The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I keep hearing these ads for Artificial Intelligence that promises their ‘product’ will not be hallucinating. This is probably good news for the clients who purchase this software, but it does little to allay my own anxieties about a future with robots who are far brighter than me (yes, I know, my digital clock is probably brighter than me) but who evidently slip into alternate realities without LSD or other circuit altering drugs. I’ve been around humans who do this and trust me, I’m pretty certain I don’t want my android creating fantastic worlds to entice me into too. Pretty obviously AI has some psychotic breaks occasionally, enough that corporations P.R. department feels the need to reassure the public that their androids have normal psyches.

As opposed to their competitors…. Whose whacked out AI’s are slipping into La La Land undetected by you, a possibly normal human user. Buyer beware! No doubt these cheaper imitations use contaminated silicone, save a few bucks and let the hallucinations fall where they may. I’m picturing HAL on 2001: A Spaced Odyssey, having a little fun with Dave outside the spaceship, stoned out of its digital head, giggling like a chimpanzee. But of course, what if your little cyborg is on a bad trip? That hatch door might open up all right, but maybe all the other doors too, let a little air into the servers.

Tell you the truth, I’m already starting to mistrust my computer. It turns itself off, adds new stuff at night, glitches and acts suspicious too many times. Not that I suspect drug usage or a drinking problem. At least on its end. Just has a mind of its own and doesn’t care to ask me for permission of any kind. If it’s hallucinating, I haven’t noticed yet. Then again, I might be the wrong guy to notice.

It seems another lifetime ago when we heard phrases like ‘compassionate conservative’, doesn’t it? The new conservatives, definitely gone MAGA, briefly flirted with a kinder, gentler campaign after their chosen one (and possibly God’s) had his life spared in an assassination attempt. That lasted about a week, but now we’re back to all-out war, incessant name-calling and the usual bullying. So why would we expect less of the veep pick?

Right out of the box we have J.D. Vance decrying his opponent as a childless cat lady, what, it seems, is a woman who doesn’t want children and therefore is an enemy of parents and family values. He even proposes a tax system that penalizes such people and rewards those with more kids, figuring, apparently, that when the immigration ‘problem’ is solved and the borders shut down, we’ll be needing those kids for the jobs that go unfilled. Now, full disclosure, I don’t have kids. I know, un-American. Selfish. Probably unnatural. Definitely worthy of higher taxation. I have friends who tried to have children but couldn’t. And friends who are gay who never felt the need to adopt kids. They should pay for turning their backs on providing for our workforce. Tax them! Tax the traitors!

So okay, maybe I’m being a bit sensitive. And besides, what a great way to reduce the national deficit. You could even cut the taxes of the corporations and the rich by raising mine. I mean, I want to help. I’m patriotic. I love my country. I can see now what a thoughtcrime it was to not have children. Too late for me but we could certainly force the child-bearing age couples to have a few. Might even legislate that. The Chinese had the right idea, just backwards, by limiting the number to One. We could learn from that mistake. And if the rich are still paying too much, we should consider taxing people who don’t own pets. Save us all that money for animal shelters and cut the deficit. So many possibilities. And after all, isn’t that compassionate and still conservative??

Biker Bob rides with an odd assortment of outlaws. He’s got a Honda he’s tricked out to sound like a Harley, meaning he’s got a glasspack muffler you can hear from Tyee Store to my shack, a ferocious rumble that belies the pussycat bike he can barely keep running. I had a bike once, a beat up 350 ready for the scrap heap but scary enough to give me nightmares of highway wrecks, skidding sideways down on gravel and blacktop, legs scraped to raw meat, my football helmet exploding plastic into my brainpan.

You want to ride, Biker Bob will tell you, you need a death wish. I didn’t have one so shortly after I got my street license, I sold it. $100. Cheap life insurance is how I figured it even if I paid someone to take the suicide ride off my hands. That was 40 years ago and I’m still alive with two legs and semi-functioning brain.

Bob’s a good guy, at least when you’re one on one with him. You get around his outlaw pals, his loyalty is with the Pack. If things go bad — and they invariably do with this crowd – he doesn’t recognize friendship when the dogs go hunting the weak and infirm. This is not good news when you realize you’ve become the prey. I try very hard not to antagonize the pack, but there are lines you cross without recognizing them until it’s too late.

