The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Yeah, I thought it was a fake news story, some halfwit click bait pitting two giants of the tech industry in a cage match, kickboxing themselves until one or both succumbed to blows to their fat heads. But no, these two are engaged in a back and forth social media chest pounding, no holds barred, your mama’s uglier than my mama throwdown. There’s even talk of a pay-for-view match in Vegas.

These are the people who control your destiny, adolescent testosterone-overdosed schoolboys, punks with too much money and too little maturity, stuck with some sadly huge lack of self-esteem, hoping maybe to impress the prom queen. With bush league deficients like these mapping our digital futures, what’s to worry about? I mean, try to picture Albert Einstein challenging Thomas Edison to a boxing match, see who’s got the biggest swinging dick. But this is the pathetic state of our own local geniuses, two clowns calling each other names, thumping their fists on the ground, grunting like gorillas in tweets and taunts. C’mon, seriously?

Why not a game of chess, maybe? Or a duel on Jeopardy? Not manly enough? Not sufficiently primitive for ya? Real men would use pistols at 20 paces. You boys afraid of mortal injury? Are you cowards? Put your billions where your mouths are, I say. Fight to the death. From where I sit in the pay-for-view stands, any result would be a good start.

I’ve always maintained, rightly or wrongly, that if necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the midwife of art. Most of my artist pals would probably disagree, but I can only speak for myself. If I were busy with a job or a family or any of a countless other enterprises, I doubt I’d stay up late to find the time to make art.

Course my pals would point out that I somehow chose art over careers and family and all the rest and I’ll grant the point. But … I suspect it was my laziness or contrariness that kept me from those and so ultimately I ended up living hand to mouth with part time jobs, as a recluse on this American backwash, too much time on my hands, not enough TV maybe, but eventually succumbing to the siren song of art as a cure for ennui. I sure didn’t intend to be an artist anymore than I planned a career as a business executive.

No doubt there are plenty of folks who do — just not me. A friend of mine who rode cross country moving his divorced daughter from Seattle and Gomorrah back to Madison, Wisconsin with me for four days told me us artists with our mantra that we’ve found the perfect ‘job’, one that we love and doesn’t even really qualify as ‘work’, just screws it up for the people who need to take some crappy job in order to live, to raise a family, buy a house, all that stuff we call the American Dream. They don’t need to hear some yahoo like me telling them art isn’t work, it’s a passion, gee, just find your own passion and you’re all set.

Bullshit, he says. You want society to operate, people have to work jobs that they’re, no way, going to be passionate about. But they’ll be fine, even fulfilled. Shut up, he told me, giving folks false hope.

So … I’m telling you, if you’re not bored, be happy. Life is good. Sure, us artists are probably passionate, but maybe not happy. If I’m bored, rest assured, I’m not contented. But if you think I’m going to get a job, don’t kid yourself, I’ll just go make something, keep myself busy. Not saying that’s what everyone else should do….

Not too long back I got myself invited to a ‘men’s group’. I guess I thought it was mostly a drinking society startup but after the first couple of drafts up at the new bar at Terry’s Corner, the Tippler or some name like that, the conversation detoured from politics and art to subjects on the decidedly morose side. Meaning, our old friend Death, capital D. Gotta say, I was a bit blindsided by the change of topic but these were mostly old geezer friends and they didn’t seem too perturbed, so sure, let’s get Serious.

Serious is not my usual mode for coping with life’s problems. And certainly not the End of Life, which seems to me, is the solution for all the others, welcome or not. Crazy Eddie, fresh off a brush with the Grim Reaper and sporting a new pacemaker, avowed as how he wouldn’t mind sharing some insights after his near death experience. Bobby, having just received the bad news that his chronic back pains would require major surgery, said he was In. When Ralph, the head organizer, looked over at Phil, Phil shook his head wearily. “I don’t know, Ralph.” Phil had lost his wife a month earlier to pancreatic cancer.

