The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It should come as no great surprise to any of us that after the election primaries morphed into a clone of Survivors that the Presidency of the Donald would end up being an endless series of entertaining incidents. The cast, handpicked by the King of Apprentices, is wickedly delightful. Kellyanne and her beloved Alternate Facts, the best so far being the episode of the Bowling Green Massacre, never fails to impress an audience with her toothy mendacity. She’s the wicked witch of the west room. Steve — I’m no neo-Nazi, I just play one in the White House – Bannon, plays the Wizard of Odd to Trump’s scarecrow (I wish I had a heart). The alt-righteous Breitbart publisher doesn’t get many lines, but he writes the darkest scripts. Sean Spicer, the lovable boob who has to run the daily press conferences while defending his always chuckle-headed truth-avoiding boss, may have the hardest role, but … he shows up every day, Ed McMahon to Johnny but without the good natured laughtrack at his bad jokes. And the ever lovable telegenic Mr. Pence, hoping for the Impeachment episode as soon as possible while there’s still a government left to govern. Oh, let’s don’t forget Maryann to her Gilligan, the ever fashionable Melania, standing by her man despite all the crotch grabbing tell-tales. Fox News Channel runs this as news and entertainment, fair and balanced, but certainly nothing like the truth.

Today’s episode, a belly buster comedy, revolved around D.J’s daughter Ivanka’s clothing line being dropped from Nordstrom. Papa tweeted how unfair it all was, this capitalism disregard in regard to the Good Fairy Ivanka. So unfair! Especially when the family fortune rests on the Trump Brand and if some knee jerk retailer downgrades the Brand, well, that’s lost revenue. Proof, no doubt, there is really no conflict of interest that the nattering Democrats seem so worried about. The bizness of America, after all, is bizness. So great!

I guess the folks who voted for this guy are getting their money’s worth and better yet,they don’t even have to subscribe to the Trump Network to get the entire series on Netflix or Amazon, it just downloads hourly, tweet after tweet, a regurgitation of injured pride and cock of the walk crowing. So bad! So beautiful! We’re living in a reality TV show now, the audience as the voter, the audience as the public, the audience as captured viewer. All sponsored by the Trump Brand! So lucrative! But wait! If you act now, they’ll send you another tweet, just pay shipping and handling. Honest truth!

I was just reading that Amazon has 30,000 non-human employees, what we proletariat call robots. In 2014 Facebook acquired Whatsapp whose worth was 22 billion dollars. The messaging firm had a total of 55 human employees, not that I think they were profit-sharing with them. Google, whose worth is more than most country’s G.D.P., has 60,000 workers compared to GM (worth a tenth of Google) which has 215,000. And you can bet your 401-K GM is on the forefront of automation.

Trump can talk about bringing back the coal mining jobs til the cows come home again, but if anybody thinks employment is going to go up in the land of the digitized, home of the android, they need to adjust their meds. Go ahead and bring those factories back to America’s fruited plain, but don’t expect them to hire us humans. That dream left with the Industrial Age. The discontent from the folks who watched their jobs outsourced to China, Mexico and the robots, well, that resentment is only going to get worse. And the income inequality too.

This is Future Shock rearing its ugly orange head. This is the future roaring up in our rearview way closer than it appears, ready to roar past, curves or not. The folks who think we can close the barn door and wall off the borders, they either need to stop smoking whacky tobaccy or start. Pulling the covers over our heads isn’t really the brightest color in the crayon box. I know, folks are worried about global warming and immigration issues, minimum wage and Black Lives Matter, transgender rights and gun control, abortion restrictions and prayer in the schools. All worthy causes and reasons for concern, granted. But when half the population is thrown out of work, when the 1% who own the wealth become the overlords who wall themselves in armed compounds and patrol the perimeter with drones to protect their largesse from the peasants who suspect injustice is being done to them and their odds of winning the Lottery are actually worse than they ever dreamed, well, all those other issues will take a backseat to the bonfires that light up the purpled mountains majesty.

Like the song sez, the jobs are gone boyz … and they ain’t comin back. And if you think Trump is scary, get ready for what’s coming when people who aren’t stockholders in those companies worth billions with 55 employees can’t feed their families. You might just change your mind about gun control.

