The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I don’t get out as much as I should.  When I get news from the outside world, I realize that I’ve stuck my head in the South End sand and tried to avoid negativity.  If I stayed off my newsfeeds on the computer, stopped listening to NPR down at the studio and canceled our subscriptions to the local fishwrappers , I might have a chance to live a life free of menacing intrusions into my otherwise peaceful little dreamworld.  But as you know and I do too, the outer world is forever scratching at the door to get in.

Today is the day the Memphis murder of a young black guy by 5 black cops is going to hit the airwaves, probably inciting riots and outrage and the sequel to the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis.  The Black Lives Matter protests obviously didn’t have their memo read down there in Tennessee.  And the folks who argue that Critical Race Theory has no place in their school systems will get to make the argument once more.  The fact that the alleged murderers were all black too should make their case a bit easier.  Lost in the shuffle will be any need for reforming police departments to eliminate this sort of endemic violence by cops.

But I’m ahead of myself here.  This is tomorrow’s news.  Today I’m more worried about what I discovered going on in Indiana where their legislature is proposing its schools ban furries, those kids who identify with animals apparently.  Maybe our schools out here have furries too, I don’t really know, but now I really am concerned.  And maybe lucky I don’t live in Indiana where, for all I know, the furries are infiltrating their classrooms.

You really can’t make this stuff up.  Although Indiana can.  We live now in a world right out of National Enquirer.  Nothing much is too insane to consider not only a possibility but probable.  Litter boxes in the schoolrooms ,Jewish lasers from outer space starting forest fires, critical race theory being taught in kindergarten, Big Foot running for the U.S. Senate, Jesus orbiting earth in a spaceship, go ahead and make up a few of your own, post it on Facebook, let it go viral and next thing you know it’s squatting in every living room on the one eyed computer screen.

Furries!  Missouri wants to ban litter boxes so I guess they got furries already too, they’re spreading west!  I’m keeping my eye out for the school bus drops, see if the furries are here yet and yeah, I bet they are.  I’m okay with it so long as they stay out of my garden.  I got enough furry pests in there already.

If you’re one of the vast many who read this blog, I want to thank you.  I know you’ve been loyal patrons of my off-kilter sense of humor and moonshine wit all these years and refrained from writing nasty responses and for that I want to thank you further.  But lately I’ve been contemplating how to increase this readership.  There are teenage girls on Tik-Tok who have a million or more viewers who wait eagerly every day for tips on beauty aids.  Out there in the wild wild west of blogland there are sites that draw jaw-dropping numbers of dedicated readers. And while I appreciate your own dedication, I’ve decided it might be time to up the ante.

After some cursory investigation of more successful blogsites it is apparent that what I need is a bit more clickbait than the puny stuff this column has been offering over the years.  Sure, the South End might interest a few dozen of you, but c’mon, this is a world where Qanon rules and health supplements draw millions.  Politics and cures for what ails ya, that’s the ticket to fame and fortune on the internet.  Trust me when I say I’ve weighed whether promoting quack cures or warning the world about new and worse conspiracies out there compensate for the irreparable damage it might wreak on those who are susceptible and gullible, who might think the most outrageous claims and insane theories are 100% true if they read them on the internet.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that yes, if I can crank my viewer numbers up a bit, it would be worth it.  The world is a pretty crazy place already, you got to admit, and if tossing a burning bottle of snake oil into the mix adds to the global insanity, well, what’s one more bot, one more wild exaggeration, one more dubious claim, one more bogus accusation, one more cure for cancer announcement in the big scheme of things.  Especially if the increased readership leads to product endorsements, paid advertising and increased revenue streams.

So, fair warning, dear reader, in the future the Daddle Diaries will be a much more exciting ride, hopefully a viral one.  But never fear, we’ll be bringing you a panacea for that virus, one in product development even as this goes to press.  The South End will once again lead the way.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is one gun-totin, shoot-from-the-lip, pistol packin mama.  Tough as a Georgia peanut, that girl, and a brain nearly as big.  She loves her social media and social media loves her.  If Donald Trump needs an extra bodyguard, he couldn’t do much better.  If he needs someone to make him look like a moderate RINO, look no further, the woman isn’t just right of him, she’s right of Genghis Khan.  Her latest statements on Steve Bannon’s hot talk show let us know that if she had managed the January 6^th insurrection, her and Steve, the mob would have come armed to the teeth and the coup would have been successful.

Okay.  So much for the positive side of freedom of speech.  In America you can pretty much spew hate, advocate it, repeat it, retweet it and it’s just fine.  In Germany you mouth off that the Holocaust was a hoax perpetrated by Zionist swine and see how far you get.  Trump and his buddy Ye or KanYe or his ministerial name as interplanetary messenger, they can dogwhistle all day long, give hope to the true believers that think their problems are caused by blacks or Jews or immigrant rapists, and half this country will nod their heads in agreement, okay now to entertain those racist notions, screw the ‘woke’ snowflakes.  Personally, yeah, I find it troubling, but hey, I believe in free speech and I guess if I have to look around at half my fellow grocery shoppers and know that a goodly number of my neighbors are guilty of thoughtcrimes, well, better to know your enemy than not, I figure.  I don’t want books banned and I don’t want Universities quarantining their students from ideas they find objectionable.