Ralph bored in. “Do you a world of good to unburden yourself of some of that grief. What harm would it do?”

One by one Ralph roped them in, old fellas like himself, probably frightened of the waning light … or whatever poetic metaphor keeps the dark glasses off. Of course he had a reading list, most on the subject of How to Cope with the Big D, a syllabus, apparently, for those of us in the Final Stage.

Ralph no doubt will assume I’m in denial. And who knows, maybe I am. But I’ll be damned if I’ll spend one lousy hour of whatever time is left to me on this green planet sitting around with my geriatric pals talking about coping strategies for death and dying, I don’t care how good the beer is. Worst case I’m gonna find some younger friends to drink with.

I’m organizing an exploratory committee to determine the logistics of running for President on the GOP ticket. Why not, everyone else and their 3rd cousin is shooting for the moon, hoping Trump is so under siege with multiple indictments and possibly even incarceration, that the odd man out will become the next candidate for the Republican Party. I’m not going into this naively, don’t even think that for a nano-second. I’m aware that my usual leanings will have to plumb up a bit if this longshot is going to have a snowball’s chance in the hellbroth of today’s politics.

To that end my platform will need to be tweaked a tad. Trans, of course, will now rise to the top of my Greatest Threat to the American Way of White Life. Little girls will no longer have to contemplate suicide worrying about some so-called, maybe not, man coming into their bathroom and scarring them for life. And of course no man turned woman will be allowed to play in the sports of their new gender. In fact, all transgendered people will be required to return to their original sex.

The point here to my future constituents is that I will be running far to the right of my competition. Very far. Guns will be mandatory in every household. Bibles too. Jobs in construction and the service industry will go only to white kids. At a reduced minimum wage. An iron curtain, a Great Wall, will be built not only along the southern border but between us and the lib/woke Canada. America for White Bread Americans, that will be my slogan. All others, those not like us, will be asked to vacate the building. Who needs the complaining?

Welfare and food stamps will be eliminated and those motel and burger flipper jobs will be offered instead. After all, work gives a person dignity. A free lunch sure doesn’t. Rather than waste the country’s time which could be better spent on listening to podcasts debating which books should be banned in our libraries, I will simply ban libraries, saving taxpayers fortunes in wasted money. My first act in office should you, the happily unwoke, elect me, will be to close down Disneyland and Disneyworld. Mickey has had a long enough run. Time to move on.

And, of course, count on me to pardon Donald J. Trump and eliminate the weaponized Department of So-called Justice. The man has suffered enough. We’ll let the local police handle things from here on out. I think you can plainly see, I’m the far right candidate for these right wing times. Victory will be ours … if we can stop the opposition from voting. And after all, isn’t that the American Way?

Back before the building booms when Camano was discovered by the denizens of Seattle and California seeking low cost gated communities, the Piranha Brothers plied their trade in the South End backwash. Their motto, We Don’t Need No Stinking Permits, explains why they worked after hours, on weekends, often times in the gloom of night, anything to avoid the dreaded building inspector. They worked fast and they worked cheap, hammers strapped to their construction belts slung low the way a gunfighter hung his .45, safety off, trigger filed.

They used recycled materials gleaned from tear downs and salvaged structures, not so much out of environmental concerns as a strategy to building on the cheap. Sheds, garages, chicken coops, artist studios — no job was too small, no building too demeaning. They moved surreptitiously from site to site, word of mouth spread to prospective clients the way a virus travels by stealth and speed. The jobs they turned down were those that might arouse the neighbors or were visible from the highway. Cash only, the Brothers demanded. Leave no trace.

It was only a matter of time, of course, before the long reach of the Island County Building Department tracked the two men to an unpermitted barn south of Tyee Store where Jimmy Kennedy found the pair hammering rafters into place three stories above ground. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. ‘I’ll need to see a building permit, boys,” the lawman shouted above their hammers’ racket, ‘and I’ll need to see it now.’ Even though they’d never laid eyes on the county’s agent, they knew who this was and they knew too the jig was up now that their cover was blown. It was, Josh told his partner Pete over a long afternoon of beers at the Stanwood Hotel after paying their fines and receiving their reprimands, inevitable.

