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Slip Sliding, Sloshing, Flooding, Burning, Collapsing, & Blowing Away

Eulogy for Paradises lost - Florida & California

By Vytas StoskusPublished 2 years ago 20 min read
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This is actually a shot of Florida. They can’t even get the concept of Black Hole right — they’ve come out with it as a Black Square © Vytas Stoskus, 2022

Florida & California, having once been Meccas for vacationers, retirees, & long-term residents, have become hellish environments. Florida is a cesspool of various algal growths & trash-covered beaches caused by human pollution, along with the unstoppable increasing collapse into sinkholes of its honeycombed porous foundation.

Retiring to Florida or California? Not in peace, you’re not. More likely to be in pieces, or as one sick or frightened puppy, considering the social, political, economic, & climate collapse spreading like wildfires in these areas. If you dream of an idyllic life in Florida or California, think again.

Just as once the whole world had been misinformed & looked upon the U$$$$ as El Dorado, Florida & California were such places for those already within U$$$ borders. These Eden-like environments were once-popular destinations of waves of vacationers, gold diggers, dreamers, & delusional searchers for a fountain of youth. I too had dreams & was fortunate to visit & enjoy both these havens before their expiration dates came & went. Florida was closer & had drawn my parents in their retirement years, like moths to a flame, so I got to see a good bit of it in the 1970s.

California doesn’t have such windblown minds in its administration as does Florida, but it does lack enough advanced planning to forestall what’s coming down in the long term. The trash covering the beaches, in both Florida & California, for example, often includes human & animal waste which washes into the surrounding waters during torrential floods. Swimming is becoming very iffy & is rarely truly safe.

The original natives, now mostly extinct due to the genocidal mania of the invading Europeans, were more rational, knew how to coexist more peacefully with their idyllic environment for 1000s of years, & did not suffer anywhere near the pestilences & catastrophes that swarm over these lost havens as plagues worse than anything that the Bible tale spinners or science fiction writers could concoct.

The spendthrift & oblivious U$$$$ & its irresponsible population, however, has sent both Edens to hell. The enviable lives, homes, & communities of the rich & famous in California & the Baby Boomer-turned-Yuppie retirees in Florida are being inundated by excessive water directly, through salinization or flooding, or are being washed away by it or sliding into it due to erosion & more frequent fierce storms.

Profligate lifestyles, disregarding the consequences of overpopulation, & the overuse & abuse of the landscape that materialism has engendered & encouraged are all being beaten back by forces too powerful to control or redirect with a magic marker on a map. Somewhat different furies are affecting the two disparate seaside regions.

In FLORIDA, it’s:

• It’s official now: Florida has far surpassed Texas for the capital of certified cretin level stupid. Lots of facts below will back that up.

• Before I overwhelm you with the rest of Florida’s hellish reality, I thought I’d mention a feature some will find appealing, at least those of us less influenced by the propaganda encased in the obsolete concept of religion which persists in indoctrinating innocent fun-loving children & adult screwballs with medieval myths, values, & other insanities. Florida is 4th of the 50 U$ states in terms of “sinfulness”. This is based on an intriguing new metric I discovered by reading Dan Foster’s article The Most Sinful States in America: How one personal finance company ranked each state from naughtiest to nicest.

https://medium.com/backyard-theology/the-most-sinful-states-in-america-44cdb2bd641a

• You might find this “sinfulness” notoriety to be an attractive feature depending on your morals & your own preferences for the 7 deadly sins. I must admit—mea culpa, mea culpa—that this feature did liven up some of the time I spent in these 2 former paradises (California came in 2nd) in my youth. I could also offer a couple more items for WalletHub to add to their scale that were clearly overlooked or which WalletHub was too shy to include. By the way, Floridians reassure me that they are doing their utmost to maintain their lead domestically & are looking for ways to possibly outrank some noted foreign competitors.

• Hurricanes.

• Only Texas & Kansas have more tornadoes than Florida, which averages 66 per year.

• Increased flooding.

• Dropping water tables, salinization of aquifers from the surrounding saltwater seas, & palatable water shortages.

• Frequent sewage spills & radioactive wastewater pond leakage, one such leak having been released into Tampa Bay in 2021 due to lack of another option.

• Septic systems are failing because the soil is often too saturated from flooding, heavy rains, & rising sea levels to absorb & filter the sewage adequately, resulting in contaminated rivers, bays, canals, shorelines, & groundwater.