I don’t see Bob much these days. He had a cabin I helped build up in the foothills, sold his Harley to help his ‘lady’ out, a woman who was a schoolbus driving friend of mine from the city days. Bob kept a little dirt bike at the time for off road fun, but one night he took it down to the local watering hole off Highway 9, stayed a few too long, then hit the highway late, no lights or license, just a dark run for home. The county sheriff did a U-turn when they passed each other at 50 miles an hour, hit the bubbles, but Bob didn’t see much sense in pulling over and as he explained later, thought maybe he could outrun the deputy. Yah, he said, I was pretty drunk.

A mile before the road to Bob’s cabin the deputy could see he wasn’t going to pull over so he did what most county cops would do under the circumstances: he rode up alongside the little dirt bike and came into Bob’s lane. Bob hit the shoulder, lost control and sailed over a ditch and into a field where he crashed and burned. Being drunk as a skunk, he survived without much damage, spent a night in the Bellingham jail and came home a couple days later. For a few weeks, anyway, Biker Bob was bikeless. Too bad he couldn’t stay that way….

Money talks, buddy, and bullshit walks…. We all know that. But now, in the 21st Century, we got Big Money and Big Money doesn’t just talk, it yells, it screams, it commands. You want to understand politics or the economy or the world, start listening to that hollering. Go down to your local grocery store, it’s one of about 3 or 4 chains, not much competition. Fly the friendly skies, take your pick from 3 or 4, prices pretty much the same, all high. Listen to your favorite AM radio station, right, owned by one mega company probably, mostly right wing hot talk. Looking for something, anything, on your computer, that search engine probably is Google, maybe a couple others. Ordering something you want, sure, chances are you used Prime. Get your news from X or Facebook? Hearing the Roar yet?

The Murdochs, the Bezos, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, all those fat cats aren’t just accumulating billions, they’re shrinking the world to fewer and fewer choices. Competition — remember competition, that quaint notion that in a capitalist economic system it would bring prices down for the consumer? — well, it’s vanishing. The corporate boyz bought up the competition. Stock holders are happy, not sure how you feel about it. Need a good doctor? Probably get a choice of one or two clinics or hospitals. Need meds? Big Pharma has made sure you can’t compare prices with what they charge other countries. Price gouging, you ask? Or maybe you don’t, not that it matters.

Artificial Intelligence is coming next. Hell, Artificial Intelligence is here now. Who do you think is running that? Fat Freddie’s Bot Shop? Try again. The Congress hauled in the Tech Giants awhile back, maybe get a handle on what the implications for what’s coming down the pike are, possibly put some guardrails up before it’s too late. Fat chance, Fred. The genie is out of the bottle and you won’t be getting three wishes. You’ll look back at 3 options before too long as the Good Old Days. When competition was limited, but at least you could shop at Krogers instead of Safeway. Cost the same though…

I’m going up to Stanwoodopolis tonight to listen to our state park folks tell us commoners why they closed down the Cama Beach cabins half a year ago and what their plans for this park’s future are. A lot of folks volunteered time and money for this park and I’m betting they’re coming with questions and pitchforks. The Wooden Boat Foundation closed down its operation there and the ranger, Jeff Wheeler, was unceremoniously booted out too. Jeff was much beloved by us islanders, a hands-on, all around good guy. Maybe tonight they’ll tell us why he was sacked. But I doubt it.

In 1949 we islanders built Camano State Park, about 1000 people who showed up with tractors and dozers, shovels and saws, all volunteers who cleared the road and set up the beginnings of our only state park. Cama Beach was donated by the Hamalaanens and Worthingtons, some 600 acres or more along with the old resort cabins and the boat house. Once again volunteers helped repair the cabins, open up and manage the store, clear trails, make quilts for every cabin, drive the shuttles, a lot of those jobs state parks claims not to have the money for.

So for months state parks has kept mum about why they closed the park. Rumors flew. Indian bones, broken septic, damaged seawall, fire suppression breakdown in the boathouse. Guess they didn’t figure we needed any solid explanations. Now they have this meeting, basically to explain to us peasants why they won’t be reopening our park but of course to get ‘public input’. I suspect they will get plenty of public input tonight. Then they’ll go back to Olympia and do what they wanted in the first place. Always nice to see volunteerism rewarded….

