Welcome to beautiful Florida,
Where the Summertime weather is horrida
And the natives, you’ll find,
Are all out of their minds
In the Broward to Dade County corrida.
Not that the denizens of the state are much sounder in the nether regions. If you’re certified berserk and don’t want anybody to notice, come on down to Florida, you’ll fit right in. Law enforcement is spotty here as well, partially because some of the laws are confusing, which leads to interesting dilemmas. Such as the one involving a Florida man whose hand was bitten off by a nine-foot alligator and then faced charges of feeding the animal. Alligators run amok in Florida and nobody seems to care, probably because we realize we’ve built housing developments in their old stomping grounds and they have to play somewhere. Besides, people make money with alligators. Seminole Indians wrestle them, alligator parks display them and some people turn them into purses, belts and boots. State wildlife officials recently discovered one miscreant whose business was taking alligators with their mouths taped shut to kiddies’ birthday pool parties. It’s only $175, if you’re interested.
Alligators aren’t the only ones who eat people down here. Sometimes, people eat people. A grouchy Central Florida man recently chopped off his victim’s head, removed part of the brain and one eyeball, put them in a plastic bag and walked 12 blocks to the Lakeview Cemetery, where he ate his bounty. He told the cops he enjoyed having lunch in a peaceful setting. Obviously, the dining habits of Floridians are less than impeccable. Another resident of the Sunshine State died after ingesting a lethal amount of insects in a bug-eating contest sponsored by a local reptile store. Ho hum, just another day at the beach in sunny Florida.
Speaking of reptiles, have you seen our Governor, Rick Scott? One day he is going to pull off his artificial face and reveal the serpent beneath, just like the aliens always do in the sci-fi movies. The Vaudevillian Reptilian was elected to office by astute Florida voters after spending several years as CEO of Columbia/HCA, a large hospital chain which was forced to pay $1.7 billion in fines for taxpayer-bilking Medicare fraud felonies mostly committed while he was in charge. We voters are not very smart here in Florida. We also elected sissy-boys like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, if you need further evidence.
The fastest-growing metro area in these United States is The Villages just south of Ocala, which now comprises parts of three counties, Marion, Lake and Sumter. The Villages is a hive of Tea Party Republicans, no Democrats need apply. Extremist political candidates flock to The Villages for guaranteed support from the fervid retirees, most of them with too much time on their hands. You can only spend so many hours driving your golf cart back and forth from the course. The Villages is run by billionaire developer H. Gary Morse, 75, a major GOP donor. Morse and his family control many of the development’s governing bodies including the right wing daily newspaper and radio station, which likes to remind listeners that “It doesn’t matter what day it is when you’re in The Villages.” And they’re right, it doesn’t. Every day is Dopey Dildock Day in The Villages. College graduates have to park in the rear.
Now, all things considered, you might presume a place like The Villages would be a paragon of virtue, a vision of morality, with its citizens parading in and out of church all day. You would be wrong. The New York Post correctly calls the place “ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously getting it on,” and that’s putting it mildly. This is not a community where Uncle Fester sidles up to Granny Cratchit’s bungalow, a bouquet of nasturtiums in hand, is greeted at the door with a nice lemonade and the happy couple sits on the porch swing for the balance of the afternoon discussing Lawrence Welk. No, indeedy. What they are doing in the Viagra Capitol of the World is grousing in the goodie, or at least as much of it as Granny’s goodie will allow these days. As a result of all this frolicking, The Villages has seen over the last few years an enormous increase in sexually-transmitted diseases. It’s like Spring Break for seniors, only it goes on all year long. The Florida Department of Health website contends that 35% of STDs now involve people over 50. Maybe Charles Bukowski was right when he claimed “Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.” Ian Fleming maintained that “older women are best because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.” And Harold Robbins pointed out that “Sex got me into trouble from the age of fifteen: I’m hoping that by the time I’m 70, I’ll straighten it out.”
Tales Of The South
Weird things happen everywhere but they seem to be weirder and happen more often in Florida. Where else do the police use tasers to capture a runaway kangaroo? Are there any religious cults in your state which smuggle in voracious snails which can only be tracked down by mucus-sniffing dogs? Do the federal agents in your neck of the woods nab wildlife smugglers by going undercover as caged gorillas? I didn’t think so. Those are just everyday occurrences in the Sunshine State. How come? Maybe it’s the weather. Rarely is anybody cooped up inside for long, so everybody is free to wander around creating mischief. In the Summer, when temperatures reach uncomfortable levels, tempers can flare quickly, fights erupt. People have been known to whack one another with garden gnomes, bash into one another with riding lawnmowers or, in the case of really hostile characters, stick hundreds of plastic pink flamingos on a neighbor’s lawn overnight. There’s just no ceiling on some people’s rage.
