MMMMMM...Liquid Sugar.

A Panama City, Florida Health Department official has been fired after posting the message "America Dies on Dunkin'" on an electronic sign outside of his building. Apparently, this doctor thought it would be a great idea to make the residents of Bay County more health-conscious by suggesting that the friendly and excessively perky people at Dunkin' Donuts were out to massacre them.

What would Homer Simpson say?*

The doctor had previously posted the following messages on the board:

"Sweet Tea = Liquid Sugar."

"Hamburger = Spare Tire."

and, going for the poetic approach,

"French Fries = Thunder Thighs."

Fortunately for him, the people at Lipton, McDonald's, and KFC were too busy working out casualty figures to sue the life out of this overzealous food sentinel. Unfortunately for Dr. Funsucker, several prominent Bay County residents have a stake in the donut business and vociferously complained about the doctor's none too tactful suggestion that their product might be better named Botulin' Donuts.

I feel a little bad for the doctor, who honourably served his country in Iraq. Still, perhaps his constituents would have been better served by a more rigourous, less alarmist approach than suggesting their crullers, fritters, and glazed pastries were fried, nectarous sinkers of death. Subtlety is clearly a concept as alien to this fellow as Double Chocolate Bavarian Creme Frosted Eclairs with Sprinkles.

I don't really understand the problem the chap has with donuts. Donuts are wonderful, warm, sweet, delightful friends that come in a variety of scents and flavours, just like the passengers on your local public transit system. Some donuts are cake-based, others a yeasty dough, and still others some sort of soft, oily, semi-glutinous magical texture that makes tofu seem like slimy little turd squares. Donuts brighten a breakfast plate with their glistening presence. Their circular shape offers a symbolic, holistic completeness to the meal that bangers simply can't compete with directionally and scrambled eggs are at a loss to even begin to come to grips with. Donuts are the fresh morning sunrise,the bark of a playful puppy, the laugh of a beloved child, the drifting miasma of an enchantingly out of season eastward cold front bearing down on the midwestern industrial region.

Donuts make us alert. Donuts make us happy. Donuts complete us. Donuts had us at "Hello."

All right, they're not perfect. Still, I have to wonder just how many people have been directly killed by donuts compared to, say ...doctors.

Doctors are potentially lethal. I don't mean lethal as in, "if I see a doctor a few times a week I'll drop dead in my mid-fifites." I mean instantly lethal, like a shotgun, or a Bowie knife, or a really irritated black mamba with a bazooka (just trust me on this one).

For example, doctors can accidentally (or deliberately if their last name is Crippen) kill you in a variety of ways:

• Stabbed and/or sliced with scalpel
• Injected with toxic substances
• Gassed
• Gagged by one of those gigantic popsicle sticks
  
• Pricked to death by interns who can't find a vein to save their freaking lives
  
• Pounded to death with little rubber mallet
• Shock from cold stethoscope
  
• Embarrassment from the little gown that won't close in the back
  
• Hospital food**
• Deadly medical instruments, sponges, gloves, and Junior Mints left in body cavity after surgery***

On the other hand, with donuts there's generally only choking. Ironically, doctors themselves have minimized this risk by inventing the Heimlich Manoeuvre.

So, it should be obvious that doctors are extremely dangerous. Still, we need them. We need their diligent care, their studied observations and diagnoses, their careful advice and steady healing hands.

...and for those same exact reasons, we also need donuts. In fact, I need a donut right now.

* Mrs. Fando suggested he'd say, "MMMMM... death." Sounds accurate to me.
** To be fair, nurses and administrative staff share some of the blame on this one.
*** To be fair, Kramer shares some of the blame on that last one.