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Since 2002. Anonymous Letters to the Editor with pictures. Published Monday through Friday by Noon.
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 [“Conch vs Local”] A conch was born in Key West. Lately the TDC has tried to sell the idea that anyone born in the Keys is a conch, but that’s revisionist history and don’t buy it. That’s like saying you’re an American if you were born in France to American parents. If someone tells you a conch means they were born in the Keys you know they haven’t lived here long or have never lived in Key West. Even those born on Stock Island don’t call themselves conchs. (A local has a local driver’s license.) |
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| [Thanksgiving Music] I was disappointed with our local Radio Shack playing Christmas music outside and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. What kind of Thanksgiving spirit is that? Money over thankfulness? |
 Here’s a version of John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Boom I’ve never seen. I think it’s from the early 1950s before he had a hat. Check out his crazy guitar demonstration at the bridge. |
| This is the season for all northerners visiting here to want to move here forever. In the past few weeks I have heard some things about moving here that are really funny to us locals. 1. I found six empty lots right on the water, I could build six duplexes and really make a lot of money fast. 2. I would like to buy Sugarloaf Lodge and build a 10 story hotel. I should be able to buy it for about $100,000, it’s so rundown. 3. There is 10 acres for sale on Ramrod, I could put in a 50 unit mobile home park. 4. There seems to be many empty islands here that I could develop into resorts. 5. I bet a lot of people would move here if we built a few more shopping centers. Doesn’t anyone realize the potential of 2 or 3 Walmarts here? 6. I would like to move here if I can rent for about $300 month in one of these old houses? 7. I plan on bringing 2 semis full of all my favorite antiques. Where can I rent cheap that can fit my stuff. One thing all these people have in common is that they have never seen the Monroe County permitting process. All of us locals make a shopping list and support our local businesses and come to the flea market Saturday and Sunday mornings. Getting gas, grocery shopping and getting prescriptions filled is a challenge. |
 Used vegetable oil pick up. After you fry your turkey this Thanksgiving call me and I will pick up your used oil for free. Call Phil at 305-587-3802. |
| [Best deal locally] Best prices for appliances is at Paul’s Appliance on Big Pine. He will match any advertised price on the internet or print in the country for any of the many brands that he represents. He is my go to guy for anything appliance. |
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| What does one trillion dollars look like stacked in $100 bills? Link |
 [“Internet provider“] My U-verse is very dependable, although very expensive. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ads, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 What is the difference between a Conch and a Local, and which one has the higher status? “Status” where did you move here from? It isn’t about status this isn’t Boca. A conch is someone born in the Keys. There’s another term, “saltwater conch” which was invented to delineate between them and “freshwater conchs” which are people who moved here from some where else decades ago. Of course then there are those who were lucky enough to be dubbed an honorary conch by Wilhelmina Harvey back in the day. She was a hoot. Who has a signed proclamation? I don’t.A local is someone who lives here full-time. Someone who puts up with and bitches about the bullshit 24/7, but won’t leave the place because we love it so much. A local is not a winter resident, they are either property owners or renters. Those folks are our friends and neighbors who we get to enjoy during the best weather of the year, who also entrust locals to watch over there stuff when we say good-bye to them during hurricane season. So here you go: Conch: born here. Local: crazy person here 24/7, 365, won’t leave. Everyone else = friends and neighbors we all love. It’s not about status, the difference is in mindset! |
| Sunscreen may be tied to male fertility problems (men, keep it of your thingy). Link |
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| Fantasy Fest is our Rio Festival, our New Orleans Mardi Gras and many other world wide party time happening’s, so why do you sissies and holy rollers who can’t get any always messing with the real people on this planet? Go move to some Dog forsaken hole in the ground and screw up the natives there, but leave the freakin’ Keys alone! |
 The Dvorak Keyboard is a much better keyboard than the foolish QWERTY board. It’s much easier to learn. Link |
| US Debt Clock. $17.9 trillion and rising. Link |
 Fried Chicken Person: I love the KFC fried chicken the best. Ambiance is non existence, but, boy, you can’t beat that crunchy skin and moist meat! I’m making myself hungry just typing it. |
| Fiat 500X teaser – blue pill. Video |
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| [“Difference between conch and a local”] A Conch can blame his IQ on his birth. A Local blames others. |
