The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The county just got the results in for their survey locating the homeless on Camano. Turns out they didn’t find any. None. Zero. Zilch. I guess they went from gate to gate in the gated communities, maybe looked behind the forsythia, then moved on. Nobody came down to the South End, that’s for sure.

Turns out Island County sent teams into the hinterlands to search out the homeless. Well, except not Camano Island. The housing resource coordinator was quoted in the Gazette, “We just didn’t have the time. But next year we hope to get more of a head start.” They did manage to send out some fliers on the transit buses asking the homeless, if they were indeed out there, if they would respond. No responses were forthcoming. The coordinator speculated that maybe the homeless just didn’t want to be identified as the homeless. You know, IF there were any homeless.

I suppose this could be a new paradigm for social services in America if Washington DC gets wind of this. Poverty? Post some placards on telephones asking the poor if they’re poor. Call us, we want to help. You a veteran not getting medical assistance? We put some fliers on the buses in your town. You maybe didn’t see them? You out of work, chronically unemployed? We posted a notice on Facebook. Maybe you need to buy a computer, get some DSL service, reach out to us. We want to help….

I ran a poll myself this week. Posted a notice on my blogsite asking anyone in county government if they were intelligent enough to be holding office. If so, please call in to southendbrainresearch.com and answer the brief questionnaire. Take about half a minute, just want to do a head count of the bright ones…. Surprisingly, nobody responded. All I can say, if I can use the county’s own methodology, there’s no intelligence over there in Whidbey Island government. Course, maybe they’re embarrassed to identify themselves as smart. Or they’re just being modest.

Next year we’ll maybe have some time to organize IQ search parties. This year we were just a little too busy. In the meantime hopefully all the homeless over here will find decent housing. You know, the folks who don’t exist here in paradise.

Hank ‘the Tank’ Amundsen is standing up next to his barstool taking a swing for the outfield wall. “My gawd,’ he was gushing, “my gawd, it was something to see. That kid of mine is going to the majors, you guyz heard it first.” Pete, two stools down, sipped affably at his pint of IPA and said quietly, “I think you told us this last week, Tank.” Jerry nodded from a table full of empty pints he and the Flatheads had killed during the first hour of happy hour, ready for the second. “I believe Pete’s correct, Tank, but he forgot to mention the week before and last month and I think, check me on this Pete, I think you told us Jimmy was going Pro last year.”

“Aw, guys, I’m just a proud papa, is all. You can’t blame me, the kid is great. You can see it in his swing he’s got plenty of homers coming up. Practically got a contract signed. The scouts probably already got eyes trained on him.”

Little Jimmy, if he declared eligibility at this point, would never graduate Middle School. Tank has been sending him to camps, buying gear, tossing balls, all the stuff a Tiger Woods training dad would do since the kid was two and a half. If Jimmy had hoped for a normal childhood of bikes and X-box, it wasn’t going to happen. If Tank wasn’t hauling him and his bats, gloves and balls to tournaments and camps, he was out back of his shack where he’d set up a batting cage, firing curve balls to the poor kid, yelling at him when he whiffed, hollering in joy when he blasted one into the nettles past the swingset that Jimmy never got to use. His sister, pretty much ignored by Tank, got the swing pretty much to herself.

I don’t know what happens to all the Jimmys whose alpha dads drove them to be the best soccer player, baseball star, football hero or basketball idol, whose only dream was to go pro, make the majors, play ten years or less, then retire wealthy as Michael Jordan. I suspect they become sad, depressed, broken adults. Maybe they put their kids through the same nightmare gauntlet.

I had a buddy in high school who won state champ in swimming. When I saw him after we’d trudged off to different colleges, I asked him if he was still training for the Olympics. “I quit,” he said. When I asked why, he answered, “I spent half my life in a chlorine pool, before school, after school. All so I could compete in the Olympics, probably never make it, then wonder all my damn life why I didn’t do something else. I’m going to do something else.”