‘You aren’t suggesting we go legit, are you?’ Pete asked bleary-eyed. ‘No way, partner, that’s for other construction outfits, not the likes of us.’ And so, maybe sad to say, maybe not, the heyday of the Piranha Brothers seemed at its end.

There are some who say the Piranha Brothers never really existed, just a rumor from the scofflaw days of the island when we built our own homes without permission or permit, us pioneers of Camano. Others claim they retired, drifted back into time and the backwash where even today they construct odd buildings that defy gravity and the law. But if truth be told — and it seldom is down here at the end of the island — the boys drifted into legend. Even if it was only in their own minds.

Did you know the world’s richest 8 people had more wealth than the poorest 50%? You think maybe this is an April Fool joke? Faux facts? No, eight people had amassed as much riches as 3.7 billion people at the bottom of the heap. Stop and think about that for more than a nano second. Stop in your tracks. Let your jaw drop down to your knees. 8 people – 8! — with more money than 3.7 billion people combined!! 3.7 billion people in poverty, some starving of famine, some refugees from wars, some just us South Enders who maybe didn’t want to work very hard and never started up a Tech Company.

I guess I knew we had some income inequality, growing wider every year, but c’mon, this seems slightly skewed. I don’t begrudge Gates and Bezos and Buffet and Zuck a few billion, but show me the trickle down. Better yet, show the 3.7 billion people at the bottom whose only trickle is maybe a golden shower. Oh, I know I got a lot of neighbors who think whatever we do, don’t tax the rich! Because they think they might be rich one day…. You know, get an inheritance from Uncle Bezos or finally get around to that start-up tech company or reap the gains from those bitcoin investments or … more likely, win the Powerball Lottery. That, or just bottle lightning and sell it to the poor.

God forbid that we redistribute wealth!! Wouldn’t want to be accused of communism or social engineering or even basic Christian values. Those eight fellows made their money the old fashioned way, with lobbyists and sweetheart deals, with ruthless monopolies and cut-throat capitalism. Why on earth would we tax them exorbitantly when we can take the money from regressive taxation, user fees, sales taxes and other old fashioned usury? Sure, we could use those trillions to feed the poor, cure diseases, fund scientific advances, stuff like that, but you know and I do too we’d probably just build a bigger military. Kill the poor, let them die of disease and starvation, pay them as little as possible. After all, they’ll get to inherit the earth, right? Not that I’m blaming those 8 fat cat rich guys, no sir, they’re probably nice fellows, the way we’ll be when we win the Sweepstakes. I’m just saying there’s billions of folks who maybe deserve a slightly bigger piece of the pie. And I don’t mean Humble Pie.

Yep, everybody seems really really happy that the debt ceiling crisis got resolved. Me, not so much as some. I don’t really care to negotiate budgets with a threat to bring down the economy, instigate a recession and ruin our financial standing in the world. Don’t ask me why, just doesn’t seem like the way to run a government. Unless the goal is to run it into the ground.

I particularly don’t like deals that spare the rich and rob from the poor. Okay, maybe rob is a bit over the top. Borrow, you like that better? We’re compromising, you like that word?, we’re compromising by agreeing not to raise taxes on the wealthy by cutting 20 billion from the IRS in return for asking food stamp recipients to find a job. It might seem fair, free food but you have to work. Unless of course you can’t find a job because maybe you have a criminal record and no employer will hire you. Or where you live doesn’t have many job openings and the commute into high-priced cities makes a minimum wage job a joke. Or maybe you have kids and working means hiring child care for more than you make. Lots of reasons but none that matter to the compromisers.