 If the round house is starting to look like a brazier [brassiere] I’m going to fall in love with whoever could fill that brazier [brassiere]. I don’t care what the cost. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ads, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 [Drug Test] The city of Key West will shell out $150,000 to a woman who lost out on a job because she refused to take a drug test as part of the application process. Karen Cabanas Voss, a lawyer who recently ran the Ghost Tours in Key West, sued in federal court over the city passing her over for the solid waste coordinator position because she balked at the required drug test. While drug testing in the private sector has become routine, such blanket preemployment screening in a public sector workplace is unconstitutional, U.S. District Court Judge James Lawrence King ruled in May. |
| [Drone Hits Man in KW] How big a moron do you have to be to fly a drone over a crowd of people? Link |
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| A local is someone you recognize from seeing them around. |
 [Kaiser Wilhelm helmet] The spikes on the World War I German helmets distinguished the different regions of Germany. They were designed by King Fredrick William of Prussia in 1842 and were totally useless in combat. |
| [“Skunk well water”] We tried expensive filters and everything else, but couldn’t get rid of the smell until a friend told us to use a cheap fish tank pump connected to a cheap air stone. The smell was gone the next day! |
| “Honest divorce lawyer” Isn’t that an oxymoron? |
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| Buying online can be great, especially when you use the local merchants that support your community as a try-on room. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ads, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 I was visiting my Mother this past week in Big Pine Key and decided to go to the Flea Market Saturday Morning. I found a lot of nice items. I was particularly impressed with Hareen’s Suncare & Hats. The selection of beach accessories and hats were unbelievable and the prices were great. The quality of merchandise was fantastic and I cannot wait to go back and buy more after the holidays. If you haven’t checked out her store at the market you are missing fantastic items and prices. They are a lot better than what I pay in St Pete. |
| [“Barracuda die fast if you bring them into the boat”] Not the small ones I’ve caught to eat. They are all muscle, thrashing around on the deck until I club them to death. Their needle-like teeth are a real danger. |
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| [Stone Crab Cakes] Does Fanci Seafood have stone crab cakes this year? I had some last year and they were really full of crab meat. |
 [Bubonic Plague in the Keys] Rats, like the the Key Largo Wood Rat, are vectors for over 60 diseases, the most dreaded of which is bubonic plague (the black plague) which has killed millions of people. Mice, are vectors for salmonellosis, lyme disease, hantavirus, favus, tularemia, choriomeningitis, leptspirosis, rickettsialpox and tapeworms, just to mention a few. |
| [“Skunk well water”] Our well on Big Pine turns a bit skunky at the end of rainy season every year. We have a three filter system on it. Two particle filters and a charcoal filter, then it is run through a water softener that airs it out a bit. It takes care of the skunkyness. |
 How deep are the water wells drilled on Big Pine Key? |
| Is the term “mumbo jumbo” ever used without the word “legal” in front of it? |
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| It’s on the Internet. It must be true! |
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| Reception for The Sinking World Exhibition. Sunday, November 30. Come celebrate an exhibition of world-renowned artist Andreas Franke’s surreal montages, which seamlessly interpose real underwater shots of Florida’s Mohawk and Vandenberg shipwrecks with people enacting both elegant and everyday moments from bygone eras. This is the first time artwork from the Mohawk will be on display in the Florida Keys. The FREE event is open to the public as part of the ART! Key West!™ Festival’s Art & Culture Tour and will also feature Giants in the City inflatable art. Advance registration recommended. Exhibition will run until March 25, 2015 Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center, 35 East Quay Road, Key West. For more information Events |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ad, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 [“Barracuda die fast if you bring them into the boat”] That has not been my experience. They are pretty wild on the boat for at least 30 min – until you finally have to club them down. If not, they swim away pretty slow, but still going strong. Their brain is no bigger than a pencil eraser. |
| The best divorce lawyer is Sheri Smallwood in Key West. No wasted time, shoots straight from the hip and gets the job done. |
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| The entire Atlantic Ocean rose more than three feet the last time it rained heavily in the Keys. |
 Yesterday FTR tried to argue against a claim that the Keystone pipeline is no longer necessary and the only reason to build it was to create jobs. His argument was that a lot of people support it. But he never addressed the fact that they support it in order to create jobs and for no other reason that will benefit the American consumer. That was the gist of the post he was vainly trying to rebut–the pipeline is only to create jobs and benefit only big oil. |
| [“What do the residents do here”] We read the CT, drink and bitch about people moving here who think they can work from here. |
 [“Skunk Water Well”] That is an easy fix. I had the same problem for many years and one day mentioned it to a fish collector friend who told me this simple solution to my big problem. Go to the pet store and buy a cheap aquarium pump for about twelve dollars, several feet of clear plastic tubeing and a long air stone. Your well needs oxygen. Pumping air into the smelly water will remove the smell by the next day. Problem solved! |
