The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Here’s a bumper sticker to replace the maskless yahoo I ran into at the local grocery store last week’s DON’T TREAD ON ME. How about DON’T BREATHE ON ME. With schools scheduled to return to the classroom in a month and with the country spiking in 40 states after nearly half a year of contagion that for awhile seemed to be settling down, we can’t get a federal commitment to fighting this Covid plague. We can’t even get a straight answer from the Man in the High Tower whether we should wear a mask or not. He certainly won’t. When Congress authorized payments to facilitate more and faster testing for the virus, the White House blocked its implementation. What the President wants is for the states to battle this out on a local level. Local control, better results. Although when it comes to authorizing federal law enforcement on the streets of Portland, inflaming the situation, federal control is better.

If you’re confused about what this Administration’s policy is, join the club. If you think there is a policy, wake up. Even Republican governors, mayors and legislators are alarmed. When the White House team of rivals attacked Dr. Fauci as being wrong most of the time, even the dumb refused to be dumber. Despite the President’s reassurance that this epidemic will just fade away, a beautiful thing to watch, it won’t and everyone outside the Bubble knows it won’t. When he tells Fox News in an interview this weekend that eventually he will be proven right, even his most ardent admirers wiped the smile off their maskless faces. The man may be more of a menace than the disease he refuses to fight.

History will not be kind to this President. And as the election looms, neither will his former friends and allies, his enablers who watched in studied silence as blunders and buffoonery circled like hungry vultures overhead. Why rock the boat when it was sailing high above the waterline with an economy that made millionaires of their fellow stock investors? Sure, the folks in steerage were making minimum wage bailing water, but the unemployment rate was low, surely an optimistic sign.

But now the economy has bottomed, primarily the result of ineptitude on the bridge. The captain is morphing into Queeg, mutinies on all sides, paranoia driving him to listen only to his inner voices and the pipsqueak Kushner. No one can be trusted, maybe not even Jared. Rumors are circulating that the officers are against him. Fox News has turned softball interviews into perplexingly hard questioning. He claims to be one of the highest IQ people on the planet, acing, in fact, his recent medical intelligent test. Chris Wallace, the Fox interviewer told him he too had taken that test. It asked them to identify a picture of an elephant. Wallace didn’t ask the President if he’d gotten that one right, but the rest of us on the S.S. America know, the correct answer is it’s what’s in the room at the White House.

In the 1300’s when another round of bubonic plague was sweeping the floor of civilization, a marauding army of Tartars set siege to Caffa, a port city on the Black Sea. The citizens there, fearing contamination, refused to surrender to the infected army so the Tartars, mightily piqued at this unseemly lack of camaraderie, catapaulted some of their dead over the battlements of the walled city. Velkommen indeed.

A friend of mine was in one of our local grocery stores recently on the wild and unwalled South End, a provisioning locus for State Park refugees fleeing the plague cities of Seattle and Gomorrah and a quickie mart for us residents who ran out of beer or wine and dreaded the nightmare run five miles north to the IGA. Not a mask on a single employee. When the manager was asked why not, given the Governor’s edict that all retail shops and all citizens should wear one, she was told the staff had medical exemptions. ‘How many employees do you have?’ she asked and was told, with a straight face, 27.

I suppose we should applaud our local retailer for hiring the sick and the infirm. Although I wonder what maladies, besides Covid, they might be harboring at that cash register. This past week’s editorial page in our local fishwrapper featured an angry letter from a local man who claimed it was against God’s will to wear a mask. And furthermore, it was unconstitutional to infringe on his personal, and I suppose, God’s freedom. I can only suppose the Constitution has some bill of rights not to wear masks. Or shoes or shirts. Or pants. We apparently have the right to infect our fellow citizens. God’s will be done.

