The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Nobody seems to like growing old.  Can’t blame em,  I guess when you factor in the aches and pains, the wrinkles and hair loss, the diminished mobility.  Well, almost nobody, cause I don’t mind.  Sure, I got the same ailments, but hellfire, you ought to pay  SOME price for all this accumulated wisdom, for some peace of mind, for a more stable financial grip on this hard world.

My brother’s father-in-law, a dairy farmer in Northern Wisconsin who knew a few things about Hard Living, told him at a ripe young age to quit worrying about money.  Money, he said, takes care of itself.  You’d be better off to tackle the rest.   Love, marriage, family, career, happiness.  My brother, being young, didn’t believe him until he too was older and wiser.

We used to value maturity.  We used to respect the accumulated wisdom of all those years of living.  We used to pay homage to our elders.  Now that I’m an elder, I sure wish we still did.  But we don’t.  We value youth, energy, good looks, clean skin, svelte bodies, shimmering hair.  We’re a bit superficial.  Okay, we’re TOTALLY skin deep.  We’d sell our souls to be beautiful, to be athletic, to be rich.  If I was the devil, boy oh boy, I’d be banking more souls than I’d have rooms to rent in Hell.  I’d be building infrared suburbs, you bet.  Plenty of beauty parlors, fitness centers, spas, sports injury treatment facilities, so many mirrors a 60 watt bulb would heat the place up to full sizzle.

You reach my advanced age, you ought to pat yourself on the back.  You probably figured most things out.  You must’ve learned plenty from all those mistakes.  You should’ve learned to live in your own skin.  When kids ask who your heroes are, tell them YOU are.  It’s not egotistical.  It should be the truth.

The truth is, we got this far.  Meaning, we had a hearty dose of living, our fair share….  We learned a thing or three.  We witnessed the world.  We even changed it a bit, don’t underestimate yourself.  Pass some of it on to the young’uns.  They might listen.  More than you think.  Just don’t wish you were them, young and starting out fresh.  Why go through that twice?

I got an e-mail today with a link to the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ jobs in America.  Gotta tell you, I dreaded opening it up, fully expecting to find Artist probably the worst.  In all honesty, I almost hit the DELETE button, but this had come from a friend and he probably expected a response or a confession or a vow to do better in my next career choice, one from the ‘best’ list.

Turns out the ‘best’ jobs were pretty much judged on the basis of salary.  Actuarials, statisticians, mathematician(!), no kidding: high paying, technical, number crunching corporate gigs.  Boy oh boy, if I’d only know known back when I drummed out of school and began my desperate search for a ‘meaningful’ job.  Nobody told me the best careers were the highest paid ones.  I thought maybe they would be the ones that made me the happiest.The ‘worst’ jobs were the dangerous jobs.  Like Lumberjack.  Probably cut your leg off or be killed by a miscalculated cut in a leaning Doug Fir.  Poor pay, hearing loss, amputations.  And forget health care or vacations or sick leave or a pension.  Not gonna get to pension age anyway….

No mention of Artist in the group.  I guess poor wages, no bennies, no pension, not really the ‘worst’ job if it isn’t dangerous too.  Although I got to thinking how about those glass installations I did back when I was too eager and too stupid, climb up on a skinny ledge two stories above a concrete floor to hoist 30 square foot panels of stained glass into place with barely a few toes on secure footing at 3 a.m., every cell in my body screaming NO NO NO! and the sweat smelling like fear.  Fear, in case you don’t know, that kind of fear at least, smells like excrement.  Truly, unforgettably.

Anyway …. I didn’t find my ‘job’ listed on this link.  I’m just sort of glad I got something I can call a job.  Although, between you and me and the pegleg lumberjack, I never think of what I do as a job.  Someone asked me about retirement two nights ago at an art gallery opening. Would I — could I — just stop?  It’s not like punching a time clock, I guess.  It’s not about making the money.  And it’s not about being afraid of the danger.  My danger was really starvation, poverty, failure and humiliation.  Too late for that now.  The fear now is the creative well drying up, the days growing longer and emptier, the boredom settling in like a slow metastasizing dread.  I don’t know yet, but I bet it still smells the same.

Businesses come and go down here on the South End.  Mostly go…. Folks figure they can just empty out the kids’ piggy bank or sell the old Chevy van that’s been up on blocks 10 years behind the shed and scrape up the cash to hang a shingle out on their new storefront.  Something about working for other people makes em yearn for the entrepreneurial dream.  They figure if they work for themselves, their new boss will treat them a whole lot better.

