The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Now that most of us underlings in the American plutocracy have learned that we are superfluous beings, non-essentials and persons without portfolio, the time is definitely ripe for a spiritual renaissance. Some may receive the news that their worth is negligible with great surprise and much rending of hair, but not me. I have known that bit of information since leaving the hallowed institutions of higher learning with degrees that were, like myself, worthless. Little wonder I moved to the South End. So it may be appropriate that the New Religion for these pandemic times we live in will come full fruit from these barren nettle regions. Nonessentialism. You can have your empty existentialism, your anachronistic Catholicism, your aggrieved Judaism, your battered Protestantism, your whacky New Ageism, your even whackier Evangelicals, they’re as meaningless in the Plague aftermath as Aztecan blood sacrifices on the pyramid steps after Cortez romped across their lakebed valley in the name of God and Gold.

It’s pretty obvious the keys to the Kingdom are no longer ascertained by a person’s success or wealth. The Protestant Ethic of old is deader than Martin Luther. If you thought your money and power were signs from On High that you would be granted entrance to the Pearly Gates, think again, pal. Even the rich are exempt from those criterion now. No, this is a New Era, not a New Age, forget about Aquarius. We could choose to live in Fear. Fear of joblessness, fear of poverty, fear of coming socialism and the nanny state, fear of the Virus, fear of science, fear of what our President might suggest next from his medical kitbag of panaceas. The economy is wrecked, the virus is still growing, the Age of Reason is finished. Superstition and half cracked conspiracy theories rule the land while Dread spreads like a dripping fog from sea to no longer shining sea.

This is the time for new paradigms, new religions, new politics. But … let’s be honest here, the meek aren’t going to inherit the earth, the monk in the cave isn’t going to emerge from the Dark Ages with illuminated manuscripts, a hundred Hail Mary’s aren’t going to absolve your sins or win any more football games, the games are rigged. It’s dog eat dog now, the emperor has no underwear and no clothes, the peasants won’t get cake to eat and the promise of some bullshit afterlife is a joke.

Nonessentialism, my friend. Pick up a pitchfork and head for the Amazon offices. The boyz in the corporate towers already know what you’re only starting to comprehend. You don’t matter, just a cog in the machinery of 3-D printing currency. Wake up, buddy, and smell the rot, it goes deeper than a couple of apples, it goes to the bottom of the barrel. Nonessentialism, the belief in pretty much nada. You’re on your own and about time to face the obvious. You don’t matter, you never did, and you know what? Maybe that’s not a bad starting point. Nonessentialism. You need to make the world in your own image, not the world all those yahoos who kept you down, who underpaid you, who promised you rewards … later on. Embrace it. Same as we South Enders do and always have. Nonessentialism. Now you know where you stand. Time to do something with it.

Now that the protests against the government closing down beaches and biznesses have started to make the nightly news, we can rest assured the Defenders of Freedom will provide themselves as canaries in the coal mines they would like to keep digging. I was hoping some reporter might ask these anti-government folks if they had cashed their stimulus checks. Or applied for the unemployment compensation that offers 600 bucks extra every week. Or if the geezers in the crowd with the MAGA hats wanted to stop payments on their Social Security benefits.

To be fair, we all want to come out of this state-mandated quarantine. And eventually some poor bastard in the bureaucracy will have to decide what exactly the right time will be to open up barbershops and restaurants, ballparks and concert halls. Roll the dice and wait for the backlash from trolls and the discontented. There won’t be much winning on this bet. But plenty of losers. The Coronavirus-in-Chief won’t be making that call, that’s a bet you can definitely win.

Folks want to go fishing, dammit. And they want to get a haircut. Down in Georgia, they’re going to get their wishes and I wish em luck. Catch a bass for me, whydon’tcha. Personally, I’m real glad they get to be the guinea pigs for what might result with early withdrawal from coronavirus safety measures. If they’re right, we can all go fishing. If they’re wrong, Georgia is a long ways away from the South End. Even if I did live there as a kid. Maybe we should salute them as the heroes, even the Essentials. Like the black prison inmates in Tuskeegee for syphilis experiments. Or U.S army personnel on the front lines of the first atomic bomb detonations. Somebody’s got to go first. Right?

