florida

Voters have soaked up a noggin full of negativity over the last twenty years, with an economy we had to bring back from collapse, plus terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don__ want to belabor these points, but your listeners know what I__ talking about. I think the antidote is to appreciate what we have, enjoy where we live, and make a positive contribution to our communities. My Cracker Pride campaign is balanced by the spirit of Cincinnatus. He was a farmer and Roman general who was twice made dictator. And he had the forbearance to resign as dictator as soon as he had vanquished Rome__ enemies. He became a civic ideal for good leadership. That__ the spirit I want in my district and in my campaign. - Veda Rabadel, The Tea & Crackers Campaign.

A few years back, they jacked David Copperfield in West Palm Beach, for Chrissake. Yes, it's funny: "Yo, empty your pockets," and he pulls out a bunny rabbit. But it's also depressing. If someone who can make himself disappear isn't safe, who is?

Refusing to lean back against him, Colleen sat ramrod straight until they reached the road. __ guess I should say thank you for saving my life,_ she muttered then turned and slapped Faolán hard across the face. __nd that__ for you having to save it in the first place. And I__ not your woman, you big, arrogant, lying, betraying_faery loving_ She searched for the perfect insult and couldn__ find one, __Scot._ She gave a very unladylike snort. __appy now? That fiery enough for you?

Identify yourself,_ Colleen demanded. ____e got a bat and I will beat the living shit out of you if you so much as blink. I__e got a black belt,_ she lied frantically, __nd_and_a gun. A big one._ - Colleen O__rien

You turn the lights on and off here and if you can__ sleep and want something to read there are books in the living room_ her voice broke off. __ait. Can you read?__is chin took a slight tilt upward. __ye,_ Faolán replied, his voice cool, __n English, Gaelic, Latin, or French. My Welsh is a bit rusty, and I doona remember any of the Greek I was taught except for words not fit for a lady__ ears. I can also count all the way up to_ He looked down and wiggled his large bare toes, __twenty._ _ Faolán MacIntyre

Funny how I keep forgetting you__e insane._ - Colleen O__rien

Submitted for your approval--the curious case of Colleen O__rien and thegorgeous time traveling Scot who landed in her living room._ _ Rod Serling

Och, lass. Yer going to have to not do that._ Faolán exhaled. __reeping up on a man is a dangerous thing, and I confess I__ jumpier than most. Yer feet are soft as a cat__.___ wasn__ creeping anywhere, I was going to make coffee and this is my house, I__l creep anywhere I like,_ Colleen muttered with a petulant scowl. __ut I wasn__ creeping.

His deep voice drifted to her through the crowd of women. __my lady when she returns. Och, there ye are, Blossom,_ Faolán grinned, standing up and taking her hand so she could ease back into the restaurant booth. __hese lasses were just asking if I was a stripper. I told them I doona think so,_ he said, his face clouded with uncertainty. ____ not, am I?__he inquisitive lasses in question flushed scarlet and scattered to the four corners of the room at the murderous look on Colleen__ face. __o, you__e not, but I guess I can see how they__ think that,_ she muttered darkly. __hat you are is a freaking estrogen magnet.

Food shouldn__ be that shade of green, lass._ _ Faolán MacIntyre

FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is real.Except imagination~with a pinch of perception, and a dash of collusion used as the Clabber.Be So Advised.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast."The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways."Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller."I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state."You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

The general intellectual level of South Florida is somewhere just above "functionally retarded".

Almost everything strange washes up near Miami.

The Florida Supreme Court wanted all the legal votes to be counted. The United States Supreme Court, on the other hand, did not want all the votes to be counted.

We ignore slow environmental changes unless they are crisis-driven, such as hurricanes in Florida.

Spanish Explorers celebrated Christmas in 1539 in the area we now know as the State of Florida.

But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that__ the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch)