The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

Here’s a newsflash:  most of us are addicts now.  To our TV’s, to our cellphones, to our computer, to social networks, to everything Digital.  If the medium is the message, here’s the message — we got a syringe in our heads with a permanent IV drip.

My mom used to catch us kids laying around, doing pretty much nothing, complaining how we were bored.  Nothing to do, we’d whine.  She wasn’t buying it, no way, no sir.  She’d shoo our sorry butts off the couch and out the door, where, presumably, the world was waiting for us to get busy, make something of a new day, summon up the neighborhood cronies, go bike riding or play whiffleball.

Watch a friend who’s visiting and notice how frequently they check their phone for a text message.  These are people OUR age.  The kids never stop checking.  It’s like having video games and Netflix and the high school prom and phone gossip and Google all wrapped up in a candy wrapper.  The heroin isn’t listed as an ingredient but believe me, it’s there.  We’ve hooked the kids, we’ve hooked ourselves.  Our attention spans are shorter than a commercial now.  And everything in America is a commercial.  Don’t ask me what the answer is.  There’s no methadone for this, no 12 step program, no Going Back.  Every 30 seconds we need a Google fix, a text message, a Facebook update, a digital affirmation that we’re still on-line, still worthy, still connected.

Walden Pond now isn’t some remote back-to-the-land escape from the oppression of the Industrial Age, it’s a wilderness where cellphone towers are spotty and cable doesn’t reach and high-speed internet isn’t available.  It’s a place where Hi-Fi exists, but Wi-Fi doesn’t.  It’s a primitive world where the pace of life is measured, not in Twitters, but in the entire day, in the seasons, in lives moving slowly with time to pause and contemplate.  It’s a world that, sadly, no longer exists.  Not even down here on the halcyon South End.  You don’t believe me, Google it…..

I’m like a lot of South Enders, I have to drive into Stanwoodopolis to do my weekly grocery shopping.  I used to get the essentials down at Tyee Grocery before it closed, but when I needed milk that wouldn’t spoil in two days or vegetables that weren’t hairy, I moseyed down to the big stores, you know, the chains, QFC, Haggens, Thrifty.  I used to like Thrifty myself.  Aisles looked like bowling alleys there were so few shoppers there by the end of its slow death spiral into grocery oblivion.  No amenities, no cute historical photos, no signs pointing to the restrooms where a bouquet of flowers might beckon a sensitive male shopper like myself.

No, it was spartan.  Sparse.  Practically primitive.  I didn’t waste time talking to other shoppers like I do in the other stores.  There weren’t any other shoppers.  Just me.  It was almost like they’d set out this smorgasbord of lefse and lutefisk and canned entrails just for my perusal.  I appreciated it.  Even if I didn’t buy it.

Sometimes there WERE other people in the store.  It was like a 24 hour store, really, and we were in there on break from our graveyard shift,  zombies on parade.   We’d drift by the macaroni and meet again by the fruit stand.  The fluorescent glare gave a wonderful green patina to everyone.  Ghoulish.  Night of the Living Zucchini.  My fellow shoppers at Thrifty were like myself: shopping challenged.  Xenophobes in search of an empty aisle.  It was a little like a suspense movie.  You know, you know as sure as Alfred Hitchcock is going to shock you,  that we were all going to meet at the checkout stand.  The ONE checkout stand.  No express.  No 10 items or less.  No Other Way Out.

Our carts bumped ominously.  The tabloids were chock-a-block with the latest on movie stars and their sorry sex lives.  Little books told me my astrological future.  My astrological future was this:  I will die in a checkout line waiting for the nice but senile lady in front of me to find all her coupons.  She won’t remember to get them out first.  No, she’ll remember them when the final amount has been tabulated.  She’ll want a lottery ticket.  A pack of cigarettes from the lockup six aisles away.  She wants a price check on the cereal she thought was 52 cents, but was really $5.20.  She’ll mention the spoiled milk she wants a refund on.  And finally she’ll change her mind from plastic to paper.

I don’t want to sound misogynistic, but it was always a lady.  Guys don’t care.  They would do anything to get out of here, not delay their departure.  This is hell to us.  Eternity.  No escape.  We would sell our worthless souls if we could just slip by this sweet senile lady in the fuzzy slippers and move on out to the sunlit parking lot with our pathetic bag of groceries. Pop that first beer right there in front of all the moms with their wide-eyed kids in tow and toss the empty through the rolled down window when we’re done.

It’s going to take awhile…..  I know that.  I’m prepared usually.  Mentally, physically, psychically.  I never learned, you see. Why is it people can’t have their checks ready?  Half filled out?  Why can’t they have their purses open?  Why do they have to search for the 3 pennies in the bottom somewhere so they won’t have to break a buck?  Why don’t they know about the debit/credit thing?  Why isn’t paper and plastic automatic, not a life or death quiz question? Why isn’t God doing something about this????

I remember reading in the 70’s about the Russians lining up to buy bread, lining up to buy meat, lining up to buy this, lining up to buy that, always another line at another store.  I remember thinking, those goofy communists, they must be the most stupid peasants on earth.  Can’t figure out the simplest things….

Some day soon the line would move again there in the DMZ of Thrifty.   And I would wonder who really won the Cold War….

Every blue moon a good idea comes rolling down to the South End. Or at least a crazy idea so goofus, it catches the air on fire around it. Viagra Falls exploded on the scene right before oil prices shot through the roof in Jimmy Carter’s reign. Ernie Crandall bought up the old Camp Camano cabins, all 12 of the dilapidated clapboard units, tore the worst two down, then restored the remaining 10 to like-new condition. Each had its own bathroom, unlike the shared bathhouse of the 1920’s, and each got a fully equipped kitchenette, a TV set with adult VCR movies, and a queen sized bed.

Ernie gave each cabin its uniquely distinct ‘theme’. Suite #7, for instance, was advertised as the “The Caveman: for the Primitive in all of us.” The Rancho Deluxe was touted as “a cross between rawhide and satin.” It sported cowhoof lamps and a table supported by three sets of longhorns. The Casanova had a “heart shaped bed, red boudoir and a shower curtain to make a sheik blush.” Ever the P.R. specialist, Ernie provided local reporters and their editor with free introductory accomodations. Needless to say, Viagra Falls received lavish praise and exceptional press coverage. The South End, to most Seattleites soon became the Sodom and Gomorrah of the island archipelago, a playground for bacchanalian delights and salacious get-aways. Ernie was booked for six months in advance and the Falls, despite a cascade of water of any sort, was brimming to overflow.

All this notoriety brought not only customers, but the wrath of the Little Church of the Ravine, one of whose members was a County Health inspector. Septic violations became frequent and building code violations were uncovered. Not coincidentally #4 was renamed the Pastor’s Hostage Wife cabin, a romper room for Sado-Masochists. Ernie held the hounds at bay for a time, but finally decided he might prosper financially better in a less morally upright area closer to the urban areas of Sin City. And so the South End narrowly escaped becoming Las Vegas North and a magnet for lovers. Some of us, of course, mourn the loss.