The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

In the smoking debris of the Republican Red Wave the pundits are weighing in on what went wrong.  No doubt a few die hard MAGA’s will assume that the election was rigged, probably Venezuelan software in the Dominion voting machines, but most of the autopsies seem to be looking for a villain among their own.  Trump.  The candidates he backed, ranging from the football hero to the quack TV doctor, just weren’t of a high enough quality, they say.

Ya think?  C’mon, folks, take a stroll through the past few years and tell me the GOP candidates were top drawer.  Consider just the folks who won, mostly old white angry men, guys like McCarthy who on Jan. 6^th said his president was unfit for office — ya think, again?— but was on a plane to Mar-a-Lago 22 days later to kiss the ring.  How many of these quality Republicans holding office refused to confirm Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 race?

To quote the bard, referring as easily to Donald Trump as Julius Caesar:

‘Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

Let’s be honest here.  You proved you can fool some of the people all of the time.  The real truth is you fooled yourselves.  If you’re looking for a scapegoat, try a mirror.

If you were dreading another two years of the interminable election cycle, probably canceling your newspapers and substituting subscriptions to entertainment channels, plugging your ears and avoiding MSNBC and maybe waiting  til the dust clears in 2024 before pulling the quilts down from over your head and leaving your bed … well, you got some good news.  Trump plans to tip the checkerboard for the Republicans, the House is going to divide up sides for some serious tag team no-holds-barred smackdown wrestling, and you can expect some cliff hanger serials with plenty of violence and mayhem to get you through those lonely nights coming up.  Trump is running again and you best believe the Republicans are going to war with themselves.

I guess if you honestly believe Trump won the last election, well, hell, run him again.  Just make sure the voting machines aren’t cooked, the dead aren’t voting,  the ballots aren’t stuffed, the mail-ins are banned, the gerrymandering continues, the lines in the inner cities are long and the polling places few.  Just to get the ball rolling, the President-in-Exile announced from his palace in Mar-a-Lago that the new slogan for his campaign will be — cue the trumpets— Make America Great and Glorious Again.  I guess that first term of his didn’t really make the cut.  Maybe hold off on the Glorious and get the Great accomplished.  Or … I don’t know, triple down and Make America Great and Glorious and Glamorous Again.  Just need a bigger ballcap to read MAGAGAG.  Costs slightly more, all proceeds going to the Trump charity.

Down in Florida they must be drinking the swamp water, all I can figure.  DeSantis runs ads that on the 8^th Day the Lord made a warrior.  Him.  Not to be outdone, Trump wants a glorious second coming, another Rome with him as Caesar.  Must be some biblical prophecy needing fulfilled for these guys.  If the Lord is working overtime now, adding days to Her week to get the job done, maybe it’s time to take a rest.

You were probably thinking you deserve a rest.  Sorry, looks like a long slog from here to election day 2024.  Like they say, it ain’t over til the Fatboy squeals.  Or something like that.  Might be a fine time to read some good books.

Now the mizzus was a sort of mail order bride.  I came out to the rainforests here in the 70’s, bought my 7 acres and my mule just before the interest rates went wild and discovered how few single ladies there were in the woods of the South End.

So I resorted to what our pioneer ancestors turned to … no,  not THAT … I wrote back to the Midwest for a wife.  I had a lady friend in Minnysota who was just fixing to graduate with her masters degree in librarying.  Librarying, I thought to myself, is even better’n school ma’arm.  She could teach some of the artists on the South End here how to read and write and then we could sit around the porch and discuss Nietzsche and Tolstoy, the events of the day.

Late spring of l981 I commenced to writing heart wrenching, bodice ripping, pulse pounding love letters.  I told my darling all about our little island, how it was a tropical paradise where our beautiful cottage nestled in the arms of million year old cedar trees and coconut palms and you could see the Olympic Mountains every night at sunset glowing like a fireplace and that old sun had nothing on the lovelight in my heart for her …

Course she didn’t have a chance….  Who could resist my literary charms?  And I’m sure she carried a picture of my irresistible self in a locket in her bosom, pining – PINING, ladies and gentlemen – for that day a letter would arrive from her Prince Charming, old lumber Jack himself, king of Camano, practically Paul Bunyan with a book of poems under his ax arm.

Well, I was surprised TOO she didn’t rush out to my waiting muscle bound arms.  So I wrote some more.  I wrote a dictionary worth.  Then I wrote an encyclopedia Britannica.  Spring turned to summer, summer turned to fall, fall became winter, my dreams turned to mush.  I run outa words.  ME!  With nothing left to say.  I was about to give up and become a Zen hermit priest.

