Fun:California

We have seasons. We just skip the ones that suck. California is a garden of Eden, It's a paradise to live in or see. But believe it or not, You won't find it so hot, If you ain't got the do-re-mi. The People's Republic of Comradefornia consists of three states on the LEFT  Coast of the United States: Southern California, Northern California, and Los Angeles (which incorporates the fictional location of "Hollywood"). The Northern and Southern California border is delineated by the Manson-Nixon Line.

Whereas Florida is the wang of the United States, California represents the ass of the continent. But it's America's ass!

Since a portion of its territory is on the "wrong" side of the San Andreas Fault and lies on the Pacific plate, California isn't very American.

Most of California was settled by Hispanic peoples long before the fabled East Coast settlements of Plymouth and Jamestown.

It had legalized gay marriage for a few months in 2008 until the infamous Proposition 8 struck this down; however, Jerry Brown, of "California Über Alles" fame, is right on the job, and he figures that any gay couples who did get married during that time are still married.

In August 2010, Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, but the decision was stayed pending appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where it was struck down again, then stayed again pending appeal to the Supreme Court. The justices in their wisdom ruled that the backers of Prop 8 did not have legal standing, and on June 28, 2013 same-sex marriages resumed, and it's been ffabulouss.

It is the most populous state in the U.S., having a population greater than that of Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii combined (about 39,368,078 vs. about 39,337,487), but it only gets two Senators compared to the 24 that those other states get.

California in popular culture

 * Pretty much most all popular culture comes from California.
 * Urrrr DEVON! uuuurrrrrr WHAT rrrrrr you doin' hear?

Other principal exports

 * Wine and lots of it!
 * Fruits and nuts
 * Surfing!
 * Erhard Seminars Training
 * Hot Tubs
 * Like fer shur, totally!
 * U.S. out of Humboldt County!
 * Hollywood values
 * California, itself, is going to export itself into the Pacific Ocean, if Edgar Cayce's earth changes are to be believed.
 * "Hella"
 * Quackery
 * "Gnarly"
 * Duuuuude!
 * Valley girl stereotypes

Indigenous creatures

 * Moonbeam. (His father was governor as well.)
 * Der Governator. (Technically imported from Austria, now former Governator.)
 * Water Nope.
 * Drought
 * Ronald Reagan. (Technically imported from Illinois. Turned President and allegedly reached sainthood.)
 * Richard Nixon. (Not imported, to California's everlasting shame.)
 * Drought
 * Barbara Streisand's famous shorefront home
 * Big burly lumberjacks, in the far northern third of the state, among the redwoods.
 * Lots of guys in San Francisco who wish they could meet some of those lumberjacks.
 * Drought
 * Silly-Cone Valley
 * Techies
 * Nerds
 * Berserkeley
 * Drought
 * Holly weird wood land
 * Drought
 * If you have to ask how much it costs to buy a home in San Diego or Marin County, or even the Bay Area in general, you probably can't afford it… (Whatever. It's not like everyone in SoCal can afford to buy any home.)
 * One of Stephen Curry's houses
 * Even more drought
 * Tons of drought
 * Areas where no hablo Inglés is common
 * Super cool and totally legit religions such as Jim Jones' People's Temple, Heaven's Gate, the UFO-centric Unarius Academy of Science, and Beth Sarim; the winter home of Jehovah's Witness president "Judge" Joseph Rutherford and presumed home of the resurrected 12 original disciples.
 * University of California system, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Stanford University
 * Transhumanists. They're everywhere in the Bay Area.
 * A lot of drought.
 * Disneyland
 * In-N-Out Burger.
 * Men who wear handlebar mustaches in the 21st century.
 * Great Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, and Mexican restaurants.
 * Green Day
 * Real estate speculators
 * PG&E
 * Big Freaking Tall Trees
 * The whose range is limited to the tiny Santa Cruz island off California.
 * The ... wherever they are anyway. The disappearance of this isn't good news at all...
 * ... one of most commonly spoken foreign language in California, after Spanish!

