Good morning. Here's your forecast for Wednesday: It's gonna be super-humid, with about a 96% chance someone in your office — probably Hank, because Hank's always saying he can't keep up with the pop culture — will ask you if you know who Kathy Griffin is. Dammit Hank, would you just log in to your Facebook account and type "Entertainment Weekly" every once in a while?
Since hurricane season starts tomorrow, June 1, certain supplies like batteries, first aid kids, flashlights, generators and more will be exempt from sales tax statewide this weekend. Just like always though, the stuff you really need to deal with a hurricane in the Bay area, like margarita mix, pornographic poker chips and for Hungry Howie's to bring you pizzas through like four inches of rain, are not exempt for some reason.
The Florida Dept. of Health issued a rabies alert for an area of northern Tampa after a couple of raccoons tested positive for the disease. So make sure your pets are up-to-date on their vaccinations, don't leave animal food or human food waste on your porch or in the yard, tell your kids not to hug any giant dumpster mice, etc. Oh, and "prevent bats from entering living quarters or occupied spaces," which is just always a good rule, because they're spazzy and unpredictable and also vampires.
In other pet-panic news, dog flu is apparently a real and somewhat potentially deadly thing (for dogs), and now it's been reported in Florida. It hasn't been seen in the Tampa Bay area, so don't freak out, no matter how far down in the freakout story the line "If your dog gets it anyway, it’s likely to be mild and not last as long" is buried. Bonus: A veterinarian gives a clearly casually hyperbolic quote about Pinellas County having tens of thousands of dogs per square foot. That's a lot of dogs.
And finally, apparently people who regularly drive in Ybor City have finally caught on to not only the fact that there are too many people in the world, but also the fact that Ybor City is a part of said world, and shares some of its woes as a result. Sorry folks, until we start killing each other off because of resource scarcity, or at least have a decent mass transit system, you'll have to deal with your nice, narrow old-timey streets being crowded with parked cars. So let's get a decent mass transit system before we start killing each other off because of resource scarcity, OK?