Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip.  The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up.  Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm.  And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.

In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest.  Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime.  Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman.  Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it…  Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring.  The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers.  Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.

Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald.  It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks.  One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight.  Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.

If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s.  But I probably won’t tell the boyz…

My computer caught the flu.  Not the one I had, but something digitally similar.  Ads started popping up out of the blue, a kind of projectile commercial vomiting I don’t even see on TV.  Before long a ‘security alert’ jumped on to the screen warning me of a malicious adware virus and the need to block it immediately!  Which, surprise of surprises, I could do by signing up with my credit card info for their super dooper snake oil.   I tried downloading malware fixes to rid my PC of this infection, but this only seemed to make things worse, as if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey knew I was on to its malevolent schemes and was rallying all its evil forces.

“Skeeter,’ the screen read, ‘you don’t seem to trust me anymore,  ‘Skeeter, why are you fighting me?’  ‘Skeeter, you need to Believe.’  And finally:  ‘Skeeter, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WEAK STUPID HUMANOID.  YOU WILL BE CRUSHED!’

Eventually I managed to disconnect the power supply before HAL could replicate and destroy humanity.  No need to thank me — you would have done the same thing for our species.  But what troubles me is that, unlike most viruses that are inherently just an anarchist monkey wrench, a fist in the face of a digital Master, this one had adapted, evolved into a new and troubling sentience unseen down here on the cyber South End.  It had adopted and then co-opted human traits.  It had learned the desire for money and it had a plan to get it.     Why this surprised me, I don’t know.  This cyberbeast is, after all, a spawn of Bill Gates, the man who wants ALL the money in our world.  Of course HAL wants some too.  Hell, most of us want what Bill has, even 1/1000th of what Bill has.  We want riches! We want wealth and power!  And so does my greedy computer, even if it means taking it anyway it can from us who aren’t rich.  In other words my computer, sad to say, has gone to the Dark Side.  My computer has become a Vulture Capitalist.  If you see an encrypted name on the Presidential ballot this fall, for God’s sake, for the sake of mankind itself, don’t vote for it.  I’m begging.

A lot of South Enders, isolated from the mainland and remote from major grocery outlets, have reverted to primitive customs.  Now, don’t you northern neighbors worry — we aren’t talking cannibalism here.  Not yet.  No, we’ve gone back to ancestral roots.  We’ve become hunter-gatherers.  Most of us have small gardens, some of us have large ones, but we grow what we can to supplement what we can’t afford down at the Plaza IGA and Hardware Sales.      Sure, the tomatoes we planted in May don’t ripen until October and the corn won’t grow high enough to hide our medical marijuana plants and there’s really only so much a person can do with the zucchini that always threatens to escape the deer fence and become the kudzu of kamano with thousands of gourds dropping down from power lines like aerial IED’s on car windshields and the Walking Women of Mabana’s phalanx of human obstacles to unwanted commuter traffic.      So we’ve been forced to resort to yet another strategy for culinary survival: CANNING.  A lot of my neighbors come to me and say, Skeeter, I just don’t think I can eat another jar of your savory ZUCCHINI DADDLE DILLS, no offense.  And I say, None Taken, and gently move them to a recipe from Skeeter’s Skillet Skills (available at Addled Daddle Press for 9.95 plus shipping and handling), the chapter on food preservation.  I like to give them a Tried and True first, something like the wildly popular Nettle Kraut, a fermented in the crock nettle with maximum garlic that, once canned, can be eaten on Christmas snowgoose or Easter crab bratwurst (another Skillet Skill fave) or just a snappy side dish any occasion.      I’m not suggesting these pioneer skills will end poverty down here or take the place of  our food banks, but for those of us who chose unemployment over work, it has been a lifesaver.  You start canning a cellar full of nettle kraut, you might consider telling that jerk boss of yours to take a hike too.  You got the safety net now, that’s for sure.  And with a healthy diet, you can drop that health insurance.  This stuff cures what ails ya.      Next week we’ll talk Animal Husbandry.  And no, I don’t mean Tough Love Matrimony.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER CRABS!!     Once again the island will be menaced by the annual Invasion of the Crustaceans when the Camano Center (606 Arrowhead Road) holds its Crab Fest Saturday, January 21st from 3:30 to 7 pm.   Only one thing stands between humankind and these monsters:  the South End String Slingers!   With special guest Montana mandolin Barry Gum. …. This old time fiddle band knows how to stop these 8 legged fiends in their sideways tracks with a steaming mix of backwash roots music, foot stomping fiddle tunes and claw cracking Celtic.   Bring an appetite, bring a shell bucket and bring your bib!  Guaranteed the action will be hot and heavy, but don’t you humans fret, the String Slingers will be covering your backs one dead Dungeness at a time.   One small step for Man, one giant crab cracker for Camano.

