From a headline in today's Edmonton Journal:

"Alberta restaurants will be able to let customers bring in their own wine, in a move designed to offer diners more choice, said Gaming Minister Ron Stevens. Diners can also have their unfinished bottles recorked to take home, under rule changes taking effect Monday."

And this, a little further down:

"The president of the Edmonton chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving also protested the change."

And I thought I had a futile job! Talk about a lone voice in the wilderness. The very idea of an "Edmonton chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving" seems like a contradiction in terms.

Not that it affects me much. In the kind of sleazy dives I like to frequent, bringing a bottle of wine would likely buy you a one-way trip through a plate glass window, courtesy of some schooner-swilling, sports-addled ape in a Warren Sapp jersey and an Oilers hat.

I can, however, foresee dinner outings with the parents becoming problematic. Or maybe not. I'm betting our table won't be the only one at Swiss Chalet with one of those boxes-with-a-spout for a centerpiece.

On the other hand, I doubt it'll fly in pricy eateries, mainly because the people who eat in them on more than a tenth-anniversary basis are there to impress someone or to exploit an expense account--which in either case means ordering off the menu, not cheerfully toting your favorite eight-bucks-a-bottle merlot under one arm while dragging your pissed-off date along behind you with the other. It means whipping out a corporate AmEx at the end of that three-drink lunch, not whipping out a white plastic knob and a half-empty two-litre bottle and saying, "Waiter, I'd like this recorked, please."

Gaming Minister Ron Stevens, the genius who came up with this idea (and, incidentally, keeps a cellar of what we're told are fine wines), figures it might help university restaurants attract students "who'd prefer to drink on the cheap." But surely it won't take long for students to realize that they're not saving a penny, thanks to the nigh-irresistible pressure the restaurants will inevitably put on them to order food. Not to mention the poor servers, whose new food-commission-based pay structure will force them to become bait-and-switch closers trying to upsell all those cheapass, wine-bringing bastards to the bigger steak and a side of cheese bread.

The more you think about it, the worse it gets. What if it means that all restaurants can allow people to bring wine? If so, I feel even more sorry for McDonald's managers than I already do. If they thought late hours and free coffee refills were a homeless magnet, wait'll they get a load of this. Imagine the fun they'll have mopping puke off those tiled floors and plastic tables every night (especially the Lego one), or trying vainly to remove red wine stains from company propaganda posters that say, "I'm LOVIN' IT!"

But the best explanation for the BYOB policy goes to Mr. Stevens himself, who feels the new rules mean "you're going to be able to say, 'I can have my 25th anniversary with my special bottle of champagne.'"

If I were the kind of person who celebrated a 25th anniversary with a bottle of champagne and no spouse, I'd want to make sure I could bring wine everywhere I went too.