The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Lately I’ve been reading about a new phenomenon out there in the world of media sociology: the lack of men working manly jobs.  If I’m to believe the statistics, a lot of Help Wanted postings are going unfilled.  And the reason, these analysts speculate, is that us men are unwilling to do MANual labor.  Ya think?

Down here in the canary-filled mines of the South End, any manjack of us could have told these sociologists the trend is real.  But we could also have informed them that the danger is not as dire as they seem to be suggesting.  We’ve been work averse for most of our lives without undue harm to the island’s economic well-being, only to our own.  Putting economics aside, the psychological and spiritual benefits of, okay let’s call it male malaise, have been substantial. Sure, divorce rates might have spiked but that only means that the women were freed to take on the work us lazy good-for-nothings left open.  A small loss for marital happiness.  But a big win for women’s liberation.

Plenty of women in the ‘hood here chop their own wood, haul their own water, build their own sheds, keep the hearth fires burning … and still manage to raise the kids and work a 40 hour week.  You think they’re unhappy?  Ask any of them and they’ll tell you what liberation is all about:  not having some deadbeat husband under foot telling them what they ought to do but not do one damn thing himself.  You think they’re looking for a replacement, think again.

What I worry about and the media sociologists ought to too is the next generation, the kids who think work is anything but physical labor.  They’ve grown up with video games, smartphones, apps, laptops, computers, digital toys, just about anything that glues them to their chairs.  Work?  It certainly doesn’t entail sweat or brawn.  Those days are history, my friend, relegated to the Cro-Magnon period, the one prior to Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of the Android Work Force.  Male malaise?  Why do you think we need immigrants?

Did I tell you the coming election cycle would be nothing, if not fun?  Well, at least comical.  I’m going to take a pass on the Herschel Walker Variety Show down there in the Peachy State.  Making fun of the poor guy at this point would be tantamount to sadistic cruelty.  Making fun of the Crackers who would vote for him might be fair game, but now that the Donald is back on the campaign trail, the oxygen in that room is long ago depleted.

One thing you have to give credit to the Trumpster for – or maybe Roy Cohn – is the ability, the tenacity, the mule-headedness to stick to his story.  Dammit, the election was stolen from him.  You remember the election, don’t you?, the last one, oh, must be a couple years ago now, a millennium in the digital age.  Well, HE remembers it and he wants to remind you again and again it was STOLEN!  Go ahead and show him the statistics, the lawsuits thrown out, the recounts … it doesn’t matter, don’t you GET IT, the election was, say it after me, STOLEN!  And because it was STOLEN! anything to right that wrong, to correct that error, to overturn the results is permissible if not mandatory.

Even, it turns out according to the man the election was STOLEN! from, even if it means abandoning the Constitution of the United States.  What good is that ancient testament if it allows the election of the President to be, yup, STOLEN!  Write a new one, or better yet, let the rightful winner of that STOLEN! election make his own Constitution, a fairer one, an honest one, a revised and improved one.  One that enshrines what a little less than half the national population believes is true.  Magical thinking, yeah, but correct and proper magical thinking.  The man is not only a genius with a very big brain, he’s a conduit for Truth, THE conduit for Truth as a matter of fact.   Why do you think he calls his social media platform Truth Social?  The Wizard is In!  24/7.

Me, I believe the man.  I think he really does think the election was STOLEN!  He can no more imagine being a Loser than he can imagine Melania leaving him for Herschel Walker.  You don’t get to fire Donald J Trump, he does the firing.  Didn’t you see his TV show?  Bam, big successful businessman points his nubby little finger and sayonara, buddy, you’re gone, out the door, head down, beaten, deflated, a loser.  Him, not Donald. Him.  Every episode.  Every time.  Lose?  No way!!  NO WAY, amigo!!

Give the guy another chance, all I’m saying.  No, not to be Prez again even if it was STOLEN!  But give him another TV show.  Call it FIRED!!  Haul out a dusty Declaration of Independence and give it the old heave-ho.  Bill of Rights?  Time to put a match to those.  You want to wake up the woke, what better way than slice and dice the Constitution and a few other old moldy antiquated documents from slave owning times.  Freedom of Speech Amendment, here’s the Door!  Right to bear arms?  Why not legs!?  Cue the trumpets, we got another exit for the entertainment of our viewing audience.

Let him host it.  He’s not going away, obviously.  He’s never going away.  If you think that, you’re the one guilty of magical thinking….