• Plastics pollute all its waters.

• Red tides.

• Brown, smelly sargassum seaweed piling up on beaches.

• Dead marine life washing up & rotting on beaches.

• Manatees are starving in massive numbers due to the disappearance of seagrass, a main ingredient of their diet. The seagrass is dying from toxic algae blooms of all colors & shades which are generated by the poorly treated wastewater & the nutrient-rich (due to phosphorous) farm runoff.

• Swimming at some Florida beaches may be like dipping oneself in guacamole.

• Most likely place in the world to become shark bait. To increase your chances, do so on full moons which have been found to be periods of higher rates of attack.

• 9-inch long toxic cane toads, having invaded from South America, are harmful to pets, eat just about anything, & have no predators.

• Lionfish, flushed down the toilet by bored tropical fish enthusiasts, are destroying the reefs by eating all the other fish in sight around reefs & can also sting divers in the vicinity.

• To begin dealing with a massive multiplication of invasive pythons, a python-athon was launched in which the governor’s office offered prizes for those removing the most & capturing the longest pythons in the Everglades.

• Argentine black & white tegu lizards, another invasive species, can grow to be more than 4 feet long. Though they are not considered dangerous to humans, that can be about as reassuring as a dog owner telling you “He won’t bite” just before Bowser takes off your 3 favorite fingers, especially if this includes the one you need for road rage.

• Though exterminated twice before, Giant African Land Snails have been found in Florida once again. Growing to a hefty 8 inches in length, they devour 500 different species of plants & carry the Rat Lungworm (mmm, yum) which can cause meningitis in humans.

• The ubiquitous cockroach, if it is not already, should be the state bird.

• Lethal bronzing, a disease caused by an invasive insect species, is killing the palm trees.

• Besides regular bouts with citrus canker, another recent arrival spelling disaster, if not the end of citrus growing altogether, is citrus greening, also known as yellow dragon disease, which is from insect-borne bacteria which have spread throughout the state. Once it infects a tree, it causes discoloration & misshaping of fruit which become bitter to the taste. There is no cure. The disease has spread to other citrus-growing areas as well. Enjoy your citrus while you still can. The impact is already being seen on store shelves in early 2022.

• Along with Texas, Florida shares the distinction of the highest rates of cases of a brain-eating amoeba (primary amebic meningoencephalitis or PAM) which enters through the nasal passages. It’s picked up by swimming in freshwater lakes or rivers. Only about 3% of those infected survive. But then again, to swim in freshwater anywhere south of central Georgia is to risk serving oneself up as lunch for an alligator, which can turn up in parks, lakes, rivers, drainage ditches, golf courses, & even people’s yards & garages. There was a recent report of a gator stalking a fisherman in the Everglades.

• The above-mentioned are just a few of the more than 500 invasive species which have made Florida their Eden, one of the latest discoveries being the black bean bug from Asia which may be harmful to sugar cane, hemp, & beans.

• We’re not done with the beast-ly problems — it’s raining iguanas. Yes, iguanas, being cold-blooded, go dormant when temperatures drop below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Spending much time in trees, they lose their grip when they get cold & fall down onto whatever happens to be below, which sometimes includes people who just love such surprises.

• The weather, understaffed airports, & frequent rocket launches are increasingly interfering with flights in, out of, or even over Florida.

• Unbearably intense heat & high humidity. The frequent rains do not cool anything off; they just make the humidity that much more intense when the rain & wind subside. I’ve consulted about this with St. Peter & he sends the worst sinners to Florida in August rather than to hell. Even so, the daily newspaper, The Tampa Bay Times, when it was still The St. Petersburg Times, used to brag that if the sun didn’t shine in St. Pete’s on any given day, the next day’s paper was free. Rarely did they have to give away free papers.

• Sunburn. Florida has the 2nd highest skin melanoma rate among U$ states.

• Sinkholes swallow streets, houses, pools, yards, & people. Over 6500 insurance claims pertaining to damage due to sinkholes are filed ANNUALLY in Florida. That’s 17/day!!!!! Florida sits on a layer of limestone, which is water-soluble & is dissolving — & will continue dissolving — forever. Soon, residents will be able to scuba dive without leaving their property — or maybe even their houses, provided they haven’t been swallowed by the pit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5S6WWZsWc&list=TLPQMjYwODIwMjLAQ_s-5nxUiw&index=5

• Overpopulation & associated crime, gangs, & other social problems such as an increasingly aging population, mentally unhinged psychopathic fascist thugs for leaders, & one political shitstorm after another. 49th of 50 states in mental health funding.