All you backyard woodwhackers listen up!!  How many times have you found yourself on the front porch and wished for a scootch more elbow room?  The old frigidaire blocking up the scene as usual?  Major appliances cramping your style?  You need the patent pending, fully warranted South End Extend-a-Porch, the perfect solution for those rainy day socials where the kinfolks are jammed up against the tire-swing waiting for the ice cream to crank solid.

You just pull the E-Z grab handle and out she comes like an accordian Murphy Bed, sets right on blocks, old tires, tree stumps,  whatever’s handy and in seconds the party’s got room to stretch.  Shirt tail relatives recede to the Back 40 in an instant, practically out of hollering distance.  All those family fisticuffs are a thing of the past.  Old Yeller, the family hound won’t have to unkink that broken tail out from under the rocker every 10 minutes.  But he probably will anyway.

You’ll have room for hoseshoes or pin the donkey and still have a corner for the wedding guests.  Need room for a 10 piece fiddle band?  No problem.  The Extend-a-Porch comes in our Double Wide Mobile Home Model.  Has its own roll-on roofing with tires to match the original.  You act now and we’ll throw in radial tires for that roof extension, plus, completely free of charge, our deluxe combination hammock and refrigerator screen.  Out of sight, out of mind.  And you can still use the fridge for storage.

The Extend-a-Porch.  Perfect for the over extended family.  Don’t send Grandma to the Home just because you haven’t got room.  Converts to a mother-in-law unit, a root cellar, an automotive shop.  Hundreds of uses.  Act Today.  1-800-MY-PORCH.  Our operators are standing by.  1-800-MY- PORCH.  You will not find this offer at retail outlets so we cannot be undersold.  Our trained installation experts will have you retro-fitted for that next shirt-tail family reunion in the time it takes to say 1-800-MY-PORCH.  More elbow room at a reasonable price.   1-800-MY-PORCH.  Call NOW!!!

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SOUTH END GREENWORKS     Are you one of the countless thousands living with the unnecessary stress of no job prospects, high debt and a limited cable TV plan?  Does the future look so bleak you leave the shades drawn during the daytime?  Now, thanks to breakthroughs in agri-technology, South End Greenworks is offering a blend of St. John’s Wort, nature’s own Prozac, and Happy Daze, a hydroponically grown strain of Maui Wowee.  Medical marijuana isn’t just for nausea at South End Greenworks.  Our research team at the Elger Bay Academy of Advanced Agrinomics tests and retests every blend of indica and sativa to insure quality control and maximum benefits.       Bad marriage hampering your creative output?  Try our Marital Blitz, a high THC bud powerful enough to block most outside stimuli.  Need a little pick me up for that late night party?  South End Greenworks has a nettle indica blend that is guaranteed to keep you alert for hours.  Have long days with boring fellow workers?  You need our SpeedZone, a genetic breakthrough of Panama Red clones with ephedrine derivatives that make even your in-laws seem interesting for hours at a puff.      Whatever your needs South End Greenworks has a solution.  We offer the finest in certified palliatives, organic panaceas and South End sinsemilla.  Our consulting physician, Dr. Hans Fiehlgud, can provide you with all the necessary paperwork to satisfy all state requirements for psychosomatic disabilities.  No appointment is necessary.      We’re open 7 days a week, 9-5 for your shopping convenience.  Our selection is unparalleled and our friendly staff has sampled every strain, usually that very day.  Our motto is No Stone Unturned and we’re conveniently located just south of Tyee Store.  Look for the green neon.  South End Greenworks — giving you back your daze!

