I finished painting the last side of the garage! On to the back, comrades!

Hey, this is a country that threw off centuries of traditional rule and invented an entirely new form of government in less than 20 years, ended more than 20 centuries of the institution of slavery in less than a decade, took a mediocre military and turned it into a killing machine which fought and won major wars in two hemispheres simultaneously in 5 years while going from theoretical physics to atomic energy in about the same time, went from the invention of the airplane to the moon in less than 70 years. Why would our ability to reinvent ourselves be surprising?

Jimmy Carter was a blip, an overreaction. He was in over his head and not a good President. I am embarrassed still that I voted for him. At the time, I was voting for him because he was new, we didn't know that much about him and he promised change. Sound familiar? I am certain that government is, as Reagan said, the problem. It will take a long time to convince me that the effect of not bailing out Wall Street would have been worse than a shift to socialism.

1. Annie Hall
2. Key Largo
3. The Outlaw Josey Wales
4. Blade Runner
5. Maltese Falcon
6. The Godfather
7. Star Trek: The Voyage Home
8. The Year of Living Dangerously
9. Arsenic and Old Lace
10. Twister
11. Harvey
12. Unforgiven
13. Casino Royale (2006)
14. Asphalt Jungle
15. Chicken Run
16. The Third Man
17. Apocalypse Now
18. Young Frankenstein
19. The Thing From Another World
20. Judgement at Nuremberg

• There were others on the list but 21st Century cable takes movies and plays them to death. To the point that I no longer want to see them. The Steven Spielberg or George Lucas classics for instance. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the first Indiana Jones, the first Star Wars, Back to the Future would all be on the list if they weren't on TV 20 times per year. How many movies would benefit from not being so available?

• I am amazed that the Packers allowed Rogers to continue to stay out there, wincing after nearly every throw. A baseball pitcher would be on the shelf for three weeks. Is his arm less valuable?
• Busy week for the Waukesha Planning Commission and the Common Council.
• Who'd-a thunk you'd ever see Rep. Kagen and Rep. Sensenbrenner on the same side of a controversial issue?
• The Clarke Hottelle might open in time for the Christmas season.
• The Waukesha County Museum gets a new traveling exhibit. Let me ask a question: was Les Paul a farmer? No? Then it's not the one I want to see.
• In a measure of how little news is happening, the Freeman has an article about UFOs in Waukesha County.
• Goodbye to CC and Ben. It was a pretty good summer. Four months until pitchers and catchers report. In watching the playoff games, it almost appears as if you have to have a completely different type of team than the one that played the regular season. You need to hit and run and steal bases and squeeze runners home from third and try to win without the three-run homer. That's a game that the current Brewers can't play. It's going to be an interesting winter.

Igor said it best in Young Frankenstein: "Could be worse. Could be raining."

First Opinion is: Go Pios!

Second Opinion is: Happy 80th Birthday Ed! The best neighbor ever.

• Had to mention that the UW Marching Band got itself suspended yet again. They will not appear at tonight's nationally televised game. As a veteran of college band and drum and bugle corps debauchery, I can only guess they achieved what was called "a new low" in Animal House. Congratulations!
• Saturday Sound Off covers a bevy of topics.
• Jessica McBride tells John McCain to set Sarah Palin loose.
• Pete Kennedy has an excellent Brewer Quiz for those of us who lived through 1982. The Saturday playoff game at County Stadium was, as I remember it, cold, in the 40's and miserably wet. I think the game started several hours late because of the rain. I sat in the stands bundled as well as I could with a headphone radio listening to the Badgers play Ohio State, coincidentally. The Badgers had one of their rare wins against the Buckeyes that day in the rain in Columbus. I think the score was 3-0.
• I won my ticket in the fan lottery that year. I was looking for my ticket stubs just now and they weren't with my other saved ticket stubs. I wonder what I did with them? Anyway, you cut out the sign-up sheet from the Journal and sent in your money and I was lucky enough that they drew my name. I had just started with the government in September 1981 and had only just moved to Chicago in early '82 and I was living from paycheck to paycheck. I got one ticket because it was more than I could afford. To this day, I regret that I couldn't afford two and taken my Dad.

Update: Oregon University's running back is named Jeremiah Johnson.

Update: It wasn't an hour later and the stock market reversed course and fell 157 points. Now every guest on CNBC seems to be saying that the bill won't fix anything. Suckers! Enjoy the shiny new depression we just bought.

