It is the un-sunny summer of 2018. In fact, we have seen few photons at all since 2015. In these strange, hazy days, the Sunshine State lost its namesake beneath a thick, yellowed fog that rose like yeast and settled like a Wonderland mushroom above our once-sun-kissed peninsula.
Things are mighty shady in Florida these days. And it all goes back to that sickening election of 2014.
As you know by now, Rick Scott won by 86 votes, a victory traced to a trailer park of grizzled, old-school liberals outside Gainesville who, in protest, wrote-in Ralph Nader for governor.
But even as the GOP establishment cemented Charlie Crist’s banishment from Tallahassee, so too did Amendment 2 win the day — a victory that marked the beginning of the end of our dear old Sunshine State.
The millions of dollars of political advertising, propagandizing and general stupidity of the 2014 campaign had left most Floridians stricken with PTBSD — post-traumatic B.S. disorder. Alcohol was an attempted remedy, but proved wholly useless by January of 2015. So Floridians turned to their physicians, who turned to the newly born medical marijuana industry.
And voila! It worked!
In fact, medical marijuana was so effective at curing widespread PTBSD, that physicians began prescribing it for all other manner of Floridian maladies. Diarrhea? Medical marijuana! Mosquito bites? Medical marijuana! Chicken pox? Herpes? High blood pressure? Medical marijuana!
Thus, Florida found its cure-all. Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth was a myth no more! The orange blossom was promptly ousted as the official state flower, replaced with the all-revered cannabis bud. Pot farms boomed. Doritos sales soared. And Cartoon Network set historic ratings records. But all the while, the cloud was gathering.
Floridians were smoking so much medical marijuana, that by October of 2015, there was a permanent filminess to our skies. By 2016 they were semi-opaque. And by fall of ’17, scarce was the sun that shone down at all.
Now, in our most sunless summer, existence itself is in question. The birth rate has collapsed. As evermore potent pot was cultivated for prescriptions, we failed to foresee its last, lingering side-effect: Impotency. The boys of old Florida, it seems, no longer have it in ‘em.
And even worse, our girls are no longer the fairest. One particular strain widely used for treating menstrual cramps also proved to have a cruel side effect — baldness. Now, our women look like our governor (and bald-headed cartoonists) and nobody wants anything to do with either of them.
O, tragic Florida! For the sake of justice, let there be this lesson in your downfall: You get what you vote for.
Marlette: A science fiction for Floridians
No comments:
Post a Comment