishments. Patrons are worried that it violates their right to privacy.

Once this system is in place, it will be impossible to meet friends at the pub without having the event recorded.

I have some questions about the system, such as:

• If you don't have a driver's license or refuse to let it be swiped, will you be refused service?
  
• If you don't leave a large enough tip, will that lead to a bad rating in the system?
  
• Who has access to the database now? And in the future, will the police and government demand access to your records?
  
• If you refuse to participate as a patron, does *that* event get entered and forwarded to police?
  
• If you visit (the fictitious) "Joe's Pub" with a friend, then down the road it turns out that it's also frequented by criminals, does that implicate you, because you were once a patron too?
  
• When you can't even visit the local pub without an organization tracking your movements, isn't that a police state?
  

The fact is, the more information there is about people, the more it will be abused. The myriad bits of information that's collected about you may be harmless by itself (after all, you're not hiding anything, right?), but there are people who will intentionally or unintentionally use the information against you.

Facts can be misinterpreted. Wrong conclusions can be drawn from innocent data. Decisions can be made against you based on faulty interpretations of the recorded events in your life.

So the next time you're at the pub with friends, if the serving staff asks to photograph you and scan your driver's license, don't do it. Their invasive system won't work if patrons refuse to cooperate.

Link: High-tech targets bad bar customers