I suspect there are mostly losers out there. If we taught em to love the game, if we taught em to enjoy their teammates, if we taught em that sports were fun more than a path to riches, maybe we’d have a lot more winners. Jimmy, I suspect, isn’t going to be a winner. And his dad is going to take it a lot harder than Jimmy.

I spend a lot of time behind the wheel of a grocery shopping cart. Since I don’t own a cellphone to check with the mizzus what size or brand of mayo or dressing she prefers this particular afternoon or to chat it up with some friend or relative to while away the lonely hours on Aisle 6, I find my entertainment studying the purchasing patterns of my fellow South End shoppers.

I was behind Ginny Sprague this morning. Ginny’s a mom of 3, 4 if you count her husband Morty who’s been unemployed since before the Great Recession. Her cart was a veritable shrine to General Mills, Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola. Now, I grew up on morning cereal, but I was a teenager before Kelloggs and their corporate adulterers began to hook us kids on Count Chocula or Cap’n Crunch with mostly sugar additives. That’s why we have moms, I figure, but Ginny either got addicted too or else the kids rule the trailer at mealtimes. Box pizzas, candy bars, diet Coke, canned Spaghetti-O’s, white bread, processed meat. Maybe her root cellar is still stocked with vegetables and fruit which would explain their absence in the cart, but … I’m betting the children and Morty hate broccoli and apples.

Her pile of groceries wasn’t a lot different than half the shoppers bumper to bumper at check-out, I know. We’re the wealthiest folks on earth and we eat like it’s Halloween every day. Ginny’s kids are little blubberballs at age 7,8 and 10. Ginny’s no toothpick herself and yeah, I know, it’s none of my damn business. I’ll be dead of malnutrition before they glut the health care system with diabetes and poor circulation and hopeless obesity. Not my problem, I spoze, but when I hear Ralph next door bitching about the ‘nanny state’ intruding on his freedom when schools serve nutritious food instead of a slice of pizza and a Coke, I think, hey, I’m paying for their lunch with my taxes too.

But arguing with Ralph is a proven form of masochism. I just nod in agreement. “Let them eat cake, Ralph,” I say. “And wash it down with a supersize soda.” Ralph’s just glad we can finally agree on something.

Down here in the start-up labs of the South End we’ve been printing DNA. Got ourselves some sterile vats full of 4 major amino acid groups, hooked em up to a 3-D printer, ran a USB port to a laptop and went to work experimenting with interesting combinations. Make our own stem cells with unusual variations of chromosomes, another year or two, you’ll see Wal-Mart offering kits for the kids. Make your own sibling! Puppy in a test tube! Fun for the whole family!

Course we’re still working out the bugs, literally sometimes. South Endomex Technologies made a fast mutating paramecium that ran rampant in the dumpster behind their lab a couple months ago. Two or three cats lost more than their allotted 9 lives before Billy Brandon, the night manager, noticed clumps of matted fur behind the building and alerted Frank, South Endomex’s project manager next morning. “Looked like they’d been turned inside out and twisted,” he whispered before giving notice.

Kind of a wake-up call, I guess. They double bag unwanted recombinants now, no point taking unnecessary chances. Not that anyone’s very worried. I mean, what are the odds of escaped life forms surviving in the hostile environment of the nettled South End? Humans barely eke out an existence, what chance does an unstable pile of amino acids have?

Still, always good to err on the side of caution even if the government hasn’t gotten around to clamping down on the profit motive with overly burdensome regulations.     Yet….     Which only makes us all that more inventive. Time, after all, is not on our side. But judging by the influx of venture capital, the potential is nearly unlimited. Forget Silicon Valley. This here is the Next Big Thing. This is the new Garden of Eden, a chance to get it right this time. You want an apple, Adam? Tart or sweet? Red or yellow? With or without seeds? Just punch a program, Big Fella, no need to disobey orders from On High. But … maybe keep an eye out for any odd looking worms. Still got some flies in the ointment….