A rose is a rose, so it’s said, and smells just as sweet by any other name.  Perusing our newspaper of record, the Crab Cracker now that the Stanwoodopolis Gazette has abdicated its role of reporting local news, I came across a notice that a new group had formed in the area for those coping with the loss of a loved one.  Death Café.  I know, I should be more sympathetic, possibly even supportive, might even be in need myself someday … but golly, Miss Molly, couldn’t they have come up with a better name?

Death Café.  I don’t know, it just … well, it just … it has a certain morbid and cadaverous quality to it.  I mean, you get to wondering what’s on the menu.  Eggs 6 feet under, easy over.  Soup de jour, eye of newt in a tomato bisque.  BLT’s, blood lettuce and tomato.  You can hardly stop yourself from imagining the worst sorts of breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  Zombieburgers, cooked rare.

But these are the times we live in.  Touchy-feely in a modern and alienated world.  Probably better than a bunch of tweets from people you barely know on Twitter, I suppose, but c’mon, Death Café for the luvva…. ?  Why not, oh, I don’t know, Heaven’s Gate Diner, or Streets of Gold Chop House (okay,  maybe not), Pearly Gates Beanery, Adios Amigo Pizza Parlor, Ashes to Ashes Tavern —anything but Death Café, even Death Anonymous.

The trouble, of course, is a lot of us secular humanists, having renounced the old school religions of our parents (who are now gone too late for the Death Café), don’t know how to deal with our grief for the dearly departed since there’s no, let’s call it ‘closure’.  Imagine there’s no heaven, Lennon sang.  No hell below us, above us only sky.  You think that’s going to make folks feel better when their loved one bites the bullet, think again.  John says you may think that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.  Swell, John, just swell.  He says he hopes one day we’ll join him and the world will live as one. One what?

If John were around today, he’d be the fry cook at the Death Café, no doubt about it.  Actually, he’d be head chef at the Imagine Bar and Grill.  Happy Hour all day long….

Fairline Freddy was parked at his usual table at the Pilot Lounge with a few of his vintage car buddies, watching the ballgame Sunday and drinking early.  Sam and myself had just rolled in, said hello how are ya two IPA’s, thanks Jerry, then pulled up at the only open table next to Freddy’s.  The game by then was out of reach, hopelessly lost and the mood next door was decidedly unpleasant.  Nothing new there, I figured … and as usual was wrong.

‘So my daughter wanted a blowout wedding,’ Frank was saying, ‘big Hall, hundreds of people, Big She-Bang.  And she’s 35, husband is 40, been married once or twice already, him, I mean, but they want a Cinderella wedding and I’m spozed to foot the bill.’

‘You shoulda done like I did, Frank,’ Freddy says.  ‘Tell them to elope and you’ll give them a pile of cash.’

Frank shakes his head.  ‘I tried that, Fred, I offered them 10 grand but my baby wants a fancy wedding.  Cake, florist, five bridesmaids, an open bar at the reception.  That offer work for you?’

Frank confesses that it did not.  ‘I don’t get it either, Fred.  Kids nowadays want a splash, photographers, something special.  They been living together for four years, for godsake.’

‘But here’s the thing.  The Hall I rented for Her Highness, I took a tour the other day, see how it sets up, where the band goes, the bar, all that — yeah, yeah, a band, you believe that? — and the lady who runs the Hall shows me the back side door and there’s this bum sleeping in the doorway when we open it up.  You believe that?  Guy’s got a sleeping bag and sacks of god only knows what and he’s out cold middle of the damn morning.  So I tell the woman this guy had better not be here when we have this wedding, all I can say, and she says, get this, she says he sleeps there every night and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘Looks to me like she’s dealt with this bum before and he just keeps coming back so I walk over to the guy, tap him with my boot to wake him up and I tell him if he comes back here he’ll be one sorry sonofabitch, now get moving.  That’s how you deal with freaks like this, probably some meth head, cops don’t want nothing to do with him, but hey, I don’t want him screwing up my kid’s special damn day, know what I mean?’

The table knows exactly what Frank means, nods all around, a couple of good for yous.  Sam, before I can drop an arm on his wrist as warning, feels compelled to weigh in, liberal snowflake that he is, the kind of man who thinks holding your tongue is tantamount to being complicit.  ‘Who deputized you, Frank? The guy bothering you or what?’

Frank says,’ hell yes he was bothering me! And so are you.’