And not to sound too heartless, but hey, these folks who feel tyrannized by their government, who feel imprisoned in their homes, who fly the flags that say Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, well, step right up. Us cowards salute you! And honestly, I wish you all the luck in the world. I think you’re going to need it and maybe a little more.

I live so far from reality that it’s hard for me to imagine how this Pandemic is going to alter the alignment of the earth on its axis. But I’m not so removed from the daily newsfeeds that I think we will ever return to the way we were. The virus may not beat us, may not kill most of us, may not even be as bad as our worst fears, but it will, like Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze jets crashing into the World Trade Towers, change everything. There will always be a pre-nine eleven. It will be years before we understand what constitutes post-coronavirus.

The President is slowly starting to ‘get it’ in regard to this epidemic. He got the part where the economy is going to tank, that much his inward looking brain could manage. He thinks this thing will be over by Easter, then by summer, certainly by the Republican Convention aka Trump Rally. It doesn’t take a visionary to realize the economy won’t just turn back ON. In this era of globalization the wrecked economies of countries who couldn’t pour a huge % of their GDP’s into saving themselves are going to take a brutal whipping and decades to recover. Vaya con Dios and see you at Easter, if the government’s response is any indication.

They’re on their own. Just like the states here in the Yew Ess Aye. National inventories of medical supplies? Not for the governors who didn’t show enough gratitude for the Presidential favors he’s bestowed. Not for the citizens of their states. Kommisar Kushner declares that the national supplies are national, not meant for individual states. You tell me what national means when most of these states are in lockdown. D.C.? Or maybe for the President and his family? The Republican Senators and Representatives? Maybe to offer to N. Korea and Iran as some sort of bargaining chip?

I’ve never really been a state’s rights kind of guy, but I might be leaning that way these days. If the yahoos in Florida and Kansas want to hold church services, okey dokey. If the congregation in Georgia wants to attend huge funerals, I’ll send flowers. But let’s blockade the South, Mason Dixon on down, toss in Texas. Build a Wall, I say, and put razor wire around Mar-a-Lago. And sure, charge it to the federal government, well worth the cost this time.

I got a friend who called me up asking if I had some colored glass he could get his hands on. Sure, I said, whatcha need it for? He explained that he was making mermaid sculptures and decorating them with everything from crushed seashells off the beach of Baby Island to possibly pennies as mermaid scales. He needed some glass to break into pieces and glue onto the mermaid’s tail. Okay, I said, I got some scrap glass you can use, anything to help a fellow glass breaker.

My pal is a real estate agent. Meaning, he’s in the same boat as a lot of us here on the lackadaisical South End, folks who basically are self-employed, work when we want, play most of the time. If we can handle the guilt of not embracing the Protestant Ethic, we’re fairly happy campers. But now, with this Pandemic Panic, the entire island has self-quarantined. Every manjack of us is holed up in Paradise wondering what the world will look like after the plague subsides. Whatever jobs were out there, they may not be after the dust settles and the virus leaves stunned survivors in its wake.

Whatcha making the mermaids for, anyway? I asked my buddy, thinking he was embarked on a mercy mission, maybe take a few to the nursing homes in the area since he’s a pretty philanthropic guy, the kind who takes firewood to shut-ins in the winter or organizes trash pickups alongside the roads. What do you mean? he asked. I mean what’s your plan with these mermaids is what I mean. No reason, he said, just bored.

So you got four mermaids done, now you’re making more? I was thinking about the 5 guitars I’d just made, no good reason. “You need to be careful, Zorba,” I warned. Whaddaya mean? he asked, a slight tremor in his voice. “Can’t you see, man, the thing has got a hold of you. One or two mermaids, sure, I get it. A little hobby to fill the time while the plague passes by. But the third? And a fourth? You can see where this is going. Be careful is all I’m saying.”

“It’s harmless,” he protested. “Just something to keep me from being bored. What’s wrong with that, Skeeter?

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You’re playing with a loaded gun, my friend. Another mermaid you’ll be hooked. Sure, it’s a few seashells glued on, then it’s some broken glass, some pennies to make scales, next thing you’ll be making full size sculptures, casting bronze, there’s no telling where it leads. You’ll end up like the rest of us on this desolate hellhole of an island.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” he fairly squeaked. I hated being the bearer of bad news but hellfire, someone has to speak Truth to the moths circling the flame. “What I’m talking about is falling into the trap. One mermaid okay, two, sure, but the addiction starts there and next thing you know ….” I paused to let this sink into his bald skull. “What?” he asked, “Next thing I know what??”

