The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I just e-mailed a friend who had gone up to Fairbanks, Alaska to see his grandkids and kids. Just said hello basically and how’s the weather? Within a few minutes I got a new feed on my Yahoo news advertising great deals on Fairbanks hotels. Now … I suppose this could just be a cosmic coincidence, a shot in a trillion that maybe I was hoping to take a vacation jaunt up into the north country in winter, catch a little of that minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and enter the Iditarod with my husky sled dogs.

But … I’m betting my friends at Yahoo are monitoring my every word in hopes of monetizing one or more of them into sponsored ads. I’m growing accustomed to online shopping opening me up to every Amazon algorithmic advertisement based on my curiosities, but I like to think e-mail is more like sending a letter than it is posting on Facebook. Sure, they’re probably like the NSA, CIA and FBI, just collecting metadata, not really reading or listening to actual content. And like our friend Mark Zuckerberg sez, whaddaya got to hide anyway? We should all be open books, transparency is in society’s best interest.

Well, Mark’s best interest anyway. Love ya, Marky! You adorable rich rascal you. Mmmmwaah. You killed that lying press with a billion posts of faux news, you cute little bugger. And now we got a reality TV host as CEO of America, muchas gracias. I noticed, though, that you filed suit in Kauai to keep your estate there private, even built a rock wall to help you hide behind. What gives, little buddy? Whatcha hiding? Whatcha scared of from the peeping masses?

Well, if things get too hot in Kauai, I got some great deals in Fairbanks to help you chill out. Least I could do. Send me your e-mail and I’ll pass them on. Say hi to the mizzus, Mark. And keep yer head down.

In Sweden there’s a town that just designated one hour for sex at lunch. Seems their childbirth rate is a bit low and maybe morale too so the mayor declared that lunch be turned over to libidinous activity. Good exercise, he added. And, if sexual shenanigans needed any further endorsement, substituting that for lunch should bring the city’s citizens’ weights right down as well. Exercise and diet together, probably cut down on heart attacks by half.

Some wag on the city council wondered what about those who didn’t want to have sex at lunch or maybe didn’t have anyone to have sex with. The mayor was undeterred, suggesting those lonely workers could take a walk instead, something easier to mandate than, say, setting up sex clubs for those sad bereft souls wandering pitifully in the snowy parks while their peers were boffing under quilts in their warm beds.

While this is just a small experiment in social engineering for one town in a northern latitude, it isn’t hard to imagine it spreading like a herpes virus to other industrialized countries. The Japanese tried stretching and exercise breaks but the Swedes may have hit on something much much better for morale in this cubicle infested world most employees feel trapped in. Sure easy to imagine the Danes and the French jumping on the bandwagon, probably a stretch for us tight ass Americans though, especially now that the unions are pretty much gutted. More likely employers in the U.S. would opt for mandatory masturbation. That, or keep the bag lunch as the better option.

These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry.

So sang Paul Simon on The Boy in the Bubble.

These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby , don’t cry
Don’t cry.

Aw, who’s crying now? Trump’s apologists are all over the jungle these days trying to mop up the mess he left accusing the prior president of wiretapping Trump Tower. Kellyanne Conway, as always the most entertaining of the surrogates designated for bidet overflows, suggested what he meant was that this is the day of wiretapping microwaves, everybody knows that now and that was only one of many possibilities. TV sets, I-phones, dishwashers, baby monitors, talking toilets, who could possibly say for sure which smartass device was doing the surveillance bidding for that lowlife Obama?

She sure didn’t know, but she was not, she insisted with some petulance, Inspector Gadget. Next question? I know what you’re thinking: she’s the mole burrowed in the Trump administration clandestinely working for Saturday Night Live. Deep Comedy. Staccato signals of constant misinformation tailormade for another hilarious sketch.

There is a boy in the bubble, all right, so deeply out of touch with reality it probably should scare the bejabbers out of us, but … what about those poor folks who pinned their hopes to this guy,
It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart?

Me, I feel sorry for the baboon.

A friend’s son, newly graduated from college, mentioned to me the other day that I should consider ‘monetizing’ this blog. Apparently he confused me with a blogger who has an audience of more than a handful of layabouts on the South End. Shortly after the Election of 2016 I listened to a Southern California dude who had put out faux news stories impugning Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. He claimed he had tried to plant fake stories about Trump too, but, he said, the folks on the Donkey side of the political aisle weren’t nearly as gullible as the Trumpists. He felt bad, he said, that stories like his had cost Clinton the election — he had even voted for her — but that’s the way the ball bounces.