• The Trump Mafia family as a neighbor, but only if you’re filthy rich & live around Palm Beach.

• With such persistent imbecilic believers as the Mar-a-Lardian has at his beck & call pushing Florida to its limits, just a few more puffs or splashdowns of some harsh weather in this intellectual wasteland & maybe it’ll wash away into the oily residue of the Gulf of Mexico as the Atlantic piles more garbage onto its once-pristine beaches. I believe that the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle are shifting westward & will soon claim this former Paradise.

• Teachers are being armed with guns, so shootouts can be expected to increase in schools. Florida has ranked 3rd in the nation over the past several years for the number of shootings in schools. The wackbird governor has reassured me that they will try harder to move up those last 2 notches in the ranking. It galls them to be behind Texas & California.

• Florida is especially preferred by “the nice guy next door” for mass shootings in general. It’s been 2nd to California over the past 4 decades & is making extra efforts to attain the #1 spot. With the elected officials they have, I have full confidence that they can do it.

• More nutjobs than any other state in the number arrested for participating in the assault on the U$ Capitol on January 6, 2021.

• Not only always known as a state to which the elderly swarm to retire, but it has become the preferred state of those who have retired from this reality & prefer the mass delusion of an alternate reality & the bogus politicians who promote their fantasies without the assistance of the Disney enterprises. Welcome to the delusional politicians’ fantasyland.

• Governor DeSantis has gone full blown psycho in his attempt to outdo Trump’s racism, buffoonery, & denial of reality by ramming through the state legislature a law that bans the teaching of truth in schools. Expect ever less literate & more severely morally & mentally warped results from Florida schools as reality has less & less of a grip on anyone in Tallahassee. The governor & the state legislators are apparently envious that anyone else has more of a grip on reality than they do.

• More concerned with banning porn than guns. Legislators are convinced that guns are safer than sex on camera.

• The manchineel tree is so toxic that just touching its leaves can cause blisters, standing under it in the rain can cause painful burns, a single bite of its fruit can be fatal, & the smoke from burning its wood can lead to blindness. It’s really a shrub, so I would suggest that Floridians attempt growing it in hedgerows around their properties to defend themselves from their politicians.

• Is the U$ state with the 2nd highest number of distracted driving accidents.

• Sand in their grits.

• A residential high-rise recently collapsed because of structural failures & lax inspections resulting in at least 97 deaths.

• Miami-Dade County rates 3rd highest on the National Risk Index for natural disasters. It promises to try harder next time & go for the lead position.

• More lightning strikes than any other U$ state: 3500 strikes/day, which equals to 1.2 million/year.

• One recent “bolt from the blue” was literally out of a blue sky on a sunny day & struck a palm tree 8 miles (13 km) from the storm which generated it. Another recent lightning strike flung a chunk of freeway paving through an approaching car’s windshield. During the summer, storms along the Gulf Coast can occur daily. Fishing & swimming, being 2 of the most favorite activities in Florida, are especially dangerous in this regard with people fishing & swimming being the 1st & 2nd activities most likely to produce victims of lightning strikes in Florida. These activities occurring along the water are especially lethal because the surf often obliterates the rumble of distant thunder which can be warning enough for some folks to retreat from wide open places like the thundering surf along the shore.

• & this one may be the most bizarre: Florida, having the highest frequency of lightning strikes anywhere in the U$, has had toilets in homes hit & obliterated by lightning by way of plumbing being a conduit of electricity. So, I would imagine that constipation, or possibly diarrhea, may be an occupational hazard of living in Florida depending on whether one takes the chance of sitting on a throne while dreading that lightning may strike unannounced, or by avoiding such meditative breaks as much as possible out of sheer terror of being blown to smithereens &/or kingdom come, depending, of course, on one’s beliefs.

• Tampa celebrates a mythical cutthroat murdering pirate in mid-winter every year with the Gasparilla Pirate Festival. This coincides perfectly with Florida’s need to excise any rationality from everyone’s brain so as to make mayhem & murder acceptable & worthy of celebration.

• The grits keep getting grittier from day-to-day. Bon appétit.

• In summary, Florida rates lower than hell itself as a place to live or visit.