“You become like the rest of us, Zorba, you become an artist.”

“I’m just killing some time, Skeeter, I’m just bored,” he protested.

“That’s what we all said. If we were honest. Just … be … careful, that’s all I’m saying. We got too many lost souls here now, we don’t need some retired realtor joining the ranks.”

Next day when I took him the glass he said he wanted more colors, not just the blues he originally requested. I shook my head, sure, why not. Too late, I could tell, nothing for it but to take him the whole crayon box. Sometimes you just can’t talk folks off the ledge.

Liberate the fish! The cry went up from far and wide, here to Michigan. The fishermen are up in arms! Well, the fishermen are up in reels. Damn the pandemic, they want to fish. They bought an expensive boat, they’ve got gas going bad, they have gear and motors and licenses, by god, they want to fish. Somewhere in the Constitution there’s an amendment they have the right to catch fish. Somewhere next to the one that gives them the right to have gun shops open. When fishing is outlawed, only outlaws will fish. Or fish will be outlaws. Something like that….

I confess here and now, I have fished all my life. My sailboat has a downrigger on it for salmon fishing. You know, when there were salmon. I have licenses to dig clams and catch crab. And I can see their point. We don’t have clambakes with one hundred other clammers and we don’t tether our boats together to fish. It’s a lonely occupation, fishing. At least it was for me. Nobody in the boat with me, pretty much no fish either. But it was like the old joke where a guy comes across a fisherman casting from the pier and asks, How’s the fishing? And the fisherman sez Great. How many you caught? the guy asks the fisherman. None, the fisherman sez, but the fishing is great.

The parks are closed, the boat ramps are closed off, the quarantine is in effect. We’re supposed to stay home. It’s no surprise to me that the first signs of insurrection, the first hint of revolution, aren’t the poor, the unemployed, the homeless … no, the protests started with the sports fishermen. They fight with the tribes, they fight with the government, they’d fight with anybody who took away their god-given right to fish the lakes and the streams and the Puget Sound. Where else can they go to get away from their wives, to drink beer in peace all day long, to breathe free the backwash of gas motors?

Personally, I hope the government, when they begin opening up the closures for schools and businesses, parks and trails, bars and restaurants in staged progressions, they let these fisherman fish first. For no better reason than to shut them up.

Coming home the other day, I was listening to National Public Radio — mostly for further education credits — and they were talking about somebody working in the Inner City who went around to the homeless to offer them free health checkups. These folks were, as our reporter tactfully put it, probably on drugs or booze or were mentally ill or any combination thereof. Probably all three.

We always talk about the street folks this way. Poor sad souls who fell through the societal cracks, who might have, if not for drugs or booze or rock and roll or psychiatric reasons, might have been happy productive members of society. Almost exactly the prognosis for me and my neighbors here on the South End!! I mean, who wouldn’t want to work at Twin City Foods on the ‘line’, who wouldn’t rather drive to McDonalds and flip burgers for minimum wage, no benefits, no health insurance, no kidding???? Who wouldn’t want to go back to school, get that GED or a PhD. and become a 6 figure a year attorney?? You’d have to be CRAZY not to!!!!!!!!!! You’d maybe have gotten so dependent on drugs and alcohol this wouldn’t APPEAL to you! whatsoever, not at all!?

Holy Cowpie. Maybe our reporter never worked in a factory dawn to dark, 6 days a week. Maybe our Good Samaritan never thought of the American Dream as a rat race through the labyrinth of Hell in search of moldy cheese. Maybe our sociologists, who work for the universities, have full tenure and pensions and fat salaries, maybe they see unemployment or poor health care or an Insecure Future, as something, oh, I don’t know, something WORSE than a dead end job, a horrible boss, a joy-draining life on the assembly line of ‘respectability’.

Well, now that Covid-19 has made indigents of all of us, the sociologists can study the effects of joblessness, poverty, homelessness and a scarcity of toilet paper on the folks who did think a mind-numbing job would spare them the grim realities. But I doubt the results will make these investigators re-evaluate their premises. They still have jobs. They still have health insurance. They can still pay their rent. I say send those researchers, those professors, those academicians down here! Give me a couple of days, that’s all. After that, they’ll be on drugs or booze or sudden retirement. Probably all three…. And all the happier for it. Not that we need more newcomers here on the South End….

