QUICK somebody remind me what the point of living in New York is BECAUSE I AM RAPIDLY FORGETTING.
Meet me at Gasparilla bridge, 1972.
(Alvin Lederer Collection)
Ugh, now I’m tired, cranky, AND homesick. THANKS A LOT INTERNET
Yessss I love it when people notice the crazy shit in my hometown. The pies from Yoder’s, the Mennonite restaurant near Pinecraft, are un-fuckwithable. (My friend Ashley is having them at her wedding this fall instead of a cake.)
Would I be a crazy person if I spent this much money to hug and kiss a dolphin and/or sea lion? I am serious.
Real talk: dolphins are amazing. As a brat from Florida I have had dozens of actual wildlife encounters with dolphins, but have also done one of these resort-style things as well, in Hawaii. There’s a level of guilt involved — dolphins are smart as fuuuuuuck and keeping them for our amusement seems barbaric — but at the same time, dolphins are smart as fuuuuuuuck, and they seem to actively enjoy interacting with an animal as smart as they are (that would be humans), so that mitigates the guilt a bit.
I say do it, why not.
nrdc:
These shrimp without eyes were caught off the Gulf Coast in late 2011.
BP Hauls in $7.7 Billion in Profits, Gulf Fishermen Haul in Shrimp with No Eyes
Oil giant BP, the company behind the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, reported profits of $7.7 billion for the last quarter of 2011. Company executives and industry analysts sounded bullish about the company’s future in a recent New York Times article, saying they had set aside enough money to compensate victims of the Gulf spill and had plans to expand drilling operations in the Gulf.
BP seems to be recovering nicely after the disaster, which killed 11 people and pumped 170 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But stories from the Gulf suggest that the region is anything but healed.
The Gulf has been plagued with a suite of unexplained afflictions. Gulf fishermen say this is the worst season they can remember, with catches down 80 percent or more. Shrimp boats come home nearly empty, hauling in deformed, discolored shrimp, even shrimp without eyes. Tar balls and dead dolphins still wash up on beaches. Scientists report huge tar mats below the sand, “like vanilla swirl ice cream.” Read more in NRDC’s Switchboard blog.
For anyone who thought the largest oil spill in history just “went away.”
Well, I’m really regretting not being in Sarasota over Christmas break now.
How Floridians start the day, happy Friday!(UF Archives Special Collections)
I actually had almost this exact dream a couple weeks ago. I think it was about my personal problems.
1961
(UFDC Heritage Collection)
Sooooo who wants to quit their job, buy a used car, and tour every one of these that’s still open with me? I think I’ve only been to six or seven of these, which is unacceptable.
Life does not suck right this second.
YES, THIS. This long piece about a family’s trip to Disney World does more to capture my feelings about it than any other piece of writing I’ve read, though it’s still not exact. I grew up not too far from Disney World, have been there dozens and dozens of times, and it’s quite honestly one of my favorite things about Florida — how can you not be completely fascinated by something so massive, something that by every reasonable standard should not exist, and should not function, but which does exist, and which functions amazingly well?
Anyway, one of the things I love about Disney is the multiplicity of coping strategies: how you approach and react to the park, what it says about your character, etc. etc. In this article, it’s by being a huge stoner, which hasn’t been my experience but which I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to try sometime. I’ve certainly seen the park both sober and drunk about a bajillion times, so I might be ready for a new set of goggles.
Plus, there’s now a high likelihood that my first son is going to wind up with the nickname “Li’l Dog,” because AAAWWWWW.
- Buying it in hardcover based entirely off a summary blurb in some magazine or another.
- Missing my subway stop on the commute home because I was too engrossed.
- Sitting at my desk during lunch reading it even though that makes me look like I’m just goofing off.
- E-mailing my mother to tell her to go buy it.
- Repeatedly cursing to the heavens that Russell beat me to writing one of the best Florida novels of all time.
It’s a good one. Get on that, people. Just $9.69 for your fancy electromatronic reading box, or $13.72 in hardcover. (If you need the high-concept pitch: It’s about a family that operates a downmarket alligator-wrestling attraction in the Ten Thousand Islands of the Everglades. You maybe couldn’t press my joy buttons any harder.)
God, I miss Mark. This is his UK Christmas travel odyssey told in text-and-comics form. It’s amazing. Click through for the story of our public-art attack on unsuspecting Sarasota, FL at Christmas of ‘09. (Yes, that might be my shoe and butt seen fleeing the scene, but just try to prove it, coppers.)