The interviewer asked if he would continue to print faux news stories and he said he was considering desisting, but … geez, he was making 6 figures and he had a mortgage and a family to support. It was going to be a hard call. “How did you find me, anyway?” he wanted to know.

Let’s see, on one side, honesty and integrity; on the other, outrageous lies and money, the more outlandish, the more money. Call me cynical and tell me to go play by myself, but I’m betting our friend holds his nose and keeps printing what sells. Me, I’m accustomed to poverty. Plus, we don’t have a mortgage. And we don’t have any outstanding loans and, well, we never did. So maybe it’s easier for me than this lowlife Southern California creep to walk away from dirty money.

And oh, if you were wondering about the headline of today’s blog, it’s just a trial balloon. I mean, how will I really know if I would turn down 6 figures if I don’t actually make 6 figures? This is called research and development. So … thank you for your help. I sure couldn’t do it without you loyal readers. And here’s a sneak preview of tomorrow’s headline: Trump Fails Urine Test! Again!

Feel free to forward this to friends and sponsors.

These are dark days in the Funhouse. I know, I keep saying I’ll leave politics alone for awhile, maybe bring the firewood in from the back 40 or even tend to my so-called career. But honest to God and Abe Lincoln, how do you ignore the tweetstorm from our Comb-over-in-Chief when every day he drops a Breitbomb on the lying press? Yesterday he called Obama the lowest of the low for ordering a wiretap on his people in the Trump Tower. Proof? He don’t need no stinking proof?

Proof was so Then. We’re working on an entirely different political paradigm here. The media are the liars, not the liar himself. In a better, more orderly universe, we might expect the Congress, even his own party, to call a lie a lie. But the agenda these folks have in mind for transforming government to their own small privatized vision gives them the courage to maintain a distant but incredibly loud silence on these matters. If they can just get the EPA shrunk down to size, if they can get those corporate tax breaks enacted, if they can push back on the culture wars soon enough, well, what’s a white lie or two?

Profiles in courage, this is not. Of course when half the country, their voting base, believes the most outlandish garbage dished up by Fox or Breitbart, why should they take a stand for truth, justice or the American Way? This is Profile in Cynicism that takes our collective breath away. If the time comes when this self-absorbed bully in the White House is dragged away kicking and screaming, maybe we should take a good hard look at the folks who turned their gaze away when he was at his most outlandish. I get it that the voters are in an intemperate mood. I get it that they no longer trust politicians to look after their interests. I get it that a tough talking TV reality host might seem just the antidote to their problems. But c’mon, this is no game show. And the only thing so far that’s been drained from the swamp is my atrophied sense of humor.

Well, the days of death panels are quickly coming to a close now that the GOP has set the date for the repeal of Obamacare. Or most of Obamacare. Or at least some of it. And they have even announced a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, the health care law that one third of this country doesn’t realize is the same thing as Obamacare. The good times are on their way again. And Republicans are crowing that the wicked witch is dead.

I don’t know if we should dig the grave just yet. Those folks who want to keep the Affordable Care Act and get rid of Obamacare, they might be disappointed when they learn that ignorance might be bliss, but it’s going to be expensive. And once again, when the sausage of this new health care bill gets ground, the process is going to be on full display. Drop the funding for Planned Parenthood? 65% of us want to keep it funded. Give vouchers for health care? You got tea party Republicans who see that as one more entitlement they can’t afford. Cut off Medicaid to the states who expanded Obamacare? Plenty of governors who are going to scream bloody murder. Drop the requirement that everyone has to get in the pool to drop insurance rates? I’m betting the kids and the healthy aren’t going to sign up. Might as well wait for that first heart attack.