We just bought a new car. Our meager attempt to prime the economic pump. I’d list off all the things this vehicle is capable of doing, from self-activating braking system to rear view camera, but it would be easier to list what it doesn’t do. You can’t crank down the windows. And without a computer, good luck diagnosing anything past a burned out light bulb. It doesn’t fly — at least I haven’t found the button that switches into Aero Mode — but essentially it’s a Jetson ride, mostly computer driven, sensor controlled and definitely futuristic.

And yeah, it cost what my first house cost. $24,000. That house was a used ghetto hacienda, built about 50 years before I won it bidding in a sealed auction offered by HUD. Course back then I was buying cars for 2 or 3 hundred bucks and yeah, the windows cranked up and down, although some didn’t work at all. Maybe this a story about inflation or maybe upward mobility or even, I hate to believe it, conspicuous consumption, I’m not sure. But it definitely is one about the American Dream of my days. A house, a car, a family with 2.3 kids. A job, a career, a one wage-earner family.

Mostly gone now, replaced by two wage-earners who make less than Ward Cleaver. The Beaver is hooked on Game Boy, Wally’s a heroine addict and June has become the primary breadwinner now that Ward has been laid off. They’re mortgaged to the hilt, retirement is postponed indefinitely now. I suspect they voted for Trump first go-round, figuring what did they have to lose?

Second go-round, I’m betting they did again. They still got plenty to lose. Maybe the American Dream was diminished before but now it seems like it’s on life support.

My new car has self-activating brakes when I’m headed into peril. America apparently doesn’t. Maybe too many of us are like this old fool, watching the rear view and not the detour ahead. I suspect when we get where we’re going, the levy’s gonna be dry.

Our favorite capitalist, Elon the Musk, just asked for and got a trillion dollar bonus package by the profit-happy stockholders of Tesla who voted over 75% to accede to the boy wonder’s demands. Atlas didn’t just shrug, Atlas jumped up and down like a pom-pom powered cheerleader on meth. At the same moment the government shutdown has left 41.7 million of us struggling to buy food, what with the SNAP food stamp program on indefinite hold. Judges have ordered it resumed but needless to say the Administration has appealed those decisions. Let them eat cake, some might say, but good luck affording that.

If you were to take that trillion dollars and distribute it to the 41.7 million Americans experiencing food shortages, each one of them would get 24, 500 dollars. That, needless to say, is a helluva lot of cake. Might even make bakers rich in these tough times.

I’m not against capitalism. Geez, I am a capitalist. Got my own bizness, believe it or not, pay B&O taxes, quarterlies, even hire help when needed. Call me a job creator, maybe not in the Big Leagues, but definitely an entrepreneur. The more I make, the more taxes I pay. If that were true for all of us job creators, we might have a more equitable distribution of wealth, but the tax laws are designed to let the rich, especially the really rich, slip the noose. Deferments, deductions, dodges — the intricacies of the IRS codes, written by the rich for the rich, definitely skew toward the favored elite. Their mantra is that they pay more than the poor so why pick on us?

Which, if you apply that, makes sense that they’re not bothered by shutting down the SNAP program. Blame the Democrats, they say. And the Democrats, who refuse to let Obamacare subsidies expire, another kick in the teeth of the cake eaters, claim the money they want to save is really going for tax cuts for the rich.

I don’t pretend to have the solution for our ever accumulating national debt, but I know this: the next elections will be about income inequality. The posters will be Elon in a gold Tesla with a ragamuffin kid nearby with outstretched hands. Even in America’s present Gilded Age, that disparity is more than a little unsettling. A trillion dollars for one man, not many of us think he’s worth too much more than a billion or two.

I had an old friend ask me late into our New Year’s Party last year if I had a banjo she could borrow so she could learn to play one. Since I had 5 of them hanging on various walls, I could hardly say no without seeming like some selfish materialistic you-know-what. Four were handmade by me, three of them within the year so I didn’t want to loan those. Another is my concert banjo, mostly rebuilt by me, so no on that too. And another was a 1920’s vintage Sterling, nice inlays, sweet action, pretty sounding little 5 string.