1. The installation took about 2½ hours with the last hour being the instructional on the remote and waiting for my computer to reboot twice. My NIC card wasn't performing as planned.
2. Outlook Express doesn't work yet, I thought it would come back with a final reboot but I guess I need to keep fiddling with the connection option. I didn't want to make him wait around until it rebooted yet again. Microsoft needs to create a Wizard that does the connection for you.
3. I'm going to have to set up a new mailbox for the Chronicle since I cancelled my dial-up and the mailbox doesn't transfer. Apparently Worldnet and U-Verse are not on speaking terms.
4. I'm going to miss having a TV by the computer. I should have sprung for another connection. Wait a minute ... I've got high speed internet and can watch on the computer can't I?  Old dog/new tricks.

I'm happy the Brewers won, but there was none of the gut-twisting tension I had back in the yore. That might be a good thing at my age. The 1982 season's last week was incredibly wearing on the soul. This season, it was a foregone conclusion that it was the same old Brewers and they wouldn't win anything. Good thing the Mets were worse. It's still nice to be the team which didn't actually win anything yet but had the best record amongst the losers, but there's not the unbridled joy I saw back in the day.

Oh, remember to thank Bud Selig for the Wild Card and the roof on Miller Park.

• The papers this morning are Brewers, Packers and bailout stories which you can get anywhere, so sorry for the lack of links.
• The Packers played? How'd they do?
• The Bears look good, darn it. Lovie Smith must be a pretty good coach.
• Springsteen is doing the Super Bowl! Can I admit something? I'm not much of a fan. His music is OK, but I don't think it's THE.BEST.EVER. From what I hear, his concerts are the best value in rock concerts, but I like only two or three of his songs and those are close to 30 years old. He was better when he was poor.
• My take on the bi-partisan Wall Street bailout bill agreement? The politicians will profit, the rich will get richer, your taxes will go up, my money will vanish and we'll have a depression anyway. Good luck, everybody.
• Since I'll be spending the Great Depression of the 21st Century indoors, I ordered a 32" LCD for the bedroom. Thanks Ma.
• I finished priming the last side of the garage and will paint it tomorrow during the ATT U-Verse install, weather permitting.
• Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended the paint guy at Home Depot by asking for his "cheapest white paint" for the garage. He truly believes that Home Depot doesn't sell cheap paint. So I got a can of his "most inexpensive" paint and vowed to buy my paint cheaply at WalMart for evermore.
• I should be able to bang out a dispatch tomorrow morning before the install begins. Have a good Monday, worker bees.

UPS delivered my TV to my neighbor's house, even though I had a note on the door asking them to deliver it today. What's up with that? Fortunately, I would trust that neighbor with my life. What do other people do, who don't know their neighbors? I did all the assembly, it's a beautiful thing and may not be too big for the living room as I first thought, but I haven't hooked it up yet. Maybe later, I have paint to scrape.

• Allison's boss ... Dan something ... hmm ... anyway, he presented the Waukesha County budget which Allison probably prepared for him. The Freeman focuses on the tax rate, which is going up by less than 1% and they say "property tax bills stand pat". The Journal focuses on the total budget increase and calls it "sharply higher". Curious.
• One thing that they can take out of the budget right now is the purchase of two snowmobiles. Rent them if you need them. Borrow them. Don't buy them.
• Bad News Bears. True to their nature, Chicago is trying to torpedo Milwaukee. Did you see the line-up the Cubs put on the field last night?
• In a curious decision, the Freeman accepts a guest editorial from Paul Bucher, the attorney of Pewaukee Chief Gary Bach, while Pewaukee is still contemplating legal action against the chief. I heard this on Law and Order: "tainting the jury pool".
• I watched some of the hearing on Capitol Hill about the bailout. Boy, I don't see any way Obama shouldn't win in November with this financial mess we're in. Expect to hear the name "Keating" come up a lot in the next month. I also watched Republican Senator Tom Coburn frustrate Democratic Senator Dingy Harry Reid on the Senate floor with an unending series of objections. Reid was having trouble maintaining his composure.
• Meanwhile, the Great Lakes pact was passed by Congress. This protects Great Lakes water from wholesale diversions by non-bordering regions, though someone could sell it all to the Chinese in 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 five gallon jugs.
• Waukesha has such interesting Planning Commission meetings. The Shoppes of Foxxe Riverre already look more interesting than Pabst Farms. I'll still be able to watch those meetings on U-Verse, right?
• Mark Belling agress with me that Pabst Farms should be put on hold until they can come up with retailers to be proud of and he also blasts two Waukesha County municipal clerks.

