The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The writers and actors are on strike out there in woke Hollywood. Maybe you think they’re after more money —and maybe they are — but the real fight is about the moguls at Disney and Netlix and Prime planning to use Artificial Intelligence as a substitute for their human creators. Let the bots whack out a script in a nano-second, have the two leggeds clean it up, save plenty of money. Actors? Maybe you’ve been busy trying to decide between Threads and X, but AI can create totally realistic digital clones of Brad Pitt or Sandra Bullock, why pay them all those millions?

The fight is really, for the corporations at least, about money after all. For the artists, the writers, the actors, for the rest of us humanoids, it’s about choosing sides. You want an android world or you want one us hominids can call home? You worried about uncontrolled immigration, wake up! The new immigrants aren’t homo sapiens, they’re cyborgs, androids, bots, apps, algorithms, all quietly taking our places. They’re the pods under your bed in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, cloning you, becoming you, replacing you.

Sure, they can work way more efficiently, out produce us, save the billionaire class a ton of money, eventually leave us behind to scrape up the scraps. But not without a fight. Trust me, we’re gonna lose. The Tech Boyz have too much invested and it’s not for humanity. So root for the actors, the writers, the creators. Root for the humans! They’re fighting for the rest of us … whether they know it or not.

My teachers and my parents and the TV shows of my youth kept telling us kids that the way to deal with bullies was to confront them, they’re actually, deep down, nothing but cowards. My family moved north from Georgia to Milwaukee when I was 13, a radical transition from semi-rural living to urban discomfort. My junior high school had the usual mix of cliques with one exception, the hoods, guyz who dressed up as gangsters to celebrate Valentine’s Day, the Massacre. Nice bunch, kept switchblade knives on themselves and guns in their lockers. Welcome to the city, Farm Boy!

At recess we played a game new to me called Foursquare, bounced a volleyball around from the four corners, nothing I remember about it 60 years later other than a couple of the hoods used to blatantly cheat at it and no one had the courage to call them out for it. One of my teachers who’d heard our complaints said it was up to us to put a stop to these guys’ cheating, not his problem, and anyway, the best way to end their bullying of the rest of us was to stand up to them, show them we weren’t afraid and more than likely they’d back down. Because … well, you know why. These thugs were basically cowards, that’s why.

So I decided to put an end to this cheating. Kind of ruined the game and we were required to play the stupid game. This, dear reader, is probably as good an allegory for life in these partisan times as you’re gonna want. Needless to say, the cheaters, once confronted, feigned courage. “Who’s gonna make us?” one of the gang said, and I said, well … you know what I said. Me. And then we ‘rumbled’ as they say in Milwaukee. I took the first punch to the stomach. I took the second punch to the face. After that I don’t remember what body part I slammed against my opponent’s fist, but I do remember the teacher who advised us to handle this ourselves, breaking up the slaughter and dragging us both to the principal’s office. Where we were given verbal lashings and detentions, both of which my coward bully laughed off in the principal’s face.

What I learned from this and a few other similar confrontations, bullies aren’t necessarily cowards, they’re just bullies. Creeps and sadists, brutes and users, I don’t know where my teachers and my folks got their psychology degrees, but from personal experience I have to say they should ask for a refund on their tuition.

21 years ago the South End String Band got asked to Help Save the Grange. We’d played the Tyee Store parking lot once, the Elger Bay Store parking lot once, and we were still recovering from monoxide poisoning but we said yah shure, u betcha, why not? We put on a concert, had a spaghetti dinner with spumoni ice cream for dessert, held a raffle for goodies we’d had donated, charged 5 bucks a head. Even though it was a cold and rainy night in February, folks turned out and stood in a long line outside, so many that we had to ask two times for people to leave so we could get the next shift inside, after all, it was a fundraiser. In the end we managed to make thousands of dollars, folks signed up to join the Grange, hundreds of Camano Islanders rolled in to help.

Last night we played a short remix of that event long ago. Spaghetti dinner cooked by Mike Nestor, same guy who was chef in 2002. Pat Major collected 10 bucks for the dinner, still the Grange Master. And of course the Grange is still here. Bad bathrooms and all. After dinner the Band played our set on the same stage we used back then and the same one we used on quite a few benefits we put on over the years for the place. Made them a lot of money in 21 years and were happy to keep the Hall a community gathering place.

But … I’m not sure we can take credit for saving it. Although, I do know this: if you’re an upstart band and you get to play for hundreds of folks who came down to the South End on that cold rainy winter night, the Grange might have saved us.