So I loaned her the Sterling. Reluctantly. And I still felt like a selfish materialistic you-know-what. I mean, jeez, she was a friend and I could help out and maybe she’d even learn to play the thing and maybe love playing it and the world would be a better place with another banjo picker. Stranger things have happened, believe me.

Two weeks later I get a call. The banjo, she says, has problems. Won’t hold its tuning. The 5th string peg is glitchy. She’s had her luthier pals look at it, but they don’t want to make adjustments. She wanted me to pick it up, fix it and return it when I had it ready. She sounded a little put-off that her loaner wasn’t up to snuff. I said bring it down and I’ll see what I can do, but I’d been playing it and I sure didn’t have those problems. She said snippily, it does now.

I adjusted some tuning pegs and glued the 5th string peg and she took it on home. It was clear she wanted a replacement banjo, but I was … well, you already know what I was. A week later she called to say the banjo was no good. Her friends had looked at it and they said it was no good too. She was bringing it back. I said okay. I was leaving but just leave it in the shop, door is unlocked.

When I got home, it was raining cats and puppies. There was a message on my answering gizmo telling me my banjo was leaned against the shop back door, outside, and it was raining so if I got this call, I might want to bring the banjo inside. At which point she laughed and hung up. I raced down and sure enough, my vintage 1920 maple banjo was soaking wet, the pot full of water, the tuners ready for some imminent rust.

Maybe a better man, a less materialistic you-know-what man, would’ve shrugged and said c’est la vie, it’s just a banjo, probably only worth $500, no big deal. But like I said, I’m not. And my friend, well, she isn’t my friend anymore. With friends like that I could start another band. Course, it would be mostly blues.

I know you’re probably sick unto death of hearing me ramble on about my little projects. Home improvement, self-improvement, who out there cares and why should they? The stuff I do, everybody used to. At least before TV and computers made my world boring and anachronistic. Sure it’s nice to pretend I live up some holler a stone’s throw from the 19th Century or that someday they’ll name my crappy pond Walden Too. Truth is, that pond will maybe hold a footprint of mine in its mud, a future fossil drying up and of interest only to archeologists back to explore the planet. Hominid South Endosaur, bipedal, semi-upright, omnivorous, small brain, tool user from the Menopausal Era before the global warming extinctions.

They won’t find much of us, I’m betting. They’ll make bad guesses from my middens before the mizzus made dump runs mandatory when she arrived on the scene. I don’t even want to tell you what I buried back then, but let’s just say you piece together as much of my civilization as the folks who dig through the Jamestown dumps in the Virginia colonies. I find artifacts myself from prior pioneers. Hell, my shack is an artifact, built over 100 years ago. Up the ravine we’ve found 17 brass beds, an old Studebaker, empty liquor bottles, a copper washing machine tub, assorted glassware, coffee pots, zinc canning jar lids, you name it, it’s out there. I buried a cast iron wood/electric Monarch stove too heavy for me to lift, but okay to roll into a hastily dug grave.

So I was gonna tell you about making a bed this week. I planed rough cut madrona, designed a headboard and a footboard, ripped the wood but saved the ones with bark, assembled them, finished it and hauled it up to the house we just bought next door. You’re thinking, Big Deal, so what, shut up already. You can buy a bed in Goodwill. Or get a job and go buy a nice bedstead downtown at the furniture store. Who in holy hell makes a damn bed anyway?

My father-in-law, visiting a couple months before I finished the new house I’d spent one and three quarter years building already, found me making homemade doors. I was on Door #2 or so with 9 total to build. He said I could buy those at the hardware store and maybe move into the new house before me and his daughter died of old age waiting to finish building it. He had a good point, I guess.

But I’m not much for advice, especially when I’m knee deep already in a project. I finished 7 more doors, hung them and moved on to artsy fartsy floor tiling, stained glass transoms, maple floors, window casements and slate in the entryways and the hallways downstairs. Tedious work a lot of it. We did manage to move in before our demise, I’m happy to report. Course now I’m building an oak bed to replace our brass one. I guess it’s always going to be a race to the finish, one I’ll eventually lose. Like they say, you made your bed, now lay in it.

