Brain Needed Space

Daniel’s Top Ten Things He Hates About Orlando

10. Road Tolls. I spend $5 a day in tolls. Yes, I know you New Yorkers can easily laugh at that; I grew up on Long Island. But for almost any other city in America, toll roads are not the norm. Here, we’ve got four roads that make a big box around the city, and three of them are toll roads. The fourth is a federal interstate and the local government keeps trying to make that a toll road as well. We’ve paid for these roads many years ago, and the officials just keep the toll booths up as a source of revenue. I loathe being robbed.

9. Right-lane passing. Look, I’ve driven on five continents. I’ve driven right and left-hand drive cars on both the right and left-hand side of the road. I’ve circumnavigated the US and most of Europe. I’ve survived Saudi Arabia’s highways from Taif to Jeddah. Orlando is the only place I’ve been where passing on the wrong-side is not just accepted, but mandated.

8. People who watch Space Shuttle launches and make my forty-five minute drive home from work a three-hour nightmare. ‘Nough said.

7. My thin skin. Anything below 60 degees farenheit is freezing. It’s not my fault I’m a temp-wimp now; it’s Florida’s.

6. Red Ants. I grew up on the cool, crisp grass of Long Island. Now I live on the vines of St. Augustine “grass” and the red ants that make these jungles their home. Red ants eat your skin, crawling in your toes and gnawing the tender flesh betwixt your toes. People go into shock from red ant attacks. There are two reasons that Florida is capable of supporting human life, and pesticides is one.

5. Hurricanes. No, not the football team, but the natural disasters. There is little worse than having your electrical power go out in Florida due to a hurricane, as then you lose air conditioning. The winds and water are nothing; losing one’s power is unbearable. One cannot survive in Florida without air conditioning. Actually, Florida wasn’t even a real state until the 1950s when AC was made readily available.

4. Disney visitors. Listen, if you’re going to come to any of the Disney parks, fly on an airplane and use the Disney shuttles. They have made it so that you don’t need a car. They pick you up at the airport in air conditioned vans, take you too your air conditioned hotel, you run amok in the air conditioned attractions, your take the air conditioned van back to the airport, you say goodbye, we’re all happy. Renting a car and trying to find your way around is just going to piss us all off. You’re lost, you’re tired, your AC isn’t working, you’re making me pass in the right-hand lane, and you make up for the lost time by extending your visit.

3. The Orlando Magic. We let Shaq go. We don’t deserve a basketball team, honestly. I’ve been to a few games, and at one I was asked why I was coming. I said, “Because I got free tickets. There’s no way I’d pay to see this team.” Yes we’re doing well this year, but the past fifteen years could’ve made Orlando “Shaq-Apulco”, instead of just the man’s backyard.

2. The people who play with alligators. On Kennedy Space Center, there’s a sign that says, “Don’t feed the alligators”. OK, so some stupid morons have thrown food at alligators. Understandable, but hardly Darwin Award winners. Then there’s the sign that says, “Don’t move the alligators”. What kind of moronic reprobate gets it into his noggin to try alligator-tipping? An eaten one, that’s what kind.

1. My pool. I have a leak somewhere and it’s going to cost a butt-load of cash to find and fix it. D@mn.

Share on Facebook