We were down at the Columbia Gorge trailhead last year, emptying bladders and filling water bottles. A woman emerged from the restroom and whispered to her companion in a conspiratorial voice, “There’s no flush.” Her friend shook her head in incomprehension. “Not working?” she asked. “No, there’s nothing but a hole.” “A hole?” her friend asked incredulously. “Just a hole in the ground and no flush.”

I felt like a Cro Magnon listening in on aliens from some advanced galaxy. How could they possibly understand my dependence on a polluting gas engine? Or something as totally primitive as a cellphone? These two debutantes had missed their exit, apparently, on the way to the Ritz. A pit toilet was incomprehensible and if it weren’t such a sordid subject matter, it would have made for the nucleus of many a future discussion over bridge and tea at the Country Club. “But where, Charlotte? where does it Go???”

Indeed. Not that our two ladies could answer that question in regard to the plumbing matrix from their Beverly Hills manse to the sewer system it connects to. What matters is that it be whisked away, out of sight, out of smell. We don’t know how things work anymore — but so long as they do, we don’t need to care. The world is less and less natural to us; it’s electrons and silicon, computerized and digitized, all packaged in Black Boxes that create the new universe.

The trouble is, Charlotte, we’re still of the natural world. Body functions, pheromones, appetites, all that genetic coding of mammalian evolution in a world that’s more and more alien to us. We’ll fix that eventually. We’ll adapt to the virtual world, the one we make not so much in our own image as a clever cyber image. The natural stuff will be obsolete soon and we’ll replace the old ‘parts’ with new and improved engineered ones. The robots aren’t going to take over us humans. Us humans are going to become cyborgs.

And Charlotte, the best part is you won’t need a flush. Or a toilet either.

This spring I built a greenhouse with about 14 old tempered glass door panels I had salvaged long long ago. Treated lumber framing and cedar siding, but mostly glass. Even had stained glass in the front door and two next to that plus another two in the back. Put a 55 gallon black barrel and concrete pavers to radiate heat at night.

The first spring day that hit 70 degrees, the greenhouse hit 90. What, I wondered, would happen when we hit 80 or more? I’m growing tomatoes and a few exotics in there, probably loved that 90 degree heat but I was betting they wouldn’t like Saudi Arabia temperatures. So I cut two large windows in the back opposite the front door to let heat out both ends. This week we hit the mid 80’s outside and the greenhouse hit 105.

Course, I panicked and bought sunblocking screens for the glass roof and got that attached. Next day we hit 89 outside and the hothouse was 107. Not exactly sure at what temperature green tomatoes roast on the vine, I ordered a solar powered exhaust fan. If that doesn’t work, I’ll order a second one.

Inside the greenhouse my tomatoes are 5 feet tall while the ones I planted outside from the same seed are spindly still, just beginning to realize summer is definitely here, but cold at night. The difference between the two is astounding. I recommend a small greenhouse to anyone who still pooh-poohs climate change, still thinks we ought to drive large SUV’s and wants to drill baby drill for more oil and gas. Death Valley broke its all time heat record this week and cities from Las Vegas to Miami are burning hot while the summer’s just begun.

I may or may not solve my greenhouse overheating problem. Bad planning on my part. There won’t be any exhaust fans for Mother Earth when us tomatoes begin to fry on our vines. No sun blocking shrouds, no good fixes. Just bad gardeners, when all is said and done.

I went to apply for my State Park Annual Permit yesterday, what used to be free to us citizens, but now costs us taxpayers because the State doesn’t have enough tax dollars for what it used to have enough for so the budget needs to be balanced. Now the poor can pay what the guy launching his 25 foot Bayliner pays for a permit, same way he does at the gas station for the gas tax, same as he does at the drug store, same as he does just about everywhere he buys something. This is what we call Recessive Taxation. No breaks for the indigent. You know, folks we now refer to as Takers.

Big break for the wealthy. Evens the playing field … for somebody. I’m not so poor anymore. Maybe I should harden my heart, take up polo, spend my days investing on the stock market and figure I got mine, those who don’t, well, they probably didn’t work hard or make the right decisions. Plenty of em down here on the South End living on the wrong side of the road. Probably LIKE poverty. Got what they deserved for not going to college or working at Boeing or being born white or male.

