To begin with, I should apologize for the unfinished nature of my most recent post, the second part of which was finished here on my computer but somehow vanished during the publication process. See “Dwarf Planet, Giant Slug” (Apr. 5, 2024). It was even more fragmentary before I cleaned it up a little, but the original draft, which of course was even funnier and probably award-winning as far as you know, could not be recovered.

Could this have been caused by a conspiracy, such as the one responsible for secretly adding toxic chemicals to the atmosphere for unclear but probably sinister reasons? You can’t prove it wasn’t!

But it wasn’t.

This is partly because there is no evidence any such conspiracy exists, as we discussed shortly before my mysterious lapse. See “Tennessee Senate Votes to Ineffectively Ban Something That Doesn’t Exist” (Mar. 22, 2024). But the lack of evidence that “chemtrails” are real didn’t stop Tennessee legislators from rushing to ban them. SB 2691 was approved by the Tennessee House on April 1 (appropriately enough), and is now before the governor. He might still spare the state some embarrassment by vetoing it, but we shall see.

Sadly, the House refused to adopt a second proposed amendment to the bill, this one proposed by Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D–Nashville). Amendment No. 2 looked an awful lot like Amendment No. 1 (which inserted the chemtrails stuff), but with a couple of tweaks. As you may recall, the “whereas” clauses in the first one looked like this—

Amendment No. 2 would have added two more:

The proposed statutory language would have been amended accordingly as follows:

The obvious problem here is that as drafted, it’s unclear whether the activity is prohibited only if the actor intends to affect temperature, weather, or the intensity of sunlight in order to threaten the Sasquatch and its natural habitat, or is prohibited regardless of whether the Sasquatch is being targeted directly. Using a comma and “which” usually means the clause that follows is non-restrictive, which would suggest the latter interpretation. But since the main purpose of Amendment No. 2 was almost certainly to mock those on the other side of the aisle who voted for Amendment No. 1, it would make more sense to interpret it as requiring Sasquatch targeting. That would be my ruling, at least.

But it doesn’t matter for now, because only 18 representatives voted for the Sasquatch Amendment, with 71 voting against. SB 2691 as amended (the first time) then passed by a vote of 70–22–1. (Coincidentally, Tennessee’s House is currently split 75–24 in favor of the chemtrail-fearing party.)

I suppose it’s no surprise that Tennessee is not the only state considering imposing a ban on this thing that isn’t happening and which a state government probably couldn’t legally ban if it was. According to reports, lawmakers in at least seven other states (Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota) have introduced or previewed similar bills.

For example, Minnesota’s SF 4630 makes Tennessee’s bill look positively sane. That one would not only ban chemtrailing—or as the bill pseudoscientifically describes it, “stratospheric aerosol injection”—it is also super-worried about “excessive electromagnetic radiation” that the same conspirators are trying to harm brains and/or the environment with. And if you have been releasing “xenobiotic agents” in Minnesota, you could be in big trouble if this passes. What are xenobiotic agents? The bill defines “xenobiotic” as “foreign to the body or to an ecological system,” and I guarantee you that whoever drafted this thing has no idea what that might mean. Could be chemicals, radiation, lasers, low-frequency alternating current, or “sonic weapons,” because all those are mentioned in the bill as things to be worried about.

Even better, it allows “citizen reporting” of “suspected” activities of this kind, requires law enforcement to get involved, and allows the governor to call on the Minnesota National Guard to order aircraft “to land at the nearest available airport to be investigated for prohibited activity.”

Since literally every aircraft except for gliders and maybe balloons necessarily emits “xenobiotic agents” as defined just by virtue of the exhaust, that last part seems especially wise.

Well, this is all complete garbage, and it should be safe to describe it as just crazy people venting except that another state legislature just passed something similar. To date the Minnesota bill hasn’t gotten out of the relevant subcommittee. I urge all xenobiotic agents and co-conspirators to deploy—oh, I don’t know, sonic weapons? Yeah, let’s say sonic weapons—in order to make sure it never leaves.