I’ve had my share of bad Thanksgivings. Family arguments, odd combination of guests, friends who wouldn’t eat the dinner for fear of salmonella poisoning (I guess they didn’t believe the shack kitchen met Washington State Health Dep’t. standards). I don’t ask for much, just plenty of food and libation with folks who are friendly. We’ve had storms and power outages. Didn’t matter. We have a wood cookstove and plenty of oil lamps.

The one Thanksgiving I remember most we had maybe eight of us at the table, all neighbors and friends. Dinner was fine, the conversation was pleasant, the adult beverages were working their warm glow. All, it seemed, was well in this little corner of the world. And … there was still dessert on its way.

Somewhere in that toasty conviviality one of our guests, the eminent Dr. S____ who preferred the high class moniker to her given name, decided it was time to go around the room, each of us, and offer us assembled epicureans our best scenario of leaving this Mortal Coil. Maybe she was working up a post-doctoral thesis, I don’t know, but she insisted everyone make public our favorite manner of death. She, in fact, would begin.

Maybe a good host would’ve let this proceed. Which, in fact, I did, not quite believing this was actually going to be our dinner entertainment. The Doc wanted to die on her blue water boat cruising the world, a watery demise. She had quite a romantic narrative to fill in the plot. I could feel my cranberries curdling somewhere buried beneath turkey and dressing.

“Who wants to go next?” she asked and a neighbor friend began hesitantly, mistakenly thinking the House Rules somehow made confessionals mandatory. “Wait!” I demanded. “It’s Thanksgiving, for crying out loud, not the Day of the Dead. Maybe we could tell what we’re thankful for and forget this morbid death fantasy stuff. No good. It’s no damn good!”

A few years later the Doctor nearly did die on her sailboat near the Fiji Islands. Demasted the boat in a storm, motor conked out, the radio gave up the ghost and now they were adrift in the South Pacific. A dream come true for the skipper maybe, but for the crew, a couple of friends from the South End, not so much. I wonder today before I go in for Thanksgiving dinner what poor yahoos are sharing turkey with her this year. Me, I’m thankful, Big Time, I’m not sharing it with her.

On the Luddite South End we don’t have an AI server station. Not yet anyway. Probably because our electrical grid isn’t up to the demands these data centers need. Or the vast amounts of water necessary to cool them down. One of these tech centers would require our entire aquifer. Or else the Tech Boyz could desalinate the Salish Sea nearby and cool their miles of circuits. Course the desal plant would need all the power of the entire island and maybe Stanwoodopolis too, much less the electricity to run the computers, but so far they’re content to put their server farms off island, okay by us.

You probably already know this (but I sure didn’t), AI runs these ‘farms’ partly to teach other AI’s, basically a kindergarten for young ChapGPT’s, but with a fast learning curve, say a few days or maybe even a week, then they can graduate with PhD’s in various specialties. They’re dumb as rocks to begin with, dumb as most of me and most of my cronies down here when we’ve been drinking, but quick as you can say check and mate, they’ve learned languages, mathematics, calculus, spam writing, videography, history, maybe even what we homo sapiens taste like. Me and my buddies, even sober, couldn’t learn one millionth what they learn in hours or days. Obviously they don’t drink. Yet. Probably shouldn’t give androids taste buds, although I’m betting they’ll develop curiosities and plenty of our bad habits. Woe unto them!

A good percentage of us, even us South Enders, are using AI already — and it’s just taking baby steps. Better than Google searches according to the Flatheads who use it for repair diagnostics and after market parts searches. If the car guyz are hooked on advanced search engines, believe me, we’re all doomed. Every cute kitty video ever made will be at your beck and call. All the kids growing up with AI on their smarty pants phones, they’ll be the first to snap up android friends, robot teachers, probably cyborg parents too. Why not? We made a mess of this world, give the droids a shot. Let’s face it, the Pied Piper is coming.