We're Not Number One!

     Long before anyone ever heard of butterfly ballots, Floridians were used to living in a punchline. The warm, moist wang of America has always seemed to invite an eccentric brand of trouble and whenever we hear a weird headline - plagues of snakes, gorilla skulls for sale, "Pregnant cougar turns herself in after escape" (wasn't me) we wince and wonder if it's us. It usually is. We don't have our own category on Fark.com for nothing.
     So it's a banner day to come across a news story in which, in some way, we aren't the class fuck-up. 
     Cue the Las Vegas Sun's "One Nation, Seven Sins" by Abigail Goldman in which geographers from Kansas State University mapped which parts of the country were the most and the least afflicted with anger, lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed and envy (yes, we imagine they did get paid). Wrath is calculated by the number of violent crimes reported to the FBI per capita while envy by the number of thefts; gluttony by the number of fast food joints per capita, that sort of thing. "This is a precision party trick — rigorous mapping of ridiculous data," writes Goodman.
     And while her story focuses primarly on Nevada, it links to a national picture of "hot spots" with the sinniest of us all highlighted in angry, envious, lustful red. Shockingly it's not always us. Florida actually comes up smelling like a rose in three categories: lust, gluttony and sloth. 
     Lust (left, as played by Raquel Welch in "Bedazzled" 1967) was calculated by a places STD rate; sloth by comparing rates of employment with expenditures on entertainment. The worst offenders on the lust map were the Southern states - with the exception of a dirty Panhandle, Florida comes off clean as a whistle. There's very little sloth in America in general - none in Florida. None. As far as gluttony there are a few nationwide blemishes in parts of Texas, North Carolina and Virginia, but most of the country, Florida included, appears to be fat free. 
         If you asked me to describe Florida in two words "virtuous" and "industrious" probably wouldn't have made the list (I'm not surprised that we escaped the gluttony circle of Hell, though; in a hot climate in which you wear as little as the public can stand you in, you are, if not fit, at least conscious of trying to be). I'm proud of us for being hard working but prouder still that we are sexually responsible enough NOT to be one of the angry, red, itchy, sore looking blotches on the Lust map. Way to go Florida! We're not number one!!! Let's try to stay that way.
          You will be kind enough not to notice that on the maps of wrath, pride, envy we're as red as a baboon's ass. We're also pretty damned, greedy, (except for in the lustful Panhandle).
          But let's not dwell on the negative right now. It won't be long before we see ourselves in headlines underscoring all those things, not to mention a few hundred pounds of missing ammonium nitrate, human skulls in people's luggage and who knows what else. Sigh. Home. Sweet, crazy-ass home.