Weather
California's once mighty middle class has been decimated or sent packing and the state is now populated by a feudal elite lording over the poor, its very landscape cursed and forsaken by the gods, who smite it with fire, earthquake and drought, not to mention more mysterious afflictions. The four California seasons are Drought, Fire, Quake, and Flood. These represent the classic elements Air, Fire, Earth, and Water respectively, proving all the New Age healers in California right.

Drought (Summer)
It never almost never rains in southern California. It's really not that bad though the state hasn't had a real winter in years. This causes confusion among people who are not from California and a lot of trash talk about how their state is better because it has "real seasons". To a Californian, though, it just sounds like something akin to penis envy. In recent years it hasn't rained in like, at all. Which would be totally awesome if it were not for like crops and stuff that wither and die if they don't get their like, H2O, I mean water, you know?

The water wars in California's central and southern valley are making headlines. It's mostly farming interests who want to suck dry California's groundwater—with long-term damages that will affect the surrounding regions for thousands of years—for their own profit while claiming the feds are overstepping their boundaries by preventing that from happening. Along Highway 99 between Modesto and Bakersfield you can see what non-farmers like to refer to as "water whining" signs claiming that Congress has somehow caused California's drought, and asking "Is growing food wasting water?" (I didn't know you could eat cotton, which is grown heavily in some of these regions). Most farmers are converting anything they can to Almonds due to global demand. Almonds are so profitable these days that even housing developers are planting them rather than building houses. It's a gold rush.

Given the circumstances, it looks like changes to agriculture will be slow and painful, so they're focusing on residential water use which people can actually change. Agriculture is a golden goose. They can't kill it. Golf courses, water parks, lawns, fountains, are easier targets. It's pissing in the wind, but that's the reality: residential users will actually conserve if you ask them to. Ask farmers to use less and they cry like babies and refuse to change. Restrict their access to surface water and they just pump more from underground, causing the valley floor to further subside.

Fire (Fall)
Hot, dry summers create tinderbox conditions in woodland areas where, despite dire official warnings every Fall, someone invariably drops a cigarette or a match, touching off a "wildfire season" that lasts roughly from late August through October. Powerful hot "Santa Ana winds" blow in from the East and create unusually hot days during fall whose temperatures exceed some warm days in July. No, these winds aren't hot from the desert, but from being compressed by the mountains' geography. During these windstorms, sustained wind speeds of more than 60 mph (96 km/h) are common in the mountain passes. When this happens, any spark can quickly grow into a massive, seemingly unstoppable wildfire. TV news promptly goes into DRAMA mode: intrepid reporters in station-monogrammed fleece jackets file breathless LIVE reports from "the fire ground" while helicopter aerial shots reveal huge walls of flame approaching suburban communities as homeowners desperately water their roofs with pitifully dribbling garden hoses. Thanks a lot, PG&E.

People in Southern California don't really experience the colorful dump of leaves trees go through that people love about fall in the other areas, so they generally know it's fall because it sometimes rains and it's kind of chilly enough in the morning that they need a thin jacket.

Quake (Winter)
Ignoring statistics and geology, many natives swear that periods of cooler temperatures typically found between November and March bring on "earthquake weather". During this period, stores often promote quake safety items such as straps made of nylon web that anchor tall bookcases and other furniture to walls and "childproof" kitchen cabinet latches that prevent dishware from being hurled to the floor. Also popular are backpacks stocked with first aid kits, flashlights, water, and freeze dried food. See also earthquake prediction and survivalism. In the Bay Area and Los Angeles, forget about "White Christmas"; rain (snow in the higher elevations and latitudes) is usually supposed to start happening at late October, but there are some years where there's barely rain at all, with even smack in the middle of December seeing a day or two of showers and the rest of the month being bright, sunny, but cool (still warm enough to wear a T-shirt outside in some days).

Flood (Spring)
It's not actually Spring, but more like January when flooding generally occurs, usually as a result of excessive rainfall due to subtropical storms, excessive snow melt, excessive runoff, or levee failure. In addition to homes and roads suddenly underwater, there are massive landslides to contend with. In LA, several people either drown or are rescued from the Los Angeles River after straying too close to its concrete-lined channels.

We make fun of our drought all the time, but scientists have been predicting that a mega flood in the future will be more likely and devastating than that giant forecasted quaked deemed as "The Big One". And unlike The Big One, there's that climate change thing that'll only make it worse!

