Homeless people are smart, much smarter than we give them credit for, and they are getting smarter through natural selection.

How do I know this? Because Downtown Orlando has a homeless problem. Also, St. Petersburg has a homeless problem. Oh, and Miami has a homeless problem. And, lest we forget, so do Daytona, Cocoa, Jacksonville, and pretty much any other downtown area in the Sunshine State.

This means that bums are smarter than the majority of people I meet in my day to day life.

I’m writing this post while looking out a window at the Pittsburgh skyline; the skies are blue, the sun is out, nary a cloud in the sky. This is blatant false advertising.

When you step outside, any exposed skin starts to burn from the frigid temperatures. After walking for ten minutes, you begin to shiver. If the wind picks up, you’ll begin to expect frost giants. And yet, people choose to live here.

I grew up here, but I was smart and moved somewhere that is generally beautiful all year round, or at least somewhere where the local hospital doesn’t have a pick-up-the dead-bumsmobile to round up all the corpsicles of transients every morning.

In Florida, I hear people complain about the weather a lot. This is irrational – the heat won’t kill you, unless you don’t drink enough water, and you can actually go outside and do things, which sums up the entire economy of Florida. Theme parks, beaches, resorts, golf, casinos, water parks, festivals, sex tourism, Florida has it all. And yet, for many this is not enough, because they hate sunshine and probably by extension unicorns and puppies. They wish for “sweater weather”, or “miss snow”, or want the climate to be one “where you can cuddle in front of a fire”.

They want to live in weather that is physically painful, visually ugly, that causes a ridiculous amount of traffic fatalities, and generally just makes for lousy moods.

You can cuddle in front of a fire in Florida. It gets chilly in the winter; not chilly enough to snow, but chilly enough for sweaters, and hot chocolate, especially if you’ve lived there long enough and are accustomed to the temperatures. The best part? It doesn’t last very long, so you get your yearly dose of cold to get you into the Christmas spirit, and then afterwards you can go surfing again, or golfing, or fishing, or hunting for alligators, or drinking beer on a porch while yelling at kids to get off your lawn, or whatever it is you like to do. No more sitting inside, dreading the next time you have to go out, start the car, and scrape ice off your windshield for fifteen minutes before you can go to work.

My biggest pet peeve is the oft-repeated phrase, “well, you can always put on more clothes when it’s cold, but if you take too many clothes off it’s illegal.” What?! Can you stay outside all night, sleeping in a snowstorm, and survive just because you’ve put more layers on? Not even that dude with all the t-shirts from that viral video could survive. All extra clothes do is trap in your body heat, which will still dissipate, only slower

On the other hand, taking off clothes is a lot more fun than putting more on. Legally, women can (and do, thank God) go outside in just a bikini, and guys can get away with wearing only a pair of shorts. If you want to take more off, there are places in Florida where you can do that, like my pool, for example. If you are a gorgeous lady, Florida law dictates that you must be naked in my pool. Don’t argue with it, it’s the law. And also science.

If that’s not good enough for you, have a cold drink. Or several. With booze in them. And an umbrella. It’s been proven to lower your body temperature, improve your relaxation time, and chip away at your inhibitions, which helps if you’re a gorgeous lady coming over to swim in my pool.

Oh, and Jesus invented this awesome thing called air conditioning. You should look into it.

Human beings took an evolutionary step backwards by heading up north. We evolved in the hottest parts of Africa, near large bodies of water (we are the only ape that has webbed hands and can swim), with thick hair on the top of our heads to protect us from the sun. Things were happy, shelters were easily built, food was easy to come by, and you didn’t have to worry about freezing to death overnight. Then some dickhead decided to venture up north, and must have peed his loincloth with excitement when he saw big furry elephants. He then went back down south, and grunted and made cave paintings about how there were big furry elephants that could sustain an entire tribe for weeks.

Today, there are no more furry elephants, and yet we still live in these godforsaken climates.

Well, except for the homeless. There seems to be a mass exodus of the homeless to warmer climates. If you have nothing holding you down in an area, you can beg for change for a bus ticket and find yourself in Orlando, or Las Vegas, or Los Angeles, or San Antonio, or pretty much anywhere but a place that can kill you with a cold snap. Those that stay run the risk of frostbite, thereby eliminating their ranks.

Before you know it, we will have a race of super-homeless taking over our streets. Their common sense and intelligence is already above those who prefer ice and snow and putting on so many layers of clothing you start to look like a balloon. They won’t have to beg for money; we will have to beg for our survival at their hands. Shelters will become elegant fortresses, meant to keep the plebians out. They shall take over all that is warm, and we will be forced to trudge through the snow, facing grey skies and slippery roads, kidding ourselves that we’re in the ideal part of the country because at least we can cuddle in this weather.

So, basically, I hate cold weather.