Back when I was on unemployment the Social Services people would always send me and my ilk to a sawmill 30 miles north of me, minimum wage, bad shifts, basically a sweatshop … but… if you turned down a job there the good folks at Social Services stopped paying you unemployment. For me and probably a lot of us down-and-outers, it was better for our mental health to turn that job down. Good racket, though. For that sweatshop and for the bureaucrats who bought into the scam, money saved all around.

They say work gives a person dignity. What they don’t say is that a lot of work does just the opposite. What they also don’t say, ever, paying your fair share of taxes might give the rich a deserved sense of dignity too. And maybe even an honest sense of patriotism. Just saying….

Now, a lot of us South Enders look a little dubiously at Dad’s Day. It sounds suspiciously like one of those STING operations for deadbeat dads delinquent on child support payments. Get us all down here, then throw the net. We can already see the headlines in the Conway Chronicler: South Enders nabbed in Paternity Sting.

NOT that I’m saying I’m a deadbeat dad. I know being an artist and a banjo picker sort of doesn’t help the image, but we all been down on our luck. Little Jimmy understands that. His mom’s a little less forgiving, but when the CD sales start rolling in and the big art commissions, she’ll change her tune.

What with all these studies proving that more than a quarter of men in this country aren’t the genetic fathers of their children, Fatherhood on the South End has taken on a whole new meaning in these modern times we live in. DNA tests take all the romance out of relationships, you ask me. The old family tree’s got some extra branches now. And I guess that’s good, but it sure takes some of the mystery away from sparking and courting. Personally I don’t care to find out half the South End String Band is related.

But it IS father’s day coming up. Won’t be long before dear old dad is just a Test Tube in some sterile lab. Sample # 74 Double X, blue eyes, dark hair, long fingers for the banjo. I like to think I got more to offer than a Petri dish. Although, Little Jimmy’s mom might not agree.

The Band was thinking of maybe lobbying for Father’s Day being a day of amnesty. You know: Give a Dad a Break Day. Or even a whole month. NOT that I’m saying the boys down here are looking for a way to skip the June payments. We were just thinking a little breathing room ….. you know, til the CD sales pick up.

Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….

I identify as a guy, a cisgender, actually, and yeah, I had to look it up. It means I kept the same sex as I got tagged with when I was born. I’m pretty happy with the designation, not planning to start experimenting at my advanced age, not having gender doubts, not really worried about others who do. Folks have to figure this stuff out themselves and it probably doesn’t help one bit that we’ve politicized the journey for these people, hard enough without the whackjobs taking their jabs, passing their laws and generally just being, oh, for want of a better word, un-Christian. Live and let live, do unto others, all that peace and love stuff, let’s just learn to get along, children.

I know, for some it’s really hard to accept the idea of a man wanting to be a woman … or vice versa. But c’mon, you’ve all known people who were caught in between hormones, tomboys, sissy guyz, macho women, some who loved people of their own sex, some who wanted to be the other sex, some who couldn’t make up their minds, some who loved both. It’s a complicated world, for sure, and if the pronoun preference bugs you, okay, I get it, but look, not too many years ago gays were relegated to the closet. For a long time it was illegal to love someone of your own sex. Seems like ages ago, but believe me, it was yesterday and worse, it still is yesterday for a lot of states in these not very united states.

Uganda just passed anti-gay laws, some that trigger a death penalty. We got nations that are anti-woman, much less gender bending. In this country we like to think of ourselves as enlightened. Progressive. Although progressive is now a pejorative word in plenty of sectors. Movies, the internet, television, streaming, you name it, pretty much an across the board acceptance of LGBTQIA2S+, the plus being a catch-all for whatever part of the sexual spectrum we missed. But now we have a political party that thinks demonizing Hollywood or Disney or permissive parenthood is a path to winning office in the Land of Grievances. Too late, boyz, your hormones are too toxic! Plus, you’re on the wrong side of history. Homosexuality isn’t going away. Trans aren’t either. The closet doors are open, fellas, and if you look close, you’ll find a few of your friends and family. You might even, if you open your eyes, find yourself. Scary, I know….