For visitors to this website not yet familiar with the Keys, they are insanity’s, er, sanity’s last stand in America, maybe in the world — maybe even in the Universe! You’ll have to come here, though, to understand that, but perhaps reading some of the musings on who knows what posted nearly daily to the “Today’s Flakey Drivel” menu file at the right, and to the “Today’s Cock-a-doodle-do” file of our brother webwsite goodmorningkeywest.com, will help get your feet a little wet.
When I started up this website last year (2007) with the indispensable help of the notorious “Capt. Conch” of bigpinekey.com, I perhaps didn’t realize why. Then, I met reason #1, Sandra Downs of Cudjoe Key. After hearing some of her yarns about Keys life I said she was welcome to use this website to tell her tales of the Keys and elsewhere. “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” in the memu to the right was her first submission, summarizing her love affair with and her distress over what is hapening to the Keys.
Subsequently, Sandy decided to run for Sheriffette of Monroe County, and as she knew not diddly squat about websites, I referred her to Capt. Conch for help with setting up a campaign website, and you could learn learn more about ”Hurricane Sandy” at sandyforsheriff.com. Well, sometimes. For as soon as Sandy’s website was up and running, bigpinekey.com was hacked and its hugely popular “Coconut Telegraph” file was destroyed. This sort of freaked Capt. Conch out, because his was the hardest kind of website to hack, and he had put in additional safeguards against hacking. Same day, sandyforsheriff.com was hacked, and the ”My Experiences With Injustice” file, her most uncomplimentary report on the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, was destroyed. (Currently, this file is back on sandyforsheriff.com, thanks to Capt. Conch.)
Capt. Conch wrote an email to Sandy, and later one to Bill Becker, News Cordinator of US 1 Radio (104.1 FM), located on Big Pine Key, at Bill’s request, saying he had confirmed with MicroSoft that bigpinekey.com was hacked, and not only that, it appeared Sandy’s website also was hacked, all due, apparently, to her running for Sheriff. This stirred up quite a flurry on US 1 Radio and the “Coconut Telegraph” blog file of bigpinekey.com, including allegations that Sandy had hacked both websites to draw attention to her own campaign.
The problem with that conspiracy theory is Sandy was and still is website illiterate, not knowing how to build one, much less hack someone else’s. A second problem is she then had and still has no ability to change anything at sandyforsheriff.com, as all of that control resides in Capt. Conch’s domain. Like he would hack his own website and kill his source of income? Like he would mess up Sandy’s brand new website, for which she’d just paid him, and get himself in dutch with state and federal law enforcement? Well, the Keys are a weird place, and while maybe I’ve seen weirder things happen, this one ranks right up there near the top of the weird barometer. Right up there near the top.
The design of sandyforsheiff.com does not permit a feature for posting ongoing events, such as the Today’s Fla-Key Drivel file on the right side of this homepage. So I’m providing Sandy additional space in various files in the menu to the right bearing some version of her name in the title. If you have any interest in law enforcement, detective work, juvenile and adult shenanigans, some pretty creative, some plain bone-headed, you might just find a new source of entertainment and intrigue in Sandy and her writings.
As for me, I’ll be sort of disappointed if the sorry, low down, no good, m-fing a-hole scum bag who hacked bigpinekey.com and sandyforsheriff.com doesn’t now hack this website and/or goodmorningkeywest.com. Sort of disappointed, because if the dirt bag doesn’t hack it, I won’t be able to go straight to the F.B.I. without passing Go, to report it and demand a federal investigation and prosecution. No way in heaven or hell, unless commanded to do so by GOD, would I go to the State Attorney Mark Kohl or retiring Monroe County Sheriff Rick Roth’s Office about that. Might as well as ask barracuda to guard finger mullet, based on what I’ve learned about Keys law enforcement since “Hurricane Sandy” and her her children and husband showed up in my life. Might as well as ask barracuda to guard finger mullet.
I’ll also be sort of disappointed if Sandy doesn’t win the sheriff’s race, as I believe she will bring an entirely new regime into Keys law enforcement. Entirely new. She says the Sheriff is supposed to catch criminals and protect the people. She says whistle blowers in the Sheriff’s Office should be encouraged and protected. She once turned in her husband, before he was her husband, to law enforcement for breaking the law. After he got that staightened out there, she married him. She does random urine tests in her own home on her own husband and children. She wants a Citizen’s Review Board looking over her shoulder when she’s sheriff. She thinks the law should be enforced equally and fairly for everyone, no special favors. Not even to law enforcement officers or their families, or their friends. Not even to bubbas or elected officials.
As a Keys resident and registered voter, I’m giving Sandy this free publicity as part of my God-given and First Amendent unalienable rights to say what’s on my mind, regardless of how someone or someones else might feel about it. Sandy had nothing to do with my doing this, except in furnishing me her writings and information that I request. Well, we do laugh and cry some about it. And maybe there is some talk of some folks getting what’s coming to them, legally speaking of course. Under human and God laws, and maybe we talk some about pirate justice, too. Or maybe I just dreamt that.