These are tough times in the Land of the Rich, Home of the Corporation. And you know as well as me, when times get tough, the tough huddle up with their tax lawyers. My newly minted president doesn’t pay taxes and claims that because he doesn’t, it proves how smart he is. The dishonest media wants him to show them his tax statements, maybe see where his money is actually coming from over there in Russia. The dishonest media distorts his real position on those Russian hacks and his refusal to believe the good Moscovites would stoop so low as to feed Wikileaks the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails. So what if even the right wing Republicans believe the dishonest media, someone has to stand firm in his convictions, or at least his gut instinct.

My mother would have washed our mouths out with soap, but those were vicious times when the rod was never spared and the child was seldom lost. Even if the child ended up beating his own kids. A few days ago that seem like months Mr. T was made President of these not so United States, proving once again that democracy is a work in progress and maybe not a permanent state of affairs. For those of you who think that placing our trust in a racist, thin-skinned bully best known for self-promotion is tantamount to a trainwreck, let me say that folks who were fed up with Wall Street shenanigans and lost jobs in these globalized times threw the dice. My liberal pals who think Bernie might have won or maybe Joe Biden, okay, maybe, but the Donald fed off the fury and resentment of folks who think the immigrants have stolen their jobs, that blacks are welfare cheats, that homosexuals are going to hell in a hurry, that transsexuals are bathroom predators, that both political parties are beholden to Big Money, that a woman, particularly a Clinton, was unfit for office and that it was high time to shake things up.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we? If those folks pinned their hopes on a vicious clown, well, we’re all in for a wild ride. If some of their anger was misdirected, okay, maybe the next election they’ll try some other crazy experiment. You know, like fairer tax laws or single payer health care. But don’t bet your 401-K on it. People still vote their pocketbooks and until the rich learn they don’t need to accumulate every last dime and nickel and Lincoln penny and to hell with the lazy poor, you can expect pitchfork politics to continue. Even the 1% might regret this much excessive greed when the guillotines get rolled into the public squares.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the dishonest media isn’t cowed by all this bluster and bullying. If nobody is checking on facts, Big Brother has already won. And the rich will only get richer. God only knows, they need the money.

I love a good holiday as much as the next yahoo … but c’mon, this Groundhog’s Day business, let’s be honest, the Chamber of Commerce out there in Pullmyleg, Pennsylvania has pulled a fast one on those of us who take meteorologic prediction seriously. Down here on the convergence zoned South End, No Way is a groundhog going to see his shadow on Feb. 2nd. Even if we had groundhogs! This thing just gives Science a bad name. And lately, the last thing it needs in these superstitious, Mayan Calendar, end-of-the-world times is a black eye over some mammalian hairball on the East Coast seeing its hairball shadow (or not) and then extrapolating that to El Nino or asteroid strikes on Wall Street or global warming.
Which is precisely why some of the more empirically minded boyz down at the Mabana Body Shop have been searching, in a deductive sort of methodology, an alternative Predictor of winter longevity. Hellfire, if winter’s just going to last until April, we figure there’s no point in fighting serious incentive-reducing Inevitability. We’ll just pull the covers up, collect unemployment and wait for spring. This is how civilizations thrive: they figure out tides and seasons for planting schedules and harvest times and happy hours.
The model the boyz constructed over the past decade or so is a local paradigm that utilizes a 5 gallon polyethylene bucket of fresh caught Dungeness crabs —- I KNOW you’re going to point out they’re illegal this time of season, but listen, we’re putting em back when the data is collected. Spirit of the Law, if not the Letter and that, in a clamshell is the very essence of the South End Way. —- So you got a pail of clacking claws and now you bring out a dog, any dog, any breed, random sampling, see? And you let the pooch check out the crustaceans. No shadows, no hibernating drowsy marmots. And if the crab gets a lock on Snoopy’s snout, voila, studies have shown that is a true omen of an early spring. The dog schnozz slips the noose, 6 more weeks of sleeping in.
Simple. Like Einstein says, the more elegant the theory, the higher the probability it’s correct. And the boyz down at the body shop will tell you, the accuracy here is in the 90 percentile range, statistically astounding. We’re not claiming, like those unabashed self-promoters in Pennsylvania, that this will predict spring for the entire country, but for all us Left Coasters, rest assured, Feb 2nd now has science as its bedrock foundation. We’ll leave it to the South End Chamber of Commerce how they want to capitalize on it. Crab Dog Day. Nice profitable ring to it, don’t you think, kind of like a cash register. If we can keep PETA at bay….