| Try Comcast internet, it’s all I’ve ever used and it hauls ass; although we do have our fair share of short service outages. |
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| [“Is the WD-40 ad potty mouth or do I just have a dirty mind”] You do not have a dirty mind. You read the ad exactly as intended. WD40 did a great job of creating interest in it’s product. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ads, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 [Card Calendar] A complete deck of playing cards contains four suits, two primary colors, and thirteen values ranging from the Ace to the King. Usually, it contains two Jokers. Lurking within these colors, suits, and values is an astonishing, but entirely coincidental, relationship to our modern calendar. Some of the proposed “alignments” between cards and the calendar are:– Two colors representing night and day. – Four suits representing the four seasons. – Twelve court cards representing the 12 months. – Thirteen values representing the 13 lunar cycles in a year. – 52 cards representing 52 weeks in a year. Perhaps the most interesting coincidence is that if you add up all of the values in a deck, using the Aces as one, and the Jacks, Queens and Kings as eleven, twelve and thirteen respectively, you arrive at a total of 364. Adding the first Joker as another one gets you to 365 – the same number as there are days in a year – and adding the second Joker gets you to 366, so we even have leap years covered! |
| [Internet] I am very happy with ATT&T’s U-Verse internet connection. It is nearly instant. You can negotiate a good monthly rate, especially if you bundle your phone (cell or land-line), and cable TV. No matter what price you are quoted, ask if there are any specials they may have overlooked. If you say that you’ll shop around, ATT&T will always find a lower price “just for you”. U-Verse is not available in all areas of the Keys. |
 [Crappy gas”] I don’t know what was in that gas yesterday, but it was scary. No wonder his boat craps out. I’m not surprised he bought it at the BP /Shell station because everything there is crappy. I go there to use my Win Dixie Fuel Perks savings and have never been there when everything is working. One time recently I was getting gas from one of the working pumps and watched the airhead girls leaning against the propane bottles smoking cigarettes, thirty feet away from the gas pumps. |
| [“Marine gas”] I’m not sure what it looks like in a clear container. I really worry about the Shellopoly on BPK/Ramrod/Summerland. I’ve been boycotting them for what they’re doing to us on price gouging (we used to be cheaper than KW and Big Coppitt, but not any more). I didn’t think we’d be paying such a premium to get bad gas. I buy on the water at Venture Out and it’s usually 20-40 cents cheaper; and when I’m in Marathon I get it at the Valero station where it’s been up to 70 cents per gallon cheaper! |
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| [“Conch vs Local”] You can be a Conch without being a local. You can be a local without being a Conch. To be a local you need only have a local drivers license and declare your residency. Snow birds that do not get a local drivers license are not locals, no matter how many years that they have been coming down. You need to declare that over 50% of your year is spent here to qualify for a local drivers license. A Conch on the other hand is a Conch by accident of birth. Beside a Mayoral declaration giving honorary conch status, being born in Monroe County is the only way to make a Conch. A Conch can live anywhere, and still be a conch. There are Conchs all over the state. The original Conchs were mostly made up of Yankees. Many Loyalists who refused to be disloyal to the King went first to the Bahamas where they were heard to say that they would rather eat conch than be disloyal, hence the nick name. From there many emigrated to Key West. You can still hear the slight New York accent in some old Conch families’ conversations. |
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| KW Police Chief Donnie Lee, talking about Fantasy Fest, was quoted as saying “This is a community decision. We’ll follow the orders of the majority of the community.” Well the majority of Monroe county, 72%, voted to legalize medical marijuana, but he’ll gladly haul your ass off to jail if you’re caught with one joint. |
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| [“Skunk water from well“] Go to a pet store, get a simple aquarium air pump, hose, and air stone. Put the stone down the well and turn it on. What you’re smelling is sulphur dioxide, a gas in suspension. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ads, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
 [“Samantha Fish Band”] Thanks for the turn on Monday. She’s one of the few woman guitarist that can play lead. Most just play chords to accompany their singing. All girls who play guitar–sing. Not so with men. Men seem to focus on the instrument more, especially if they have a lousy voice. |
| To reply to the Internet provider question, I have UVerse thru AT&T and it is a very strong internet service and I have no complaints about the service. Always have a very strong signal and great service. |
| In case any readers freezing somewhere “up north” are wondering, as I write this: at 8:15 a.m., it’s about 75 F in Key Weird; 81 F expected high today, 71 F low tonight. About average when no cold front comes down. Coldest I ever saw down here at night was 43 F. With wind howling 25 knots, that’s really cold; kills fish in shallow water. |
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| Some new words have been added to the American lexicon thanks to the serial lies and insults of embattled ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber.