Starting a business, they suppose, is a snap.  After all, this is a capitalist society and there’s all those consumers up on the North End clamoring for sales and services.  Wanda opened up the El Sol Tanning Solarium last year.  Now you know and I know the sun doesn’t shine much up on the cloud shrouded North End…. And so did Wanda, so she put out the CostCo neon OPEN  sign in a little 700 square foot storefront rental up by the Plaza Market where storefronts are opening up faster than real estate offices can move in, something Wanda mighta shoulda oughta factored in when she developed her business plan that night between dinner and Wheel of Fortune.

She lasted about the time it takes to say melanoma.  I don’t know what tanning beds go for used on CraigsList, but someday the antique value should be right up there with Ozone Generators from the 1920’s.  Wanda did get a nice full body tan herself, better than the burn down at the bank, and now we got another FOR LEASE sign where the neon no longer says OPEN.

When I last chatted with Wanda, she was heartbroken her dream died before it even had a chance to blossom.  ‘People must stay indoors and figure the TV will give them a tan,’ she lamented.  I said they go to Palm Springs or Albuquerque for the sun, not some coffin with full spectrum artificial lighting.  Wanda was in full denial.  More advertising maybe.  A location closer to town.  One free tanning session for every ten.  Now her savings were gone.  ‘I don’t want to go back to driving that school bus again,’ she practically sobbed.  In the land of capitalist dreams where Bill Gates whispers sweet somethings in every aspiring entrepreneur’s ear, failure is hard to accept.  Wanda will be fine.  She’ll dust herself off, take stock and probably launch into the next hot market.  DVD rentals or an umbrella shop.  Dreams don’t really die down here on the South End, they just recycle.  Worst case, she can do like most of the rest of us small businesspeople and become a working artist.  Low pay but huge self esteem.

Our latest entrepreneurial entrée into the fragile economic market of the South End is Tatoo U.  Armed with dye injecting needles and a menacing array of bicep tats, ‘Biker Bob’ Kowalski opened up his ‘body art emporium’ in the cleaning supply room of Hair Today – Gone Tomorrow’s Rogaine Outlet beneath Windy Rear Realty.

The opening week alone Biker Bob adorned 30 arms, torsos and lower calves with artworks ranging from colorful butterflies and cute unicorns to snarling hounds of hell and a blood dripping dagger with the always popular logo: NO LOSERS!  Bob acknowledges that he’s fighting a long held stereotype of body art that’s a bit negative.  “Mostly it’s the old farts,” he said in an exclusive interview for the Crab Cracker.  “They equate it with a sailor’s drunk in some port town.  Next morning he wakes up with the worst hangover of his life and the wrong girlfriend’s name on his chest.”  Bob tells us he doesn’t get many sailors and he’s reluctant to inscribe current girlfriend’s names.

Scrutinizing the hundreds of graphic images posted on the salon walls, I ask what are some of the favorites of us South Enders.  He admits it’s a bit early to say, but he’d done a couple of dragons for the guys and the little butterfly is popular among the ladies. “They like it right about bikini-line or just visible below the top of the bra line,” he says, then laughs and admits, “me too.”  Not bad work, if you can get it.”

With all the artists down here, I make the mistake of asking if he plans to use any of them to create one-of-a-kind tattoos.  This rankles him.  “Why don’t you go ask THEM if they’re going to use any of the other artists’ art to make theirs, ya jerk!”

I took his point, without the dye, apologized and took a hasty departure.

Artists are hyper-sensitive people, in case you’ve somehow never stumbled down to Colony Central here at the nettlesome South End.  Biker Bob will make a fine addition.

On my way past a stack of detergent and window cleaning supplies I passed a client coming in:  about 18, pierced nose, tongue stud, 3 tiny diamonds glittering in a clean row on her earlobe.  “Go for the butterfly,” I meekly suggest.  Her accompanying boyfriend glared ominously at me and advised I mind my own business.

You know, if I had one….  Biker Bob apparently does.

Before my Old Man died and he stopped watching or reading the new, if we asked him about some current event or other, he’d shrug and say ‘crazy world’. I think in his late 90’s he figured there wasn’t much he could do anymore to change things. If there ever was …. So he put politics, world and national and local events, catastrophes and wars, all of it in the rearview and tried to focus on eating and breathing. The rest — someone else could worry about it.

There are days — and this is one — I wish I could ignore the outside world, play my banjo, make some furniture, design a stained glass window, chop wood, hunt for crab, sit and write, enjoy the remaining years of my life without the constant bombardment from the insane jungle beat of a world going mad intruding constantly. The polls say Trump is at his highest approval rating ever. Higher than Biden, even though the guy is a crook, a traitor, an authoritarian creep without morals or values or the slightest human empathy for anyone but himself.