In between playoff football games the talk down at the Pilot House Lounge usually turns to politics. These days, even during the games…. The other evening Bobby, the night bartender, had the TV turned to CNN at the request of the Vandiver Brothers who had wearied of the hockey game on ESPN. “Puck this, Bob! How about some news instead of this stupid game with teams we never heard of.” Bob’s a little new to the Lounge scene, a recent hire, and so he acquiesced, not realizing, I guess, he might as well have tossed a Roman Candle in the middle of the bar and yelled Fire!

The channel couldn’t have been switched more than 30 seconds before Wally, seeing a newscrawl about Trump firing his attorney general over his new immigration policy, went ballistic. “That stupid %#@!!*$” he hollered, “What terrorists does he think he’s keeping out?” From the back corner, Little Jimmy fired back, “The Muslims, that’s who!” If this had been Tombstone circa 1880, tables would’ve been overturned, the mirror shot out, bottles broken over drunken heads, the pandemonium spreading into the street outside, panicking the horses. It would’ve taken the Marshall to restore order, haul a few of the cowpokes to the hoosegow, maybe even lynch one or two.

But … this was the Pilot Lounge, and while it isn’t a bastion of civility in these decidedly uncivil times on the wild wild South End, violence is pretty much verbal and even occasionally regretted in the sober light of the following day. The argument went from banning Muslims from a few countries to letting Belgium and France immigrate, sides forming in the bar and the shouting making it impossible to carry any one argument to a logical conclusion. Finally it was Bob who shouted for order, swearing to cut everyone off if they didn’t shut the *%$#! UP!! Like I said, Bob was new and didn’t really understand the Rules of the Lounge. Course, who does?

But one of them is this: the bartender does not take a side. Not once, not slightly, not ever. Bob said to the suddenly quiet room, his threat to curtail their Monday night drinking effective as a punch to the gut, “I’ll tell you something about Extreme Vetting. Forget the damn Muslims, forget that. Forget even vetting the President. He never showed anybody any tax returns. You haven’t got a clue what he’s going to do. Nobody knows and maybe nobody cares. Just vote the man into office and see what happens. Vetting? Cripes! But here’s some Exteme Vetting for tonight. One more word from anybody about politics and I’m 86’ing you. You can go home and argue with your wife.” And with that Bob turned the hockey game back on and the sound way up. “Now,” he said, “who needs a refill?”

I don’t remember who won the game and I doubt anyone else did either. But we chose up sides and rooted for one team or the other. I hope I never watch another hockey game as long as I live.

We Shall Overcomb

This week an avalanche buried a resort hotel in Italy, tornadoes destroyed towns in Georgia and Florida and Alabama, mudslides crushed homes in Southern California after monster rainstorms, a train flipped over onto an adjoining one in India and a bus full of kids hit a barrier in Europe and burst into flames killing most of the passengers. Fire, pestilence and mayhem! Fear and loathing!

And, of course, Trump. It was a week of disasters, catastrophes and portents of things to come. If I were a biblical sort, I might sacrifice a first born, the omens seem so fraught with terror. But … an old friend sent me words of hope, a message of optimism, a life preserver for these turbulent seas boiling with foul toxins. It said: WE SHALL OVERCOMB.

I’m receiving too many e-mails of despair. My old man is still sending bogus news about the Obamas. The folks who put Trump in office won’t let go of their bogeyman. The Clintons have a secret plan to get back into power! The lying press won’t recognize ‘alternative facts’! We’re still arguing if the Inauguration wasn’t the hugest one in the history of the universe, as if anyone but the man with the biggest ego in the universe cares. As if anyone of us care. We shall overcomb is what I think. The world will keep spinning on its little axis, the Syrian War will spill more blood, the Middle East won’t have peace in my lifetime, the immigrants from the south will keep on coming wall or no wall, the Russians have a new best buddy, the rich will get richer and the poor can eat cake. Jobs are going to the robots, privacy is a joke, there are more channels than ever before on cable TV. What’s changed?

I’m pruning my 26 fruit trees. The firewood needs to be hauled in from this winter’s downfall. Taxes are due. Our health insurance is about to expire. Same as when Nixon resigned. Same as when Reagan came in threatening to shrink government. Same as when Clinton cut back welfare, same as Bush when he invaded Iraq looking for those pesky weapons of mass destruction, same as Obama fighting on with drones, same as the yahoo we got now bringing back coal jobs, same as always….