There are those who think Donald J. Trump has no sense of humor, who argue that his narcissism makes it impossible for him to laugh at himself and therefore he is incapable of finding humor in others without resorting to cruelty and bullying. The world, they say, is a dichotomy of Him vs. the Rest of Us. He sees it through the lens of his bathroom mirror and to make jest of anything would be to mock himself.

I disagree. I think the guy is the consummate funny man. His problem, I’ll argue, is he’s a straight man in search of a partner. He’s Abbot without Costello, Laurel without his Hardy. Edgar Bergan without Charlie McCarthy. He has these great pearls of comedy but never gets the shell opened. Take yesterday, just for example. He’s at his usual podium giving the State of the Pandemic rundown for the past 24 hours. He’s blasted blue states for their Democratic leanings and insinuated that this is the reason for elevated Covid-19 deaths. Okay, in and of itself, NOT funny. Actually kind of dumb, stupid even. He’s got Pence nearby, pretty obviously a ventriloquist dummy, ready for a second act entrance, but like the Big Man himself, an empty suit without Edgar Bergen moving his wooden lips. The health folks might fill the role, crack wise after such a pronouncement, “Right, Don, probably explains their weather this past winter too.” Drum roll please….

Trust me, the reporters would bust a gut. We all would. Course Fauci would disappear from the stage, but that’s not to say the gag didn’t work. And ratings would soar, viewership would go through the roof and in a few short weeks the Trump Comedy Hour could expand to three hours or even four. We’re all trapped in our quarantine cocoon, you think folks wouldn’t watch a genuinely funny variety show?? Get another Fauci every day, just part of the act, same as the other government agencies, a hilarious revolving door. Part of the joke is how completely inappropriate the pick is. Rush Limbaugh as head of the Center for Disease Control. The guy was an oxycontin addict before we’d even heard the term opioid epidemic. Rush might hang on for a week before You’re Fired.

How about the one liner that folks should take disinfectants, get them inside the body by injection or ‘almost a cleaning’ where it will do a number, a tremendous number, on the lungs? Sure, it sounds stupid when you leave it out there like that. Makes the man look like Pence, nobody to drop the tag line. You almost feel, I don’t know, sorry for him. Where’s the damn punch line, everybody? Don’t just stand there looking uncomfortable! Drop the dime!!

“Well, I guess, Mr. President, you might consider, in your own case, doubling down. A little Lysol with a toilet bowl cleaner for a chaser!” Admittedly the poor schmuck who followed through would be gone immediately, but hey, anything for a laugh, right? Right?

The Invisible Enemy attacked in 2020, about a century after the Spanish Influenza, what the President called Chinavirus and wags in the Administration labeled Kung Flu. It spread across the world in no time flat through respiratory transmission with epidemiologists cautioning that it could kill millions before we could stop it. One by one countries closed off their cities, shut down business as usual, quarantined their citizens, demanded people stay home except for essential services like groceries, pharmaceuticals, booze and cannabis. Fingerpointing became a new national pastime now that sports were banned and concerts canceled.

General Trump declared war. On the virus. On the immigrants. On Democratic Governors. On reporters who ask uncomfortable questions during his daily war briefings. On the states whose governors went into lockdown and won’t reopen businesses. On the World Health Organization. On China. On the Democrats who want stimulus dollars to go to testing in the states. On the Fake Press. On … well, pretty much the same enemies he’s been fighting since taking office and long before. The man is a trench fighter, a take-no-prisoner warrior. If war is Hell, he’s our Satan.

The germs, however, seem to be winning. Bodies are piling up in makeshift morgues, refrigerated cars and storage lockers. Testing is random and haphazard. The General informs us he’s completely in charge … but the Governors are the ones who should do battle. Respirators, masks, ventilators — they belong to the federal government. States should buy their own arms. When they do, their supplies are confiscated by the federal government. To be distributed at some future date. It’s all very confusing, no doubt the fake media’s attempt to aid and abet the virus.

Some citizens are beginning to chafe over the quarantine. They say their freedom to assemble, their freedom of speech, their freedom of religion is being sacrificed to the virus. They want to go fishing. They want to buy a gun. They want to go to church. They want to picnic on the beach. They think the virus is a hoax and they’re sick of being held hostage. The General tells them to listen to his experts but tweets that they should Liberate themselves. It’s all very confusing, no doubt the fake news.

