Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns Book

Sometimes it's hard to take Florida seriously as a state. With headlines like "Florida Man Says Syringes in his Anus Aren't His" and "Florida Man Caught Shoplifting During Kohl's Interview," making the rounds online, I'm left wondering if I've accidentally clicked on an Onion article, or if truth is, in fact, stranger than fiction.
Apparently, there's no one more familiar with the absurdities of Florida's political and environmental landscape than Carl Hiaasen, a long-time reporter. The book is a collection of his scathing columns for the Miami Herald in which he skewers a wide range of political figures and corporate bigwigs for a shockingly long list of grievances ranging from blatant corruption, to extortion, to murder-for-hire. Despite the fact that I have little to no interest in government or politics and even less so in zoning issues from 20 years ago in a state where I don't reside, Hiaasen's biting wit and outrage was enough to keep me going till the end. Some examples:

Janitors at Dade's criminal courthouse have a special 'Voodoo Squad' to clean up messy animal sacrifices dumped by friends and families of defendants...We shall also proffer that most people view Miami's blood customs as primitive, cruel, and unquaint. While many locals are equally disturbed by the occult killing of animals, no less an authority than the US Supreme Court has sanctioned these ceremonies as rituals.

Bailing out a country club is a code-one emergency, but why? Are stranded foursomes wandering the turnpike median?

According to credit receipts, on eight different days the commissioner made multiple pit stops at that same service station...he spends so much time there Amoco ought to bronze one of the high-octane hoses and dedicate it in his honor.

Meanwhile the mystery of the vanishing palms lingers. Maybe they got treejacked on the Rickenbacker Causeway. Or maybe they were abducted by coconut-craving aliens....the public can help. If a suspicious-looking forest suddenly appears in your neighborhood, call Crime Stoppers.

Things tend to run pretty smoothly after you assassinate those that who disagree with you.

A couple years ago, a work-in-progress by Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez was stolen from his car, along with a handgun. Many of us expected the burglar to turn up dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after foolishly attempting to read the mayor's manuscript.

The election boiled down to Gersten's word against that of a crack-smoking hooker. Not surprisingly, voters believed the hooker.

In a place like Miami'where for years the government has been run by thieves'the most savvy and knowledgeable voters might very well be those with a rap sheet.Who better to assess, for example, the unlikely candidacy of Humberto Hernandez, indicted on 23 counts of bank fraud and money laundering? In most law-abiding American cities, Hernandez wouldn't have had the nerve to run for re-election'or, at the very least, he would have been jeered out of the race. In Miami, naturally, he won by a landslide.