‘Good,’ Sam says, ‘that’s the idea.  Who made you God?  Here’s some character, down on his luck, you don’t know one thing about him, parked in a doorway, cold, probably hungry …’

‘Hungry?’ Frank shouts, ‘the guy is holed up across from the damn Food Bank.  He’s eating 3 squares of free food a day, no job, no worries, life of Riley.’

‘Life of Riley?’  Sam is suddenly on full boil.  ‘Life of Riley, really?  You ever been homeless, Fred?  You ever go without a meal?  Ever lost a job?  Ever been down on your luck?  Have a little compassion, why don’tcha?  But naw, go over and kick the guy awake and threaten him, that’s nice, that’s big hearted.  Geez.’

Frank gives Sam a long woeful stare.  I’m expected fireworks, overturned tables, broken glasses, blood on the floor kind of violence.  But instead Frank suddenly deflates.  ‘I lost my job once, Sam’ he says in a quiet voice.  ‘Boeing laid me off and I lost my house.  My wife left me awhile after that so I lost her too.  She took our daughter and I got the boot.  I been there.  I didn’t live in an alley but I had to hole up in a friend’s basement for a year.  I know what bad luck is.  I just don’t want my daughter’s wedding screwed up for her.  That’s all I’m asking.  I’ve screwed up enough things for her.  She just wants this damn wedding to be special and I want everything to go okay. ‘

Our two tables go church quiet although the ballgame is still going, other tables are groaning and cheering, the place is full.  Sam fingers his glass and finally, after a long silence, holds it up to Frank.  ‘Cheers, Frank, you’ll have a great wedding for your daughter.  One she’ll appreciate.  You’re a good dad.’

‘Too late for that, Sam, too late for that.’  But Frank lifts his glass and so do the rest of us.  Too late for all of us, I think.  Later I’ll wonder where the guy in the doorway ended up, but for now, all is well in the world.  Or at least the Pilot Lounge….

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the President-in-Exile has to turn over his tax returns, much to the howls of Donald out there in the wilderness of Mar-a-Lago.  So unfair!  What the returns will show, according to testimony by his accountant, are losses every year for a decade.  700 million in 2009, 200 million the following year.  Chump change for a highly successful businessman like His Highness, proof once again for his minions that the man knows how to navigate the system.

In other words, you paid more than Donald J Trump in taxes most of your life.

Digest that for a few minutes.  Or a day or two.  Even if you believe that the man who claims to be one of the richest men in America honestly made money by losing fortunes every year for a decade, an extraordinary feat even for the Trumpster, you might question if this is the right man to drain the swamp.  Or you might wonder if this is why Republicans fight tooth and nail to defund the IRS.  Donald claimed he couldn’t turn over his returns because of ongoing audits by the IRS.  Ya think?

And do ya think the corporations that manage to avoid paying federal taxes year after year thanks to loopholes, subsidies, deferments, offshore accounting and all the other sleight-of-hands by teams of tax accountants willing to fight for shady offsets and deductions, full knowing the audits aren’t coming so why not, do ya think this is smart business?

Most of you get your taxes taken out directly through your employer, not much wiggle room for sneaky deductions.  You pay more than one of the richest guys in the country.  Maybe you think this is fair.  He gets rich and you pay for the schools and fire fighters.  He lives like a pooh-bah while you fund the building of highways and bridges.  He rents hotels to government visitors at astronomical prices while you have the honor of hiring police and paying for the military.

Drain the swamp?  No, the alligators are doing fine just the way it is.  Vote for the guy again, why not?  But whatever you do, ask not what he can do for his country.  He expects you to ask that of yourself.  Thank you for your service, sucker!

So for some reason I’m riding down the road in my truck and decide to see what the conservative folks are talking about today, same as I used to before Trump got elected, test the roiling waters of the right wing, put a finger into the wind and see which way the tornado is blowing today.  My moderator begins by saying, “I heard this on some newsfeed this morning and I didn’t have time to fact check it.”

This is a familiar lead-in to any of us who listen to these talking heads on the far right.  Not enough time in the day to double check their sources, but hey, it sounds true to them and so my guy says, “well, let’s just go ahead and imagine it is true, go from there.”  This is like a scientist saying, okay, I haven’t got a clue if this hypothesis is accurate but why don’t we go ahead and build a theory around it, find out if we like the looks of it when we’re done.”

The story my agitator has supposedly, but I doubt, heard, revolves around the rumor which he declares is suspiciously plausible, that Joe Biden tried to cut a deal with the Saudis for a promise of drilling more oil.  He would, this rumor has it, offer amnesty to the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.  He refers to the prince as MsB or maybe it’s MbS, either case, he tells his audience, you know who I mean.  Oil for amnesty.

