Did you know Tuesday was originally dedicated to a one-handed god of war, and also given to the celebration of the life and actions of John The Baptist? Yeah, Tuesday kind of got some mixed signals there in the early days. What I'm saying is, Tuesday was kind of screwed from the jump.
The Hillsborough County School Board unanimously made interim superintendent Jeff Eakins their guy to replace controversial former official MaryEllen Elia. Not much was made of this decision compared to the coverage of Elia's ouster, and why not? It only concerns the future of a generation of Tampa Bay children; it's not like it's the new season of Dancing With The Stars, or anything.
The Lightning lost their third game against the Detroit Red Wings in the Eastern Conference playoffs to give the Wings a 2-1 edge going into the next match. An ignorant conspiracy theorist might dismiss the detailed analysis by more qualified journalists (and team members) that definitively shows the Bolts played poorly and deserved to lose, in favor of the vague assumption that some shadowy body politic always fixes things so playoffs stretch out to increase ticket and merchandise sales; I, for one, am an unapologetically ignorant conspiracy theorist when it comes to professional sports. This is J. Edgar Hoover's doing, somehow.
Pasco County approved stricter rules about where convicted sex offenders can live in the region, increasing the distances they must reside from schools, parks and other places where children congregate. READER'S POLL: Should we do the punchline about how that should be fine considering Pasco has like one school, or the one about how actually banishing all sex offenders from the county would revert it to unincorporated wilderness status? You pick! You decide! We're lazy and terrible!
Anxiety continues to grow over the fact that Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has yet to appoint a successor to Police Chief Jane Castor, who retires May 8. Who wants to bet he's holding cage match-style tryouts to see who can best respond to allegations that Tampa cops are overwhelmingly targeting black bicyclists over white ones?
And finally, as if you haven't heard: In classic Florida Man style, a Wimauma 18-year-old is recovering from being bitten by a venomous water moccasin after HE TOOK THE SNAKE OUT OF A PILLOWCASE AND PUT IT ON HIS CHEST. Look, with all due respect to the youthful idiot's family and friends, do you see people in Russia trying to capture bears with fucking Cling-Wrap, or folks in Australia fishing for great white sharks by dunking their faces into the water above the Great Barrier Reef and spitting chunks of tuna entrails out of their mouths? When Florida is finally forced to secede from the United States as a last-ditch PR move before the apocalypse, its collective last words will undoubtedly be "hold my beer and watch this."
Image of water moccasin by Ltshears via Wikimedia Commons.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2015.