The Sistine Chapel of garages now has a fully painted front and I'm moving on to the final side. The back is not going to get my "A" game. I wonder how cans of white spray paint it would take? I'm optimistic I can finish the side by next weekend, weather permitting. A hose removed about half of the flaking paint. A couple of trips up and down with a scraper, a quick once-over with the sander and I'll be ready for the final two gallons. My success with the front has even got me looking at the walls in the house. Now that we're about to go into the Great Depression of the 21st Century, I'll have plenty of time.

• Prairie Home Cemetery says it will cost $100,000.00 to paint the fence. Alderman Vitale says, "Why do anything?" Residents are silent. The Chronicle's opinion? In the coming Great Depression of the 21st Century, out of work people will do anything for money. Have them sand it and paint it. Note to realtives of residents: The fence is irrelevant, an ornament. If someone wants to vandalize the cemetery, the current fence isn't going to keep them out.
• A long-time leader of the Town of Sha has passed away. The Chronicle sends its condolences.
• This is just flat ridiculous: You've had a year to get more salt. Salt cannot possibly be hard to get. The oceans are lousy with salt. Recycle some of those classic Zatarain rice dishes.
• 75% of the State of Wisconsin was born here and stays here. 90% of them dream about moving south but stay in their zip code and paint their garage instead.
• The failure of the Brainerd, MN franchise of the Northwoods League is discussed.
• I guess it makes sense, but I had no idea that there was a law against selling fake illegal drugs.
• Diamond Jim Doyle announced a grant to Crites Field for an "automated weather observation system" which replaces, I guess, the old manual weather observation system of some guy going outside and looking up.
• Arrowhead High School has a collegiate-level athletic department and the results show in their success. Unfortunately, it adds iron to the argument that the more money you spend on a high school, the better it is.
• Eugene Kane continues the Democratic Party drum beat of, "If you don't vote for Obama, you're a racist."
• So the callers to Sound Off who support McCain are, by his definition, racists. I know for sure that one of them is a Flinstonian.
• Have the days of organized instrument playing gone? When "Guitar Hero" can give you an instant rush of success, why should you put in all those hours of practice on the real thing? Over the past 50 years, one thing I've seen is the instant gratification society develop. Young 'uns want to go from college to billionaire in a year. No one wants to play baseball because you practice a minimum of three days a week for a three-hour game, so they play softball with an hour batting practice before the 55 minute game. Horse racing was too slow because there was a half hour between races, so you went to the dog races because it was only 10 minutes, but that's still too slow so you go to the casino where you can lose $20 in less than a minute. I was content with dial-up, now I need 6 mps.  Headlong down the slope we go, heedless of what's at the bottom.

1. The Packers were unable to generate a pass rush with four people. Did you hear KGB's name all night?
2. Focusing on the pass, they were susceptible to the run.
3. Their guards aren't good enough or big enough to defend against a pass rush.
4. Except at linebacker, the team is thin.

Correctable? Not with these players, I think. However, the team looked better than the other teams in their division, so there's no reason they shouldn't win their division and get in the playoffs. The Cowboys, on the other hand, should go undefeated.

• A sad tale of the non-existent Les Paul wing of the Waukesha County Museum.
• This should be interesting. Someone's opening a military school in New Berlin.
• What I learned on Saturday night at the zoo (other than that Chef Jack is an awesome caterer):

1. What I don't know: 99%.
2. 70% of that is what I know I don't know.
3. 30% of that is what I don't know I don't know.
4. How much of the any of that is what I don't want to know?

• Is it any wonder I woke up Sunday feeling like I had a hangover?
• Speaking of hangovers, Oktoberfest in La Crosse starts with the largest parade in the state of Wisconsin on Saturday.
• It's apple time here in Wisconsin and the upper Rust Belt. The Elegant Farmer has been named by the Food Network as having the best apple pie in the United States, a title I think is dubious. I never got the paper bag thing. I'd bet there are kids today who would swear the best apple pie in the world was served at Retzer this weekend. The people in La Crescent, MN (you missed Applefest) and Gays Mills serve a fine apple pie. Gays Mills has their Apple Festival this coming weekend and considering the terrible flooding they've had this year, they could surely use your money. I have two words as far as apple pie goes: Norske Nook.
• Curt Otto has colored pictures of Target and WalMart and all I have is this stupid garter snake t-shirt:

A productive day yesterday. I finally pulled the pin and ordered ATT U-Verse. It is scheduled to be installed on the 30th. Since I ordered the HD package, that required that I have something to watch it on, so I joined the 21st century and ordered a 37" Toshiba 1080p. Thanks Ma. Price was good, shipping was free and no state tax. Of course I will pay the state tax due on my next return. Cough, cough.

