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Price gouging? Gas shortages? Power company trucks everywhere? The president is coming to look important for six minutes until he realizes there is no power here and it's hot and smelly? It must be that magical moment that all Floridians love: post-hurricane recovery time! Florida has been Mother Nature's bitch as of recently (New Orleans was just a one night stand), so I have decided to explain to you why this has happened, and what we can do about it.

First off, my hurricane credentials are top floor. I have personally survived about 15 hurricanes over the years. I live in Sunrise, Florida, which is approximately 25 miles north of Miami, about 10 miles east of Ft. Lauderdale. It used to be swampland and part of the world famous Everglades, a magnificent ecosystem unlike any in the world where alligators live side by side with black panthers, peacocks and snakes only found in this part of the world. By next month it will be paved over to become a Wal-Mart Supercenter/Starbucks/Moe's/Native American Gambling Casino and Resort (progress is inevitable). We get a hurricane just about once every two years, and a major one every five years. My backyard has been bent over by such major storms as Andrew, Georges, Michelle, Katrina (before it hit LA/MS it was a category. 1 and plowed over south Florida), and most recently, Wilma.

Let's put it this way: I know hurricanes like a sorority girl knows the "reverse cowgirl" position.

To understand why hurricanes hit Florida so much, you must go way back in time to when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Around 150 million years ago (this writer's memory of the tour at the Florida Museum of Natural History back in 1st grade is very off so let's not fact check ok?… it's probably the beer) the entire state was underwater. Unfortunately, the state decided to rise from the ocean right in the middle of what would become the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, where it would spend the next forever or so getting ravished by all sorts of tropical weather. The reason why Florida chose to rise here and not next to… let's just say… Bermuda, where the only major problem is alcohol shortages, is unknown. But geologists and paleontologists have found evidence to lead them to believe the state decided to vote on it. Some voted for where it is today, some voted for Bermuda, and others voted for Pat Buchanan. The state also decided to only half rise out of the ocean, which accounts for the total flatness and why Florida's highest point is a Garbage Dump (which has it's own theme park by the way… and don't let Google fool you into thinking it's "Britton Hill." I learned that in 4th grade!). Worst of all, Florida had come out of the ocean in the shape of a phallic symbol. It's one thing if your state is low in the education, but it's another thing if your state looks like it is taking a leak on Cuba.

So what can we do about this hurricane problem? I have a suggestion, and I think it is a win-win situation. Sell Florida back to Spain. Granted, if I were Spain I wouldn't want Florida back, but economically I think that Spain would at least have to consider it.

In 1821 Spain practically gave Florida away to the U.S. It probably had to do with the absence of The Fountain of Youth or maybe because it was pointless to be there until Disney showed up in the 1950's. Now with 12 million people and Disney and a bunch of casinos, Spain could make a lot of money here. Plus, the citizens in Miami wouldn't even know the difference. And how does this help the U.S.? Simple: The hurricanes are now Spain's problem.

You see when a hurricane hits Florida, it's more than what you see on CNN when Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper complain about FEMA or on the Weather Channel with Jim Cantore looking all worn-out by the weather but he is a Weather Channel employee and goddammit he is going to report the weather from some hurricane ravaged beachfront hotel. It's far more than that. There is no power, you can't drink the water because it is contaminated, lines for gas are hours long, ice becomes the most important thing around, and the biggest thing of all: No air conditioning. No air conditioning may seem like "no big deal" to all you Northerners, but a/c to a Floridian is like 7-11 is to a pothead. Floridians just can't exist without cold air. And if our cold air is taken away, people start going crazy. Very crazy. My house in Sunrise was backhanded by Wilma, and has been without power since the day Wilma hit, and since then my mother, a very mild mannered third grade school teacher, flipped off several power company officials at a stop light, which is now a 4-way stop. However, nobody apparently understands that. But the reason for that is simple, south Floridians do not drive according to rules of the road under normal circumstances.

But on a national stage, hurricanes like this are big, too. After a hurricane rips through an area, celebrities, and even the President come to help the situation. Insurance companies have to dish out huge sums of money, power companies from around the country come to help offering manpower and equipment, the Red Cross comes in and aides people hurt by the storm and offers food and water to those who have lost everything, and even Kanye West will get involved.

After Wilma, President Bush decided to take time out of his busy schedule of posing in front of cameras while fixing things at his ranch and ignoring foreign policy entirely to come down to south Florida to survey the situation and assure everyone that everyone is doing a great job and that everyone is going to make it because everyone here is an American and everyone who is an American is… blah blah blah… you know the rest. Then he realized that a.) It was hot b.) It smelled down there and c.) He had to get back to doing a whole lot of nothing on his much earned vacation for the next few weeks at his ranch. He then hopped in his limo and headed back to the airport. However, his ride back to the airport was halted when he threw a hissy fit because they couldn't get a chocolate frosty from Wendy's because all of the Wendy's franchises in the area have been relocated to the Atlantic Ocean.

What with global warming, El Niño, and the reprise of European techno music in America, more hurricanes are coming. This is 100% imminent. In order to avoid this problem that costs the country billions of dollars and most certainly will happen again, let's just sell Florida back to Spain. Let them deal with it. We can't afford to keep rebuilding the State of Florida every time Mother Nature wants to kick Florida in the balls.

So I say let Spain do it.