Florida: The Farcical State
After an employee of Florida’s environmental protection department was sentenced to seventy lashes and a mental health evaluation for violating Governor Rick Scott’s ban on the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in the workplace, Sen. Clarence William “Wild Bill” Nelson II has called for a widespread ban on the use of needless clichés in his state.
Also known as America’s answer to the twilight zone, Florida has long been ridiculed, especially for its state motto: “The Sunshine State: Please ask us about our grandchildren.”
When asked about the proposed ban in an interview with Shepard Smith on Fox News, “Wild Bill” responded; “Clichés are just so god damn annoying. Aside from being indicative of lazy speaking and lazy writing, we rarely ever use them correctly, and even when we do, they rarely make sense. I am not an all talk, no action kind of guy. My colleagues and I will adopt an all hands to the pump approach.”
Seemingly unaware that he just used two clichés, Bill Nelson continued, “Most popularized metaphors are outdated. ‘Don’t cry over spilled milk.’ I mean, come on, do you know anybody out there who would literally shed tears after knocking over a glass of two percent? Relying on such nonsensical phraseology shows a distinct inability to discuss anything original. Clichés are about as useful as a lead balloon. Honestly, I could go on until I’m blue in the face, but I shall digress.”
Nodding his head uncontrollably in agreement, Shep Smith asked, “Which cliché gets under your skin the most, Bill?”
“For me, Shep, it’s gotta be ‘selling like hotcakes.’ Let me state something for the record, hotcakes are not pancakes. They were popular in the 19th century, but so was incest. They were made from cornmeal and cooked in pork lard — people in Florida are better than this.”
Enlightened by this brief hotcake history lesson, one would assume that “selling like hotcakes” meant “selling absolutely nothing.”
In addition to being particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as 80% of the state’s residents live or work near the coasts, its elderly population is also vulnerable to the threat of unintentional cliché usage, mainly because they grew up in an era where hotcake sales were quite high, as were the rates of incest. If the ban is enforced, in the words of Shep Smith, “Floridians may very well be up in arms.”
potato connoisseur. An expert in the area of mediocrity, he one day hopes to own a decent coffee maker and visit SeaWorld Orlando.
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