The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

While I was cutting glass in the shack for a stained glass project, I was listening to a woman who won the McArthur ‘genius’ award for her theory on ‘grit. I think maybe by that she means stick-to-it-ness, what we South Enders call stubborn as a mule. If mules and jackasses are ever considered smart, we South Enders may yet win Nobels and Pulitzers, although maybe not the McArthur award.

This Grit Theory, though, caught my interest. Awhile back a fellow named Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book that postulated that successful people put in 10,000 hours of work before they reached competency enough to be considered successful. Masters of their Chosen Field. I guess it takes true grit to put in 10,000 hours of anything so maybe they’re saying the same thing.

Me, I consider myself a Dabbler. A dabbler, if you look it up in those old dictionaries nobody uses anymore, is a person who refuses to take himself seriously. Probably drinks, sleeps in, doesn’t read directions or take instruction, would rather cut off his right arm at the elbow than shoot for perfection, can’t be bothered with too many details, probably wanders the garden rather than finish an honest day’s work ….

I’m happy to be a Dabbler. I always intended to be a Bum, but dabbling saved me from the vicissitudes of bumhood. I found this old shack when shacks cost what shacks should cost. Then I stumbled into glass art and managed to dabble myself into gigs that kept me from working. I’d tell you I have 10,000 hours logged, but hell, I’m not going to waste time doing the math, all that multiplication, and anyway, I don’t punch a timeclock. Plus, then I’d want to do some long division, figure out my hourly wage and send myself spiraling into a deep depression.

Always dabble, that’s my preference, that’s my motto. Although, I will admit, I’m pretty gritty about it.

I listened to a guy the other day on the radio postulating how, in a few decades or so, robots will be so ubiquitous in our lives that we’ll actually marry them. I know, I know, it sounds whacked. Until you take a step back and watch your friends with their ‘devices’. I know people who sleep with their cellphones. I don’t ask them questions, I don’t pry, I don’t pass judgement. But it does get you to wondering. Me anyway.

I called up a credit card company yesterday and got the automated voice operator. Except now, instead of the usual 4 options to ‘her’ questions, my robotic friend could understand what I asked outside the parameters of her options when I asked to speak to a homo sapien, nothing that would surprise you folks with smartphones used to chatting it up with Siri.

I watch with no small dismay the frantic and pervasive text messaging of kids these days (and now my own friends) who prefer digital communication over the messy face to face of human contact. They have pretty much abandoned phone conversations too, once the preferred domain of the shy, and now correspond with thumbs and 140 character maximum messages. We are bonding with our machines. The Flatheads, our local vintage car guyz, probably could explain this in 20th century terms, this love of their Buick 88’s and ’56 BelAirs, all that waxing and rubbing, but so far they haven’t entered into matrimony. Although … Fairlane Freddy sleeps in his a night or two a month when the mizzus is fed up with his drinking. If it could talk reassuringly to him, god only knows where things might lead.

Trouble is, we’re making these robots smarter than us. Probably make them more beautiful too. If you thought artificial intelligence was frightening, couple it with a movie star body. We’ll be slaves in the time it takes to say pornlove. I suppose we won’t have to worry about children so in one short generation the androids will have won, no doubt part of their master plan. We’ll probably think it’s worth the sacrifice. At least Fairlane Freddy will.

What can a person say to the richest guy on Earth whose main goal in life is to leave the planet on one of his spaceships, making him an immigrant on Mars? He’s ranting about millions of dead people collecting Social Security while other Trump appointees are blathering on about immigrants collecting money on the entitlements, probably, so they say, they’ll vote Democrat. The billionaire makes Marie Antoinette look like a socialist. Even the most devout Trump sycophant must be getting nervous when one of the mainstay 3rd rails is about to be monkeyed with, forget about this weeks’ heavy losses on the Market thanks to the Artist of the Deal’s waffling and threats and pullbacks and more threats. Tariffs and trade wars are one thing, fooling with Social Security or Medicare is a whole ‘nother tarbaby that a chainsaw isn’t going to cut through.