I decided to go with the 37" because it was a good middling size. I plan on getting a second TV, but I want to see how the 37" looks to decide whether the second TV will be larger or smaller. This being an older house, the room sizes are quite small by today's standards, so I suspect that the next TV will probably be a 32" as opposed to 40" or 42".

But wait, there's more. I also finished priming the front of the garage and I'm anxious to get the final coat on and then move to the final side. I want to get that done before my neighbor's 80th surprise birthday party. He can see that last side from his house and he's been patient enough not to say anything for the past 16 years. It will be my gift to him.

Here's the biggest new in today's paper: It turns out the guy who played Sulu is gay. He married his long-time partner. Who knew? The wedding processional was "One Singular Sensation" from the Broadway show "Chorus Line". No stereotyping there.

The stock market "plunged" 4% yesterday. Back in October 1987, it went down 20% in a day. We all survived that day, there was no depression and a more than decade-long era of prosperity began. Look at it this way, the Packers won, the Brewers fired Ned Yost, the Badgers are #8 in the polls and it's supposed to be sunny and in the mid to upper 70's for the rest of the week. Your 401K will come back, just don't retire until you're 69. Unless you're me, of course. What I'm saying has become my mantra of the past five years: It could always be worse.

• Bad times in 1200 miles of destruction left by Ike mean good times at Generac, amongst others.
• Early Chronicle line on the Packer-Cowboy game: Cowboys (-650,000)

Okay, I got to this point, it's 7:22 a.m. and the morning Freeman isn't available yet. It's an omen. Like the fact that I've broken two glasses in the past two days. I'm going to go away and come back later.

In the meantime: Here's another picture my relatives will throw away when I'm gone. It was taken at Boerner Botanical Garden when parking was still free:

• Jessica Mc Bride covers the left's Palinsanity.
• Pete Kennedy talks about the booers of Brewers.
• The Freeman editorial staff hands out laurels.
• Laurel Walker thinks a cop killer should stay locked up. Maybe she's showing some growth. She previously said this about a convicted serial sex offender:

For all I know - and can hope, the flag came from someone who thinks that in America, if you've served your time and met your responsibilities for release under the law, if you can live by the rules on the outside, and maybe if you want to turn your life around, you should get a chance to try.

• It's nice to know she does draw the line somewhere.
• Update: Carroll College moved the time of their commemoration of an alum who lost his life in Iraq.

• Wigderson says, to our credit, we have not forgotten what happened this day.
• The Freeman reminds us that we must never forget.
• I still believe that President Gore's response would have been three or four cruise missiles lobbed into some sheep-herder's camp somewhere in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein would still be in Iraq and the Taliban would still rule Afghanistan and possibly taken Pakistan as well. Both India and Israel may have been forced to use nuclear weapons in the past seven years. Thank God W was President.
• Pipe bombs were found in the former residence of a guy who is in prison for weapons charges.
• The E&R UCC on Wisconsin Avenue got its steeple.
• Salvage yards, prisons, foundries, used car lots, I suppose there are a lot of things less attractive than a self storage yard, still ...
• Steve Schmuki is asking for the expected recount of his 9-vote loss in the race for the 97th.
• While Schmuki's fund raising was going up, the winner, Ruth Page-Jones-Nelson-Doyle-WEAC, found hers going down. Have you got $30,000 of your own money which you could commit to winning an election? Remodel your kitchen instead.
• Which brings me to my goal of the day which is to buy a new refrigerator. The old one still works, but its compressor clunks when it turns off, is probably an energy hog and we know it's more than 16 years old because it was here when I moved in. Like the water heater and boiler it is time it was replaced. I was hoping to wait until a kitchen remodel, but considering the progress I'm making in my painting, I decided not to wait. Kenmore, in case you're interested.
• By the way, Jim Behrned looks to be your next Register of Deeds in a close race which shouldn't be a race.
• Here's the Freeman's article on the Waukesha School District's latest money troubles.
• The Smart Car is selling well initially. It doesn't look very safe to me. On the other hand, it must meet federal safety guidelines. Those same guidelines keep American car manufacturers from importing their European models which get much higher gas mileage than their American counterparts. Yet you can buy a moped or motorcycle with no 15-mph bumpers, no air bags and no roll-over cages. Explain that.
• Sound Off has someone complaining about train whistles. Yes there are still train horns and probably will be as long as there is a car wash on Main and Hartwell. Imagine you are reading this in some other part of the U.S. and wondering why a car wash would cause trains to blow their horns. Yesterday I was at that corner and a swiftly moving engine without a train attached zipped through both crossings before the gates even thought of coming down. That's dangerous because some people (including me, I'm ashamed to admit) have considered the lights and bells only the first warning that a train was coming.