But one day I got a letter saying she was coming OUT.   …  For a day or two, then going to Alaska to see her cousin.  Alaska?  Why on god’s green earth would she go to a godforsaken hellhole like that when she could have the whole South End paradise?

Course she was gonna see the cottage wasn’t a cottage – it was a shack.  Leaky roof, crooked floors, a ladder to the upstairs.  Alaska was gonna look REAL good.  And Prince Charming?  I was in serious trouble now.

But luck was on my side.  The day she flew in a storm took out a dozen trees to the South End and power was out when we pulled in the drive.  So I lit up the oil lamps and popped the champagne and boiled the crabs on the woodstove and I won’t tell you the details but let your romantic imagination run wild and you might have some small notion of why the mizzus is still the mizzus and why we both still celebrate the day she came out here and not our wedding anniversary and why the South End will always be a tropical paradise to at least a couple of us old lovebirds.

Well okay, that Big Red Wave for the Republicans came in with a little less than what they’d hoped for, no doubt figuring Sleepy Joe’s age and world inflation would be all they’d need for a wipeout victory.  Maybe total negativity isn’t the best message for the voters.  But what are ya gonna do?  After all, tax cuts for the rich probably aren’t going to slow down inflation.  When bread prices go through the roof, telling em to eat cake won’t fly either.

Where we sit right now, the Senate is a toss-up.  If Nevada drops in the Dem category, game over.  If it flips red, we got ourselves another Georgia finish.  A reverend vs. a football hero.  Tough choice down there in the Peach State.  Herschel is carrying a lot of baggage, even for a big running back.  Doesn’t like abortions but paid for two of his out-of-wedlock sweethearts to have one.  Then lied about it.  Claims we can push that bad Chinese air back where it came from and solve pollution woes.  Asks why we want any more trees.

You probably don’t expect football stars to be Rhodes scholars too, but maybe they should be smarter than this guy.  And maybe morality should count too.  Especially if you’re the party of family values.  The hair on fire boyz are rallying like dumpy old cheerleaders for Walker, exhorting the crackers to get their redneck asses out to vote, the fate of America is on the scrimmage line.  Me, I think this is the ultimate irony for the GOP.  A candidate with no solutions, no real ideas, no telling how he got to be the spotlight for the entire country to parse and analyze.  I wouldn’t want to be Herschel right now, no way.

And if I thought bozos like Lindsay Graham or Newt Gingrich were going to save the day, maybe block those 300 pound gorillas on the front line, holy pigskin, Fatman, I’d be wishing I was back with a couple of my sweethearts, promising to use protection this time.  But you never know in the Yew Ess Aye these happy days what the ending to this election might be.  Walker is Trump’s pick and so I expect he’ll have to go up to Georgia, give his usual stump pitch whether the Republicans like it or not.  Poor Herschel, damned if Trump does, damned if he doesn’t.  Why can’t life be as simple as football?

Just before Election Day a major blow hit our area, knocking out power, internet, phones and most remnants of what we like to call civilization.  Five days later, yesterday, the power came back on and we could get the dreaded election results we’d missed.  You know and I know and so does Q that this was no coincidence, this blackout, just another conspiracy to rig the polls while some of us could do no watching, not while we were struggling to stay warm, forage for unspoiled food, haul water and help the neighbors who didn’t have generators whining 24/7 for 120 straight hours.  Who could possibly know what tampering was at play down at the ballot boxes.  Or what last minute Dirty Tricks were being conducted in the electron darkness.

We fully expected the power might never return.  Possibly the entire country was cast into the Bronze Age, the coup Trump had planned for Jan. 6^th nearly two years ago might have taken place, the country might have declared martial law and the Proud Boys possibly confirmed to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court.  The Storm Qanon had predicted had manifested while we were occupied with surviving, little knowing the real occupation had arrived.  The Red Tsunami had swept away democracy as we once knew it.

But … as is usual, paranoia might have some basis in reality, just not most of it.  Our state, Washington state, ‘woke’ that it is, remained mostly blue.  Florida, well, there was your tsunami, with a hurricane close on its heels, headed right at Mar-a-Lago, another embarrassment for the President-in-Exile who refused to heed evacuation notices.  The Red Wave, the one predicted by nearly all the pollsters and pundits, washed weakly to shore.  As of right now, the House looks like it will go red, the Senate, probably a repeat of the Georgia vote, the state that will determine the majority.  From where I sit, power on, lights aplenty, water running, refrigerators working, internet back, phone working … I feel like we dodged some bullets.