Quid pro quo, maybe you remember the Trump deal in Ukraine, not that this will come up in the next half hour’s grinding of innuendo and speculation until the sausage is ready for the bun.  Now, to be fair, I have more time on my hands than our national Limbaugh clone so I punch up MbS and first article out of the chute is the CNN post that the U.S. Dep’t. of Justice cannot bring a case filed by Khashoggi’s wife because the guy happens to be the head of state.  They can’t sue Putin, they can’t extradite Xi, and no, they can’t bring a case against Mohammed either.  Kind of a different story than the unchecked one our national radio star is offering to listeners hungry for dirt on Sleepy Joe.

Now he knows his take is bullshit and I know his slant is bullshit and you probably know better than to even tune into talking heads like this … but, half the damn country listens to this boy and his ilk, twisting and fabricating and stretching the truth til it’s red meat down to the gristle for an audience starved for scapegoats and craving revenge.  You bet I turned my radio to a music station to remove the taste.  The true believers, I’m guessing they’re listening to this all day long.

I got a theory.  Not really based on anything I want to fact-check.  Just something I want you to believe.  Stay tuned.  Send money.  I’ll be back tomorrow with the news.

The rapper now called Ye, formerly Kanye West, made the pilgrimage this week to Mar-a-Lago, formerly a swamp near the Atlantic Ocean.  The President-in-Exile had invited Ye to a meeting, two very big brained men dining together and possibly discussing Trump’s 3^rd run at the White House when Kan-Ye surprised Donald by asking if he, Donald, would consider running as Vice President when Kan-Ye announces his own run and was then met with angry screams from the candidate who had already declared himself a presidential candidate.  When big brains clash, you have to expect explosions, I guess.

Apparently the tete-a-tete went downhill from there.  Mr. T purportedly made explicitly nasty comments about Kan-Ye’s ex-mizzus, the Queen Kardashian, mother of his children and so the chit chat rapidly slid downhill.  Nevertheless, the rapper turned politician released a two minute video of their encounter, Mar-a-Lago Debrief,  no doubt expecting potential voters might turn away from a man who loses his temper, calls Ye’s woman (bleep) and seems slightly if not totally unhinged.  Well, at least he gave Donald a chance to be his running mate which shows the incredible magnanimity of the rap star.  Despite his anti-Semitic remarks of late.  And the fact that he brought a couple of pals instrumental in white nationalist organizations.  The more the merrier in the clown car, looks like.

If you thought this would be a boring election cycle, you’ve been watching too much Tucker Carlson.  Hopefully you won’t be too troubled by the lack of policy statements, wonky analyses or cogent platforms.  The monkeys are out of their cages now and whoever was in charge has exited the premises.  Expect a barrel of laughs for the next few years.  My guess is Trump will make up and eventually ask Kan-Ye to run as his vice president.  Although … there are plenty of potential candidates to choose from.  Hopefully they won’t dial back on their meds.  We could use all the comedy we can get.

If you’re like me … and about 50 other Republican wannabees … no doubt you’re thinking about tossing your fedora in the ring and taking a shot at knocking Trump out of the primaries in 2024.  Why not?  The Loudmouth is gambling that his candidacy will subvert the lawsuits, indictments, criminal fines and penalties, possible jail time, all that pesky stuff that would give most people ulcers or visions of suicide but not him.  Money talks and he’s got plenty of talking to do.  Twitter just took a vote and the tweeting public, by a slim margin, said sure, let the man rant on their platform.  That, or they figured the way I do, Twitter is going down like the Titanic with Elon at the helm, kicking off half the sailors and the guys who run the engine room, shortly before the iceberg.

Sure, the other four dozen potential candidates are more qualified than me or you, but you think Trump was more qualified than his ten or twelve opponents when he won the primary back in 2016?  You just got to be more outrageous than the others.  The media loved that guy.  Who do you think they wanted to cover, Bernie Sanders or Marco Rubio?  It was Trump all the time, crazy talk, wild stuff, outrageous accusations, foul language, everything the press figured would sell papers and add to their audience shares.  Even when he turned on them, the networks and the reporters were drawn in like moths to a dumpfire.  And the MAGA minions loved it!!  Deplorables?  Naw, they just love a thug gangster, nothing more American than that.