These are tough times in the Land of the Plague. Partisan politics takes precedence over sound medical advice and in those places where the Lockdown was lifted and the partying commenced, the virus has proven immune to political debate, surprise surprise. Other countries have managed to contain the contagion, but here, we subscribe to the Don’t Tread on Me, I Can Do What I Want philosophy. So much for the idea that we are all in this thing together. Better to let the virus run its course and the survivors can carry on. Another few months of this and I expect to see catapaults launching the dead over the gated communities.

This is Year One in the Plague Era. If you follow the death reports, the daily Covid cases, all the statistics from all the states, you can monitor the slow and inexorable spread of the virus. If you’re holed up in your Covid cocoon with only the weekly grocery run wearing your mask and your shields, you have plenty of time to read plague predictions, even time to research pandemics throughout history. It’s a frightening read. Millions dead of bubonic, AIDS, smallpox, cholera, flu, you name it, it ravaged the civilized and uncivilized world.

Occasionally I peek at the coronavirus stats for the world, the nation, even the counties of my state, Washington. My county, Island County, for the past month or so had a death toll of 12. A few days ago we were listed as 11 dead. I figured a misprint, checked the following day and the day after, but nope, 11 dead now. This is great news for those who think the plague is a political prank or a liberal hoax. Even better news for those who believe the President when he claims the virus will just fade away. Not only will it fade away, the dead will return to life!!

I love magical thinking as much as the next superstitious anti-vaccine yahoo, believe me. I want to throw my plague mask in the trashcan and go back to partying with my pals down at the local watering hole. If I get sick, so what? Survival of the fittest, right? Except, I don’t want to believe in Darwinism, none of that scientific hocus pocus baloney you get every day in the fear infested media. And if I die of this disease, well, a chance in 12 I’ll return to the living, how’s that for statistical analysis? And don’t get me going on zombies. Nobody is talking zombie here.

All I’m saying is, like the President, let’s be optimistic. This thing is headed in the right direction. Be of good cheer. Stop doomscrolling. Stop worrying. We’re going to be fine and even the dead will be home soon. Count on it. But stop counting.

If you thought the Kung Flu came from China, like your President does, maybe it’s time to wake up. If you thought the Chinese Flu was developed in a lab or came from some so-called ‘wet’ market in Wuhan, forget about it. The truth is out there, as they used to say on the X-files. The truth is stranger than fiction. Or, more to the point, fiction is truth and truth is fiction and the folks on Facebook no longer argue which is which. Who cares, really, when we’d rather have interesting lies than boring truths.

You think this comet Neowise showing up in our solar system at the same time as the coronavirus was a coincidence? C’mon, think about it. UFO’s are circling the planet like bees around their disturbed nest. The government knows all about this, but they’re keeping it secret, as always, lobbing you misinformation about Russian election interference and Twitter hacks to prevent us citizens from asking too many questions. Like where did this comet come from? And why is it here? Who sent it and what do they want? Remember when the European Space Agency landed on a comet a few years back? What did they find there, eh? And why didn’t they let us in on that secret?

I looked at this comet a few nights ago. If that tail doesn’t look exactly like a sneeze loaded with coronavirus hurled across a crowded room by a maskless contagion superspreader, I don’t know what does…. Aliens are out there, my friend, and trust me on this, they are not your friend. They are planting the seeds of destruction in our atmosphere even as you sit there blithely reading this, unaware of extraterrestrial dangers. They have sent the Messenger of Death in the form of celestial bodies that we ooh and aah over, little suspecting we are being washed by plague mists continuously as the comet streaks over our heads. And you thought chemtrails were frightening! You thought vaccines were scary!

Another existential threat, can’t you see that for what it is? This isn’t pixie dust, pal, this is space plague. Oh sure, they’ll find a vaccine for it, you can bet your supplemental health insurance on it. But what’s really in it? Antibodies from another galaxy, that’s what. Go right ahead, let these enablers shove a syringe in your arm, but don’t come crying to me when your body starts to grow scales and your appendages begin to double. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.

