brooksville's new clothes.

more visible than the emperor's, with luck.

the city of brooksville is enforcing a new dress code, becoming one of three city outfits to do so. i like the idea, but they've stipulated such near-unenforceables as:

• deodorant;
• underwear;
• "clothing considered offensive, distracting, or revealing"; or
  
• "skirts worn below the waistline such that the abdomen or waistline is exposed"

note: even with the previous rule, low riding pants would still be acceptable.

i don't have a problem with telling people what to wear to work. in fact, i'm one of the biggest proponents for professional dress that you'll meet for my age. but i'm also a big believer in having reasonable rules. and some of these are not going to be able to be effectively enforced. who's going sniffing around for someone not wearing deodorant? similarly, if someone's wearing too much of a fragrance, is that equally noncompliant?

another iffy one for me? a proposed rule in 1996 asked for skirt splits to be limited to an inch in order to negotiate a step.

and maybe the most offensive part of the article? in which they imply that these rules are set up so that men in the office are not enticed by women. city manager Richard Anderson, who I quite frankly never want to work for, said this: "Men have it hard enough just to do a day's work and not be enticed by a woman who is not dressed properly," Staib said at the time. "If you have to bend over for the bottom file . . . that would entice any man, unless he is not completely a man."

i'm all about dressing appropriately, but not to calm down your libido. just so i can do my job!

so my bottom line is this: don't come to work looking like you should be at the beach, the club, at a sporting event, or a party. beyond that, the specifics just shouldn't be necessary!


so hooray for workplace wardrobe wardens, and HOORAY FLORIDA!

i don't care how much i need to escape the police...

i am not lying facedown in a cow pasture.

but that's precisely what jeffrey moore and three of his friends were doing in a manatee county pasture when found by police.

moore was found to be in possession of a small slingshot, and a crossbow. he claims he and his friends were searching for psychedelic mushrooms.

i know what you're thinking: was the crossbow for a particularly large mushroom, or to fend off the dangers of the creatures they encountered on the drug trip? answer: neither. the crossbow and slingshot were to protect them from attacking cows.

in any case, the men were arrested and presumably their medieval weaponry was also confiscated.

hooray for medieval mushroom mauraders, and HOORAY FLORIDA!

what about "my mother, the car"?

the only instance in which i think a car would object to things.

oh, and herbie. let me not forget him.

however, a panama city motorist who blew a .228 spoke in defense of his towed vehicle after a traffic stop thursday, ardently assuring the officer that "the vehicle did not know what it was doing, and didn't deserve to be arrested."

this after he failed to make it to G in the alphabet during his field sobriety test. he started at F. and this is the BEST part of the story.

so hooray for abnormal alphabets and arrests, and HOORAY FLORIDA!

everyone's taking the plunge!

but not everyone's doing it the same way.

stacy lazdowski and her fiancee waited six months after their wedding to start their honeymoon, and they're not waiting anymore. even after waking up the morning of the trip to find they'd acquired a new car.

in their pool.

the night before, a teenage driver in their coral springs neighborhood swerved to avoid hitting a cat, and ended up in the pool by way of the bushes and a fence. the driver was the only one in the car, and he managed to leave the scene uninjured.

and undetected, for the lazdowskis didn't find out any of this until they woke up to see it.

so hooray for catsaving capers in coral springs, and HOORAY FLORIDA!