The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Yesterday I got one of those calls I really hate to get, the ones where the caller asks if I have my TV on. Last times I got one of those the Trade Towers had been hit by commercial jetliners and the Challenger had blown up after launch with all on board. Nervously I turned on the television. Had Trump bombed Iran?

Or maybe it was just the earth shattering news that Georgia had elected two Democratic senators in the runoffs. Good news for me, maybe not for Moscow Mitch. But I didn’t really expect to get good news and for once I was right. The screenshot of the first channel to pop up was like the movie World War Z where the zombies are crawling on each other’s backs to scale the barrier walls protecting the humans on the other side. Mobs of folks were storming the nation’s capitol building where, I knew, Congress was in the process of certifying the electoral college votes. Giant Trump banners and American flags and Confederate too were dragging the ground as the mob pushed up the stairs, clambered over the walls, climbed the scaffolding, a seething angry wave of people surrounding the Capitol, breaking windows, breaching barriers, busting down doors. The news moderators were incredulous. So was I.

Cut to a few scenes inside. Legislators on the floor, huddling with their cellphones, fearing for their lives, gunfire in the background. Protestors dropping into the chambers from above, sitting in the office chairs of Senators and Representatives, smashing glass while the Capitol police aimed revolvers in their faces.

When the first Tower collapsed, I still remember the feeling that this couldn’t be happening, all those people inside descending to streetlevel, all those people dead. Could a skyscraper collapse like that? Watching the chaos inside the Capitol Building, I thought the same thing, can this be happening? Where were the National Guardsmen, the DC cops, the Secret Service? Could rioters just walk right in while every Senator and Representative were inside, trapped and at their mercy? Could this happen in America?

Well … yes it can. The President, the same fellow who’d spoken to these folks earlier and asked them to take their grievances to the Capitol, watched it, just like you and me, on TV. His attorney, the former hero mayor of the city of the Twin Towers, had urged them to resort to ‘trial by combat’ if the phony elections giving Biden the win weren’t overturned. Whatever we thought America was yesterday, it isn’t the same today.

What it will be tomorrow is in the hands of the people who enabled the Man in the High Tower, knowing all along he was unfit to be the leader of a democratic country. Courage may be in short supply, but the fear they felt yesterday might be the greater catalyst.

I don’t know about you, but I was looking forward to a brand new year with partisan politics in the rearview for awhile. Sleepy Joe could run the government with eyes closed, you know, while he was taking his afternoon nap, and maybe everybody would calm down for awhile, take a breather, focus on getting past this plague. But no, one hundred and forty GOP Representatives and a dozen Republican Senators intend to refuse to ratify the electoral college votes this week. They claim the election was fraudulent, the voting booths were removed, zombies voted, the ballots were counted multiple times, aliens manipulated the results and blacks and latinx votes should be thrown out. Vice President Pence mumbled that yes, Congress should look into these irregularities, discrepancies we all know exist.

I’m apparently living in CrazyTown. The President took an hour yesterday from his intense Covid management to call the Sec. of State in Georgia to implore, to whine, to wheedle and finally to threaten him to find about 12,000 votes to put him over the top. Last time I looked, even if he won the Peach State, he comes up short. He already tried to twist the arms of the Michigan folks. He’s lost about 100 times in state and federal courts to show the least amount of irregularities, some tossing out his lawsuits with disdain and contempt. This would all be, as one justice characterized the suit brought before him, laughable … if this were a sitcom.

But it’s not a sitcom, it’s potentially a national crisis. And we already have one of those in the coronavirus plague that’s killed over a third of a million of us, much of it due to negligence on the part of this Administration, one of the many reasons Trump lost by 7 million votes. That’s a lot of Venezuelan zombies to account for. Even adding in the Lizard People who may have voted too.

CrazyTown will be a Netflix original, unless I’ve missed my guess, but the last thing I need — and you either — is a bingewatch of further outrages by this sore loser and his gutless sycophants. Threatening the Sec. of State unless he alters the election results is a federal crime. It’s impeachable if we had the time or the courage, but of course, the vocal defenders of the Constitution won’t lift a finger. Not even the second time. Is this a great country or what?