Here it is again, Groundhog’s Day in the Land of Covid. I think it’s Wednesday, or was Wednesday, or will be again tomorrow, but I’m not sure what week of what month. I vaguely remember the 4th of July awhile back but it might have been last year, I’m not prepared to wager any bets or testify under oath. I talk to my old man who’s 97 years old every day and invariably ask what’s new? He pauses to think for a minute or so, then invariably answers, Nothing.

He lives by himself, rattles around his two bedroom house, watches the news on two TV’s, cooks himself three meals a day, reads his subscription magazines that pile up, naps, watches movies at night until he falls asleep on his recliner. Next day he gets up and repeats the above. He likes the routine. Life distilled right down to its essence. Me, I’m not 97. But I’m locked in a similar routine and I really don’t like the same routine.

Oh sure, I love watching the news, reading the morning papers, digesting whatever new pandemic statistics roll in, marveling at the Trump Show, waiting for the election commercials to start gathering steam. Who wouldn’t? But if you ask me, like my old man does every day, what’s new? I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say Nothing. Grocery shopping once a week. There you go, there’s something different. Or fix the broken washing machine, a happy break in the monotony. Mow the lawn, same as last week, but this is this week, different, see?

Last night I hauled down the road at nearly midnight. Took two binoculars and a camera plus a small telescope hoping to find the comet that’s visiting our little solar system. Sure, it’s probably sprinkling viruses into our atmosphere, but hey, any visitor is welcome by me. I stood for half an hour in the middle of the highway without a single car driving by, looking toward the Big Dipper, and lo and behold, there it was, a small slash of light in the distance, my celestial intruder. I was gobsmacked. I was tickled pink. I was transported out of my ennui for at least a short time. A comet! In all my life I’ve only seen a couple. Admittedly this one was a little shy of a Double Rainbow event but I’ll jump up and down for any comet anytime anywhere. When my old man asks me today what’s new? I’ll say Comet. Tomorrow, of course, I’ll say the same thing if I manage to see it again tonight. Tomorrow is Wednesday probably, the day after I saw the comet. The day the conspiracy theorists start to spread the rumor that the comet brought Covid.

I just read a study that proved ‘grumpy’ miserable people live just as long as the happy cheerful folks. This is good news to us seasonally afflicted South Enders, all us perennial grumpsters holed up in our dark shacks hoping Global Warming is true and it gets here soon. I can say for myself, at least now that I can rub this phony smile off my mug and go back to honest cynicism knowing it won’t cause cancer or a heart attack, it’s a relief. A smile, I don’t care how many times you sing it, isn’t much of an umbrella. Even face down ….

Course half of us down here don’t believe in science so a ‘study’ isn’t going to change most minds. Half don’t buy climate change or evolution or the coronavirus or the Round Earth theory. Just ornery, I guess. That, or they got religious beliefs we’re supposed to be tolerant of even if they’re intolerant toward everyone else’s.

I’m sure next year we’ll get a study on whether religion makes a believer happier. You’d sure think it would, not that they’d maybe live longer, but go ask the Taliban how cheerful they are without music or dancing in their lives. Some of our righteous neighbors seem too busy casting stones at the rest of us they don’t squeeze much joy out of their own lives, probably wouldn’t if every day was warm and sunny.

Personally I don’t think happiness springs from too rich a soil, not something that needs or wants much fertilizing. It requires maybe just the opposite occasionally, brings a little balance to the garden. Me, I sprinkle lots of skepticism, amend with some sarcasm, keep things a little on the warm side when I need to. I get plenty of bugs, worms, even critters. Gardening has its ups and downs, but the harvest, even if it’s on the lean side some years, is pretty good. Might not help me live longer, but it seems more natural, more honest.

And McDonald’s — you can go ahead and change the Happy Meal name, no health benefits, to what it truly is: Crappy Meal. You got science on your side now.

Another day, another Covid report. I notice I’m losing track of time, the days, the weeks, even the month, all just slipping by without signposts to mark some new event, a vacation maybe or a wedding or a birthday party for friends. Even the statistics of new cases and more deaths just seem drearily the same. And when the President tweets that this will just fade away shortly, sooner than you think, the joke is stale. I can only slap my head so many times with this boob.