We were just down at the Emergency Room a few nights ago, the mizzus and me. If you’ve only seen that on prime time TV, trust me, it’s an eye-opener on what the guts of health care look like when you need it NOW. Cat scan, x-rays, blood tests, urine analysis, lab work — you aren’t thinking about the cost right then. But you will…. Nearly two million of us will file bankruptcy protection from those bills this coming year. And 56 million of us will struggle to pay those bills. One of the sponsors of the new health care bill said today that folks might have to choose between buying that new I-phone and health insurance. No problem, save a couple hundred dollars and get themselves a …. what kind of policy does he think a few hundred dollars will buy under their new care plan??? At least he didn’t say choose between food and health care. But I suspect that will be the real choice for a large number of us. Compassionate conservatism long ago went out of fashion. It was an oxymoron then and now it’s a bad tweet.

Down at the South End recycling centers we have a tradition of setting our unwanted possessions out beside the highway, no need for even a FREE placard, and by late afternoon or the next morning, whatever was offered to the motoring public will be gone, hauled away, recycled, possibly resold. Couches, TV sets, patio furniture, broken chairs, doesn’t matter, the stuff gets snapped right up.

I like to think our carbon footprint is so small, Trump’s hands would fit inside the tracks out there on the Great Camano Rift. But … it does get me to wondering, where does all this cast-off, broken down, beat up stuff go? And who is hauling it home? Free is always tempting, free is generally preferable to cheap, free is most of the time hard to resist. My neighbor who is moving lock stock and gun barrel to Arizona has been dragging everything from umbrella stands to step ladders out in front of our driveway. He asked me if I wanted to take first grab, but I said, geez, I just cleaned out my shack and the last thing I need to do is fill it back up with new crap. There’s enough Sisyphean ordeal in my life, no point driving to the dump and the Goodwill five times a week.

But someone is snatching up these goodies. I see a pickup stop, back up, pull over to the shoulder, then next thing I know he’s loading up the ladders, maybe the small table, all in a hurry as if the absence of the FREE sign means it’s maybe not. By the time he’s peeled out, along comes a sedan, up pops the trunk, in goes the little screen TV working order or not. The neighbors poke through the roadside displays, but most of it looks like what they got already or have thrown out last week.

Maybe the folks who mow the yards and maintain the lawns of the more well-heeled South Enders, maybe they’re the ones who see these roadside garage sales as an off-season Feliz Navidad. I mean, there are plenty of us South End natives who are poor down here, but we’re talking about the last two miles of a long skinny island, not a huge population of indigents, lately not even percentage wise.

It’s a mystery to me, but I decided I’m okay with that. Saves the neighbors hauling stuff to the dump and saves somebody some money grabbing free goodies. Win-win, as we like to say down here. Beats buying that junk new. Even if some of us apparently did.

I just spent the morning with my friendly dentist. You want to darken your day, this is one way to blot the sun from a morning. Potential gum disease, stress fractured teeth, a ‘hard bite’, old fillings, potential crown work — it’s like having a TV that only plays Fox News’ Sean Hannity, all the negative opinion that’s fit to speak. My mouth has two months to live. I’m regretting I made the appointment, better just to live my final years in blissful ignorance, gumming my soup dinners happy to never floss again.

My buddy Roger tried that avoidance route, mostly because he couldn’t afford dentists. Half his mouth is devoid of teeth now. They rotted to the point the pain got too much for him, then he had them jerked, something the poor tend to do rather than pay for a crown or implants. Teeth are way down on the list when poverty dictates priorities. And even if he’d had health insurance — which he didn’t — dental health isn’t covered, don’t ask me why.

I got a lot of neighbors here on the cavity-prone South End who look like hillbillies without their molars and incisors. One year I was working building a winery for Professor Bob up north when my co-grunt put down his framing hammer and got down on hands and knees searching the plywood floor we were laying.

“Lose a contact?” I asked, getting down with him to search.

“Naw,” Randy replied, “my &^%$#!!tooth.”

It had rotted, literally, right out of his head. The kid was 22 years old. A minute later he found it by a box of 16 penny nails, a brown little molar, horrible there on the gleaming blonde plywood deck. Next day I asked if he’d gotten in to see the dentist. He shook his head no, opened wide to show me the gap in that rotten mouth of his was filled, then he grinned. “Nothing a little SuperGlue can’t fix.”

No brains, no headache, as my neighbor used to intone, philosophically challenged. I decided right then to buy an electric toothbrush and a year’s supply of floss. Saves me a fortune on SuperGlue.

