It’s unclear if lovemaking perked up in Pinellas County after fluoride was removed from the water. Pinellas voters, however, were not of the same mind as General Ripper or the Tea Party. Two commissioners who voted for the ban were booted out of office in November, the first Republican incumbents to lose there in 30 years. Both acknowledged that they were undone by their fluoride vote. “The voters clearly said they want fluoride in the water. And I will never vote against fluoride again as long as I live,” ousted Commissioner Neil Brickfield told the Tampa Bay Times.

In December, the new county commission voted to resume fluoridation, conspiracy be damned.

No matter. The ultra-right has other conspiracy worries. Like gun confiscation.

Over the weekend, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, told Fox News that he no longer supported background checks for all gun sales. Closing the background check loopholes had been the one meager gun control issue with a chance to make it through Congress. But LaPierre warned Sunday that expanded background checks would lead to a gun registry which, in turn, would lead to President Obama “taking away your guns.” Obama, apparently, has been planning this gun grab all along.

(This coincided with a burst of even more obscure conspiracy theories about that photograph of President Obama with a shotgun, supposedly taken while he was skeet shooting at Camp David. The angle of the barrel, apparently, was all wrong. Obviously, White House secret operatives had Photoshopped the shotgun onto a picture of the President pointing the way to U.N. headquarters for an FPL meter reader.)

Folks in the Villages know better. Obama won’t need a gun registry. Not if smart meters are allowed to collect information about how many assault weapons, Stinger missiles and rocket-launched grenades law-abiding citizens have stashed in our cupboards. The president can just get the info from the UN.

Gun confiscation isn’t even the worst threat posed by these damn gadgets. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I’ve noticed that since FPL installed that damn smart meter, things around the house haven’t been, well, all that lusty. I’ve noticed a “profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness.”

It could be old age, of course. But I’m feeling the same about smart meters as Jack D. Ripper felt about fluoride. “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

Besides, I’m sure my dogs would prefer dealing with an FPL meter reader than some damn U.N. invasion.

Unless the U.N. infiltrators come with doggie treats. That could change everything.