We shall overcomb! Yes, indeed, we surely shall. Meanwhile, I got trees that need some serious pruning.

Fiscal Phil lives up north of me in one of our many gated communities. He owns a few rental houses down in Seattle and Gomorrah, bought when prices were pre-Amazon and the town was driveable, now worth fortunes. We’ve been friends since before the War, the Iraq ones, and so occasionally I drive through the gate after telling the guard who I am and who I’m visiting and he pops up the wooden swing arm that has STOP stenciled on its side in case us barbarians can read.

For as long as I’ve known him, Fiscal Phil has been convinced the world economy is on the verge of Total Collapse. Trump’s election only confirmed his paranoia. “The Dow just broke 20,000,” I offered as cheerful counterpoint to his apocalyptic vision, but he only shook his balding head sadly and placed his coffee cup in the built-in expresso machine he’d custom installed. Beans got ground, the grounds got pressed, water was steam injected and a few moments later he had a fresh cup, Starbucks on demand.

“Two years, Skeeter, that’s what I give the market before the Crash. I’ll be out before it does,” he said, an old prediction. Predictable as that perfect cup of joe, he rattled off his strategies for survival I’d only heard 100 times, everything from Krugerrands in his safety deposit boxes to raw silver buried in some hidey-hole in the back yard. A few thousand bucks in cash. Food stored in the basement, enough to last longer than a Mormons storehouse. Phil still has his Y-2K stockpile: generator, barrels of water, gasoline. “Doomsday,” he always intoned at the end. “It’s going to get ugly, Skeet, you better prepare yourself.”

I mumbled, as I always did, that things didn’t seem too bad. Pretty good, in fact, and Phil, true to form, shook his head sadly. “Survival of the Prepared. Don’t be a victim. What’ll you do when the money’s worthless and the food runs out?” he asked, less concerned for my welfare than for proving he was ready.

“Probably come over here, Phil. With a gun. Survival of the Most Well Armed.” Phil, never big on humor, especially the dark variety, looked shocked. Next visit, I knew, he’d tell me about his new arsenal. Dog eat dog. I guess I got two good years at least.

It was a sunny day yesterday so I decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood, maybe see if any crocuses had poked up into the sunlight early this year. Call me an optimist, but I’m forever hoping to quit my hibernative tendencies of these dark winters. Daryl and his mizzus Claudia were out by their garage when I waltzed by so they asked me in for a cup of coffee. I said sure even though I wanted to stay out in the sunshine as much as possible, not sit in their dark kitchen where half the time the curtains remained drawn.

Before I could say ‘cream’, Claudia was off on the election, so heated up she could’ve boiled the water for our coffee on her nose. “You believe that egomaniac?” she started out and by the time I’d gotten my java she was ranting about the cuts coming to Planned Parenthood, the next Supreme Court nominee, the pipeline in North Dakota and the undisclosed tax returns of the newly minted President of the Free World. Daryl smiled at each verbal fusillade and sipped his black coffee, occasionally offering up fresh meat for Claudia to gut and dress.

Claudia and Daryl pretty much stick to their god’s little quarter acre. Like a lot of us down here on the xenophobic South End. But unlike most of us, they see storm clouds on the horizon, tempests coming onshore, pestilence creeping in from the woods. The glaciers are melting, the seas are rising, the earthquake is around the corner and the bird flu will kill half the world. Sinkholes will take their car, the government will ruin the global economy, tomorrow is something to be dreaded. I don’t usually take sweetener in my coffee, but given the extra bite of bitter, I spooned in a little honey. This launched a tirade about killer sugar and the food conglomerates’ greed, high fructose sugar, transfats, GMO’s, additives, diabetes on the rise and the end of Obamacare. I could feel my stomach starting to roil.

By the time I got back outside dark coastal clouds had rolled in and the sun was pretty much blotted out. I knew I wouldn’t find a crocus trying to reach for spring; instead, I’d see the nettles poking up back on the trail in my woods. The groundhog wouldn’t see his shadow this year, he’d be dead of groundhog flu. An ill wind blew through the firs and I wondered if rain wasn’t far behind. Rain and toads, hail and misery. I hurried up, hoping I could make it back to the house before the sky fell in. Darkness seemed to come early. The house seemed miles away. And even if I made it back, it probably would’ve burned down by the time I got there. I thought I heard wolves howling. No, I was sure I heard wolves.