About 1980 I picked up two good old boys hitching into Tyee Grocery, which was Ted and Ellen Snowdens’ back then.  Part store, part junkyard, part tow truck outfit, part well drilling, part gas station.  Looked like an Ozark shopping mall run by Ma and Pa Kettle.  These two gentlemen were hitch-hiking in the middle of nowhere, drunk as purple skunks in the afternoon, so naturally I was curious where they’d come from, them being neighbors and all,  so I offered to take them back home after they’d purchased their groceries for supper.

Supper, it turned out, was some crackers and a big can of tomato juice they’d mistook for tomato soup.  And a couple quarts of their fortified favorite wine, Thunderbird, their drink of choice.  I kindly declined their dinner invitation, but I WAS interested in seeing where they lived, which was back in the boonies I’d never been, a nice little cabin they’d trashed up nicely sitting on a half acre trout pond like you’d see on a picture postcard.  Turned out they netted the trout and smoked the fish and sold them down at the Pike Street Market for a small fortune.

Well, finally they got to arguing about the ruined dinner menu, what with the big can of soup being juice, and who was to blame –so I said I got to go now, boys.  They said stop by any time and fish all you want and I said thank you kindly, I might just do that.

Course it being the only fishing hole on the entire South End, I was back there, pole in hand, two days later as soon as I knew they’d gone back home to Seattle and Gomorrah.  Had three two pounders in no time flat, dinner for Ma and me.  For awhile I thought I had a gold mine.

But I kept noticing nasty notes on the door of their cabin from creditors and ex-spouses and aggrieved parties and folks who just plain didn’t like the trout ranchers, folks who’d come all the way to the hollers of the South End looking for money or revenge or Lord knows what from these boys, and one day I noticed somebody had stuffed garbage in the wood smoker and let it rot, not a good sign for making flavorful smoked fish.  And that was when the fish were gone, netted up, I figure, on one last drunken weekend.

Every once in awhile I’d go back, hoping the trout might reappear, but of course, like a lot of our fishing around here, it never rebounded.  Still, I can say with some pride, I’m the only fisherman you’ll meet who ever caught a trout on the South End.

I read in the news the other day that the average kid text messages 200 times per day.  You might be skeptical of that number … unless you’ve sat in a room with some of these nimble fingerers.  They will ignore an incoming meteor before they put down their I-phone or whatever device their parents have empowered them with.  Hell, I even see the folks now just as addicted, drifting off from our conversation to check an incoming text message.

200 messages!  The phone companies must be making a gazillion bucks on our kids.  They’re making nearly as much on their folks.

People ask me — well, people who don’t know me, ask me— what my cellphone number is.  When I tell them I don’t really have one, they look at me now like I just walked out of a jungle in Southendzonia, possibly the Missing Link between apes and Cellular Magnon Man.  They check for opposing thumbs, incipient language skills, tool usage.  Sadly, I fare poorly.

But in my defense, I have a telephone.  Which, I point out, is connected to a digital answering machine and a computer modem.  I receive and send e-mails.  I can surf the Web.  I just don’t happen to do it 24/7.  I don’t want to be that connected.  I don’t want to send or receive text messages 200 times a day.  I’m just not that social an animal  — and if that makes me maladjusted or by definition, sociopathic, I guess I will plead guilty on Facebook.

You know, when I join.  Right after I buy my I-phone.  The day after hell freezes over.

If you’re going after me, I’m going after you.. Don Trumpleone, the Godfather.

These are going to be interesting times, these next few months, another indictment due any day, make that the fourth. What is that Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times? It definitely looks like the mob boss is going to have his day in court. Or days. Probably weeks and months. Indictments, arraignments, depositions, trials, sentencings, then appeals, a country divided into warring camps, possibly Civil War, bad craziness. Count on one more year of the Donald Trump Show, season 7, probably 8, possibly even a resolution to the cliffhanger this has been. What a ride it’s been!! Impeachments, insurrections, political intrigue, porn stars. Porn stars!! No wonder the ratings are through the roof. The show has everything.

But … most of us are pretty burned out. We just want the guy to go away. Too much binge-watching. Too much social media. Too much of everything! You have to give the guy credit, he knows how to keep the spotlight on himself, all the time. He’s the entire Kardashian Klan. And even under a withering assault from multiple inquests the man turns the attacks into money. He’s not above selling a T-shirt or two. He’s not embarrassed to ask his MAGA minions for financial support. And … they keep sending in their checks to the billionaire snake oil salesman. So he won’t have to fund his own defense. You think that isn’t amazing???