If the women who voted based on abortion rights or the kids who voted to save the planet, I thank you.  If you were the dickwad who voted for Dr. Oz or thought De Sanctimonious was the answer to inflation or the Ukrainian war, hello, the country hasn’t gone totally batshit crazy.  Just yet.  Return to your idiot newsfeeds and hope to god your power doesn’t go out for five days.  Stuck with your own fantasies and conspiracy theories, you won’t make it.  Bolt the doors, load your AR-15’s, listen for the zombie apocalypse coming for you.  Exactly what you feared….

A bunch of us yahoos are gathering for the apocalyptic midterm election returns coming  this Tuesday, masochists all, hunkering down for what portends to be the end of civilization in America as we know it, plenty of liquid courage at the ready.  The pundits are predicting a Red Wave based pretty much on the price of gas and groceries, which are, according to the GOP, Biden’s fault.  No doubt the rest of Europe, the Chinese, hell, the entire world’s inflationary woes are Sleepy Joe’s fault.  That damn Joe!

I’m really not sure why we’re even having elections.  Plenty of Republican candidates have already declared that if they lose, the election was rigged.  If they win, it must be okay, fair and square.  Somehow when Trump lost and plenty of GOP Reps and Senators won in the 2020 fiasco, the elections were both.  Go figure.  My pals are thinking the worst this time around.  The demise of Democracy.  Post truth.  Fascism on the march here in the Yew Ess Aye and around the globe.  Doomsday for the Democrats.  Nothing short of a Proud Boy takeover.  Thank you, Donald J. Trump, for destroying America.

Me, I’m clinging desperately to a longshot  turnout by women and maybe even the younger generation.  I know, fat chance.  But the kids, you’d think with all the existential threats swirling around their little metaverse, they’d intuitively understand the absolute necessity to keep the bootlicking Trumpists from ascending to power.  Although … maybe they’ve drunk the Kool-aid too.  The women, that little agenda of the Supreme Court might have given them some inkling as to what’s coming.

Course, in the era of social media, all bets are off.  Black is white, good is bad, truth is bullshit and vice versa.  I don’t have a clue anymore.  Folks just believe what they read and see on their bubbled sites and only read and watch the sites they want to believe.  Maybe the Storm is coming.  Maybe Q is on the way.  Maybe Jesus is orbiting the planet, planning a Grand Entrance.  Maybe gravity is faux science.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve.  All this evolution to produce big brains and it comes to this, just chimps who invented the internet and the computer, then used them to make themselves stupid.  Serves us right….

Okay, so I got my 3^rd Covid booster, and yeah, I know, probably Bill Gates’ tracking devices too, but I’m willing to throw the dice, take my chances and see if I can keep from contracting Long Haul Covid in my advanced geezerhood.  Thought while I was at it, I’d take the flu shot too.  Being careful about money, if not nano-trackers, I googled up Medicare to see if they covered flu shots and yah, shure, u betcha, they did.  Except when I made an appointment at one of our local pharmacies, they said they couldn’t find my Medicare Advantage program that would cover it.  But … the nice man at the counter said since I’d made a reservation he’d discount the copay and once I got my correct card, they’d refund the money.

Maybe you know where this is going….  They’re NOT going to refund any money and my good friends at United Health, a nice woman who can speak English but not very well, told me they do not cover flu vaccinations.  What the &%@#?  Last year’s flu vaccine was covered, but by a different pharmacy.  You tell me….

What I think, other than feeling duped for 70 bucks, was how impossible it seems to navigate our best-in-the-world health care system.  This is enrollment time in case you missed getting three or four calls per day from potential future healthcare providers.  If I thought it would help, we’d change to one that offered flu shots … but of course they’d probably be the one that had a higher co-pay or hidden fees or worse premiums.  If I was a Philadelphia lawyer with a medical and pharmaceutical degree, one willing to read the terms of agreement of multiple providers, compare the apples and oranges with the melons and bananas, sure, I’d switch over every damn year just to see if I could get a preventive care vaccination for free.

With only so much time left of my Golden Years I thought maybe I could spend that research on something, oh, slightly more enjoyable and far less maddening.  Next year I’ll probably just take my chances on the flu.  If I come down with a case of it, maybe then I’ll read the fine prints of these world class health care providers while I’m recuperating.

Some years Halloween comes early to the South End … and some years it never seems to leave.  Down here in the nettle regions the kids get driven north to the Stanwoodopolis Suburbs where the candy flows like bottled mineral water and the sodium lights force phantom predators back into the shadows.  This season we just got the fright-filled statistics from studies that show philanthropy by the wealthy dropped by nearly 5%, wealthy being those who made over $200,000 a year.

