Good morning. No, you cannot wear that blanket to work.
Yesterday, thousands of students across the nation and around the world walked out of their schools for 17 minutes not only to mourn those lives lost in the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but also to protest our government’s disinterest in protecting their lives by enacting common-sense gun-control legislation. Many were threatened with detention or worse, and students at one Lakeland high school claimed the school threw together a fake fire drill to gloss over the walkout. Educators and administrators: If the thought of some of your students peaceably practicing nonviolent civil disobedience for 17 minutes caused you to panic, try imagining there’s a person stalking the halls of your school with a military-style semi-automatic rifle, literally killing your friends.
Speaking of kids and guns, a father in Lutz shot his ex’s boyfriend in the leg yesterday during a dispute over custody of the kid. Think of the children, indeed.
Aaand it looks like this summer’s version of Zika is going to be — *spins Wheel Of Scary Rare Diseases* — rabies. But if we kill all the bats, what’s gonna eat all the mosquitoes?
Some folks are concerned that Ybor City’s famous, loud, colorful and legally protected chickens are becoming too much of a nuisance, and want to either revoke their protection, or change it so that some chickens may be relocated or neutered or whatever. Others, of course, think that’s a terrible idea and that these majestic and somehow symbolic birds lend the district a unique quality and shouldn’t be messed with. And still others said, “yes, this is exactly how we should be spending our time and civic discourse, on the fucking chickens.” Do chickens get rabies?
And finally, unsatisfied with recently raising its already ludicrously astronomical park entrance fees, Disney World announced it’s gonna start tacking on overnight parking fees at its resort hotels. Because the people who saved up all year to drive their kids straight through from Kansas rather than flying the whole family in obviously have the cash to spare.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2018.