So you thought the New Year would be better than the last, didn’t you? You thought maybe a regime change would do the trick. Or that vaccine would cure what might ail ya. You thought things couldn’t get any worse now that the election was over. Well, that light you saw at the end of the long dark tunnel of 2020 could just be a train headlight bearing down on you. And the new year has barely begun.

If you were thinking Donald J. Trump was leaving office in a few short weeks, here’s your first clue that nothing much has changed. He ain’t going anywhere. He’s not conceding, he’s not playing by any bogus rules of a few hundred years of succession, no sir, he’s screaming foul! The elections were rigged, they were hacked, dead people voted in zombie apocalypse numbers, mail in ballots were a fraud, the whole thing was phony just like the fake news that insists Sleepy Joe won by 7 million votes. No, Donald J. Trump does not lose. Nobody fires the greatest president in American history. Nobody!

Ted Cruz is leading the crusade to stop this week’s certification of Sleepy Joe. He and nearly a dozen of his fellow senators want a commission to investigate the worst fraud in our country’s long experiment with democracy. They want to overturn the election results based on their certainty the votes were wrong, the votes were bogus, the votes were phony, the votes were really for Donald J. Trump. Any fool can see that. The Proud Boys can see that. Over one hundred representatives in the House could see that. Biden didn’t win this election, not by a long shot, and a panel commissioned by Ted and his pals will prove that without a doubt or one whit of evidence. Take their word for it, Trump won.

You can bet that most of those Senators are either running for president in 2024 or their own seat in the next couple of elections. Pence, who has about as much chance of being the GOP candidate as Mister Ed the Talking Horse, waffles on this one too, first asking not to have the lawsuit invalidating the certification of the electoral college votes, then saying he welcomes Team Cruz’s efforts to investigate possible fraud in the states that Biden won. Profile in courage, not too much. Say adios, Mike. We hardly knew ya. But what we knew was plenty.

So if you thought 2021 would be a fresh start, hang onto your crying towel. The jackals are in the tunnel too. They smell blood on the tracks and they’re howling for meat. If you think democracy doesn’t hang in the balance, you must have been quarantined with Covid most of last year hooked up to a ventilator. We have met the enemy and for once I can tell you, he isn’t us….

As you may have read doomscrolling through your Qanon feed, the Lizard People are among us. These alien reptiles, according to very reputable sources on the internet sites that were created to warn the unsuspecting prey in our naïve ranks, have infiltrated Hollywood and the governments of the world. Bob Hope, according to the Lizard experts, was one of them. So is Queen Elizabeth and George W. Bush. Hillary and Bill Clinton too. Henry Kissinger might not be a surprise to some of you, but he’s an alien reptile as well.

These extraterrestrial human imposters are so deeply entrenched in our society it’s nearly impossible to distinguish them from the tail-less ordinary lizards who make your everyday life a living hell. The deep state existed long before our present era, let me tell you. Freemasons, you bet, all lizards from beyond the galaxy. Illuminati, bet your scales on them being monsters from Mars! In fact, the penetration of these flesh eating Silurians into our governments and our entertainment industry is so pervasive, it’s difficult, if not damn near impossible, to tell the aliens from the two legged humans they impersonate.

What is so manifestly needed here is a Guide to Lizard People Identification. You need to know if that person next to you in the Safeway line, the one who refuses to wear a plague mask, is actually just a Trump supporter who thinks the election was rigged and the virus is a hoax, not a flesh eating reptilian who isn’t buying groceries for dinner because he’s got a pantry full of your neighbors. You need to know the difference, my friend.

The Democrats who abduct children for their sexual pleasure and their beastly appetites, at first glance might seem prime candidates for Lizard classification. But as you know, they have a secret basement in the one story pizza joint in D.C. A little too obvious, don’t you think? The last thing they would do is set up shop in a pizza parlor with menu items like spleen of Mormons or tongue of Caucasians. Think about it, these aren’t stupid geckos, they’re interplanetary travelers. No, those Democrats are ordinary folks just like you and me … with peculiar tastes.