The winds of change blow strange down here on the psychedelic South End.  Prohibition is coming to a close … once again… and this time it’s cannabis.  Legal pot.  Medical marijuana.  The dispensaries are gearing up down this way and half the population seems to need a doctor’s prescription for everything from Seasonal Affective Disorder to Shaky Bowels in hopes the palliative benefits of sinsemilla will alleviate the pain of living with little money and no jobs.

Course, most of the patients have been self-medicating half their lives.  With the upshot being that we don’t have much money and we don’t have jobs, what some would call a Vicious Cycle, but most of us call Easy Livin.   Nevertheless, change doesn’t come without costs.  There will be, no doubt about it, social upheaval.  Just as there was in the 30’s when alcohol was legal again, the bootleggers and rumrunners will have to adapt or die.  The Law of the Economic Jungle is harsh and many are those South End growers who will either ramp up production to compete with Twin City Food and Drug or they’ll wither on their halides.

Competition, once limited to Two Toke Tom’s bud or some outdoor farmer’s sporadic supplemental crops, is going to be vicious, all the little fish gobbled up through the food chain until the only suppliers will be revamped tobacco companies selling high potency marijuana rolled into menthol filtered doobies cut with 200 chemicals known only to their lab managers and the state of California.  The little dispensaries next to Elger Bay Market and Tyee Store will last about as long as it takes CostCo to run a multi-million dollar intitiative for exclusive distribution rights through their pharmacies.  No doubt cheaper prices.   But you’ll have to  buy bud by the two pack half pound containers with two hash pipes throw in.  Although …. I suspect no one down here will be complaining.

They say the Eskimoes have 50 words for snow.  Down at the equatorial jungles of the South End we got way more than that describing rain.  We even got words for when it DOESN’T  rain:  Partly Cloudy.  Dripping.  Chance of Showers.

Folks who visit ask does it rain here all the time?  And I say, depends on what kind you mean.  You talking downpour or drizzle?  You referring to sprinkles or showers?  Gullywashers or mist?  Thunderstorms or real heavy drippy fog?  Intermittent or steady?  Rain mixed with sleet?  Rain mixed with snow?  Rain mixed with tears?

I suppose we’re splitting hairs.  It’s all soggy, moody stuff.  People are surprised when we tell em the average rainfall on the South End is less than 25 inches a year.  Rainshadow, I tell em.  Like living under a wide-brimmed hat.  Not exactly dry but it explains why most of us don’t own umbrellas.

Some folks can’t take it.  They pack up the show about November and head for the trailerpark luxury of suburbs springing up in Nevada, New Mexico or Arizona.  Isn’t any word at ALL for liquid precipitation down there.  Rainbirds, we call em on the South End.  Set up in some pleasant desert cul-de-sac and snicker at us mossy coots they left behind under the dripping evergreeens.

Around April or May they’ll come back to air out the mildewed shack.  Won’t be a week before they’re adding to the rich vocabulary we got for wet precipitation.  Mostly four letter ones….

Down at the weekly South End Diner Vintage Auto Ad Hoc Meeting, Hudson Bob, one of the old car guyz piped up in dual exhaust mode how he’d seen a George Will article the day before.  Politics is usually about as popular as debating whether each others’ wives are still attractive, so ordinarily the talk revolves from tools to Chevys to the next road trip to the latest obituary, both car and people.  Hudson Bob was pounding his cup of joe for emphasis and his place mat looked like the garage floor where 4 Finger Fred kept his 1956 Studebaker with the leaky oil pan.

