Complex Numbers

Hav-a-Tampa

https://www.tampabay.com/visual-arts/top-things-to-do-in-tampa-bay-for-saturday-...

Now this... this is more my speed.

Full disclosure: I had ties to Tampa. My uncle lived there (died in the early noughties). He was kind of a big deal there, has buildings named after him and shit. Nice place. Never snows. Oh, sure, you get the occasional hurricane, but what place is completely safe?

Sadly, I haven't had a chance to go back since his death. I need to - there are a lot more breweries there, now, and plus there's this:

https://yborcityonline.com/

And this, across the bay:

https://thedali.org/

And of course, these:

https://foursquare.com/top-places/tampa/best-places-cigars

People are always asking me about Cuban cigars, since I make no secret of my hedonism and decadence. We still can't legally get them in the US - stupid embargo that long ago outlived its usefulness. But of course, Florida has a thriving Cuban population, so you get things like Ybor City, above, and one of Tampa's major beer factories is called Cigar City Brewing.

Don't tell my government, but I've had Cuban cigars anyway. I've visited Canada and the UK and purchased (and smoked - couldn't risk schlepping them back to the US) them there. And I'm here to tell you: Cuban cigars aren't all that.

Supposedly, when Kennedy initiated the embargo, he filled a giant humidor with Cuban cigars before anyone else knew the embargo was to take effect. The perks of leadership, I suppose. You know where that got him. I have no idea what happened to the cigars. Possibly, Johnson smoked them all. I like to think it was Nixon.

But since then, the major manufacturers and growers have gone to places like the Dominican Repulic, Guatemala, Nicaragua... and Florida. What we get from them is every bit as good, possibly even better, than what comes out of Cuba. Hell, there are excellent sticks coming out of India. The only things left of the Cuban cigar legacy are those smokes, and for people in the US, a cachet of lawlessness that surrounds the very idea.

I'm not a fan of Florida in general. I mean, look at the place on the map - what is it, but the Wang of America? (Yes, I got Turkey DrumStik , who wisely moved out of the state, to start calling it that.) And the Keys are... well, let's just say the place could use a few antibiotics. Disney World is like a giant chancre sore in this metaphor, as are The Villages, a sprawling retirement community about an hour north of Orlando where golf carts have the right-of-way and the houses all look like they only need one good Cat I hurricane to end up in the Gulf. So, there's no danger of me joining the herds of other retirees living there.

Doesn't mean I don't want to visit again.

I'll end this with a joke. It's an old one, and I'll try to render it faithfully. I promise it's relevant on a couple of levels:

Guy dies and goes to Hell. One of the demons notices that, despite the high temperatures, he's smiling all the time, so he reports to his Dark Lord. Satan goes up to the guy and goes, "You know you're in Hell, right? It's as hot as... well, it's hot here. Why are you smiling?"

"Well," says the guy, "This is just like back on the farm in August. I'm used to it."

So Satan puts him, alone, in an even hotter place. But a week later, he's still smiling and laughing.

"This is Hell," Satan reminds the guy. "You're supposed to be tortured here. What's with the smiling?"

"This is just like being in the silos back home," says the guy.

So Satan leaves and turns to the demon in charge of solitary confinement: "Okay, turn the heat all the way down."

So a week later, it's sleeting and icing up in there, and Satan looks in to see the guy laughing and dancing a jig, occasionally throwing his arms up in victory. "Dammit," he says. "What does it take? And don't tell me this reminds you of your farm."

"Look around you," the guy explains, smiling and gesturing expansively at all the ice and snow. "The Bucs have won the Super Bowl!"