Letters to the editor with pictures since 2002. Published on Big Pine Key’s garbage days, Tuesdays and Fridays.
[Open For Business] Some of us need to work, we don’t get welfare or are millionaires. Everyone has a choice — stay home if you don’t want to participate. It’s that simple. |
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[Haunted Toilet] I thought I had a haunted toilet once. When I peed and flushed, all kinds of brown stuff would come out of it. That made no sense at all. Finally, one of my kids admitted that he took an “upper decker” in the tank as a bet. I made him clean it and since then, no more phantom crappers. |
| The quarantine has hit everybody really hard. My neighbor got a pre-declined credit card in the mail. CEO’s are now playing miniature golf. Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen. A stripper was killed when her audience showered her with rolls of pennies while she danced. I saw a Mormon with only one wife. If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them. McDonald’s is selling the 1/4 ouncer. Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America. Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names. A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico. A picture is now only worth 200 words. |
[“No Name Post Office”] Those remains are from the ferry keeper’s house. All that is left is some of the cistern that was below it. |
| [Lousy letter writer corrected] Your ill-conceived anti-automatic weapon post contains a glaring argumentative fallacy: reductio ad absurdum –or proof by contradiction. In your post you write that if we lived in a civilized society we wouldn’t need guns. Then you state that we definitely do not live in a civilized society. And conclude that we don’t need guns. You actually disprove your point in your own argument. The logical conclusion is that: since a civilized society doesn’t need guns, but we live in a very non civilized society, we do need guns. I realize you were sort of wishing out-loud for a perfect world, but we don’t live in one and won’t anytime soon. |
[“WD-40 instead of gun oil”] WD-40 could screw up the stock and the bluing. If it is too much trouble to take care of your weapons, that suggests you are not a responsible person and should sell all! A badly serviced weapon is deadly. Video |
| Has anyone else had problems with ATT.net email? |
 [Fake News] In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, social media companies are under enormous pressure to combat internet disinformation – but at the same time the use of malicious tactics by governments around the world is growing, according to the Oxford Internet Institute. The number of countries with political disinformation campaigns nearly doubled to 70 in the last two years or so. Facebook remains the preferred platform for pushing propaganda; organized information operations were found on the social network in 56 countries. There is also a growing business of firms offering computational propaganda as a service. Much of the capacity building is coming from the private sector, where companies try to help politicians win elections by identifying existing partisan divisions, suppressing political participation and amplifying pre-existing ethnic, national or religious tensions. Perhaps most terrifying, it has been reported that disinformation tactics are spreading around the world as countries learn from one another. There are now seven foreign-influence operations replicating the tactics of Russia’s. |
| Fear is a great way to control people. |
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| [Opening the Keys] The merchants are going to open the Keys before this virus is gone. Follow the money and the greed. If a second wave of death gets going, I hope the President calls for Martial Law and ends the a**holes who push for sick profits without caring for peoples’ lives. You mean like the personal trainer who posted a rant on Facebook about how clean his Key West “spa” was and never closed? It’s all about “me” and his “staying afloat”. Even more amazing is his clients are foolish enough continue to show up. |
[Friday Joke] I went to the drugstore and asked for deodorant. The clerk asked me if I wanted the ball type. I said no, it’s for my underarms. |
| [Correct Link] This new report highlights hardworking, yet struggling, residents who have little or no savings and are especially vulnerable to the ramifications of COVID-19. Link (Ed: This is the correct link, the one Tuesday was not.) |
Billions and billions of full-color, high-resolution images and videos are uploaded to the Internet every day. If your best evidence for aliens visiting from another galaxy is monochromatic, low-resolution, fuzzy video taken by the US Navy, then there’s more work to be done here. |
| [Open the Keys] Please, County Commission, please don’t open the Keys before you can assure the local residents that they won’t be adversely affected by an influx of tourists. Perhaps you’re aware the local grocery stores can’t supply many items that are necessary for normal life, toilet paper, to name one, is an example. A lot of services are closed, businesses are failing. This is not the time to cave-in to the tourist industry. |
[Open For Business] The end of stay-at-home orders doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. It means they currently have room for you in the ICU |
| [Fake News] Do people invent and spread fake news because they think their political agenda is so important to the country that they are afraid if they speak the truth they’ll lose? That’s got to be wrong. |
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| [“Wheel hub overheating”] Pay no attention, it has no bearing on anything. |
Milli Small who sang My Boy Lollipop (sweeter than an apple pie) is dead at 73. Link |
| [Neighbors, Be Damned] That guy is nothing but a rich, belligerent a**hole. He bought that property knowing there was a restriction against political advertising, yet he did it anyway. He only did that, the a**hole, to anger his neighbors—to divide. To separate his community. He’s like those other a**holes who live in a beautiful neighborhood with modest rules, who paints his house purple with pink polka dots just to stand out and piss off his neighbors. To folks like these, community is just a word. |
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| [Fake News] Nobel laureate Tasuku Honjo refutes ‘false’ quote attributed to him about the novel coronavirus as fake news. Link |
[“High water bills”] I also had high water bills, which was finally resolved by Middle Keys Plumbing. They had all of the knowledge, machinery, & equipment, and replaced old PVC with PEX. It cost me $2000+ for about 5 hrs work, but was well worth it. |
| [Perspective] Having perspective is good, but using it is better. We probably all think that it’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria. Imagine you were born in 1900. Then on your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war… Link |
[Retirement] I’ve learned that the downside of retirement is that you can’t take a day off. |
| [“Stupid”] When you’re dead, you don’t know you’re dead. The pain is only felt by others. The same thing happens when you’re stupid. |
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| [Fake News] It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled. ~Mark Twain |
[Cabin Fever] Since we’ve been isolated for nearly two months, I sometimes question my sanity, but the voices tell me I’m OK. |
| The CDC says to use disinfectant on things you touch regularly. Don’t do it, it stings! |
Our farmers up here in the mountains have a great sense of humor. |
| The first step in overcoming stupidity is admitting you’re stupid, but that’s impossible or they wouldn’t be stupid. |
[Fake News] Why are the fake news people so anxious to start trouble with China? If you can think it–it’ll be on Facebook weather it’s right or wrong doesn’t matter as long as the haters can keep spreading hate. I wonder if any of them believe in God. |
| [Empathy] When you achieve power you lose empathy. Most of us know people who’ve suddenly gotten power and we say, “He got too big for his britches.” A new study found changes in part of the brain concerning empathy, and it went away (or something) when the subject was given power, or authority, etc. |
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