04
Jan
“Hey guys, fellas, boys, men, winners of bread, kings of castles, et cetera, warm winter we’ve been having, huh? No chance to ice fish there Ken, eh? Eh? Hey Dale, bet the kids love that nice big swamp of an outdoor ice rink you got there in the backyard there Dale. Bet they love that. Me, me I don’t mind. The misses and I, we take our usual trip to Florida every January rain, sleet, or foot of snow. We head for warmer weather. Tan the old hide. Put a few biscuits in the basket if you know what I’m saying. But now I’m hearing Florida is drowning? Not right away, but in our lifetimes—Florida is going to go under for good, swept right under the sea for all time. See boys, doesn’t that sound dreary? Losing your Miami vacation rentals? Your timeshares in Orlando? Your daughter in Tallahassee? I kid, I kid, but seriously fellas—we’re in the possession of some serious facts about the future state of my favorite sangria spot—can we afford to let this go unannounced? I mean guys, it’s Florida we’re talking about. Daytona, Nickelodeon, Pam Anderson (I think), Giant Mice, I think you get the picture, the point here being that we don’t want to lose Florida and at the very least we owe it to the people of Florida to at least let the authorities know through some anonymous tip that the better part of 1000 miles of southern continental coastline will all but disappear beneath the big blue and nothing will be left but a shallow swamp of bubbles and few palm frond lily pads.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa Bart. Jesus. Enough with these scare tactics, you got a point here sometime soon maybe, pal?” says a cleft-chinned mannequin of a human male, bearing pearly whites the incandescence of a Honda’s high beams.
“Yes, yes of course, I have a fucking point, John. You fucking crow. The point being we can’t let this go unpublished, this internal report. We have the PR guys already at our necks trying to figure out what the fuck’s in this damn thing and the marketing people have a strategy in place for how to spin it positive no matter which way the results swing, yet no one mentions the fact that the report damns 25 electoral college votes and three quarters of all theme park profits worldwide? No one wins here, boys. I don’t care if we double our margins—it’ll be done on the sinking backs of residents of the Sunshine State who at the very least have a right to know their homes are about to be worth whatever the bottom of a stinking pond is worth.”
“Bart, that’s enough. Have you started drinking again?” this from a new face nearer the head of the high-gloss round table.
“No, I haven’t started drinking but I’m thinking about it.” Bart said, wiping his moist forehead across his jacket sleeve. “Jesus, have we gone mad? Is no one paying attention here? Might I remind you, Mr. Gregory, sir, that one fifth of our customer’s offshore rigs are anchored in waters belonging to state of Florida? Should we not be alarmed that they may lose access?”
“We’ll work with Alabama, Louisiana, not a problem.”
“And we’ll drill the piss out of subsurface Florida” says the cleft-chinned guy.
“Is that what this is all about?” asks Bart. “This is just some big conspiracy to leverage profits out of the drowning of 50 million countrymen?”
“God no, Bart. We have ethics” says a bespectacled man a few rungs up the corporate ladder from Bart.