As was said to begin this drivel, my own grumblings and horsings around on just about any and everything go into the Today’s FlaKey Drivel file in the menu to the right, which brings me to reason #2 for me starting this website before I knew why.
I was to run for the District 3 (Key West) county commission seat of incumbent Charles “Sonny” McCoy. A native Conch, that is, born and raised in the Keys, actually in Key West, Sonny’s been involved in Keys politics longer than God, I suppose. I was terribly thrilled to be running for office again, because I love politics about as much as I love working for God. I do both because I’m told to do it, or else. Indentured slavery. Far as I’m concerned, anyone who actually wants to be in public office is a lunatic or maniac, and should be disqualified from serving just for that reason. Also as far as I’m concerned, anyone who enters public office who is not prepared to die, that is, be bumped off, isn’t prepared to do what needs to be done. Maybe now that I’m giving Sandy Downs air time, I’ll get to test that theory sooner than later.
You may now be starting to see what folks around these parts have come to appreciate, some more kindly than others, that there’s just no telling what might up and jump out of my pen, er, laptop. Just no telling. Meaning, I do not view life, running for office, or whatever as a beauty or popularity contest. I sometimes go way out of my way to make people unhappy with me. I sometimes don’t get invited out much for social events. I sometimes write about people who invite me out. I often write about elected officials, politicians, jounalists and who and whatever else crosses my path. I claim angels tell me in dreams what to write about, or else. Most people don’t seem to believe me. They would if they lived in my skin, but since they don’t, I suppose they should be darn glad.
By way of example, for why people should be darn glad they don’t live in my skin, you might check out the Puke Politics, Skunk Politics and Gadfly Politics pages in the menu to the right. About how I became a – yech! – Republican candidate. Then, to aide your recovery from that loony adventure in Rebubbaliklanville, you might swim yourself over to the Savvy Politics page, to learn how something a tad bigger than me changed its mind and sent me back to being what I was all along — a non-partisan candidate.
As such, I owe no money or favors, and don’t want to. I accept no campaign contributions. I have no campaign publicist or workers or poll watchers that I know of, other than self-appointed lunatics. I belong to no organization on this nut house world but the human race. I do not use vote-for-me campaign mailings, signs or bumper stickers. I run no newspaper, radio or televison campaign ads. I do attend and participate in all candidate forums and media interviews to which I’m invited. And I do tell people to vote for someone else, if they want to see more of the same.
This is the fourth such campaign I’ve waged in the Keys since 2003. Each hugely unsuccessful by poll watcher standards. Meaning, if I’m a politician, it’s news to me. Meanwhile, I suppose you might say I’m a pig farmer. Just joking. Sort of. I mean, how can you run for office without dealing with a lot of pork? So, and for those who adhere strictly to the election laws, not necessarily politicians, this website is a political advertisement, written and paid for and approved by me, or swiped from someone else. By way of example, you might check out the “Candidate Qualification” page in the menu, where you see just what a big pirate at heart I really am.
Then prepare to come hard about, because it came to pass that I was told to broadcast that I was throwing my support behind my Democrat opponent, Heather Carruthers. It was really bothering me that my non-affiliated candidacy might split the vote enough for the Republican incumbent (Sonny McCoy) to remain in office, and I was convinced that Heather would make a good county commissioner and that Sonny very much needed to be relieved of duty. For 2-3 weeks, scattered dreams had left me wondering if this announcement was in the wind, and the night before I made it, the winds rose to near hurricane force, resulting in the July 20, 2008 Downright.Frightening post.
And then, yep, you guessed it, by and by the pests with wings did yet another about face, with me in tow, putting me right back to where I was to begin with, all of which is explained, among other things, in the Sewerage Treatment menu page. Whew! I need to go to a chiropractor about this here whiplashed neck I got. Whew!
Meanwhile, anyone still gawking at the pretty pictures way up above might wish to keep ever in mind that nothing in the Keys is entirely what it appears to be. Our ocean waters are often contaminated with human fecal matter. Our only living reef in the continental United States is dying. The cost of living here is beyond belief. Our real estate market is plummeting like a stone. Our county government is a candidate for bankruptcy court or the Saturday morning cartoons. We have a staphylococcus pandemic, MRSA, it’s generally called. (See “MRSA cure” page in the menu for treatment method.) We have more booze and narcotic consumption, and more homeless people per capita, not necessarily related, than any place you are ever likely to find. Despite mucho spraying, we usually have a healthy popoulation of starving mosquitoes during the warm months. As I recall, that’s also when hurricanes sometimes come calling. We call it Paradise.
Which all brings me to maybe reason #3 for this website. It’s turning out to be some sort of off-beat newspaper or book, none of which is copyrighted, all of which is freely usable by anyone who reads it, but it is asked that it be used in context, although I realize that may or may not happen; as should anyone who uses it out of context have realized by now that if I learn of it, they just might find themselves keel-hauled in the next Today’s FlaKey Drivel missive.
Cheers!
Sloan Bashinsky
Key West
Contact me at keysmyhome@hotmail.com
http://GoodMorningKeyWest.com
(brother website)