His Attorney General warns that states that do not free their citizens from their chains and shackles in a timely fashion will be dealt with by the federal government. The federal government, under General Trump, has said the states must handle this pandemic themselves. The federal government isn’t going to stand on street corners conducting covid-19 tests, he explained. It’s all very confusing, no doubt Chinese misinformation.

From my own bunker it’s hard to tell who’s winning. It’s easier to tell who’s losing. For certain it’s all very confusing. Thank god for the daily briefings from the General to clear yesterday’s muddle up.

I’ve been watching the price of oil this morning. Started out at 18 bucks a barrel and last time I peeked, it was a buck and 32 cents. Peak Oil my butt. I was thinking of trading a guitar or three for a hundred barrels, store them in an underground facility I’m considering building, then wait for the prices to go back up to 40 or 50, then retire a rich oil magnate. If we actually drove anywhere in these pandemic plague times, l’d never buy gas again in two lifetimes.

Course, being a shrewd and savvy futures trader, I’m probably going to wait a day or two, let the price go into negative territory when there’s nowhere to store the oil being pumped this month and let them pay me top dollar to take the stuff off their hands. Forget the underground storage facility, I’ll stack them to the top of the fir trees. Seven acres of crude. Black Gold. Texas Tea. Well, the first thing you know old Skeeter’s a millionaire, kinfolks said Skeet, move away from there. Said “Californy is the place you ought to be” so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. Swimmin pools, movie stars.

Holy cow, Batman, I just checked again those oil prices. 20 cents on the barrel. You heard me right. Two dimes. Yep, the future looks bright. Not the oil futures, mine. Yours too if you get off the internet watching coronavirus updates and following Trump Tweets and get on the phone to your broker. If you don’t have a broker, I might be able to offload a few barrels to your patio or garage. Free delivery, just like my pals at Amazon. Course you need to sign up for Skeeter Prime.

Whoa, took another look at the oil price and holey moley, it’s down 35 bucks below zero!! Hard to believe, really, but there’s money to be made here for all of us, looks like to me. God, what a great country…..

If you’re like me, you enjoy a daily dose of good conspiracy theories almost more than binging Netflix. Bill Gates was behind the development of this killer virus. China unleashed this covid-19 on the United States by setting it loose on its own people and watching it spread to the rest of the world. The Pandemic is a hoax and photos of overwhelmed hospitals are faked. The economic shutdown is a liberal attempt to socialize America. The number of coronavirus deaths is a lie to scare the nation and make us cowering sheep.

Me, I think we should create our own conspiracy theories. To that end, let me toss out the kernel of one and hope that you can expand on it, maybe find some convenient faux facts to accelerate the paranoia and possibly get this going viral. With a little luck we can catch the attention of some Russian bots and before you can say Right Wing Insurrection we have ourselves a full blown crackpot conspiracy with interviews on Rachel Maddow and sketches on Saturday Night Live.

My conspiracy theory is this: the Pandemic was a scheme by Donald Trump and a cabal from the military industrial complex with the full backing of Amazon to unleash it on the world. Testing was withheld to give the virus a solid foothold. To that end Trump put Vice President Pence and Kommisar Kushner in charge, insuring the necessary delays in counteracting the disease. The goal was to give the President his own daily talk show, presumably to update a frightened country on the pandemic’s progress, but essentially to give himself prime facetime. Every day, week after week, the President would Talk. When the pandemic reached a critical death count, the country would shut down, quarantined, with only internet and TV for outlets. President Trump would give a fireside ramble every day.

Add to that the bailout package cobbled together in a few short days. Trillions of dollars would be handed out to major corporations and enough small checks to each individual to make the larger handouts palatable. The country was in crisis! Money would be spent. Trickle down economics would save the day. Corporate welfare would be institutionalized.

And, if necessary, if this Pandemic roared back when red states restarted businesses prematurely, well, the Election might have to be postponed. Might even need to be, for the welfare of the country, put on permanent hold. After all, we would be at war. Thankfully, the General would speak to each of us daily. A grateful nation would listen to his every word. The Trump Show would garner the largest ratings in television history. The War on Germs would never really be won, but in the end, we will have met the enemy. And the enemy was us.