Turned out it was just the neighbor’s dachshund yapping. I could see the house. It was unburned. The sun had come back out. The Olympics were incandescent across the Sound and a warm breeze greeted me when I came out of the woods. A little cluster of snowdrops were poking up by the woodsheds and the hellebores were blooming. Maybe, just maybe, spring wasn’t far behind.

The Pilot House Lounge was packed. You’d’ve thought the Super Bowl was coming on with half the South End turned out to watch it on the bar’s big screen, the 52 incher Fat Fred had installed at one end of the lounge just for such sporting occasions. Trouble was, this wasn’t the Super Bowl or even a playoff game, it was Trump’s Inauguration. And it was way too early to be drinking heavily, which the unruly mob clearly was.

The South End, like the rest of these not-so-United States, is more than a little divided on most issues, but with the Donald, we’re like Serbs and Bosnians. So far without the genocide, although … Fat Fred wasn’t too sure Rwanda wasn’t on its way by the time Clarence Thomas swore in the Vice President, Pence. Jimmy the Geek, not a habitual drinker, was sudsed to the gills, drinking doubles of straight Jack with a beer for a chaser.

“You’re swearing on a Bible, you liar!” he shouted, hammering his bottle in a staccato drumbeat. The big screen TV looked like a drive-by shooting when someone tossed a crumpled wad at Jimmy. “Sit down, Jim!” Terry hollered from behind him. “And be quiet. Have a little respect for the moment.”

“Are you serious?” Phil shouted back. “These guys never showed anybody any respect. Why should we?”

A table full of Viet Nam Vets where Wild Billy held court, their flag patches bristling on their black Harley vests, began to holler, answered by the tree huggers at Two Toke Tom’s rowdy table. Trump was on the screen now, his hand on the Bible Lincoln used, his wife — “an ‘illegal immigrant’ Jerry shouted from the back — holding it while Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath of office.

“So help me God,” Trump stated, then the Lounge went crazy. Fred tried turning off the TV but that suicidal move pissed everyone off so eventually he relented to cheers and a few boos. An hour later most of the surly mob had skulked off to face the music at home, a mere few moments of matrimonial hell compared to the next four of who knows what.

Two Toke said, “I was pretty worried there for awhile.” “About violence from that crowd?” I asked. “Naw, the inauguration,” T.T. answered. “That was CNN we watched. Trump already told us they were liars. Fake news. I’m gonna take him at his word. That guy isn’t president. Not if CNN says he is.” Tom waved a hand in farewell. I guess he has a point. What a few days later we call Alternative Facts. Me, I’m planning to watch the Super Bowl somewhere other than the Pilot House. Hopefully alone.

They came one by one at first, then a few pairs but soon carloads arrived and by noon the highway was jammed, throngs of protesters cramming their way down the highway from Elger Bay Grocery to the South End Diner, chanting everything from ‘He’s Not My President’ to ‘Keep Your Hands Off My Pussy Hat’. The so-called Women’s March here was pretty much men too, a lot of them clad in their pink ‘pussy hats’.

The mizzus hated those hats. Well, not the hats, the name. Obscene, she said, and of course, that was the point. The new Prez used the term to describe how he could grab a woman victim there and she’d do anything he wanted. He says he’s tired of political correctness, now he’s got a few million marchers mocking him. Welcome to the New Politics.

Me, I’m a big fan of hats. I’m a big fan of protest rallies too ever since the Viet Nam anti-war riots at my college, the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, back in the late ‘60’s. Tear gas, National Guard troops, flowers in gun barrels, student sit-ins, student strikes, a world away from now but maybe coming back. We sat still for the Iraq Wars, we stayed quiet as the rich got richer and the rest of us could eat cake, we watched the money boyz drag down the economy with their greed ten years ago and then blamed Obama for the Recession lasting so long. Now we voted in a billionaire playboy, thinking what, he’ll create a level playing field?

Okay by me if it’s the women who take charge. Okay too if they wear those cat-eared pussy hats. Although, I may stick with my own headwear. The President, standing in front of the CIA’s memorial to its fallen, ranted that the press had underestimated the immensity of the crowd who came to his Inauguration, not a word about those folks who had given their lives, just a grievance that the press had shortchanged his Victory Lap. The man wants to end political correctness. A few million walked the streets yesterday who agree. I may just have to get myself one of those hats. Or just stick little cat ears on the one I got.