To “gruber” is to lie to someone because you think they’re too dumb to know any different. It is to insult your own base because they have proved so easy to deceive in the past. “Grubering” is the act of brainstorming for new ways to fool the voters. A “gruberism” is a lie told by a Democrat politician that is so brazen, so hackish, so unbelievable, it reveals a complete contempt on the part of the politician toward his supporters. |
| Contact Us. Click this link to post any opinion, ad, changes to an ad, complaint, kudos, or anything else. One link fits all. We read them all. Contact Us |
| Some very good statistics before the Ferguson verdict is announced. In the Obama Climate you would have to be nuts to be a policeman no matter your race especially a white man. He can be in trouble no matter what he does. For a white police officer will never be allowed to draw his gun to defend himself against a black man no matter what the black man is doing that he may deserve to be shot for. Thanks Eric Holder and Obama. You both are real race baiters! |
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| The more we learn about Jonathon Gruber and his involvement in the crafting and selling of Obama/Democare, the more infuriating it becomes.
Gruber is an uber liberal economist for hire whose day job is as a professor at MIT. Gruber has made millions, at least $5 million crafting, advising, and selling various economic schemes to a whole laundry list of government agencies. It is supremely ironic, that this man, an avowed progressive is now a 1%er, a wealthy person who the liberals are taught to revile. He is a thoroughly despicable person who has become a multimillionaire from feeding at the public trough. And by proudly deceiving the public and government watchdogs. His money is money that the government has taken from you. The PIÈCE DE RÉSISTANCE of his work is the ACA, aka Obamacare/Democare. It is particularly galling to hear Gruber’s condescending “take” on you. He considers you to be a dumb shit who is unable to make sound decisions, therefore, he and his leftist intellectual equals, the liberal elite, must pat you on the head and rule your life. To them, it’s for your own good. He is the penultimate progressive, a staunch ally of Obama and his team. It is even more galling to hear and see Obama and other Democrat leaders denying that Gruber was a major player in the crafting and selling of the ACA. The level of disrespect that these people have for the American public is bottomless. Obama and his people deny knowledge of Gruber even though the written, sound, and TV record is chock full of them referencing Gruber as being the be all end all of fiscal experts. It is nauseating.
Now Gruber’s arrogance, and his condescending lies, have resulted in mass amnesia erupting among top Democrats who previously applauded his counsel. For example: Remarkably, Nancy Pelosi avowed: “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.” “So, let’s put him aside.” C-SPAN quickly excavated videotape on which Pelosi sang a totally different tune: “I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis” of Obamacare, Pelosi said on November 5, 2009, as she publically serenaded his work. Plus Pelosi’s web site used a video starring Gruber as a sales tool in the push to pass Obamacare/Democare. Democrat mover and shaker Senator John (“I voted for the Iraq invasion before I voted against it” Kerry praised Gruber saying that “he has been our guide in a lot of this (The ACA). Kerry said that with a long, straight face. Naturally Obama had to get into the ring by telling whopper lies trying to trivialize Gruber. Obama said that Gruber “was not a staffer who worked on the bill.” In fact, Gruber visited the White House at least eight times to help construct this massive new entitlement. Gruber himself tells an entirely different story from Obama and his minions. He brags of a series of in depth meetings about constructing and selling the ACA with Obama going back to when Obama was a Senator. Gruber said on PBS’s Frontline on June 13, 2012, that he met with then-Senator Obama in 2006: Gruber said: “When people sort of knew he was thinking about it [running for president], but had not announced yet, I went down basically to do the tutorial for him on what we had done in Massachusetts [with RomneyCare] and how it would work and basically thinking about expanding it to the national stage. . . .” Gruber continued: “Next time I see him is summer 2009. The big issue there is that you really want to make sure to move forward on cost control. I think that at this point, he sort of knew we had a good plan on coverage, but he was worried about cost control. So he had a meeting in the Oval Office with several experts including myself on what can we do to get credible savings on cost control that the Congressional Budget Office would recognize and score as savings in this law.” And Deer Friends, there is much, much more, too much to post. But now, Obama demands that you believe that Gruber had little or nothing to do with the ACA. Obama is demanding that you believe him and ignore your own lying eyes and ears. As we enter into the second enrollment period for Obama/Democare, it is no surprise that public approval of the bill is at a barrel bottom 37%….., and falling. Does it trouble you that the vast majority of major media have nearly completely ignored this travesty? |
Gruber says that Obamacare was able to be enacted only because of “the stupidity of the American voter.” Gruber CREDITS, he actually praises, Team Obama for deliberately defrauding the Congressional Budget Office as Obamacare was concocted. He lauds the confused language of the bill: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber declared. He also said: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. . . If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”