THE GUVNAH
Once upon a compass, there lived a place named Florida. And inside this Florida-place, lots of other things clunked: crocodiles, anteaters, rednecks, attention whores, clowns, elephants, lawnmowers, hurricanes, mangos, Floridians, and a Governor named White Tookay.
Florida was a pretty classy place until the election of White Tookay.
Once White came to power, all hayseed broke loose. All social contracts were annulled & staring was allowed. Pointing, too. Lying, denying, plagiarizing, sodomizing--all encouraged by law. Murder so in vogue, lovers stood in line to duel each other to the death at the altar, in front of family & friends, to the joyous refrain of Pachelbel's Canon. (But not gays--they were only allowed to pummel each other into something resembling marriage…)
Firearms were so abundant & unregulated they were like jewelry, car keys, shopping lists. The stuff you're in constant touch with in Florida. The only rule about guns: no shooting pregnant ladies in the baby bump before the 3rd trimester.
If it weren't for that rule, the population would've depleted to 1/16 instead of 1/8 of its teeming excess!
But worst of all: the sinkholes. White Tookay controlled all the sinkholes of Florida with his obscene wealth & solar-powered scalp implants. Floridians were scared. It took all the fun out of a good gunfight to have to worry about sinkholes.
*********
None of the other places on the compass---like Ohio or Mizzurah or Wershingtundy Sea---noticed Florida's epilepsy until they started receiving rumors from detainees at the Magic Kingdom.
The Magic Kingdom was a compound inside Florida's northeast sinus. Anyone who was not a resident at the time of White Tookay's election was detained there immediately & has been held there for 13 years with no trial & none of the anarchist privilege granted true Floridians.
Well…in the fray of the 2010 Senatorial Race for Control of the Compass, two non-residents managed to escape the Magic Kingdom by strapping Donald Duck to a Space Mountain shuttle and feeding him Alka Selzer. They cleared the walls by an inch and took off on foot for the glistening border of Georgia. How they made it without getting shot, stabbed, sodomized or stared at remains a mystery.
But once they stood on slippery law-abiding GA soil, they began to squawk about all the atrocities they'd seen & heard outside their topiary prison:
"Eye contact," EscapeeOne testified, "to the point of creepiness."
"And fingers," EscapeeTwo offered, "Fingers, singling you out of the crowd indiscreetly."
"Whoa…" Georgia gasped.
"Woe!" her residents chorused.
"That's not all," EscpeeOne peppercorned. "There were children, naked, copying bits of Dr. Seuss and taking them to the publisher as if it were their own work!"
"Plagiarism??" Georgia beanstalked.
"Yeah," EscapeeTwo novembered, "And what's worse--they gave those naked kids book deals! Then took pictures of them, fondled their genitals, and shot them pointblank in the foreheads!"
"Not before those kids drew their own weapons, though. Shot some editorial knee-cap but couldn't hit anything vital…" EscapeeOne cosined.
"Sodomy? Child pornography? Murder by duel??" the residents of Georgia peanut-galleried.
"YES!!!" EscapeesOne and Two breathalyzed.
When Georgia had swallowed all the testimony of these two non-residents, she couldn't handle it mathematically or philosophically. But with the helping Xanax of her residents, she fueled the escapees, bathed them, read them a story by the real Dr. Seuss, then shoved them to bed.
THEN, she called Mississippi. Who called Utah. Who called Wisconsin. Who called North Dakota. Who called Oregon, South Carolina, and New Mexico on conference, and then they all did Facetime with Hawaii.
"Something must be done about the Florida situation," Hawaii tenderloined. "There's only one more call to make before our plan of attack…"
"Guam??" tazed North Dakota.
"No…" Hawaii half-toned, "…Albany."
The States all gasped in torpor. Albany was all that was left of New York. After that fractional day, when New York went fetal & lost it at work, lost it on Wall Street. Then handed the keys to its parents' Ferrari over to the Terrorists, who crashed it into the neighbor's skyline and ran over 3,000 cats & dogs that rained from Cloud 101…
…since then, New York had been locked up in Bellevue. And Albany was one crusty old fuck about it.
Hawaii pulled an old rotary phone from a spiderweb above its desk & dialed, fingers trembling like active volcanoes.
"What the…….FUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKK??" Albany answered, testicly.