How about Mitch McConnell, you ask? Looks like a turtle, slinks around on his scaly belly, does untold harm to the human race. Afraid not, once again. Just your run-of-the-mill self-serving politician. He eats flies for breakfast, not humans. In other words, sometimes diet is an indicator. Not those Democrats, however, who do eat human flesh, but I didn’t say this would be clear cut, now did I?

Long forked tongues make for quick ID. And scales behind their ears if you care to get close enough to look, which I don’t advise. Claws instead of fingernails are pretty good clue. And hissing sounds, a real tell-tale. Check for a secondary eyelid and for vertical pupils, almost always a positive identifier. Tailored clothes to hide a prehensile tail isn’t as clear cut, but combined with other known traits, it’s useful information. A double row of razor sharp teeth are a give-away if the reptiles unclench their scowl, which is not often.

I know you want to ask if the Trump is one of them. Some say he’s the alpha lizard, but before you make a rash judgement, consider this. Qanon has identified him as the hero crusader who will save planet Earth from these flesh eating monsters. My own take is a bit more measured. I don’t think he’s completely human, but I can’t, with certainty, declare him a Lizard Person. A lizard, yes, but not the extra-terrestrial kind. I could be wrong.

Wow, just when you thought you’d gotten to know the man …. After all, you’ve been deluged for four long years by an incessant torrent of tweets that reveal ten times a day what a spoiled rich brat this guy is. He was the horrorshow punk in the Twilight Episode who would turn his family members into animals if they hurt his delicate feelings, even make them disappear forever. He was a monster, that kid, and that kid is still getting his feelings hurt in the rat-cage of the White House. He’s pissed. Nobody dares go near the room where he’s raging, not if they value their careers. They can hear the furniture being smashed and the dinners thrown against the historic wallpaper. Horrible noises all night long. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ranting about the Fox News betrayal, yelling at an imaginary Bill Barr.

You go in and tell him he lost the election. See how he takes the news. The only people going in that wreckage of a room are the sycophants who want him to declare martial law, confiscate suspicious voting machines, appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s boy. Toadies who tell him what he knows to be true: he won. He won by a landslide. And where are his loyal followers? McConnell and Pence, they’ve abandoned him. Half the Republicans are saying he may not be president another four years. You can hear him howling their names, vowing revenge. They’ll be sorry, the bastards. They’ll pay! This thing isn’t over yet, not by a long shot. He’ll campaign against these traitors!! He’ll ruin them! And if he has to destroy the Republican Party to do it, by god, he’ll wreak havoc on these people, these creeps. He’ll bring the temple to the ground!! He’ll pardon all his cronies. He’ll pardon his family. He’ll pardon himself, not that he has anything to be pardoned for, just so he can show them who runs this show.

Lost? LOST??? He’ll show them who lost. Donald J. Trump does not lose. Donald J. Trump is a winner!! So much winning we will get tired of it. Biden, president? Give him a break! Sleepy Joe won? Don’t make him laugh. We’ll see who gets the last laugh. If it means dragging down the entire country, that’s what it means. Nobody, and I mean nobody, tells Donald J. Trump he lost that phony election. He’s a winner, He won by a landslide. The rest is fake news. He’s been telling you that for a long time. Half of you know he’s telling the truth. The rest of you will learn the hard way.

Some of the boys down here on the South End were deep into a night of nog over at the Tyee Store and Saloon when the subject of New Year’s Resolutions reared its ugly head.  We’d pretty much solved most of the burning issues of the day that Congress can’t or won’t address, and with world peace close at hand and a solution for global economic recovery looming in our fevered LED’s, we naturally turned to self-improvement, the final obstacle to Nirvana.

     Self-improvement, in case you’ve never met a dyed-in-the-alpaca-wool South Ender, isn’t high on his Honey-Do List.  If it’s on the list at all…..  I’m not saying we don’t think we could use some polishing, but all those so-called vices other folks resolve every January One to curb or cut back on or eradicate completely, are those very traits we hold in high esteem.  We sure aren’t in any hurry to canonize ourselves.  We aren’t aiming for perfection.  Okay, maybe we could stand a bit of sprucing up, but we all know what a slippery slope that is.  Mabana Mike quit the bottle for 13 weeks two New Years ago and by the 3rd week he was an insufferable convert not only to Sobriety but worse, Piety.  Every day was like an AA meeting with Mike and he might as well have started his own church, passed out nicotine patches and offered  up 3 more cups of decaf coffee to the gods of abstinence.