Customs (The Grapes of Wrath)
California is the only lower 48 U.S. state that stops you at the state line to ask whether you have any produce. (Hawaii does the same.) They have enough fruits and nuts already and don't want any more. This practice started during the Great Depression, when going through California customs was to keep out Okies and Arkies fleeing the dust bowl, but the ACLU sued and California wound up with a bunch of Okies and Arkies anyway. They had to settle on keeping fruits and nuts out of the state, but they wound up with a bunch of fruits and nuts anyway.

Pedestrians
When people say nobody walks in California, they usually mean Los Angeles, which is a special case when it comes to pedestrian traffic (and a lot of other things). It's rare to see a skater, jogger, or a bicyclist on the street in LA since everybody knows that public parks and beaches are the only place you should do such things (and always when dressed in fashionable lycra "activewear" bearing a Nike or Reebok logo). Even more rare is seeing a pedestrian outside of a crosswalk since it's common practice for police to stop and question anyone seen walking more than two blocks, especially in an upscale neighborhood. (The exceptions are Compton, LAX, and the areas around them, surprisingly.) That being said, Northern California (which in many regards is so different, it could be its own state) does actually contain insane people who walk more than two blocks and are neither too poor for a car nor out to steal one. Crazy, isn't it?

Common misconceptions

 * California consists entirely of beaches.
 * Earthquakes, on average, are much more terrifying and destructive than tornadoes, hurricanes, or any other sort of giant swirly formation of air and clouds.
 * All Californians (not just San Franciscans) are liberal socialist Democrat bleeding-heart dope-smoking homosexuals with AIDS. Have you ever been to the Central Valley? (Especially the southern half.) Or LA / Orange County for that matter?
 * All of California is Los Angeles and the Bay Area. (Or alternatively, all of California is like Hollywood.)
 * It never rains in Southern California. (The next line in the song is actually "But it pours. Man, it pours!")
 * The only way around is by car. (The most patronized Amtrak routes outside of the Northeast Corridor are in CA, and LA to San Francisco is the busiest air route in the country. Not to mention the growing ridership of BART and other similar systems throughout the state.)
 * Every person in California has nicely tanned skin and rides surfboards.
 * There are no Republicans in California. Wait actually it's true! They assume this despite Reagan once being their governor and the election of the Governator. They also assume the Republicans are somehow less crazy but they're just as awful as Republicans in the South.
 * It's impossible to afford a house in California. (Wrong, it is only mostly impossible. We recommend you dive headfirst into unfathomable depths of debt to pay the property taxes for your $1,300,500 modest suburban 1-floor house. Do note even areas infamous for crime such as Compton and East Los Angeles score an F on affordable housing).
 * Nobody has any gerns or freedom (movie armorers have all the gerns)

SoCal
Like, what in the hell is a subway? Like an underground car? Wait--are you talking about the restaurant?

NorCal
Up here in the SF Bay Area we have the loudest, and filthiest subway in the whole country, and quite possibly the world the Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART for short. Many of us wish it had been called the Fremont Area Rapid Transit District, but it's too late now to change the name. The first thing you'll notice when riding BART is the extreme noise that the incoming train produces. One could be forgiven if they believed there was a tornado inside the station. Also, unlike N.Y., people are allowed to set up stands and shops inside the stations. With the Downtown Berkeley station having a few small coffee shops inside it. Also of note are the many stands run by Jehovah's Witnesses, especially on Fruitvale Station, who take pride in distributing magazines like Awake! to the heathen masses. If they try to bother you, just say you're Shinto and they'll leave you alone: this is Oakland after all.

Sacramento has a robust light rail system that serves the city well, though it's entirely above-ground. It efficiently funnels commuters to and from work, substantially reducing traffic during rush hour. The clientele can become rather sketchy outside of commute hours though.

Religion
California, being less religious than the rest of the U.S., is a heathen state. They will go to hell because the devil's afraid of what a bad influence  all the Hollywood execs would be on the murderers ! Its Bay Area is a fiery pit of atheism and homosexuality! (As long as you ignore all the churches and synagogues etc. of course.)