Every morning I get up out of a warm quilted bed ready to face the day ahead … only to find this continuing source of irritation and dread. I suppose I should linger under the covers a lot longer, maybe all day. Or cancel our subscriptions to the newspapers and turn off the news on radio and TV. After all, I’m not going to be consulted on the replacement of Obamacare. Even if I did know it was going to be very complicated.

Politics, like the stock market, is really driven by the mob mentality, not so much data and facts, alternate or otherwise. It’s psychological. Or pathological. Once the money boyz lose faith in the Dow Jones, the bulls lose hope and the bears start stalking. Same with politics. Create a sense of foreboding and fear, then look for remedies. We may have nothing to fear but fear itself, but believe me, fear is plenty. Today, on the heels of the president’s speech to the Congress and the nation, the bulls are running.

Spring supposedly is right around the corner. Snowdrops are blooming by the mailbox and back in the woods. Daffodils are up. The wild currants are showing blossom. So okay, it snowed this morning. But tomorrow is March, coming in, I guess, like a lion. I’ve been spending most of my time, when I’m not torturing myself with the news, cutting firewood in the back 40. The wood is for the year after next, meaning, I have hope that in another year, I’ll still be alive and kicking, that the world will still rotate okay, the sky will not be falling and the nation will survive and us too.

I suppose Global Warming will keep encroaching, the polar bears will starve, the oceans will rise and the health care system will go backward. The rich will get richer and the immigrants will be slowly rounded up and deported. Who knew that immigration reform would be so complicated? Who knew global warming would be too? Who knew life beyond the golf courses and the resorts was so messy?

Today I got band practice. Gonna take my 5 string banjo and join up with the rest of my musical cronies and pound out some lively versions of Celtic and old time and even some rock and roll to get ready for our St. Pat’s day gig at the gnarliest bar in Stanwoodopolis. Something about a banjo. Pete Seeger’s banjo had this written on the drumhead: ‘This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender’ Kind of optimistic, you ask me, but I will say, when I play mine, it’s hard not to feel good about the world. Who knew music would have that kind of power?

The Trump Team, the folks who screamed holy murder about deficits and debt, just announced today they would present a budget for increased defense spending. Let’s see, right now we have 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending going to defense. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total. U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. U.S. military spending dwarfs the budget of the #2 country – China.

So … I guess we need more rockets maybe. Or another aircraft carrier or two, just in case we take on the REST OF THE WORLD!! Are you kidding me? Last time I looked we had an epidemic of Alzheimers, diabetes, cancers, run down the list and tell the folks who have kin with those that we need to cut back on spending for cures and put it toward more bullets. Somebody explain to me this kind of priority when we’re already spending more than a third of all global military expenditures and we can’t win a war in Iraq or Afghanistan? Shoot me now.

I’m sorry, but this is immoral. Trump states ad nauseumtweet that we need to take care of Americans. So we buy more bombs? We upgrade the nuclear arsenal? We build a new Star Wars defense? Who’s kidding who here? Us Romans just keep piling up the garrisons, extending the empire, menacing the world. The current Commander-in-Chief wants to end Globalization. How about ending the military globalization, pardner?? Trade pacts, not so good. Military bases, great idea. How about 800 of them? More than any empire in history. More than the Romans ever dreamed.

Down the road from me, up in the salmonberry jungles of the interior, my neighbor Ronnie lives in a doublewide pretty much gone to wrack and ruin. His mizzus works upcountry in a hair salon, makes about enough to keep Ronnie in beer and off Medicaid. He’s got a veritable armory in the back bedroom, ammo and pistols, hunting rifles and even an illegal automatic AR-15. “Who you worried about?” I asked him the day he first showed me some of his prized possessions. “I’m worried about the damn Muslims, that’s who. And maybe you too.”

“I’d worry more about me, Ron, than I would those infiltrating, Koran-brainwashed refugees I never seem to run into.” Ron doesn’t have health insurance, says he doesn’t need it, never gets sick. His two year old Ford 150 with the gunrack in the back window probably eats up most of Kari’s salon wages, I’d bet. From our place some nights I can hear him target shooting when the wind is right. Drives the neighbors crazy. They ask if it’s legal to shoot guns out here in the wild wild South End. “Oh, it’s mostly legal,” I have to tell them. “Just part of living rural.” It’s not only the rural yahoos that love to shoot guns and collect more. It’s the whole damn country.