But hey, he wore a mask two days ago. HE WORE A PLAGUE MASK!!! The news media went half crazy. The man wore a mask for the first time in public. Let’s see, that’s about 6 months into this plague, about 3 and a half million Covid cases in the country he presumably leads, 135,000 dead voters. I mean, what’s the rush? He told reporters he’s always thought wearing a mask was a good idea. You know, in the right place, the right time. And no, I didn’t slap myself upside the head when he said it, the dark humor has been drained right out of me. I live in an Alice in Wonderland world and I’m just trying to hang on without going too much further down the rabbit hole.

So when the Masked One ordered all schools to open this fall, or else!, I just grabbed one hand with the other and held it tight against my body, no point giving myself a self-induced concussion. All those states that came out of Lockdown, Florida, Texas, California, South Carolina, Arizona, well, just like the health experts predicted, they have huge spikes in cases. All those young people partying, drinking in bars, congregating at the beaches. Masks? Wrong time, wrong place, apparently. But if you thought those grim new statistics would matter, think again after you’ve duct taped your hands to your chair, the right time to open schools is a month away, the right place is a classroom with 30 kids and a teacher, maybe masked, maybe not.

Ignorance is bliss in the New America. So why not keep these kids home, forget virtual schooling or any schooling for that matter. Dumb them down, prepare them for the future. Plenty of jobs in a Trump administration for that kind of portfolio. High school dropout, Jimmy? No problem, the President is looking for a new Secretary of State. Welcome aboard.

I confess. I have a TV. Not a very big TV, not a drive-in theater size TV, a TV that our friends find maddening if we want to watch a movie together but that seems plenty big enough for the mizzus and me. I don’t want to build another house to make room for a 60 inch television. But I do want to watch the news and a few shows. And I don’t want to pay for cable or satellite. Not that I wouldn’t want to watch 100 stations with the weirdest content imaginable just to get PBS.

So it probably won’t surprise anyone to know that I have an antenna on the roof. Since everyone went to digital, the old antenna wouldn’t pick up anything. Nada, zip, zero. Thanks a lot, FCC. The first UHF antenna would catch a few stations, not most, and even then you had to haul up to the roof, turn the antenna, climb back down and see if that picked up the station you were after and when it didn’t repeat the above. Great exercise, not good viewing. Like the internet, TV reception out in the boondocks is for the birds. Sure, the providers promised high speed updates, but any fool knew they were lying. And now that the pandemic has forced us all into quarantine, the internet with everyone logged on is reminiscent of the old dial-up days with buffering that lasts longer than TV commercials.

A week ago I did some buffered research on TV antennas, ordered one online and got it a few days later. The old one, which actually wasn’t very old at all, had replaced the previous one that refused, no matter what compass direction I pointed it, to pick up PBS. PBS, we learned through further internet buffered research, had a slightly weaker signal than any other station this side of Portland or San Francisco. Close, but no cigar, so I figured get a slightly bigger antenna but maybe not as big as a large array telescope. With high hopes and plenty of pessimism I hauled the new aluminum job up to the roof peak, attached it to the metal mast, pointed it in the direction of Seattle and Gomorrah, climbed back down the ladder and turned on the TV. Wow. The stations were really a lot crisper, all of them.

All of them except PBS. Which didn’t come in at all. PBS asks us for contributions all the time. Maybe when they offer a repeater station instead of a cheesy coffee mug for a donation of 120 bucks a year, they might have a shot. Until then, they can quit asking.

