Florida Weirdness Continues As Usual. Alligators And People Uphold The State's Reputation.

Florida is famous for its weird news, of couse.  Half of the time, the weirdness involves alligators.

I've got three examples. I'm sure there are dozens of examples, but three is all I have the energy for.

So let's go: Even routine traffic stops are practically never routine.'

Take one case last month in which a car blew through a stop sign in Punta Gorda, Florida.

One of the standard questions the police ask you during traffic stops is whether you have anything else on you. The cop wants to make sure there aren't any dangerous guns or other weapons in case things go south during the traffic stop.  

The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said Ariel Machan-Le Quire, 25, answered that she did. Ariel told police she and her companion had been collecting snakes and frogs beneath a nearby overpass. OK. Then she pulled a live, foot-long alligator out of her yoga pants.

The pair were warned against blowing through stop signs, and the state Fish and Wildlife agency was called in to investigate. Possibly in that order. In Florida, hiding alligators in yoga pants could well be as common as people blowing through stop signs.

She and her companion were cited for violating the bag limit on reptile collecting, which is regulated.

The alligator and all the other animals the couple found were released back into the wild.

The next alligator crisis came last month when police in Clearwater, Florida responded to a report of a home break-in.

Homeowner Mary Wischhusen heard a crash in her kitchen around 3:30 a.m. one morning and discovered the burglar in her kitchen. She retreated to a bedroom and called 911.

When police got there, they found the home had indeed been broken into, and the perp was still there. It was a ten-foot-long alligator, and it had broken into the house through a low window.

Ten police officers and two trappers spent two hours trying to coax the alligator out of Wischhusen's kitchen. Her only regret is the alligator toppled a wine case, smashing all the bottles of red wine inside. It was the good stuff, she said.

Nobody is sure why the alligator targeted Wischhusen's house. My theory is it likes red wine.

Finally, this week, a Gainsville, Florida couple decided it would be a nice idea to have a picnic on the shores of a lake.

Then an alligator decided to join the party. The couple wisely retreated, so the alligator came up and helped itself to a block of cheese, salami, half a watermelon and an entire bowl of guacamole. 

Luckily, the alligator was full after that, so instead of eating the picnicking couple, the little monster went back down to the lake.

For now, anyway.

Turns Out Yoga Pants Are The Downfall Of Society

Montana State Rep. David Moore is no fan of
yoga pants. Apparently they are a menace.
Image from Jezebel.  

The State of Montana has the best fashion police, let me tell you.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket, and Montana State Rep. David Moore knows exactly why:

Yoga pants. Especially the ones that are about the same color as human skin. It makes a person look naked or something, Moore said.

According to the Billings Gazette, Moore has introduced the morality saving House Bill 365, which would expand Montana's indecent exposure law to include, as the Gazette put it, "any nipple exposure, including met's and any garment that 'gives the appearance or simulates' a person's buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple."

That list would include flesh-colored yoga pants, Moore said. Other color yoga pants would have been OK, supposedly, under the proposal, but Moore doesn't like any yoga pants.

"Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway," Moore said after a hearing on the bill, says the Billings Gazette.

This all got started last August, when there was something called  "Bare As You Dare" bicycle event in Missoula. This kind of thing happens in a lot of cities lately where people in a group ride bicycles while naked because it's fun, people want to celebrate and promote acceptance of all kinds of body images, or they're making some sort of statement like "bicycles are good" or "fossil fuels are bad."

I'm not sure how riding a bike naked will reduce our dependence on fossil fuel, but what the hell. Nobody is getting hurt at these events, right

If you ask Moore and another Montana lawmaker named Walt Hill, this kind of naked bike ride is a terrible threat to the Good Citizens of Montana, so any kind of indecent exposure must be stopped.

Officials felt like they had to give a permit for the "Bare As You Dare" event last year because denying it would maybe make the officials run afoul of First Amendment free speech protections.

So, the effort is on to cover up Big Sky country.

"I want Montana to be known as a decent state where people can live within the security of laws and protect their children and associates from degrading and indecent practices," the Billings Gazette quoted Hill as saying.

Yeah, because I surely wouldn't feel secure unless there was a ban on naked bike rides, yoga pants and guys walking around wearing no shirts.

The wrong kind of clothing is apparently dangerous, at least in the eyes of some lawmakers.

However, Moore's efforts are for naught. According to Jezebel and the Associated Press, a Montana legislative committed voted to day to quash the anti-yoga pants bill.

At the peak of the craze of wearing baggy pants that sagged halfway down people's butts, some states and municipalities tried to ban the wearing of them. 

Too dangerous? Too, I don't know, hip hoppy?

Way back in the 1930s people tried to ban zoot suits because they, like the baggy pants, represented an urban youth culture, rather weighted toward Hispanics, that the adults didn't like.

I'm still not sure how banning certain types of clothing, instead of banning objectionable behavior is going to fix society's ills.

But I guess fixing society's ills is too tough a task, so banning certain types of clothes seems an easy way out.

Talk about the emperor having no clothes!