And I was worried about Artificial Intelligence taking over …. Global warming is no hoax and it and all our new wars are spurring immigration on a level we’ve never seen, only to get worse, but always a wedge issue for the ultranationalists here and abroad. What, me worry? But, like my old man says, crazy world. Unlike him, I have to live in it awhile longer.

Riding my non-electric bike around the Head today, I came across a small pile of firewood stacked on the side of the highway that read: FREE — TAKE ALL OR NONE. I have a friend who could use a little extra BTU’s for the coming winter, her own pile being a bit shy of warming her past Christmas, so I thought I’d drive my truck back when I got home, pick up half a cord and make a surprise delivery.

I arrived with my pickup and backed along the shoulder next to the pile, but before I was barely out of the cab a woman appeared out of her blacktop driveway riding a gas powered mini-tractor. ‘That’s on my property,’ she announced, which, since the sign said FREE, momentarily confused me. ‘Is it yours?’ I asked and she told me no, it was the neighbors’ but they’d piled it on her property instead of their own, apparently a territorial intrusion that perturbed her greatly. I said I would remove the offending wood post-haste, figuring this would alleviate her boundary dispute, but then she said I should move my truck to their side of the woodpile, more a demand than a suggestion, and although I considered explaining that the shoulder was actually neither hers nor her offending neighbor, it was county right-of-way, I decided to move the truck. Then … I don’t know, call it contrariness. Or maybe the imperial way she was acting, but … I decided why should I move the truck when I would be gone in five minutes, no harm done.

So I asked her highness, ‘What’s the problem if I just simply load the wood right here and be on my way? To which she responded that the shoulder was more level on the other side. This side was just as level, seemed to me without calling in a surveyor, so I decided to ask again, ‘What’s the issue here?’ The lady started to answer, harrumphed heavily, then threw up her hands and started up her go-cart to leave.

A better man might have let it go at this. A better man might have moved the truck to the other side. But that man, alas, is not me. I said, ‘Hold up!’ And remarkably she did. ‘I just want to know why it’s a big deal to you to make this some kind of confrontation.’ This flustered her and she seemed on the verge of forming an answer, if there was one, but finally gave a disgusted wave and motored down her asphalt drive toward her million and a half dollar manse, no doubt muttering to herself about low life, cruddy losers who have the temerity to park anywhere near her moatless mansion in some beat up truck wearing a beat up hat and addressing her with insolence On or Next To or Too Nearby her estate.

There was a time, long before m’lady or m’lord bought their palace, when the South End was a tad more neighborly, when we helped each other build additions or fixed plumbing or troubleshot car problems. We knew each other’s name and yeah, sometimes we didn’t get along. I guess we were all serfs back then, but happy serfs. Now we got the dukes and duchesses to show us our proper place where even the shoulder of the road is off limits. It won’t be long before they’ll toll us for the use of their highway too.

It’s that time of year again. Time for a Covid booster. Masks, zoom meetings, quarantines. Maybe even a flu shot. Time once again for all the conspiracy trolls to hit social media with horror stories of nano-trackers and autism babies. Science, the tool Big Government uses to control you!!

The Age of Reason is over, my friend. Logic is being swept aside for superstition. Rationality is the tool government uses to enslave you. History is propaganda. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery. Doublespeak is back! Truth is a Ploy! Big Brother is Woke. Trust No One!

Vaccines don’t save lives, they kill more people than the disease itself. Doc Fauci was a monster. Science exists to subjugate the masses. Global warming is a hoax. The moon landing was faked. Lizard people rule the world. Chemtrails pour poison on you. Jews are starting forest fires using lasers from space. Obama is the anti-Christ. Democrats are abducting children for perversion and for snacks. The Sandy Hook slaughter was staged.

Make up a few of your own, why not? It’s fun and others on your social media will read it and take it to heart as gospel. Everything is wide open, subject to no fact checking, just take it for granted and if enough of us believe it, it must be true. Doubt everything, believe everything, it’s the new mantra of our era. Alternative facts! Skepticism is the new religion. Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes? Me, of course. Welcome to the New Dark Age.

Qanon Alert

This past week FEMA sent out an emergency alert test to every cellphone, TV and radio in the United States. If you think this was simply a test, you haven’t been tuning in to the higher frequencies, but thankfully, there are folks out there in social media land who do. They know what’s really going on and it isn’t some benevolent government agency just broadcasting a test emergency signal. Anything but!

For those unfortunates who had vaccines injected into themselves, here’s the bad news: that FEMA signal was actually an activator of the nano-particles the government slipped into the syringe. Once activated, pal, you will be under the control of big brother. You will be monitored and manipulated like the marionette you will become. Sorry, a great many of you will become actual zombies, maybe not the cannibal version but the living dead nevertheless.