• My suggestion would be to have Florida sawed off from the mainland allowing it to drift off into the ocean & its swirling hurricanes to be disposed of as the sea & sky gods see fit.

• Wait, wait, hold that thought . . . a bulletin has just come in! The Devil has announced that hell likewise has its limits & that they will no longer be accepting Trumapaholic MAGAttes, QAnon conspiracists, or anti-vaxxers. These will now be rerouted to Texas &, you got it—Florida! They’ll wish they’d gone to hell.

In CALIFORNIA, it’s:

• 2nd most “sinful” state. Going for #1!

• Wildfires, wildfires, & more wildfires.

• Dry lightning makes up 46% of California’s lightning strikes, & because it occurs with little or no rain to accompany it, many of these strikes ignite wildfires.

• Planned power outages of several days at a time are becoming more frequent because of droughts & to allow the electrical systems to cool down with some wildfires being blamed on power relay equipment failing & shooting off sparks. The resultant loss of power for extended periods is causing havoc for the have-nots whose food spoils & must be tossed out or eaten at the risk of poisoning oneself & one’s family. The rich simply go out & buy power generators for $500-$1000 which use 2–3 gallons (7–10 liters) of gasoline/PER DAY, further fowling the already smoke-rich air. Adding the expense ($100–200/month) of powering a generator for a minimally surviving household is impossible, to say nothing about the unavailable initial purchase price. Chaos is looming just due to this one factor, but putting out wildfires in dry woods, with enormous winds coming down from the mountains & constantly fanning the flames, is equally challenging & will doubtlessly result in many lost homes & lives along with the consumed woodlands & their creatures.

• Earthquakes, & always anxiously anticipating THE BIG ONE!

• Several active volcanoes.

• Homes with enviably fabulous views increasingly going swimming by taking high dives into the ocean due to shoreline erosion & unstable ground when sudden torrential rains turn it to mush.

• Wildfires.

• Some of the most crowded freeways have entrance ramps monitored by traffic lights, so a driver must go from standing still to freeway speed in a couple of seconds. Great promo for cars with powerful engines. This is misleading because, considering the volume of traffic, the speeds to which one must rev up are not that high.

• Speaking of freeways, it’s a great place to get shot while changing a tire as the son of the infamous comedian/rapist Bill Cosby found out a bit too late.

• Speaking of rapists, Hollywood is in California, with its casting couch studios & producers & out of control doped-up actors.

• Leads not just the Wild West west of the Mississippi but the entire Wild West U$A in being the state preferred by psychos for mass shootings. BANG!!! YOU’RE DEAD! No, I was just kidding. Well, actually, I wasn’t. This #1 ranking is also true for their school shootings.

• Evacuations of 10s of 1000s due to anticipated flooding & advancing wildfires.

• Droughts & water shortages alternating with megafloods which have been dubbed “ARkStorms” from the combined volume of snowpack & sudden incessant rain. These threaten to wash 100s of 1000s of tons of pesticides, petroleum products, & other toxins into a less than healthy brew which would flood into several of the state’s population centers including the Central Valley, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the San Francisco Bay area, & even parts of L.A. The Los Angeles River, way back in 1969 when I toured Universal City Studies, was considered by our tour guide as the only river in the world that needed to be irrigated. Its dry concrete culvert bed has been used as a location for filming scenes like the car race in the movie Grease as well as other movies, TV shows, & music videos.

• The town of Carson recently (November 2021) had a state of emergency issued for the stench of sewer gas emitted by the vegetation rotting on the exposed banks of a canal which, when not under drought conditions, are covered by water. There is a slim chance of future stability in that regard because of the alternating extremes of droughts & flooding downpours.

• Fear of tsunamis from active volcanoes & the earthquakes which these generate from anywhere around the Pacific Ring of Fire.

• Radioactive debris drifting in from the Fukushima earthquake & nuclear reactor meltdown of many years ago.

• Unsolved problems of closing down nuclear power plants & disposal of their toxic & infinitely radioactive waste.

• Occasional sinkholes.

• Occasional tornados, & even firenados, are whipped up by wildfires.

• Beaches are covered in trash as deep as 3 feet (one meter) when rivers flood & wash their plastics & other trash into the ocean.

