On Milwaukee backs off bra ban for historic bar

Posted on May 19 at 12:29 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Bra Team, 1

Administrative Nanny State, 0

obsessed with score keeping and stats..., Bob Keith

On It’s Distracted Driving Awareness Month

Posted on April 13 at 1:11 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

I'm sorry, what is the topic? I was driving down Milton Avenue and my mother-in-law's dog knocked my lit cigarette on the floor of my 1989 Corsica and some old newspapers caught on fire. I was needing to turn on Randolf but now seem to be on Center Avenue..., anyway..., as I text this as I drive, my cell phone seems to be going dea...

Bob Keith

On Whose quote is that, really?

Posted on March 25 at 5:32 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Now we are out-sourcing our mission statements to China too?

Bob Keith

"Don't take any wooden nickles!"

On Nation learning about Janesville

Posted on August 14 at 11:32 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

“With the nation’s eyes focused on us, let’s all do our part to make a good impression.”

Of course myself working a job from hell, I did not feel like posting moments after you submitted this posting. So, the advantage goes to you by default.

Oh, Greg, you who I am thinking never served a day in the military (or was it you who served in the Air Force?; regardless, even if you yourself served, most people in the media, most of your colleagues, never served a day or suffered a crap day in some outpost hell job) or, I am guessing you for sure never worked a crap blue-collar job for any length of time in your life; what you ask of us to do with this, “make a good impression” business, is something called the, “Good patient syndrome.” Research dictates that good acting and well-behaving dying patients get better care than whiners and complainers.

Transpose the above definition to the economy.

It reminds me of Seventh Grade logic. “Let’s be good children, the Superintendent is coming to have an inspection of our school.”

I remember while being in the Army overseas, the Secretary of Defense was popping in to our “outpost of paradise” to look in on the troops.” An outpost of paradise is somewhere the banal citizens really don’t need to know about…, if you get my drift. Anyway, we were instructed to hide all broken equipment and make our outpost from hell…, “look nice.”
It is amazing we apparently won the Cold War. But I digress.

I am just curious Greg, how is it we in Janesville are suppose to make a good impression of 10,000 lost jobs since…, let’s say 2006?

We now have a culture of part-time, benefitless, minimum wage jobs, here in Janesville. We are a poster child template for the “new norm” America. We are a farm team for China.

And by the by, I am just a bit right of Barry Goldwater. So, don’t even think about calling me a Liberal.

By the by again, both Republicans and Democrats stink when it comes to supporting working people. And that being said, I am at a loss as to how we are to tax fund 11 aircraft carrier groups with minimum wage job tax assessments. So, Greg, do you have an anecdote, to shut people like me up. What you ask is to shut up people who have been ground in the economic dirt. I guess you are lucky most of the perps that have been ground in the dirt in Janesville have moved away to find work elsewhere…, or, they have just given up.

Bob Keith,

..., no problem using my own name because most blog comment posters under-impress me as anonymous sissies anyway.

On Who really owns those terraces?

Posted on July 30 at 5:05 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Greg, you play the unassuming role like a fiddle.

What the hell do we actually own? To the 17 foot mark; to the sidewalk; or, to the curb? Or, as my dad used to joke about out on the farm in Lima Township, "We pay taxes to the middle of the [insert expletive here] road; but, try to plant corn there and see what happens to you."

And, yes, I understand the good County did plow the snoww off that road we paied taxes under; so, please give my dad a break. It was just a bit of farmer sarcasm.

Apparently every tax jurisdiction is different. And I understand fair blog commenters and Greg, that a governmental agency can do just about anything they want via the declaration, "easement."

I have a call into the City of Janesville to get a definitive answer on just where our line of ownership and tax responsibly begins and ends.

I wait for a call-back with baited breath.

Oh, by the by; if anyone thinks they really own their land, see what happens when a governmental agency approves a big-box store, airport, or highway in your neighborhood. We can chat over your tears at the gin-mill of your choice.

Bob Keith – foolishly loving this subject for some sick reason

On Remember when stores were closed on Sundays?

Posted on July 26 at 8:45 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

Fate played a part - I happened to meet an old pal's x-girlfreind at one of the many after-game-bars. She lived not too far from the stadium.

Why don't you just make up your own ending to the story at this point.

Bob Keith - a firm believer in fate

On Remember when stores were closed on Sundays?

Posted on July 26 at 12:05 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

The irony as well as the tragedy of this subject is poetic. I remember wishing there was more than one all-night restaurant in Janesville besides the Oasis. I remember riding my motorcycle to a Brewers game back in the 1970s and not being able to find an all-night gas station after the game to fuel up. It is almost painful to invoke the worn out cliché, “Be careful what you wish for.”

There are all-night restaurants now, but most of them are not worth eating at and are overpriced with contrived menus, poor service, and bad food. And, I haven’t been able to afford a professional sports game for years, so I shouldn’t be needing a late night gas station after an extra innings game any time soon.

And speaking of sports, for better or worse, American football was once tied to the hip of Sundays off. Nowadays, it is hard to figure out which day or night your favorite team will be playing.

Times have changed and will always change of course. But, we embrace, enable, and apologize ad nauseam, for this “new norm,” global 24-hour, 365-day work life. Yet, few of us work full-time or earn benefits. The post World War II, 40-hour work week with its freed-up weekends, some benefits, and perks, is gone forever. I work with 30-year-olds that have never known what it is like to have predictable weekends off; and, they surely have no idea what a benefit or vacation day might be. They are poster children for collective banal social re-conditioning.

