Meanwhile, back home on the ranch, educators are getting the axe and citizens are getting billed for 911 calls. You screwed us Chuck, you really did.

LAKELAND – A man’s body was found floating in a Polk County lake Saturday morning. Now, investigators are trying to figure out if the man was killed by an alligator.

Two fishermen spotted the body floating in a canal near Saddle Creek Lake just east of Lakeland, and noticed a 7-foot gator was swimming close to the body.

The fishermen were able to keep the gator away until authorities could pull the body out of the water.

Investigators said the man had no signs of trauma to his body and don’t believe foul play was involved.

A medical examiner will now determine if the man was attacked by the gator or if he died from other causes.

A trapper was called out to destroy the gator.

Can someone explain to me why the heck they just up and killed this alligator? If the gator killed the man, it would have been apparent I would think, what with the missing limbs and large chew marks. So this guy keels over or drowns or whatnot and the gator just swims up probably out of curiosity. So we just execute the animal for being on the scene? Maybe the fisherman killed him? We don’t know for sure they didn’t. We didn’t just shoot them in the head on the spot did we?

Did I miss something, did we declare war on these animals? We seem to respond to every crossing of paths with alligators with just instant destruction of the animal. Where is PETA on this? Do they only care about animals they think are cute and fuzzy?

A state song many said is racist could be in for an overhaul.
On Thursday, the state Senate voted unanimously to make Jan Hinton’s “Where The Sawgrass Meets The Sky” the official anthem.
It beat out a handful of other tunes in a public contest.
Lawmakers also decided to remove what some call racially insensitive lyrics from the state song “Suwannee River.”
Some senators had tried to do away with the song entirely. Gov. Crist said he’s disappointed.

So the lawmakers decided to not only remove the lyrics from the song, deciding to just change an artist’s music post mortem, and THEN dump it entirely? Why not at least just leave the song alone if you are ditching it.

Yeah, the song could be considered a little dated as it is written from the perspective of an Black American in the old south, but by a white man. It definitely uses some phrasing not acceptable in common parlance today, though it never seemed to bother Ray Charles, both a black man and a Florida native. All in all, the argument is there to change it for sure, but picking a state song for somewhere as awesome as Florida needs some better thought put into it.

I’m having a little issue with total suckitude of “Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky”. It sounds like an awful two bit song played while waiting in line for a ride at EPCOT. In all honesty Jan Hinton, your song blows… hard.

I’m a true son of Florida, born on Orange frickin Avenue, and this Florida native whole heartedly rejects and will never recognize that god awful travesty as my State’s song. Charlie Christ, your spray tan ass was born in Pennsylvania, so I gotta say your opinion has little value for those of us that have to live with the song after you move to DC (which you obviously are itching to do). Take another stab at picking a song, because that thing seriously is an embarrassment.

Everything is off to a great start! Smiling face of Lydia Gardner assuring you that “paying your traffic ticket is FAST and EASY!” Super, if there is one thing the internet is good at, it’s making things that usually require standing in line for, much more fast and easy! Super! But wait, there’s more! Just a few things you need to know before you get started, probably things that help you to make things even more FAST and EASY, I’m sure!

Great, we can use the system to do several things, excellent! Gotta have my citation number ready, sure thing! And they accept Visa and Mastercard, no Discover, though… hmm, well that happens. It’s handled through Link2Gov, um, okay… not sure who that is or if I should know… wait… what? Service fee of $3.99?!? Well that’s usual, I mean everytime I shop online they charge me even more than usual… oh, wait… that’s backwards, it’s usually cheaper to shop online… the whole less overhead thing…. Maybe I should send Lydia some info about Google Payments or PayPal or something. Apparently Link2Gov is so grossly expensive in their transaction fees that the city has to try and recoup that by passing off $4 to us! Seeing as how this fee does not appear at the windows, it’s not related to actual credit card processing, but purely from taking the order via the internet. Good job choosing an online payment service Lydia!

Okay, well, maybe Link2Gov’s premium cost is due to their superior service, I mean I’m sure I can securely and quickly make online paymnts with it… between the hours of 2am… and 10pm… WTF?!?! I’m sorry, does someone have to wind the computer back up from 10-2 in the middle of the night? Maybe the hamster in the wheel gets tired, needs a little sip from that plastic water bottle with the metal straw hanging out the bottom. Maybe Lydia is superstitious and doesn’t trust the internet’s series of tubes to handle credit cards during the “witching hours”.

So, maybe I’m thinking the system has downtime so that the day’s citiation can be put into the system. That might make sense, given that the database servers are running from Microsoft Access off of Ms. Gardner’s desktop. But if that downtime helps us to get to pay our tickets as quickly as good citizens should, it’s worth the sacrifice! What’s this… may take 15 days for your citation to appear… you mean the citations that we have to pay within 30 days or you issue a bench warrant? That’s kinda, I don’t know, incompetent.

And the final cherry on top of this primo example of government ineptitude? “Select Pay a Ticket at left to Continue”! Um… why not just make the word “Pay a Ticket” a link? I promise it won’t make the left side nav jealous.

And in the words of Columbo… oh, just one more thing… Why would I call the number at the bottom for information in English… if the page of information you just provided was… in English?

Make sure you get a big raise Lydia, and have the deputies deliver it to you in their tights and tutus.

Enjoy!

“The motivation seems to be money. They just needed money to live to pay the bills. They weren’t very arrogant. They weren’t your normal criminal element. They have no criminal histories at all. None of them.”

Awwwww. We should just feel sorry for these guys, they were just trying to earn a living, keep the lights on and food on the table. That is so freaking sweet I could f-ing cry. Cops… guys… what the hell is wrong with you? Are you seriously trying to muster up some sympathy for these parasites? For god’s sake, grow a pair! These are dirt bags, attacking, as in ATTACKING innocent people, threatening their lives and forcing them to hand over their hard earned money that, guess what, THEY use to put food on THEIR tables! And I have news for you, just because you keystone coppers with the golden hearts two sizes too big haven’t managed to catch them don’t mean they have no “criminal history.” I mean, just the fact that they are accused of a STRING of robberies and kidnappings shows they have a history of doing this in a serial manner.

Let me be the first to say, wow… just… wow.

Based on this list we beat out famous mega-metros such as NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, and Boston. I imagine the tourism industry with WiFi at hotels and conference rooms flooding the air had something to do with the results. I wonder if the cancellation of the downtown WiFi project was taken into account or the survey was done previous to this announcement. Maybe this is a good notice for the city government to understand that hey, people want this stuff!