     No, we decided long ago it’s better to accept our little blemishes and move on the best we can.  You live in a Shangri-La-La like we do, you don’t want many more monks claiming blissful enlightenment.  Next thing you know hordes of tourists seeking Truth, Wisdom and the South End Way will be clogging our backwash blacktop.  Plus, Tyee Store isn’t legally zoned for monasteries or temples.  We’ll probably just save everyone the grief and skip the resolutions again this New Year.  Good luck, though, to the rest of you….

No doubt some of you revelers are wondering if we’re going to have our annual New Year’s Party this Year of Our Covid 2020, maybe figuring after 3 decades of these if we didn’t we’d have to leave town and hang a sign on the door saying
PARTY CANCELED THIS YEAR
SEE YOU SURVIVORS IN 2021.

If you’re still wondering, the answer is you need to get more than a vaccination when they’re available. Trump lost the election, the world is round once again and sadly this coronavirus isn’t a hoax. Someone asked if we might have a Zoom Party instead. We assume they had been celebrating a couple weeks too early. The idea of a festive zoom party has all the fizz of a non-alcohol champagne. Better than that would be a return to the pre-party days of falling asleep on the couch by 10 pm waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square on your black and white TV. In other words, hell no. We’d rather have a power point presentation of past parties than sit through a night of Zoom waiting for midnight, bad video, sound that glitches and disembodied voices. Our fervent resolution for New Years is NO MORE VIRTUAL SOCIAL TIME.

So sadly we’ve bagged our New Year celebration this year. We’ve asked Santa for a couple of vaccinations and two senators from Georgia which would mean next year’s bash will be exactly that. Meanwhile, hunker down, avoid friends and family, wear a mask and for godsake, stay off social media, no point living through the coronavirus only to contract brain rot. This plague will end and like the saying says, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. And if you believe that, by all means, come on over for our non-existent New Year’s Party.

So the Pope is now an Art Critic as well as the Last Word on morality. I’m not clear on how baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary got approved as cosmonaut religious icons and I’m really not sure why anyone would think the Pontiff would endorse a nativity scene that looked like a scene on the cutting room floor of Aliens, but geez, couldn’t he lighten up a bit? He’s accepted homosexuals, why not avante-garde artists? Maybe even offer up an encyclical giving contemporary sculptors a pathway into Heaven? Modern art, it seems safe to say, isn’t the Holy See’s cup of tea.

I hate to say it, but the guy sounds like a Philistine. Don’t get me wrong, I got plenty of friends who are philistines, who think maybe I should tone my own stuff down and maybe do some nice sailboats and Victorian windows and even colorful flowers. Not because they worry that I’m going straight to Hell, just that this modern stuff leaves them cold. I mean, what IS that you got here, Skeeter? Is it my damn job to figure it out? It’s like those paintings by that guy Piccollo or whoever with two eyes on one side of a backwards face? C’mon, I never met anybody looked like that? D’jou??

Give me that old time religion, apparently. Renaissance art and forget the Campbell’s soup crap. Back here in Crazy Land, Trump just mandated that any new government buildings in Washington D.C. have to be ‘classic’ architecture. That new fangled stuff, forget about it, nobody likes it, nobody wants it, nobody is willing to pay for it. Right. Hitler hated modern art too. Degenerate art, I think was his term. Trump’s? Who knows what goes on in that gerbil caged brain of his? You ever seen his baroque apartment, the one with the gold toilet, probably all you need to know. The man thinks he’s in Versailles. Without the waiting guillotines….