Somebody somewhere, but not here on the South End, decided that if you got a lot of money, you must be smart. If you’re a billionaire, by god, you must be a genius. Trump and Musk certainly think they’re the brightest boys on the block but I’m sorry, a dollar does not an IQ point make. Tesla stock is plunging and even worse, its image is so corrupted the poor saps who bought one of those cars of the future are slapping the bumper sticker that says I Bought This Tesla Before Elon Went Crazy. You will never see a MAGA hat sporting anything similar for their boy, but wait til eggs become the new currency, replacing crypto.

When the rich decide laying off tens or hundreds of thousands of employees because they’re part of the government they hate, when their economic policies enrich themselves with tax cuts that do nothing for the poor, when their sole objective is slash and burn, what are we to deduce? Me, I laughed when the GOP called themselves Compassionate Conservatives, an oxymoron if I ever heard one. These new so-called Populists, who have no interest in anyone poorer than themselves, they need a reminder that when folks wake up, the guillotine isn’t far behind.

The stock market has the Jitters, apparently, because yesterday the Dow dropped nearly 1000 points and the NASDAQ fell over 4%. Right now the Dow is down another 500. I long ago gave up my dream of becoming a hedge fund CEO so maybe I’m not the right hombre to weigh in on fiscal policies under the new Trump regime, but I do know corporations and even small businesses like my own hate uncertainties. Will those tariffs drive up the cost of my stained glass? You bet it will. Will they kick up the price of my Canadian lead came and zinc border metals? Hell, yes!

Last night some arsonist in Seattle and Gomorrah burned a few Teslas sitting in a warehouse, no doubt venting their anger at Musk and DOGE, not sure what the thinking was there, but a message of some sort was delivered. Lately I’ve noticed a few bumper stickers that read: I Bought This Tesla Before Elon Went Crazy. Call me a hopeless optimist but I’m hoping to see plenty more of those and another one that says: I Voted for Trump Before Donald Went Power Mad.

These are very strange times in the Land of the Free, Home of the Capitalist. My neighbor dropped by today and before we could say Shut My Mouth we were debating politics, his Libertarianism to my Cynicism. He thinks tariffs might be a good remedy for what’s wrong with America because, well, because Trump is a great businessman, knows what he’s doing, knows how to handle trade negotiations and delivers a hard deal. Employment, he says, is already up. So … he missed the government layoffs and firings by DOGE evidently. Not real jobs.

I said I’d bet him a dozen eggs soon to be worth a bitcoin or two that this economy will take a hit from Trump’s recklessness, same as his casinos he drove into bankruptcy, smart businessman that he was. But … really, what do I know. These Trump Bibles might be selling faster than bitcoins and the gold tennis shoes, maybe even better.

When we finally called our debate a draw to save a friendship, my neighbor said he doesn’t pay attention to the news, too depressing. It was all I could do not to mention I pretty much assumed that.

I’m standing at the bar in the South End String Band’s latest hangout after the last couple of dive bars closed. If you want to know why they closed, consider I’ve been here five minutes already, enough to write this much this far. The bartender watched me walk in, the fry cook apparently doesn’t serve liquor to people with a hat so here I stand, still scribbling in my notebook.

Ah … here comes my bartender now to take my drink order.

Oops, no, she’s going to serve the guy who followed me in three minutes after I came in, a regular, surely that justifies leaving the occasional customer to stand another few minutes while they catch up on gossip. There are four of us total in this shotgun alley of a bar. Trust me, only one of us ever leaves a tip. Oops, make that none of us today….

This particular tavern has always been a rough joint. Bikers back in the day, crack users next, meth heads for a time, now just down and outers idling away their afternoons, their evenings, their lives. If you are an aficionado of such places, a connoisseur of the hard drinking, chainsmoking denizens of these inns that the Liquor Board keeps on its permanent Watch List, you can’t really get upset with miserable service when the bartender cops an attitude. After all, the whole place comes with attitude and isn’t that why you come in the first place? You want brass and ferns, muted conversations, white wine in a stemmed glass, the hushed tones of incessant cellphones (‘Excuse me, I have to take this.’) and bartenders who enquire occasionally if you’d care for a refill or a ‘freshening’, you definitely leave town.