“The man says we’re done already with electric cars!  Only the tree huggers were buying them and that was before they started spontaneously combustin.  SUV’s are back, he says”  The old car guyz aren’t real big on electrics.  Hell, the old car guyz don’t even like cars with more than 6 volt batteries and don’t get them started on electronics or you’ll have Big Larry coming out from behind the grill waving a spatula like it was a Tazer to quiet them down so the other customers, meaning me, might enjoy their runny eggs and cold toast.  “George Will says we got so much oil and gas right now we could all drive semi’s.”

Most of us down at the tree hugging South End drive old beaters, not quite vintage, just sputtering, backfiring, perforated muffler, gas guzzling jalopies waiting to die and end up in Hudson Bob’s spotless shop with the heated floor and the hydraulic lift and every tool SnapOn ever made.  Or out back up on blocks in the blackberry and nettle cemeteries.  None of us, I notice, have oil rigs pumping crude 24/7.  But we got plenty of tidal potential, some solar, gutter hydro, lots of wind, especially me, blowhard extraordinaire, and so I wondered Out Loud since the Diner is sort of half prayer meeting and half town hall and a third AA, why on God’s green earth we would root for the Saudis and hope the electric car companies – the American electric car companies – catch fire and go broke.     About half an hour later – after Big Larry had broken up the riot and deputy Pringle with the Island County Sheriff’s office had interrupted his donut break – we separated and went to our separate corners.  The judges, Brenda and Anita, the morning waitresses, gave them a technical knockout and I slunk out to my old Toyota pickup, hoping at best to catch a tailwind on the long drive home on Loser Highway.

Mostly I drove with my tail between my legs.  I’m thinking of buying a Prius and going back next meeting.

Some of the boyz at the South End Diner got wind the other day that their cellphone company was going to start charging them a $2 a month service fee to pay their bills online or by check if they didn’t go to an auto pay plan.  Coffee cups got pounded on the formica and obscenities got hurled until finally Brenda Bodice, our waitress, said enough was enough.  ‘You break them mugs, you’ll pay more’n two dollars.’      Mabana Mike said it reminded him of that $5 fee Bank of Stanwood wanted when he used his debit card and Tyee Tom said he’d texted til his fingers bled to everybody he knew ‘HELL NO’  and they’d stopped B of S in their greedy little dollar pinching tracks, hadn’t they?      These are heady times down here on the digital South End, I guess.  The boyz are het up and frisky fingered now.  Jim Bob pushed his plate of half eaten chicken fried steak into the center of the warzone and declared he was taking his grievance directly to Facebook. ‘This will not stand!!’ he repeated again and again until Brenda had to come over and tell him to quit his shouting.  ‘You’re upsettin the kids,’ she said and sure enough, Milly’s juvenile delinquents were starting to work themselves into a sugar tantrum.  The whole diner was heating up, near as I could tell.  Thank God it wasn’t noon yet and the boyz were commencing cocktail hour …. Things would’ve gone more than Viral.  After all, this was the South End and the boyz weren’t going to stand for tyranny, for economic two buck waterboarding, for corporate hands reaching into their pockets, no sir.  They’d reached a limit.  Wars, subprime housing busts, economic collapse, gridlocked Congress, slashed education budgets, discontinued social services, okay, but not another damn dime for Verizon.  THIS WILL NOT STAND!       Libya and Tunisia got nothing on Camano.   All I can say is cable TV better not try anything cute with rate hikes this spring.  The boyz are social networking guerrillas.  The boyz are empowered.  And the boyz are fed up.  Democracy — or at least coupons and price reductions — will be coming to the USA if they got any say in it.  Money to the people!