Hitler sure had some nice buildings. Sturdy stuff. Brutal to some, but hey, brutal’s in the eye or the gunsight of the beholder. Trump maybe thinks his Reich will last a thousand years too. The Pope’s has. Why not lock in for another couple millenia? Personally, and I sure don’t want to offend any philistines, stagnation doesn’t seem like much of an aesthetic. Innovation, experimentation, evolution, change … well, it may not be the gold toilet standard, but last time I looked, the world was hurtling into the future whether we decided to rebuild Rome again or not. These folks don’t want to learn from the past, they want to live in it.

  Back in the less consumer-driven days of early Christmas, we South Enders would hang our stockings by the chimney with great care. Mostly so they wouldn’t catch fire…I mean, we used that chimney for heat.  How Santa was going to get down the brick chute without scorching those red pajamas of his, us young’uns didn’t have a clue.  So we worried about St. Nick.  Well, mostly we worried he wouldn’t leave us anything at all while he was hustled off to the nearest burn unit.   Our parents told us not to lose any sleep over it – Santa probably had fire retardant uniforms.  Oh, right, like Kris Kringle moonlighted as a chemist half the year.       

    But Santa always did seem to find the South End on Christmas …  which didn’t help to explain the half empty stockings and the paucity of presents under the tree every year at our house.  We kids just figured Santa had checked his stupid list, probably twice, and we were blacklisted on the NAUGHTY side once again.  We even used to leave cookie bribes and a jug of something savory to drink when he showed up.  It was odd how the jug was always empty and still, the stockings were sadly deficient.  Pa always said the reindeer must’ve been thirsty and we’d say, hey, if Donder and Blitzen could find their way here and down a burning chimney with a 6 inch hole to the woodstove, how come St. Nick couldn’t find us?  And Ma would give Pa a dirty look and say, something was Blitzen all right, but it wasn’t the reindeer….

     Santa finds the South End pretty easily now, I’m telling you.  Come Christmas morning it looks like a China R Us down the middle of the living room, barely room to squeeze near the tree.  Nowadays we don’t leave Santa a plate of cookies.  He expects an ATM machine and a Visa Card.  Christmas down on the South End lasts and lasts – about 12 easy payments, then it starts all over ….

Neighbor, do you wake up mornings, look out your window over a cup of your favorite roasted coffee and discover the suburb you left behind two short years ago has followed you here to Paradise? Does it seem like four of your next door neighbors are saluting you with their Starbuck’s coffee? At night does it look like the sky is glowing an eerie electronic blue from 17 TV’s flickering out every living room window? During the day does it seem like every retiree from here to Elger Bay is mowing his weed and feed lawn on a precision close-order drill of riding John Deeres? Do you find yourself daydreaming of a place in the country where you’re the only lucky fella in the subdivision? Friend, stop thinking the grass is gonna be greener somewhere else… You know the chemical fertilizers aren’t any more effective there.

What you need is our newly patented, completely remodeled South End Insta-Foto Fence. Installs in just minutes with household tools! The Insta-Foto Fence not only repels stray dogs and unwanted neighbor kids, the life-like realistic scenes of rural retirement will lull you back into a reverie of country contemplation.

Lay back in your reclino-lounger with your favorite adult beverage and view scenes of rural bliss. We offer a full catalogue of bucolic photo options. Maybe you want an ocean vista, waves gently rolling on to your immaculate yard. Order ‘Sleepy Shores #17’. If Pastoral Paradise (#3) is more to your taste, a panorama of cattle grazing by far off trees on a gently undulating hillside will make you want put a straw in your mouth and a lemonade on the side table. Maybe the long monsoon months of interminable winter have got you long in the mouth. Try ‘Tropical Sunset foto-fence #6’ and forget those drizzly days of the past. Prefer something more exotic? Maybe a golf course scene in Hawaii is more your style with its happy duffers driving the fairways of your own backyard. Just order ‘Pebble Beach Hole #9’ and imagine that drive between the sand bunkers hitting the green every time. Twenty images to choose from, installed with no muss, no fuss. So easy and affordably priced you’ll want to change fences often.

Instant Foto-Fence. Because you deserve more than another man’s suburbs. Now available in electric for maximum dog repellant protection. Keeps out the deer too!!!