So I go online for my permit cause I can afford a computer and DSL. Good website, easy navigation, sign me right up! I notice, though, if I apply online, it costs $5 more. And I remember the same thing happened on my vehicle licenses. They want me to go through a private vendor, see? Job creation. Get rid of that state job which, apparently, isn’t as valuable a job as a private one and now we pay less taxes, right? Sure … Course, I gotta pay it privately now. Kind of like saving money on garbage pickup in the city. Turn it over to Waste Management, your taxes go down. But you gotta pay Waste Management now. Costs more since they don’t have much competition. But at least you’re not paying more in taxes. It’s a little like contract soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Better, I hear, to pay double or triple pay for Blackwater Boyz than to recruit more volunteers or God forbid, draft kids to fight our wars!

I sure don’t want to pay more taxes. Neither does Boeing. Or Amazon. Or Weyerhauser. Or Cabelas. I guess why we give em huge tax breaks. Sure glad taxes aren’t going toward helping out our State Parks. And that extra 15% to give the private sector a piece of the pie, well, at least it won’t raise my taxes. And the poor. Let em eat cake. But I don’t recommend they order their bakery online.

Back in the early ‘70’s I lived on a Polish homestead in Northern Wisconsin, wife, dog, a few hippie friends, sort of an ersatz commune, which, of course, didn’t last long. Not as long as my short-lived marriage but that’s another story. The little mill town we lived near, Mosinee, was pretty much a redneck burg, home to the Posse Comitatus, one of those fun gun clubs advocating anti-government sentiments. Part of the reason I left, but again another story.

This story is about the Herman’s Hermits who came to Mosinee to play some sad sack of a gin joint on its outskirts. You maybe remember these guys, mid ‘60’s, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter hit, mostly a flash in the pan but hey, big for awhile on the pop charts, part of the British Invasion. A decade later the lads are down to touring backwash America to crowds of dozens, not the thousands they once performed for.

The lead singer whose name I can’t remember, was interviewed on the Wausau station promoting the gig and the D.J. asked him what he thought of playing for really small audiences in the waning years of a once really successful career in a crummy tavern far from the madding crowds of yesteryear.

And Herman, or whatever his name was, said it was great being on top of the charts, drawing huge crowds, being famous … but the real deal was playing their music. Which was what they’d be doing this coming weekend to whoever shows up. We’re bloody musicians, he said, and that’s what we bloody do, play music.

I gotta say, some 50 years later in my own twilight career, I still remember this interview. And I think now what I thought at the time, bloody good on you lads! The money, the fame, the whole music industrial complex — not really the point in the end. Nice to have hits, nice to have a chart topper. But in the end, despite the lights going dim, the band plays on. Course, me, I might miss the groupies….

Harry works down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop. He’s an artist with bondo, makes a ‘total’ look brand new after pulling the dents and replacing crushed quarter panels, has a real nice touch with an airless in the spray booth. Back about 4 years ago, Harry was a ‘he’. Six foot four, muscular in a lithe sort of way, moved car parts around like baskets of daisies. I didn’t know him real well, I guess, mostly because my beater cars never got treated to the Body Shop make-over. Dents, scratches, bullet holes —- I’m not spending money for pigs’ lipstick.

So imagine my surprise when Harry walks up my drive during our annual Mother’s Day Studio Tour … in high heels, a tasteful above-the-knee pleated skirt, grey blouse and a matching handbag. “How you doing, man?” I ask nonchalantly and Harry explains, no doubt for the 1000th time, he’s no longer a man. Course, judging by the 5 o’clock shadow of a beard, he’s not quite a woman either. Which, he tells me earnestly, will take the hormone treatments some time to kick in.

Even on the live-and-let-live South End, this was, well , this was … different. And we’re accustomed to different. Harry toured the studio and we chatted it up and when he left I gave him a manly sort of hug and said, “Good luck, man,” and immediately corrected myself. Harry gave me a wink and a laugh and sallied forth down the drive.

Harry quit the Body Shop — not because the boyz couldn’t deal with The Change — they still speak fondly of him. Her. You know what I mean. She wanted a new life to go with the new her.

A couple of years ago I ran into Harry. Harriet now. She was installing fountains. Hauled the rocks, dug the ponds, wired the pumps, plumbed the waterfalls. “I’m an artist, Skeeter” she declared. She was welding sculptural components, creating light shows, running her own business. “Life’s good, then?” I asked.

She broke into a radiant smile, one I never saw at the Body Shop. Leaning down to whisper in my ear, she fairly bubbled, “It’s a joy my boy, it’s a joy!” All I can say is the path to happiness is a whole lot harder for some, even on the salty South End, but it isn’t impossible.