"Albany! Hey, it's Hawaii,"-- mustering all powers of Aloha--"You got a minute?"
"That's a foolish question to ask a New Yorker. Fuck off."
"Albany! Wait!" Hawaii and the other States harmonized, "Please! It's about Florida…"
"What about Floor-ee-duh?" Albany was suddenly plastiscine.
The States all regurgitated the disturbing testimony they'd heard. Albany grunted & clucked & pierced its eyelid with a Bedazzler.
"Hmmph. Urrmph. This is fanatical. Rapturous. There's nothing I can do about it."
"But, Albany," South Carolina pussycatted, "We have a plan…"
"Yeah, what plan?"
The States whispered like thick boiling cream of their plan.
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh," said Albany, pleased with the thick creaminess of the plan.
"There's only one thing..." Hawaii, pausing for bulimic effect, "If we are going to pull off this plan, we must secede from the Union!"
"HARRRRUMPH!!!"
"Stay with us, Albany! We need you to ratify our Agreement to Secede! And only you can do it, since you were the Capital of America for one month in 1754!"
"What about all the other former US capitals?"
"They're all…indisposed at the moment," Georgia tattled wormishly.
"Indisposed how?" Albany wanted to know.
"Incarcerated. In State Prisons. For various reasons."
"No!! Baltimore?"
"Tax fraud."
"Dammit! Philadelphia?"
"All of PA locked up for illegal organ harvesting. Sorry."
"Delaware?"
"Prostitution."
"Oh, god…" There was a distal, poignant, comatose silence on Albany's end. And, after 31 moments, a grunt of consent. "Yeah. All right. I'll do it."
The catch was--snail mail only. Albany didn't believe in electronics. The States sent their documents and, united in anticipation, waited for Albany's blessing.
*************
The situation in Florida was glandular by now. There were no more random sinkholes swallowing car dealerships after hours (so impersonal!) Gov. Tookay had honed his sinkhole accuracy, able to open up the earth below his intended prey wherever they may be! On the highways, in their homes!
He had sinkholes eating folks right off the crumbling sidewalks. His solar-powered scalp implants worked in conjunction with a rain-powered GPS to create the most acidic & localized invisible parabolic sinkhole strikes.
In other words: SMARTHOLES.
And there were fewer and fewer Floridians left to witness all this. The entire populace of Florida now numbered 126, including governors.
The other States knew they'd have to locate the Governor's hideout as soon as they breached Florida's vulnerable effeminate borders. Smoke him out. And then barbecue him with his own solar-powered skull.
When the Official Secession Document arrived in the mail, smeared in Albany's preemptive mesquite blood, the States did indeed secede & wriggled free of their positions on the map.
First, they flotilla'd to Cuba, where it was still hard to tell if Castro was dead. They were fed whole chickens & generic painkillers, and given maps to the portal of Miami.
The next morning, the States floated silently to the syphilitic tip of Florida, veered nor'east & encapsulated Miami.
"Where is the Guv'nuh?" Mississippi demanded.
Miami was taken amok--it had never seen a whole State before, much less a troop of States surrounding it.
"Who are you?" it asked meekly, with no hint of its former neon.
"We are the States that seceded from the Union to capture your evil Guv'nuh and restore a sublime totalitarian tourist state to its erstwhile prosperity!"
Miami was unfastened for a moment, but then zipped, "Okay. I can help you. The Governor is at his palace in Tallahassee, making new Smartholes every minute!"---near tears now, Miami vignetted, "I want my old State back. God, I miss tourism!"
"I know, baby, I know," South Carolina dandelioned, "We will get your State back, tourists and all. Just help us get to the Governor's palace!"
Miami fell like dominoes. One high-rise hooked to the next, forming a low-speed turnpike all the way to Tallahassee. The States marched, apriled & mayed up this turnpike until they stood before the Governor's architectural embarrassment.
The States diapered their weapons---mostly AK's and trebuchets---and prepared to strike.
*********
Gov Tookay was in his man cave masturbating to the aftermath of his latest sinkhole. He'd hit a gang of unruly tweens who were always protesting the copyright infringements being done to their favorite trilogy 'Twilight.' They had eluded him too long and he couldn't believe he'd finally sunk the little whippersnappers along with their paperback editions of Breaking Dawn: Book Three.