There’s some kind of ruckus among the three regulars down the bar but it ends as quickly as it ignited, too early for more than verbal violence anyway. My bandmates eventually arrive and after a short wait Charlene takes their orders. My glass sits empty, but just as she wheels suddenly I try to signal for another beer since she didn’t connect the empty glass with a possible refill. She strides away without turning. My kind of place, I realize, and sure, I’ll leave a tip.

Radio Free South End was the ‘brainchild’, or lack thereof, of Wolfman Chuck, once a DJ for KRAP, the alternative music station down in Seattle and Gomorrah back before the city morphed into Tech Town. He claims he was ‘let go’ for pushing the boundaries of even those leftist programmers who decried censorship, something to do, they told him, with violating all manner of human decency.

Not to be so easily cast off the airwaves of Puget Sound, Wolfman laid his plans, moved to the politically incorrect South End, recruited a few of us slackers for his Bandwidth Comeback and launched Radio Free South End, a laughably puny low watt FM frequency so low on the dial even the FCC would have to stoop to find us. This was the Year of our Lord 1999, slightly before podcasts and blogblasts, sort of Old School but without much emphasis on the school. Wolfman had a primitive transmitter — don’t ask me the technical — and a tower he erected over his trailer’s roof. All he needed, he said, were volunteers to be the DJ’s when he needed a break. Of course we asked if this was criminal and of course Chuck said Hell No! Freedom of speech, he told us, First Amendment, he claimed. So sure, we volunteered, why not, we had some things to say, even some music to play.

I doubt anyone further than 5 miles north of the island’s head could hear us, but when you consider most of the bloggers out there on internet podcasts get half the listeners Wolfman got, who really cares? Chuck wasn’t interested in advertising revenue, he just wanted what he called, reverentially, airplay. Chuck played old rock and roll, early blues, strummed his homemade mandolin, told off color stories mostly about us local yokels, even played the South End String Band every damn day, probably as thanks for half of us band members volunteering to DJ.

I can remember like yesterday the day our music died. It was my morning to fill the 10 am to noon slot only to find Wolfman slumped over his microphone, headset off one ear, holding up an official looking paper from some government agency or other.

‘We’re signing off today, Skeeter,’ Chuck told me as American Pie was playing, I bet for the 16th time that morning, the last song on KINK’s brief but glorious existence. A week later Wolfman was gone, the radio equipment too and his trailer had a For Sale sign out by the road. Camano’s infamous and only radio station had put a thumb out and hitchhiked into legend.

Rumor has it there’s a pirate radio station operating off the coast up in the San Juan islands, some DJ on the run from the Feds, still broadcasting to any and all in listening range. I’m betting it’s Wolfman Chuck. Every now and then I crank my radio up and run the dial north to south, hoping, I guess, to hear a crackly South End Blues coming out of Canada on the magnetic waves of an aurora borealis, Wolfman still howling into the wind, the last real DJ fighting the corporate mega-stations. And some nights, maybe too much to drink, I think I hear him and his tinny little mandolin.

O Cannaba!

As most of my THC-saturated neighbors here on the South End know, Canada just went green. Marijuana is soon to be legal across the great white north. Little wonder the Trumpster has washed his hands of these hockey loving infidels and put tariffs on them in our ‘national security interests’. They’re a clear and present danger, a hostile, potential invasionary force, a nation of dope huffing, hockey crazed whackos so menacing we probably should build a border wall on our northern flank. The bastards believe in the metric system, for cripesakes, you think that’s not foreign to our American values? Wake up before it’s too late! I don’t want a hockey rink in MY backyard!!