We have animal events in Florida. You may have heard about the flood of Burmese Pythons in the Everglades and other southern regions of the state. Burmese Pythons are BIG critters, invasive snakes with a large breeding population. Picture a happy band of picnickers galumphing through the meadow, when what to their wondering eyes should appear but a giant python wrapped around a half-ingested deer, for crying out loud. Fortunately for the ingestee, our picnickers read Bambi in their early years, not to mention remembering what happened to Eve. And in Florida, our picnickers come to the fray heavily armed. Before you could say pythonskin boots, one of them plugged the big eater and cut him open with a skinning knife, allowing the terrified deer to jump up and skitter off. And no, we’re not making this stuff up. As Carl Hiaasen always says, we don’t have to make stuff up, we just open up a newspaper. You remember newspapers?
We also have fish issues. We used to have—I know you’re not going to believe this—Walking Catfish, which caused all kinds of problems, especially when they brought their kids out to meet the ice-cream truck. The Walking Catfish didn’t have legs, they just propelled themselves across dry land on their fins, gulping air as they skimmed along. The Fish & Game boys originally decided to leave them alone since they weren’t accosting anyone. It was when the catfish started hitchhiking that the rangers went into action. Either they finally cleared them all out or the fish successfully hitchhiked to California because they haven’t been as much of a problem lately.
What have been a problem, and a weighty one at that, are the Jumping Sturgeon, which have actually killed people. Here you are, riding down the river in your little boat on a Sunday afternoon, maybe rolling about 30 miles per hour, when KA-POWW!, an eight-foot-long, 200 pound Jumping Sturgeon erupts from the water and smacks you in the puss. You think Mike Tyson hits hard? And these things can jump as much as seven feet above the surface. They’re not trying to hurt anybody, they’re just fooling around. It’s like they say in the song, Fish Just Want To Have Fun. In Florida, we give them ample opportunity.
The All-Star Team
Bamboo Flute Blanchard, a card-carrying member of the Rainbow People who winter in the Ocala National Forest, put down his flute and picked up a dagger one fine day. “I wonder what it would be like to take a life?” he pondered. Then he jabbed his sleeping dad in the chest, failing to kill him but causing him to become extremely ornery. When the cops came for Bamboo Flute, the tootler would only grunt.
Aaron Fechter, who invented the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, accidentally blew up his own Orlando warehouse while experimenting with a new fuel, leaving animatronic creatures popular at Chuck E. Cheese entertainment centers strewn about the landscape. Local children were horrified to find the smoldering remains of Helen Henny, Mr. Munch, Jasper T. Jowls and even Mr. Cheese, himself, among the wreckage.
Pad Gardner of Panama City would like to live his life as a maxi-pad. Gardner, the proud owner of more than a thousand sanitary napkins which he loves and admires, lists his occupation as “feminine pad at feminine hygiene products.” His Facebook profile picture is a fan drawing of a pink pad. So far, local women have not been lining up to obtain his services but Pad is bravely absorbing the blow.
Burglars raided the Florida home of Nathan Radlich recently but left his wide-screen TV, his VCR and even a Rolex watch. What they did take was a box containing a grayish-white powder which police said looked like high-grade cocaine. Radlich, extremely upset, went on local television to ask for the return of the ashes of his sister, Gertrude. The next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of local drug dealer Hoochie Pevens was dumped on Nathan’s front porch, together with about half of his sister’s remains. There was also an apologetic note from the folks who had inadvertently snorted Gertrude.
Some of you may remember the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials from the 1990s which proclaimed “There’s No Wrong Way To Eat A Reese’s!” Florida woman Michelle Underwood, 46, apparently agreed. She was nabbed by police recently for screaming down Interstate-95 at 127 mph while enjoying her tasty snack. Arresting officer Bud Davis attested that Michelle did not appear to be under the influence of anything but the Reese’s. She told him she simply wanted to enjoy her candy at a higher rate of speed than anyone else had previously done. When Davis found nine kilos of cocaine in her trunk, Underwood said she had no intention of using or selling it, merely that the presence of the coke added an additional level of danger to her tasting experience. Michelle’s one call from lockup went to the Guinness Book of Records, which promised to get back to her. Anyway, despite the advertiser’s claims, apparently there’s at least one incorrect way to eat a Reese’s.
Christina Andrews of Pensacola is dissatisfied with her breast size and she’s not going to put up with it anymore. Unfortunately for Christina, breast enhancement surgery is not cheap and she is not well off. Necessity being the mother of invention, Andrews has constructed a large sign reading “Not Homeless Need Boobs,” which eloquently addresses the problem. She totes this sign around daily on busy local roadways, collecting donations, stares and….um, invitations. The pot is growing steadily, if slowly. If and when Christina achieves her objective, she promises to return to the highways to show off her superior product. We’ll see.
So you get the drift. We’d blame it on the salt-sea air but this stuff never seems to happen in Ocean City. We’d say it was the humidity but Houston isn’t half as weird. So maybe it’s the people, a strange blend of natives and immigrants drawn by the Siren Song of the Southern Extremity, as far as you can go from anywhere else. Alaska knows the feeling, steeped as it is in malcontents and law-evaders no longer satisfied or welcome in “the lower 48.” Truth be told, the place sort of grows on you and so does the wackiness. We’d probably be bored in North Dakota. We’d be looking for trouble in Oklahoma. Here, it’s right around the corner. If you dare to poke your head around and look.
That’s all, folks….
