Post #217611 by mbonga on Mon, Feb 27, 2006 4:39 AM

I lived in Melbourne, in the Palm Bay area. I didn't commute, but I don't recall the traffic ever being really bad, not like you'd see in Miami, DC, New York City, or Los Angeles, at least, where you will need 15 minutes to move about 1-2 miles.

Now the bad news, and there's a lot of it, and it involves the most important things. Florida is one of the most dishonest and backwards states in which I've ever lived. I had more far trouble with dishonest schools and employers there than anywhere else in my life. There are no unions, for one thing, so employers can and do fire people at will. Why aren't there unions? Because the people who have tried to start unions were found dead in swamps, murdered. And I'm talking about modern times. That shows you the kind of place you'd be moving to. It's controlled by the Good Old Boys, whether you can see it or not. To give you an idea of the pervasiveness of that type of power structure, there was a book for sale all over called "Good Old Boys," talking about the politics of central Florida. That book was so ubiquitous that I first saw it for sale in a copy service center while making photocopies! That's the kind of place you're moving to.

Now some natural history. Most waterways larger than a creek are not safe to be near because of alligators. There was a classy seafood restaurant on one point near where I lived, and there were large alligators strolling by the windows where the diners ate. That might sound like fun until you realize that there were no fences there, and the alligators could just as easily have strolled up to the front door of the restaurant. There were constantly newspaper reports of dogs and kids near the water being grabbed and carried off and eaten by alligators. Alligators were in public parks, golf courses, nature trails, drainage ponds, the Indian River in people's backyards, and of course lakes. One newspaper report told of a homeless guy living alone near a lake near where I lived (there are a lot of homeless down there, due to relatively warm weather) who was grabbed by an alligator and mauled for a period of about 2-3 hours until somebody happened by to help out. In California I constantly explored fields and creeks and shores all alone as a kid, but if I had done that in Florida, I'd probably be dead by now. You don't want to get mauled by an alligator. Even though that homeless man escaped, the dirt and bacteria in a gator's mouth are so dangerous that they thought the man's leg would have to be amputated just from the infection alone.

Hurricanes are a real worry, too. It's incredible, but most homes and buildings are not hurricane proof. After the '92 hurricane went through, insurance companies went broke all over the state, and you literally couldn't even get simple theft insurance for several months, until they eventually approved of you paying them for insurance! Even if the hurricane misses you, there are plenty of tornadoes, with and without hurricanes. Tornadoes can do more damage than hurricanes. I was walking over to a Seven/11 one day and saw this white funnel coming out of the sky only about a mile away, and it wasn't even a particularly bad day. Nobody seemed to care. Storms are very frequent, and carry a lot of lightning. Newspapers are full of stories of people being electrocuted by lightning, and people you talk to will tell you about their mailboxes being blown up and forest fires starting from lightning.

Speaking of housing, Florida was the only place where I had my entire apartment deposit illegally stolen when I moved, and I never got any of it back. Not only did I not get it back, but they tried to charge me even more, and had the gall to take me to a collection agency for damage to their rug because their roof leaked!

Mosquitoes are dangerous certain times of the year because they carry encephalitis, which is fatal. People who contract that develop headaches of such severity that they go into a coma from the pain.

The Indian River is so polluted that fisherman are warned not to use their mouths to hold fishing line. One fisherman who did so was poisoned so badly that he developed ulcers of the face, and began to lose his memory as his brain functions were impacted, too. Many of the fish in that river have visible ulcers. Speaking of fisherman, Florida fisherman have been known to sadistically mutilate pelicans who grab their fish. The report I read didn't provide the details, but I think the fisherman cut the legs of the birds, then let them go. That's the kind of place you're moving to.

The only time I was ever held up at gunpoint was in Florida. I was lucky. The thief who held me up beat up another guy the night before, even after the victim gave him his wallet. One of the school security guards was even shot at. Of course the school newspaper suppressed most of these details. Good Old Boy system again: you can't be scaring off the families up north who send their kids down to Florida to go to school. Money is at stake! And speaking of shootings, need I remind you of the series of murders of German tourists in Miami in the early '90s? It was so common that one rock band named themselves The Dead German Tourists. I have one of their CDs.

People let their dogs--big dogs--run free at night. There were many times walking around at night that I was confronted by large dogs holding me at bay, often for several minutes until they got bored. If you call the dog pound, they never show up on time or find the address, and don't care.

Florida laws are incredibly backwards. Oral sex is illegal, for example. One free newspaper I picked up in a music store there gave advice of what to do if stopped by police, and advised, "Don't ever get arrested in the South." Gays who attended my school were often harassed and their teachers often made sure they failed their classes. The cops are dishonest. I knew one guy who got out of jail, and because he was in jail, he couldn't get a document he needed, then because he didn't have that document, they threw him back in jail. The reason he was even in jail in the first place was a policeman recognized him from a session in which the victim had been lied to, and so the officer lied and said he was breaking the law again. The police then lied to witnesses to get testimony that fit their needs. Laws against double jeopardy don't mean anything down there. And speaking of the hurricane of '92, one store owner in the Keys told me how the police were looting people's homes, but of course that tidbit was somehow omitted from the news. I heard firsthand of police also looting a person's home after he had gone to jail--yet another person I knew from jail there. At the time I left, my ex-girlfriend told me her boyfriend had just been sent to prison for rape, and she knew firsthand for a fact that he never raped anybody, but somehow that evidence was ignored. You probably heard about the huge scandal over black motorists being stopped and cash seizures under the pretext of drug law violations. That was in the Daytona area, and had nationwide attention. And speaking of nationwide attention, I'll remind you of one other piece of notorious Florida news, with a single word: ballots! Only in Florida could things get that bad!

The school I attended (Florida Tech) cheated me out of years of my time/life so they could make tuition money off of me, and put me so far in debt that I may never be able to pay back my school loans. My advisor had no idea what I was working on or if I was even still attending school, because one semester he gave me a grade when I wasn't even attending that semester. The school was unbelievably crooked and backwards in every aspect, and any complaints about the administration were completely ignored. The Good Old Boy system again. One student I knew from France, after running up years of debt, was unable to continue, and had to move back to France without a degree and out about $100,000. That school was also engaged in illegal activities that I won't go into. The nearby school BCC was even worse: they were constantly in the headlines for illegal activities.

When I finally graduated, I worked as a teacher for another school. That school, centered in Merritt Island, advised me so wrongly about my class and teacher requirements that I ended up losing about half my students, which allowed the school to cheat me out of about $700 of my salary that semester, due to the fine print and the wrong information they fed me. I was fired from a dumb summer job because the boss got an e-mail complaint from somebody and didn't even check if their information was correct (it wasn't). The next employer cheated me out of about $20,000/year for about three years. I couldn't change jobs largely because the managers and job agents were so incompetent that they kept getting their information wrong or making wrong assumptions. I tried to take my last employer to court, and I had proof that they had violated my written employment agreement, but both lawyers I contacted were so incompetent that they didn't even get the basic facts right about the case, so they didn't want to handle it based on wrong assumptions. With the exception of a short-term tutoring job, every employer I ever had in Florida was dishonest and either cheated me out of money or was engaged in illegal activity, often both.

Would I move back to Florida? Probably, but only if I could be near Orlando in a decently sized city near Disney World, and if I could live in a very solid concrete dwelling and had a very good job, both in money and security. Otherwise I would never go back, and I still hate that f**king state and I still have nightmares (literally) about being grabbed by alligators and being held up by drug addicts. Basically I'd advise everyone to stay the hell away from Florida.

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