• Golfers at the famed Pebble Beach course regularly send plastic golf balls into the adjacent Pacific because not only is the course right next to the ocean but even has a part that protrudes into it as a peninsula. The balls, of which over 50,000 have been retrieved by concerned divers, degrade releasing toxic chemicals & microplastics into the water. A pristine ecosystem has been turned into a cesspool. For more about this horror, see www.theplasticpick-up.org The course must be shut down immediately unless it agrees to have each ball retrieved immediately by the irresponsible spitbrain whose cockeyed aim landed it in the water. Another option might be a multi-million dollar fine for each day the course stays open to pay for restoring some sanity to the ravaged environment.

• Air pollution is drifting in on the prevailing westerly winds from Asian industrialization as well as from their self-generated pollution. Los Angeles usually has the lowest air quality in the U$. California wildfires are so big & frequent that they have made air quality dangerous across much of the U$ & parts of Canada, not just California.

• Overpopulation & associated crime, gangs, & other social problems. 1/2 the U$ homeless are in California. The warm climate attracts them along with all the other fools who think it’s still Paradise.

• Bus-sized sharks have been spotted off the coast.

• Bears & mountain lions visit in people’s yards, bathe in their pools, & practically knock on their doors. Some have made it through the doors.

• Defensive but violent stingrays reside in coastal waters.

• Intense heat.

• Sunburn.

• Los Angeles County tops the National Risk Index rating system for natural disasters. Great place to lay one’s head for a peaceful night’s rest.

• Sand in their granola.

• Oh, & did I mention wildfires?

California is quickly becoming similar to Florida in being overly toxic. Its ability, for example, to create smog as far east as the Midwest & East Coast due to its inability to refrain from being such a firebug may indicate that it’s time to just trip the switch for The Big One.

These lists are far from being exhaustive, but, alas, both I & other researchers are exhausted & unable to keep up with the new problems as they develop.

These former havens being turned into hells-on-earth certainly never lack for excitement, so that’s a major plus going for them. You’ll never die there of boredom, but you’ll wish you could as the problems increase. Where or when have the people of the earth, especially those of the U$$$$$, known restraint or sound reasoning to change their behavior?

Hawaii & even uninhabited islands in the middle of the oceans are being inundated by trash floating in & washing up onto the beaches from uncaring distant litterbugs whom you probably know & love & live with. The oceans, like the air, know no national or regional boundaries. Someone’s rubbish in one place gets transported by nature’s forces & becomes everyone’s rubbish in another location.

Though many of the above-listed problems are produced directly by people, even some of the seemingly natural events are also aggravated by the irresponsible overuse of fossil fuels & other careless practices ranging from extravagant lifestyles to ordering more than what one can eat in a café or simply dropping a piece of trash just anywhere. 40% of food produced in the U$$$$ is wasted, thrown out uneaten, or allowed to rot in the fields because it does not meet market requirements. Coordination with food banks is too distracting from making money for most stores to seriously consider such salvaging.

Living in the U$ has become the same as playing Russian Roulette. There’s no telling when one is likely to be washed or blown away. & this was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which looks like it will be unstoppable for some time, if ever.

Observing this from a distance would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Recall how the recent anti-Christ-in-Chief jackass-o’lantern Trumpty Dumbty used to talk of other countries being shitholes. Well, he’s dug the deepest latrine himself with the support of the 74 million equally moronic chumps who voted for him after watching him create hate-filled mayhem for 4 years.

It’s clear where the heads of elected officials & their Klueless Kristian Kluxxer electorates are in what used to be Paradise, El Dorado, the Land of the Free. Unlike in Florida or California, the sun has never shown there. Now, as a result, coming from Darwin, a source these throwbacks to an earlier evolution do not even acknowledge, will be coming blow after blow of natural forces too wet, too windy, too hot, & too earthshaking to imagine or withstand.

For more visuals on what I have mentioned above, watch this from some of the top humorists in the world, Desi Lydic & Trevor Noah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y1DzXO-lSA&ab_channel=TheDailyShowwithTrevorNoah

© Vytas Stoskus 2022 www.stoskus.net

To support me as an outspoken thinker & writer, please kick in a one-time support of $3 / $6 / $9 or whatever sum in multiples of $3 at Ko-Fi:

https://ko-fi.com/vytasjstoskus?ref=onboarding_email_share2

Thank you so much.

ClimateNatureScienceHumanity
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About the Creator

Vytas Stoskus

Social psychologist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator; organizational, cross-cultural, creativity, unschooling catalyst; authored 3 books. Heretic . . . . can’t differentiate between my work, play, & concern for justice. www.stoskus.net

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