Sure, you had televangelists who could squeeze nickels out of turnips. You had mobsters who could make millions. You’ve had politician crazy for power. But you never saw a huckster like this, a vice king wanting more, always more. The judicial system must be corrupt, the FBI must be in on it, the Bidens were worse, I’m doing this for you, please send money. I need more money. Please send more!

The gullibility of the American people is boundless. Maybe we just want entertainment, worth the price of admission. The guy is a one man train wreck, no way can you not watch. The fact that he’s willing to destroy democracy itself – or save it if you believe him – isn’t that exactly the kind of reality TV we must crave? Hoo boy, hang onto yer hats, the next and possibly final season is about to start.

Some of us old codgers here on the South End Shangri-La are starting to cash in our chips.  After a lifetime of skimming the surface of sinning, it’s finally time, I guess, to face the music.  Oh, a few of us will probably make it to heaven but we’re in no great rush, although this lifestyle of excess and bad habits might make you think we’re on the Fast Track to hell.

Other places, you see folks buying their cemetery plots or ordering fancy marble headstones with a pithy Bible verse as a hedge against being denied entry into the Gated Community in the sky.  They make living wills and put their estates in order, plan the funeral service ahead of time with their favorite music and slides, sort of an MTV for the soon-to-be-departed.  Probably working even now on the special Facebook update and that final Tweet :  Bye, I’m dead.

Down here the boyz have our own mortuarial customs.  We like to put an obituary photo in the local newspaper stating date of birth, date of death, who got left behind and something about going now to be with Jesus.  The grieving missuz writes this.  What we do is pick the obit photograph ahead of time.  Custom dictates that it is at least 30 years old when we still had our hair and didn’t have that beergut, and most importantly it shows us proudly holding a trophy size fish.  Salmon’s good, halibut’s better.  Anything that takes both hands to hold up for the camera is best.  If necessary, a string of trout or a mess of panfish works, but only as a last resort. 

The Deceased As Sportsman is the idea here, even if the sportsman’s features are blurry (the photographer was drinking and celebrating too, you see).
No, I don’t know where this custom originated, we just follow the dictums.  Most of us haven’t fished in the last 30 years.  I suppose we all hope Heaven is just one big lake, fully stocked with whopper Chinook and 150 pound halibut.  Hell, I figure, might be the same …. Only we have to clean the catch ourselves.  Until  the missuz shows up.

Before the advent of circuit boards, silicon chips and computerized everything, us do-it-yerselfers took no little pride in fixing our broken appliances, our busted stereos, our crippled cars and even our dysfunctional lives.  Really didn’t have much choice given our fiscal challenges.  The washing machine quits, you have to weigh that $50 service fee just to drive down here.   Believe me, you’ll learn to diagnose a blown fuse or a broken fan belt yourself before you wait two days in your last clean underwear and then pay half the cost of a Maytag to keep the wringer washer working another six months.

My dryer quit this week.  Nothing new there — it goes on strike regularly.  But this time the little gizmo that held the blown fuse wouldn’t let go of the fuse.  No big deal — I went on-line, googled up the part, found it … and discovered it cost more than that service fee I’m trying to save.  Being a South Ender I balked at the rip-off price.  No way was I paying $54 plus shipping for a plastic toy fuseholder.  Next trip into town I scrounged the hardware store, found a reasonable facsimile and rewired the dryer to hold it …. And yeah, $5 later, I was fluffing up my dungarees.

Sometimes it pays to think outside the box, cornball as that expression is.  I bought an extra hard drive for my computer — and oh yeah, I got one — but when it came it wouldn’t fit inside the Tower.  A North Ender might send it back, see if there was a better fit.  But like I said, we like to think outside the box, so I cut a slot with a hacksaw in the tower side and slid that new blank brain right in and left its frontal lobe sticking out for better ventilation.  Sure, the missus shook her head sadly.  But the salient point here is that it worked and  MORE IMPORTANT BY FAR, the job was done.