But don’t think for a nano-second that’s all. These FEMA signals will shut down 5G communications, allowing Sleepy Joe and his evil minions to instigate a nationwide Lockdown. Those of you who were vaccinated will find that the signal also triggers a Kill-Switch in your central nervous system, yet another mechanism for control of the population. The days of freedom in the Yew-Ess-Aye are over, my friend. You will do as you’re told. Or else!

It’s been a few days since the test and I’ve been watching to see if my neighbors are showing signs yet of nano-particle activation, sudden flare-ups of deadly diseases, increased mortality rates, zombie-like walks along the highway, possibly even incarceration by government operatives. So far, not much. Maybe the activation is on a delay switch. Maybe they got the word and turned off their cellphones. Maybe none of them had the vaccinations. Or … maybe the test, the so-called emergency frequency test, was really a test to misdirect our attention away from something even more nefarious!! Stay tuned, the worst may yet be on its way.

Back in the good old days I used to enjoy the Stanwoodopolis Gazette’s letters to the editor when a couple of curmudgeonly right wingers would sound off almost every week with their loony rantings. Nowadays, of course, half the country is sounding off with internet trolling, whacky conspiracy theories, unhinged grievances and the megaphone of the insane. Occasionally, though, I find one that trumps the usual litany of the angry birds and this morning I read one that argued we do not need to reduce our carbon emissions.

The writer laid out his case by citing Cicero: “True Law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting.” Now you might be wondering how this applies to climate change, global warming and the existential threat they carry, but bear with me and our writer. Let’s bypass all the controversy over whether these are the result of human activity. Total waste of time. Because, you’ll see, True Law is photosynthesis. Plants need carbon dioxide to survive. If you reduce your carbon footprint, you hurt the plants. You hurt the plants and you screw up the balance between plants and animals. Simple as that. Is that crystal clear?

The Creator provided us with photosynthesis. If you try to reduce carbon emissions, you’re a fool, and as our boy Doug also says, “Every person should oppose this insane attempt to reduce carbon dioxide.” He says sagely that “there is no rational reason to violate the unalienable right of plants to have carbon dioxide.” There you go. Plants have rights! Inalienable rights. And if you take that away from them, you hurt the animals too. Plus us!

You really can’t argue with the logic Doug is presenting. True Law. Photosynthesis. Even got old Cicero on his team. Leave well enough alone, the world will be just fine. All I know is I hope Doug keeps sending those letters into the newspaper. The rest of my paper has gotten repetitive and boring. Meanwhile as Doug and the Brits say, Keep Calm and Carry On. Maybe breathe on your houseplants more often too.

One of the hazards of scribbling nonsense in these 21st Century blog sites along with about one billion other yahoos is that there are folks out there who really – and I don’t mean maybe – REALLY don’t like what they read in Skeeter’s pantheon of purpled prose.  Maybe some search engine sends em by mistake, hooks on a key word, next thing you know, instead of a self-help forum, they got some chucklenut waxing profane about a subject they couldn’t care less about.  And now, instead of Helpful Tips from Tom on how to turn their unhappy life into something swallowable, they got precious time wasted scrolling down South End Babble and boy howdy, somebody needs to reimburse them!

So they write to me in the anonymity of the internet.  Which is the digital highway equivalent of road rage on the interstate.  Flip me off, swerve into my lane,  jam the brakes.  They’ll show me who’s who and what’s what.  And the best part: they’re untrackable, anonymous as drive-by shooters.  Splatter my windshield with shotgun pellets and don’t look back, just speed away to the next unlucky target.

These are some very Very ANGRY! people out there with us.  More than you think.  Way more.  I suppose we’re lucky they shoot from the lip, not the hip, but if you ever made the mistake of commenting on a forum or some issue that meant enough to you that you weighed in, then you probably learned firsthand what I’m talking about.  Civility is most definitely not a valued trait in Cyberville.

I’d like to see the volume and vitriol dialed back a bit.  I know, probably won’t happen, probably get ratcheted UP even more if anything,  But personally, I’m weary of the ranting, the hysteria, the apoplexy.  And hey, you, the guy who sells antiques and read the blog by mistake on cleaning out my storage shacks, maybe hoping for bargains:  I’m sorry you thought this offered no insights for living your life.  And I’m doubly sorry if you thought I was so self- centered I used the blog to make myself look attractive.  I guess we won’t be dating.

I don’t have anything to sell, pal.  Not the junk I cleaned out, not the ideas in my head.  And .. .sadly…. it sounds like we’re all a little late to offer you tips on living.  Let’s both just figure it out on our own.