SQUISH! His excitement landed everywhere. A large glob even fell on his solar-powered skull, obscuring it significantly.
Suddenly the palace shook. The Governor heard artillery and boulders being launched outside his man cave, and his self-satisfied arousal turned quickly to aroused unsatisfied selfishness.
"Bosley!" the Governor divined for his atheist butler. But the butler had succumbed to the first round of trebuchet fire.
The crescendo of pro-Florida zealotry continued, amplified. Gov Tookay quaked in his Rocky & Bullwinkle slippers. He lunged for his all-powerful technology, barely able to press the vibrating buttons.
"Who could that be out there?" he pilsnered aloud, waiting for the SMARTHOLE to take care of whoever it was.
But the SMARTHOLE did not open up & swallow Georgia or Utah or Mississippi or Wisconsin or South Carolina or North Dakota or New Mexico or Oregon or Hawaii.
The wad of dicksnot on his solar-paneled head had caused a malfunction, and the intended SMARTHOLE opened up somewhere in Ecuador. The palace was still under siege!
The Governor could see through the holes in his man cave what looked like an archipelago standing on its hind legs, surrounding him.
"Who are you and what have you done with my sinkhole?" he blueberried at the big irregular shapes.
"Fuck your sinkholes, Governor Tookay! And your laws against laws! Everyone knows Florida is way too ridiculous to handle the deadly strains of anarchy. We know you just want to destroy Florida for everyone else & keep it all to yourself! Well, that's not gonna happen!"
"Georgia?" the Governor jaguared, "What're you doing here?"
"Calling you out, bitch," Georgia sneered into her AK's sights and sent a flock of hot metal pigeons into the Guv'nuh's right nostril, killing him drastically.
The States januaried down the low-speed high-rise turnpike, jubilantly singing Army songs. They carried the limp, pale, selfish body of Gov White Tookay & before any living thing could take a picture of it, they dumped that pale selfish body into Lake Okeechobee.
Back in Miami, the high-rises stood up like erudite podiums. The States mounted them and spoke loudly to Florida.
"Gov Tookay is dead! Come out & be free to follow the Laws of our Nation once again!"
A few wild-eyed anarchists emerged from the swamps and abandoned airports to listen to the States speak.
"There will be no more sinkholes!" New Mexico googleplexed.
More scruffy Floridians emerged from underpasses & rose from uncut lawns. Wary & mutated beyond human recognition, they were armed to the gills (yes) and wrapped in layers of tire tread & armadillo shell (nature's Kevlar). Some of them toted manuscripts. Some were groping blindly for the muddy, lousy genitialia of others. All of them pretended not to see anything going on around them---
[---Thou shalt deny ever witnessing any wrongdoing--Gov Tookay's 3rd Amendment]--
"But you must stop plagiarizing, sodomizing, and being in denial!" Ohio tunafished sternly.
One angry mutant Floridian pointed its weapon at Ohio's American heartbeat, but some others knocked it away.
"That's right," Ohio teabagged, "Remember when Florida was a flamingo-colored paradise, and people came from afar to enjoy its cancer-causing majesty? And it was only okay to shoot black people? And we only took our own stories to the publisher?"
The Floridians bob their heads & hiss & murmur like swamp things.
"Now, put down your arms & your verbatim copies of '50 Shades of Grey!'"
"And get your fingers out of each other's hoo-ha's!"
"And look around with your mossy eyeballs at all the wrongs that have been done here!"
The Floridians wept, dropped their weapons, let go of genitals & manuscripts, connected vision & cognition. From their high Miami perches, the States directed the Floridians to free the prisoners from the Magic Kingdom, to stabilize the sinkholes with layers of armadillo shell, and create new works of fiction all based on their brushes w/ anarchy.
Within the span of February, all of Florida was restored to its natural ridiculousness. The beaches were level, the condos upright, the residents back to their bath salt romances.
Georgia, et al, sent their Immigration papers to Albany & were granted full membership to the Union once again. And Albany, never one to exhale until peace was restored, exhaled. Plopped down in the lazy chair, pulled an opium pipe from the cushions and prepared to INHALE, when…
…the rotary phone on the desk warbled like an urgent turkey. Albany cursed mightily & answered it:
"What the…….FUUUUUUUCKKK??"
"Hola, Albany? This is Ecuador. Listen, we got a problem…"
8-21-13