I have noticed few people under 40 years old, understand the old concept of the mom and pop shop. Getting friends, co-workers, and family to try a neat little inexpensive local café or retail shop is like pulling teeth. They always defer back to the fast food chains with the lousy food and the big-box stores and the relentless sales of Chinese junk for everything in their lives.

It kind of gives me the creeps to see the new norm phenomena of big box stores open on Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings. But I am an old by-stander, a relic from ancient history if you will; one of those old nuisances who continually insists, “Things actually don’t really need to be this way for us to get by.” A fool of sorts, from a past now mostly lauded in quaint literature.

Dream on Mr. Peck, and humble blog posters, for those days when American culture collectively took a pause on Sundays. Because, the only place you will find those days for the most part nowadays, is in your…,

…. sentimental imaginations.

Bob Keith – so very tempted to just laugh at us all…

On Drought threatens to drain Rock County's economy

Posted on July 16 at 4:05 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Well Catherine Idzerda, there must be a few readers out there somewhere that pause to "thoughtfully" ponder your journalistic efforts. But, I suspect they do not wish to participate in a free-for-all of creepy diversionary comment postings. It’s a shame that since the Web began, that the “comments” arena has always been taken over by the anonymous posting rabble wearing cute pseudonyms like badges of honor. And, espousing their rhetorical flatus as if they are on MSNBC, CNN, Current, and FOX News.

People’s lives are being destroyed and we gleefully type posting tripe via anonymity. If you don’t use your real name, what credibility do you really have in anything in life?

Anyway Ms. Idzerda, it is true; the damage to our farms by this once-in-a-hundred-year’s drought is obvious to us all. Unlike however, the usually hidden perils of farming the drive-by commuter never sees – exponentially high insurance costs, high fuel costs; high equipment costs; being your own boss with no back up; sick animals; high veterinarian costs; exorbitant property taxes; on-going building maintenance; high seed costs; long hours; and, just plain back-breaking labor.

And, I might beg the differ with the one observation in the article by an academic suggesting that better weather now might save the day – perennial optimism by professors rarely pays the bills.

We might entertain considering then, that this current drought variable during this economic mess is “the straw that may break the last straw.” And a pretty big and ugly straw it is. Call it the plane crash syndrome. Planes are built to accommodate several setbacks at once – mechanical breakdown, human error, and weather challenges to name but a few. But, sooner or later that one last unexpected glitch may go wrong too…, and down comes the state-of-the-art aircraft with all souls on board.

For some of us, since 2005ish, the economy has never gotten better – only worse. And, the same said “some-of-us bunch” ain’t get’n any younger. Experience with bad times past and current, suggests to we “the-economy-ain’t-never-get'n-better-in-what’s-left-of-our-lifetimes” crowd, that in the very, very, near future, we are all going to have the results of this drought, the enduring crappy economy, and the buffoonery of our perennially impotent elected leaders from both parties…, shoved down our collective throats.

Bob Keith – really sick of the anonymous posting rabble hijacking some semblance of intelligent discussion in America; or, what’s left of it.

On More shuttered storefronts at the mall

Posted on February 25 at 11:13 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

Poetic maybe, that the "mall" concept is feeling the Internet and its Online shopping nipping at its retail heels (and let us not forget the many shopping networks on Dish).

Sort of reminds me of the angst felt decades ago when malls were pointed at as the antagonists in the fall of mom-and-pop retail and grocery stores. There is quite a list now of victims of that darn ol' Internet thing: media genres; long distance phone calls; book stores; video stores; movie theaters; some university class rooms; the Post Office; and the list goes on; and, now..., malls too?

I would like to be around 25 years from now to see what kind of scheme replaces the Internet, or at least converges on it and absorbs it. If the past is a prediction of the future, it is just a matter of time. I wonder as well, where the mall will be by then?

Violins playing now – I am sometimes sad that sports bars have all but replaced supper clubs; mega farms have replaced family farms; and, I am still always hoping Grant's in Creston Park will someday re-open so I can finally buy that poor sad monkey in their little pet aisle down from the soda fountain.

Bob Keith – just a bit tongue-in-cheek perhaps?

On Faces beyond the numbers of long-term unemployed

Posted on February 12 at 7:15 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

I think part of this economic puzzle problem has been solved by simply reading the fine posts right here on this vast intellectual forum. A quick skim of you anonymous comment posters indicates not one writer, not one..., well, maybe I skimmed too quickly..., not one writer addressed the fact that most of the interviewees in the article were, what we all might consider..., ....'n old!

Regardless of whether the current Prez, or Ol’ Romney gets elected new Prez; or, whether Walker or some other mope is elected Wis-gov, do you fine anonymous posters really think said old unemployed or underemployed workers will be hired in the next decade?

As the kids nowadadays say – a phrase I usually loathe – “What..., ever!”

Please let me speak for the banal manic depressant, schizophrenic, bi-polar, collectively insane society, we all try to survive in these days – I lived through the last big recession, the “misery recession” of Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan – and I know bull when I see it.

So, if I may be spokesperson for the greater banal society in regards to these old scofflaws discussed in the article: “They did not plan well enough for their lame lives; they were not willing to adapt to “new norm” challenges - "new norm" meaning adapting to the new Second and Third-world life we all deal with now in America; they are lazy; they are cry babies; they need to get off their old ..... and find any job; they need to deliver newspapers to bide their time; perhaps they should just die; and…, they are probably replete with bad health baggage."

“Who would want them anyway?”

"Bottom line" – being another obfuscated term I loathe – “Why don’t these old ....... just go away!

Bob Keith – living the “new norm” paradise