Used to be candidates espoused unbridled optimism.  Our nation’s best times were just around the bend, a new morning in America, all that blithe jibber jabber.  Now they want to hear why their country is going down the tubes.  So give it to them!  Commies, Proud Boys, Putin, Xi, the big corporations, the immigrants, the gun laws, hell … all of those and more!  Guns kill but gun regulation is worse!  They’re both to blame.  Right wing nationalists and those leftist transgenders, they’re all the reason this once great nation is a shithole.  Blame the farmers, why not?  Toss the Tech Boyz and the potato growers into the same bushel basket of grievance and hate, there’s plenty of room.  Republicans and Democrats … all of them are toadies and inside traders!  The whole wretched bunch should be hauled out and stoned.  Don’t forget the churches, all just as culpable as Hollywood.  Foreigners and inner city criminals, what’s the difference?  Gotta do something about it, gotta get even, gotta get tough!!  And I mean Tough with a capital T.

Yeah, this might be the election to go for the prize.  Most Powerful Hombre in the World.  My hat’s ready.  And so am I.  You just have to know how to appeal to the people.  Trump certainly did, but hey, he’s a Loser now and nobody wants a Loser.

Imagine, if you can, living without power for a few days.  No phone.  No daytime TV.  No internet.  No refrigeration.  No connection to the modern world you once knew and took for granted.  Maybe you got some candles.  Maybe some kerosene lanterns.  Hopefully some matches.  All the stores nearby are shuttered.  No gas, no food, no ice, no beer and wine.

We just went five days without electricity.  Windstorm blew down trees, power lines, dreams and all hope.  What is a modern pioneer to do?  I’ll tell you what.  Crank up the generator!  That’s right, mister, keep the house powered up!  Reefer cooling, TV on, lights on too.  Just keep pouring gas into the thing, ignore the noise from yours and the neighbors too, return to your Facebook updates, your Instagram posts, your emails and your newsfeeds.  This past week we listened to the hive in full swarm across the road, generators all buzzing angrily.

Folks ask how we can manage without one.  Since they themselves can’t imagine life worth living beyond the reach of the grid.  Oh, sure, they remember their first power outage here, the one that convinced them to haul down to the hardware store once the roads were passable again and buy that portable 25 kilowatt big boy for the next emergency, at least keep the TV running and the computer, maybe some lights, probably not electric heat.  Some got serious and installed permanent whole house units, propane tanks, inverters, automatic kick-in so they needn’t worry about missing an Oprah interview or the ending to that Netlix movie.

The pioneer days are over, friend.  Sitting by kerosene lantern, hauling in water, stoking the stove — maybe we think that sounds romantic, a break from the modern world — but not for most of us now.  Inconvenience isn’t in our vocabulary.  I can tell you that you will survive okay without the computer for a day or two.  You can discover what life used to be like before Instagram.  You might even remember what was important before the digital age.  Maybe why you came here in the first place….

Just got the news that the world population has passed 8 billion of us humans.  I remember fondly my sociology classes back in the 60’s where my professors absolutely forbid using The Population Bomb as a footnote or a reference.  Paul Ehrlich was no scientist, my educators said, he was a dopey doomsday prophet.  I think the world population at the time was maybe 4 billion.  A lot of us, seemed like to me.  8 billion, well, I have trouble enough getting to know the neighbors now, sure don’t want many more.

One thing I never hear in the debates concerning global warming and climate change is that maybe, just maybe, there are too many of us.  More mouths to feed, more houses to build, more cars to drive, more garbage in the landfills, more need for heating and air conditioning, small stuff like that.  Sure, turn the thermostat down, but hey, what if there were 4 billion less of us wanting to stay warm?   Oh, I know, we love our kids.  We love our dozen grandkids.  And we certainly love our 100 great grandkids.  Although, to be honest, judging from my old man’s memory at 99 years of age, he couldn’t tell you any of their names.  And he has a lot of trouble with his grandkids’s names.  Which are only three of them.  The fact that us 8 billion are living longer thanks to medical science and improved health care doesn’t really help either.

When I came to the South End, four cars drove off going north of our shack, four cars returned home at night.  Better believe we knew our neighbors back then and, unfortunately for them, they knew us.  Now it’s a constant parade of commuters and contractors and lawn service crews.  I don’t recognize most folks at the local grocery.  And with my memory, remembering their names wouldn’t be a likelihood.

So when we’re looking for solutions to overheating the planet, why not look at overpopulating it.  You won’t miss an extra grandkid or twenty, all I’m saying.