I had mentioned previously my unjustified distaste for the state of Florida. I basically like to think of it as the poor man's California. I feel that the two of them have a certain similar base, so there's an unspoken rivalry. I may very well be the only person who feels this, and I understand that it's unjustified. As a matter of fact, I fear that should I ever actually visit Florida, I'll like it and change my mind. This becomes far more likely when considering my feeling that every place has good to offer, and can be loved if only given the proper perspective. So, from whence comes this distaste? I believe that there are three root causes, listed in chronological order according to when they became salient to me:

The Sunshine State
Germany or Florida
hurricanes vs. Earthquakes

Let's start with the state nicknames. Imagine the confusion in the mind of little grade-school Megan when she found out that her beloved home was not indeed the Sunshine State. I mean, isn't that a large part of the beauty of California, its amazing weather? We're relegated to being the Golden State? I would realize later in life (read: after moving to NorCal for college), that as with most things related to the state government, our nickname was highly regionally specific, but again, that's another posting. So basically, my knowledge of my home state was not a consciousness that had been recognized by pointless legislation. Boohoo. Still, this moment of enlightenment was what planted the seed of anti-Floridianism in my young mind.

Second, we have a lovely little game played on Love Line called "Germany or Florida." For those of you who haven't heard of it, a caller reads a story in which craziness and degenerate activities occur, and then Adam and Drew have to guess whether it happened in Germany or Florida, because that's where all of the weirdest shit goes down. So now here I am, impressionable, high school aged Megan already pre-disposed toward disliking Florida, and now I get fodder classing it with Deutschland, a well documented head case of a country. Seriously though, give that game a try some time. If you hear a screwy/gross/trashy story, place a guess as whether it took place in Germany or Florida. Even if you're wrong, you can place money on the fact that it was one or the other.

Now this brings us to my third point. People who have not lived on the Pacific rim seem to have an illogical fear of earthquakes. The trouble with that is that even though it's true we have hundreds of small quakes every day, the frequency of sizable quakes is low enough, and building codes are well enough improved, that simple, normal, yearly weather in harsher climates causes more damage than quakes. That's right, the last really big earthquake in Southern California, the Northridge Quake, which brought down freeways, killed fewer people than ice storms in North East that same week. Blizzards, heat waves, etc are more common and more damaging, but no one seems to use them as a reason not to live some place. This little tirade has brought me to hurricanes. I'm willing to bet that some one from Florida would likely say a lot of the same things about a hurricane that I would about an earthquake, however, when I say that quakes really aren't that bad, reality likely resides more firmly on my side. Earthquakes just don't last as long, and I would guess that living through one is a far less terrifying experience, aside from the damage issue.

So there you have it, some explanation of my problem with Florida. Honestly, add in the tourism and citrus issues, and there are just too many battlefields to make it a feasible war. Still, we've got more than twice the electoral votes, so I've got that...