The trick here is to show No Fear to these malfunctioning objects, even the ‘black boxes’.  They sense fear quicker than a dog or a tax assessor.  Open them up, grab a handful of wires, pull on em with authority, half the time they’ll respond positively when they realize unequivocally you’re the Boss.  When my VCR ate a rental movie, I eviscerated the aggressive little unit and when it still refused to function, I made an example of it to its electronic brethren and tossed it two stories out into the driveway.  I have put rocks through recalcitrant TV picture tubes and in one instance burned one alive, fully plugged in, begging like HAL in 2001—A Space Odyssey.  Some machines are incapable of learning.  You must be firm.  You may even need to be ruthless.  The worst mistake you can make is allowing one miscreant cyborg mutant monster to infect the rest.  Give em an inch, they’ll grab half of cyberspace.

For those who think it’s a brave new world, one where nothing can be fixed or repaired, cowboy UP!  Down here we aren’t going to be slaves to the machine.  Even if we have to destroy every damn one ….!

Scientists ( you remember those guyz, the folks we used to trust before we stopped using Reason) announced today that this July was the hottest month on record. At the same time the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, came out with its recommendations to deregulate the EPA, the Department of the Interior and any other agency that wants to use its power to tackle global warming. A spokesperson said they weren’t denying climate change, just wanted to make sure we don’t over-reach on putting the brakes on fossil fuel usage, might hurt the economy. In Texas, in the midst of a month of hundred plus degree days, their legislature wants to halt further wind and solar alternatives for energy production, arguing that these were unreliable. No doubt the sun stops shining in the Lone Star state during those hot summer months and only fossil fuel power plants can deliver air conditioning electricity.

If fossil fuel is the answer, give the Earth a few million years and these Republican science deniers can have their remains mined and used to power the grids of whoever is left on this planet. Phoenix set a record for over a month of 110 plus degree days recently and is now working on the next month’s. One Republican legislator scoffed at the notion that science could even know if we’re the hottest we’ve ever been in the last 100,000 years. Who was there to record the temperature back then, he wanted to know. Right. Couldn’t use anything but direct observation. Must be bullshit. Although … well over half of us believe in angels.

This might be mildly amusing … except that we’re talking about an existential threat to humanity that seems to be coming on faster even than our scientists projected. The Heritage Foundation has a plan, thank god. Course, their plan is to slow down doing anything about trying to mitigate climate change. What’s the hurry, their spokeswoman said, she who was EPA head under Trump. The fires are burning unchecked in Canada, floods are more severe on the east coast, heat waves are sweltering Europe and India and China, glaciers are melting and sea ice is going away.

Maybe the Heritage Foundation and their Republican clients are right, just turn the thermostat up for the air conditioning to cool us down. My advice to you kids out there: move north as far as you can. While you still can.

I got some groundbreaking news for all you Camano North Enders:  we found Lost Lake.  Down by us, we don’t lose lakes.  Course, we don’t have any lakes.  Got some ponds that dry up in the summer.  Got some garden features.  Even got a couple of seasonal streams.  We know where they are, although we don’t give em names.  Laziness,  I suppose.  Too damn much trouble to name a creek that dries up every summer drought.  Then it really would make sense if we named it Lost River or Hidden Creek.    For a couple months, anyway…..

I was driving around recently doing my usual Lewis and Clark on Camano, exploring the backroads in case we get another major road improvement detour, maybe come up with a Northwest Passage to Stanwood nobody has discovered yet, and right past Dry Lake Road —- another water feature disappeared — there it was: Lost Lake.  I swerved right in.  About 15 seconds later I was lost.  Which is why it’s probably called Lost Lake.  Not the lake — you!  I found the lake pretty quick.  Getting out of the labyrinth was a couple days of dead end cul-de-sacs, refusing to ask directions until the gas tank hit E.

Lots of places get lost on the “island you can drive to”.  Folks just hit the mainline to the bridge and rarely explore the tributaries.  I meet people all the time who live on Camano and have never been beyond their own blacktop turn-off.  No interest, I guess.  Maybe the high gas prices.  Fear of the unknown.  Who knows?  They started homesteading their 40 acres and left further exploration of the hinterlands to latter day  adventurers such as myself.  Which means reporting back to civilization was spotty, if not outright, rip-roaring, belief-shredding lies and legends.

The South End, while not exactly lost, is very rarely found.  Occasionally I’ll find a car cruising slowly, window rolled down to ask directions.  How far to the Whidbey Island ferry an elderly couple asked recently, obviously shaken from hours of circling the Head.   I pointed across Saratoga Strait.  The lady in the passenger seat began a slow moan.  And, of course, being the bearer of rotten  news, I felt bad too.  But hey, they probably made their way out.  A day late for the wedding they needed to be at in 15 minutes.  A lot of us weren’t that lucky.