Hopefully this cannabis legalization will serve merely to sedate these Canucks. Eh? But I’m not – and the President certainly isn’t – betting on drugs being the Answer, not when we’ve seen how marijuana has proven to be a gateway drug to liberalism, abortion, anti-gun sentiment and all manner of unspeakable sexual deviance. These tundra dwellers are so stoned right now they can barely negotiate a trade agreement to take the place of NAFTA, what kind of trading partners will they be when the stuff is legal??

Tariffs are only the first phase, believe you me. This Menace must be stopped. If a Wall won’t protect us, we have other options. A First Strike must be kept on the table. Trump should demand Trudeau surrender now. Don’t make us pull the trigger, Canada!! We just want you to be compliant neighbors. Is that so very much to ask? But if you refuse to concede to our demands, no matter how much tar sand oil you promise to deliver to our pipelines, it’s nothing compared to what you’re packing your pipes with. We have drug rehab clinics here that we can provide you. But the first step is to accept you have a Problem. Don’t make you ours.

The pundits and political scientists, the sociologists and the couch philosophers, plus half us yahoos will parse this last election til the cows come back to the barn that’s leaning into yesteryear. We’ll find bigotry, blame the Latino turnout, fault the woman candidate’s presumed expectation of presumptive victory, dig into Alt-Right and Fox News and Breitbart. We’ll find plenty of fodder to explain a Trump victory.

Jobs are going away, the middle class is shrinking, the gap between rich and poor — once a leapable ditch — is now a Grand Canyon. The white majority is gone and the immigrants are coming! The immigrants are coming! Terrorism rocks the Middle East and Europe and now here. A college education costs six figures and may not translate to anything but a lifetime of tuition debt. And to top off everything, monthly cable costs for a citizenry desperate for digital opioids, keeps going through the roof. What’s a poor white boy to do? Well, vote for the carnival barker selling snake oil, a panacea for all our ills, that’s what.

I know this, if nothing else: there’s a Disquiet on the land, an Unease out there in the Starbucked suburbs, a Dread covering the wired cities. Change is coming, scary as a Terminator who keeps getting up after being killed time and time again. The Terminator, of course, is the computer we brought into the livingroom, carry on our belt or in our purse, wired our house to, runs our car, plays our music, knows our habits and buying preferences, watches us constantly.

Future Shock. It’s here. It’s been here a few decades now, accelerating like a car we’ve lost the steering on. Half of us can’t program a Blu-Ray much less comprehend Implications. We just see the landscape blurring at breakneck speed. The Industrial Age isn’t closer than it appears in the rearview, it’s gone, nothing now but nostalgic longing for a past that ain’t comin back.

The social fabric is being torn apart. We are Borg now, getting our news exclusively from Facebook. Only 15 percent of the Facebook news feed folks look somewhere else. You read it on Facebook, it’s got to be True. So what if it’s just pablum and paid pandering? It’s all we need, right? We are morphing into the Hive and we know the relationships aren’t quite … what? Real? Deep? Meaningful? We don’t know, we can’t predict, we’re afraid of what’s coming next. Wait?! What’s that signpost up ahead? Naw, it’s not Rod Serling. It’s Mark Zuckerberg. It’s Big Brother.

If there was a place worse than homelessness itself, the While-a-While was it. Ancient RV’s, rusted out Winnebagos, Airstreams down on their axles — they all came to die, slowly sinking into the wetlands, grass up to their pitted aluminum windows that seldom opened anymore, a muddy trail leading to the communal restrooms and showers which occasionally all functioned but not usually.

In the summer the While-a-While offered tourists and fishermen some spaces, most without power, for $25 a night. Half the permanent residents had come and for reasons best left for late night binge talk, they ended up trapped there. Milt came 20 years ago in his reconditioned Cortez, a heavy 20 foot industrial RV built when gas was 24 cents a gallon but was now too much for Social Security retirement if he wanted to actually drive it somewhere else. And now it was a rusted relic, flat tires, busted front axle, long dead battery. Milt lived there with his menagerie of cats, half of them feral, all of them breeding like rabbits. Residents who’d ventured inside claimed the place smelled like one giant litter box over a gas burner.