I guess the candy jars are going to empty a tad earlier when our little ‘Takers’ roll up to the festooned front doors of the Tricklers.  Forget that trickle down theory of supply-siders, I think the drought of charity may be a prolonged one.  And no, it isn’t the result of Global Warming….  Next year we’ll probably see moats around the castles and the gated communities will add spikes to the fences.  Treats for the beggaring poor?  Fuggedaboudit!  When times get tough, some hearts get harder.

In the same study they found that the poorer folks had actually increased their charitable giving by as much as the wealthy had decreased theirs.  I suspect when we belong to a community, we think of neighbors as real people struggling with the same problems as the rest of us.  We don’t think of folks who can’t afford health care, folks who lost a job, folks who had their house repossessed as vampires feeding on the Body Politic.  They’re us.  They’re not who we ‘Unfriend’ when they need help the most.  They’re who we look at in our own mirror.

It would be way too easy to demonize the rich.  Oh, sure, we could send the kids out this Halloween in tuxedoes and Armani suits.  Wearing fangs.  But charity, like our mothers said, begins at home, so maybe we should trickle some down to them.  And no, I don’t mean give them another tax break.  They already got Christmas 365 days a year.

Eco-activists are at it again in the art museums.  Following the tomato soup assault on Van Gogh, this week we have the mashed potato splatter on Monet.  I’m at a loss to connect the spud dots on this movement to turn art into a food fight, but I wish the anti-oil crowd would pick something other than museums to demonstrate their rage.  Although … I can understand using mashed potatoes.  After all, one of the better stories of Donald Trump as a kid was the one where his brother got sick and tired of Donald bullying him and finally dumped a plate of the stuff on the future president’s head, a humiliation that haunted him throughout his never ending childhood.  Let’s just say that Trump was a more appropriate target for the eco-spudsters than the Monet.

Hard to say what metaphoric point these folks are trying to make.  Other than maybe we ought to do something to save the damned planet.  Monet painted impressionistic ponds and flowers, nature through the lens of astigmatism, what’s not to like?  Maybe throw pies at Francis Bacon’s horror laden paintings instead.  Or toss spaghetti at Dali’s surrealistic melting clocks.  As if any of that would make sense to a public addicted to violence and social media trolling.

I mean, what’s next, strangle puppies at the dog pound?  C’mon, kidz, dumping on art is best left to the critics.  Even the philistine ones….  Go trash an elevator playing Muzak.  Superglue yourselves to a sports stadium.  Lash out at Hallmark cards or protest car commercials.  Go down to Wall Street and sling hash at the bronze bull.  Gotta be a hundred better pillars of greed or crappy art to make your statement.  Why pick on the best our culture has to offer?  You gonna actually kill the fat lady singing in the opera?  Piss on the collected works of Shakespeare?  Burn some books but only the really great ones?   Smash a Stradivarius using a leg of lamb?

I know, it’s hard, but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to pick up your game.  It may take a little imagination … or a lot.  Kind of why you might use Monet or Van Gogh or a few others as your muse, not your target.  Just saying….

Right off the get-go here I want to declare I’m a Plague survivor.  Two vaccinations, three boosters, fairly careful the past two or three years (who can keep track anymore?).  But so far so good.  So imagine my dismay when our President comes out and warns us we might be on the verge of nuclear annihilation.  And you thought climate change was something to worry about.

I guess you don’t have to sweat Long Haul Covid, forget about long haul anything when they drop the Big One!  I was twelve years old, a snot-nosed kid in Georgia when the Cuban missile crisis was putting us on the brink of … Atomic War!  Neighbors were building fallout shelters, stocking them with food and water, guns and ammo, figuring, I guess, they’d survive the holocaust and kill the mutants who banged on their door.  My school was conducting ‘duck and cover’ drills.  You think ‘Active Shooter’ drills are messing up kids’ heads, try Dr. Strangelove on for size — as the real deal.

So okay, there’s always some kind of existential threat, some virus or asteroid or robot apocalypse, some unexpected menace, government overthrow, a new war, famine and drought, another ice age.  You could maybe get used to one of those … but all of them coming at you at once?  I don’t think so.  Maybe just pull the sheets over your head, call your boss and tell him you’re sick, turn off the TV, cancel the newspapers, avoid social media and imagine a happy place.  A place you once lived in but forgot how to find again.  A place where the sun shines and children play, a Shangri-la-la far from the maddening crowd.  Puppies romp and butterflies fly.  Laughter fills the air like puffy clouds and worries drop away and evaporate.  Does that place really exist, you ask?

If it does, you know how to find it. It’s not on your GPS, you won’t find it online, you can’t find it past a secret door the other side of your Closet of Anxieties.   You want to worry about the future, it isn’t there.  The future is the last place you want to look.  Try right here….