I guess if protesters are clamoring to have Confederate traitors’ statues removed, the correct response from the White House obviously is to commission new statues to replace the old ones. Why not? Who doesn’t love Davy Crockett? The President no doubt watched those TV shows with Fess Parker, probably should make a statue of Fess too. Or Daniel Boone who ‘killed a ‘bar’ when he was only 3.’ I know plenty of guyz who have closed a bar at only midnight, earlier than 3, probably not heroic enough to get them into the National Garden, I’m betting. Billy Graham is on the list. Everybody loves old Billy, who beget Franklin, who beget the religion of hate. Plenty of folks on that wishlist, some sort of controversial, like Douglas MacArthur, the General who wanted to bomb the Chinese back to the Ming Dynasty. Or Ronald Reagan who was beloved by the Republicans even as he cut deals with the Iranians before he was elected President.

But my purpose isn’t to make the list shorter by questioning the nominees we have now. No, the more the merrier, I say, so let’s add more to the Garden. Why limit our heroes? Why not create a Pantheon of Popularity? If need be, if space is a limiting factor and the White House lawn doesn’t have room for Rushmore sized monuments, we could always downsize a bit, maybe hundreds of bobble-heads lined up by the security fences. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. The Three Stooges. Stormy Daniels! Definitely Stormy Daniels. Ooh, Rambo, who doesn’t like Rambo? But hey, why should I be the arbiter of national popularity? We could have American Idols winners sculpted, soap opera stars, Academy Award nominees, lottery winners, beauty pageant contestants, NASCAR drivers, even fictional characters. Billy Jack, Rocky, Bullwinkle too!, Donald Duck, Jared Kushner (I know, he’s supposed to be real but he’s practically a plastic cutout now), Rooster Cogburn, Beaver Cleaver, Maynard G. Krebs, hell, the list could go on and on. What a Garden!!! What a Pantheon!!!

Plenty of work here for all those unemployed artists, that’s maybe the best part. Set up a public works project, hire sculptors, put em to work the way we did during the Great Depression. They’ll work for peanuts and fame, count on that. Maybe get the kids working on this too, from grade school on up, plenty of public participation, every parent proud of their little progeny. A Garden of Idol in every town! Forget about Christopher Columbus and those rebel generals, time to upgrade! Time to celebrate new heroes! Every citizen can nominate his or her favorite. Hell, each of us could nominate ourselves. Hero Worship, is that so bad?

KINK, the 500 watt AM radio for the South End, recently received its FCC certification to broadcast as a bona fide public radio station. The station manager, Rhonda Bodley, made a short introduction yesterday morning at 8 a.m., something to the effect that finally the South End had its own voice. Course, for the last two years, that voice was intermittent, coming as it did from pirate broadcasts. If you happened to turn your AM dial to 490, you would have thought the Dark Ages had come to a crashing conclusion, that the rock had rolled off our cave entrance and that finally we had joined civilization. Never mind that podcasting had rolled the rock back.
Wolfman Chuck volunteered to be KINK’s first DJ. Well, the first legitimate disc jockey, spinning platters of his favorite old stuff, Jefferson Airplane and B.B. King, Van Morrison and Bonnie Raitt, all the albums and 8 tracks he’d listened to stoned out of his head, at least any that were now out on CD’s. The first song to hit the South End airwaves was White Rabbit which he introduced as ‘our theme song’. “If you remember where you were when you first heard this,” he declared, “you didn’t hear it in the 60’s. Those memories were all … ERASED!” Wolfman would laugh his psycho laugh, usually ending in a coughing jag interrupted by another song.
Wolfman’s program is called Radio Free South End. “Where the truth comes to die.” Wolfman likes to announce it as four hours of Not-So-Easy-Listening, which is true, not so much for the music format as Chuck himself. He tends to ramble between songs, reminisces about the Golden Age of the sixties, extols acid rock and waxes nostalgic over everything from the Peace Movement to Timothy Leary, all in a sleepy stoner baritone punctuated by embarrassingly long pauses. He screws up the song credits, mangles syntax and punches wrong buttons for station ID when he meant to hit a public service announcement.
But … as Wolfman likes to tell us every few hours, “They pay me exactly what I’m worth. Nada. Zilch. Zip and zero. Speakin of which, this next tune is a million dollar winner … Cripple Creek with our own South End String Band!”
Like the man sez: not so easy listening.