Most inmates of the While-a-While gave Milt a wide berth. If familiarity bred contempt, with Milt it bred outright hostility. He was a hermit now among enemies, most of whom he’d alienated over slights so small they never really understood they were slights and so they concluded the man was a total asshole, a near universal assessment at the trailer park. If you were a dog owner, too bad if they growled or chases Milt’s feline herd. If your politics were left of Genghis Khan, too bad, you were a hopeless radical. If you drank or used drugs, he wrote you off. So what if he’d done more of those than half the park in a quarter of the time — he’d reformed, rehabbed and now was righteous as a born-again preacher.

Maybe we all end up where we deserve at the end of our ropes. If so, the poor souls consigned to the While-a-While probably wished they could have a do-over. But they were there, not to while awhile, they were doomed to quite awhile. With Milt as a neighbor.

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” DJT

Hot damn! Finally, a President who understands that we don’t need a President, we need a Fuhrer! He gets his ear shot by a sniper and now he’s convinced God herself has anointed him our New Savior, why else would he be spared unless by heavenly intervention? Unquestionably, the boy is anointed. He’s been sent to save America!

I know I’m putting myself in the gunsights of future enemy lists, but geez, let’s put a couple feet on terra firma here. This is a guy who grew up with some serious issues, maybe not loved enough, maybe just wants some serious attention from the Old Money mob, the literati, the New York elite. I’m not a psychiatrist and I don’t play one on TV, but I doubt you need a medical degree to identify psychosis when it lays a trip on ya. C’mon, the fella has a thin skin and far too much money, gonna lay some leather on the people who offended him, plenty of those, from the impeachment folks to the judges who found him guilty of … well, plenty. Witch hunts! Political persecution! Weaponized judiciary! He’s gonna show you what that really looks like!!! He’s got the bully pulpit and the bully is in charge!

Sure, some folks are cheering him on, the man with the monkey wrench, mass firings of government employees, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, investigations of anyone who had a part in his impeachments or his felony trials, denigration of former allies who may have slighted him in the past, primary revenge against his political enemies or any legislator that defies his will. They love it. Drain the swamp? No sir, blow it up with dynamite! Sweet revenge, right? Right?

The bull is in the china shop all right. Moving fast, breaking things. Not gonna matter to you, the voter. You aren’t a government slacker (employee, I mean). You haven’t hired an Hispanic lawn maintenance outfit or a construction crew to build your new house. You aren’t worried your kids’ school funding will diminish their education. You maybe weren’t planning to buy an electric vehicle. You weren’t planning a vacation to a National Park. You don’t live in a fire danger zone. No sweat off your brow.

But … maybe you are one of the one quarter of Americans who get Medicaid. Maybe you have kids and grandkids who will have to worry about global warming and those fires and hurricanes. Maybe you would like someone looking after the quality of your food, the cleanliness of your water or the purity of the air you breathe. If you’re a rural resident, you might not have considered that eliminating USAID meant all those food crops we sent to other countries was 40% what you grew. Those clinics and hospitals you thought were a long drive, well, better hope the price of gas goes down, they’ll be a lot farther when the ones you got now close.

I know, you really hated Covid lockdowns and those masks and the vaccines. You didn’t know any of the over one million people who died of that disease and probably don’t believe the statistics anyway. The other 5 or 6 million deaths overall, just foreigners…. So you probably are happy the guy running the health department doesn’t much believe in vaccines. Let’s hope the bird flu doesn’t mutate. Although … it has infected more than birds now and even a few humans. Yeah, okay, you’re mostly bothered by the price of eggs.

Maybe you voted your pocketbook. Price of eggs, price of gas. No affordable housing. No affordable rents. You wanted government off your back and you wanted a tax break. Maybe you even wanted the deficit reduced. The rich will get a big break, the deficit will take off. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a little back too, not much, count on that. You voted for a billionaire with his billionaire pals. You didn’t vote for a philanthropist. In fact, you really didn’t know who you voted for. Yet.