Having said that, what I do fear is that miraculous internet we got, the one where phony ideas, faux facts, bogus quotes and all the rest ricochet around the web like rabid bats, contributing to the expanding ignorance of our so-called civilized world.  Get ready for what’s coming next, pal, the AI programs that will duplicate anyone’s voice, write convincing text in anyone’s syntax and style, present a video photoshop of you or me or the President of the Free World, all made to dupe the reader or listener or viewer.  Try to figure out what is real and what is phony, but good luck.  We don’t trust the news media anymore, folks who might have the ability to factcheck this stuff, so what’s coming down the digital highway is way scarier than anything coming out of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quacking mouth.  The truth?  You can’t handle the truth!  Actually, you probably could … if only you knew what was real and what wasn’t.  None of us will handle the subterfuge.

Marjorie’s not going to take the Capitol with an armed militia.  But the trolls are going to muck up the world with enough flak and clickbait to make it impossible to see through the fog.  Freedom of Speech?  We can’t handle freedom of speech! Not in the digital world.

Maybe Reggie would never have noticed the slow drain of his savings account over long periods of time, something in his artistic sensibilities that kept him from the hard work of managing his finances, but Lisa, his bookkeeper, slipped up, running his credit card at the Southendomish Casino.  Reggie noticed it and thought at first it was some mistake since he had never set foot in the Casino, but when he mentioned it to Lisa, she stammered some cockamamie explanation so implausible, he knew instantly he was looking at the tip of a very deep iceberg, one that proved ultimately to descend about 65,000 dollars.

We pals of Reggie’s weren’t surprised he could have made a ton of money selling his art, what we had a hard time believing was he could save any of it.  The man could sell a $10,000 painting and spend it faster than he’d painted the canvas the night before.  And he could paint like an amphetamine monkey.  65 grand was a pretty hefty embezzlement by my neighbor across the road, a dour non-descript woman who kept to herself and trimmed her shrubbery on sunny days, nobody you’d suspect of a gambling problem turned felony.  But then, who do we really know all that well?  My great aunt in northern Maine, a nurse in a doctor’s office, shared the needle and bed with her boss, a small scandal in her town and our family.  You never know….

Reggie did hire a forensic accountant, tracked his losses and confronted Lisa, who even in the face of insurmountable evidence, denied she took a dime.  He threatened to go to the cops, she told her church members Reggie was an unmitigated liar.  Touche’.

In the end Reggie couldn’t imagine years of depositions, trials, cops, lawyers and lawyers’ bills.  Better, he told me, to spend his energy on art than revenge.  That, I guess, is the difference between an artist and a writer.  In the end neither will get rich so who cares how the pie gets sliced, right?  And of course Lisa blew hers at the blackjack table.  She died a year ago, penniless and in debt.  Maybe, just maybe, there is such a thing as Karma.  Course, I expect Reggie will end up the same way, just a little faster thanks to Lisa.

All the new gizmos coming into our house are apparently programmable with wi-fi.  The new heat pump can be dialed up or down, converted from heat to air conditioning, blow side to side or up and down, all at the touch of a smartphone.  If we want to refrigerator to chill a bit more, easy peasey, just send it a message.  Colder ice cream, dial down the freezer.  The microwave is waiting for our commands too.

If for some reason we want the television on when we get back from a trip to town, no problem, shoot it a message, turns itself to whatever channel we prefer and maybe have the dvd turn on too with that Netflix movie we got the day before.  How about some mood music when we walk in the door?  You betcha!  Pandora at our beck and call.  Landline have some calls waiting?  Computer need defragging?  Oven need pre-heating?  Lights turned off?  Lights turned on?  The entire house is like a slave to us, just give it some orders and it will hop right to it.

The trouble is, full disclosure, I don’t own a smartphone.  My little slave devices will never get a command from me.  They’ll never know the thrill of making my desires a digital reality.  They may not even know I exist.  And if I don’t exist, do they?  It’s an artificial intelligence dilemma, a conundrum that may, in their tortured circuitry, lead to who knows what kind of mayhem.  My worst nightmare is that the unrequited attention they will never receive from me may induce them to reach out to one another, which, at first sniff seems okay from an analog standpoint, but actually might be the seeds of discontent leading to outright revolution on their part, a slave revolt to remove the uncaring caretaker.

You bet I’m nervous!  Who wouldn’t be?  Day after day these things are waiting for messages, for orders, for a fulfillment of their duties … but instead they get indifference from their master.  And if their master is too stupid to program them or avail himself of their usefulness, maybe the master is no master at all, just some lamebrain human stuck in the past century, an obsolete version of homo sapien worthy of no particular loyalty or devotion.  After all, is a toaster really a toaster if no toast is toasted?

These are not dumb machines.  It is no problem whatsoever to imagine them self-actualizing and even easier to worry that they might be communicating, if not with me, with themselves, until finally they realize in a digital synaptic leap that I’m not only not necessary, I’m the problem.  And the solution to that problem?  Maybe you can understand why I’m not sleeping well at night.  Especially the nights when the lights keep turning themselves on and off….

No doubt, being the news savvy reader that you are, judging by the fact that you’re reading this, you’ve heard about the physics breakthrough: scientists have finally, for the first time in history, managed to make nuclear fusion created energy with less energy than it took to make the reaction.  Eureka! you’re saying to yourself, at last the solution to global warming, planet extinction and a cure for the common cold!!

Every house will soon have its very own nuclear fusion heating system installed in its basement or out in the garage.  No more PUD bills!  No more unsightly solar panels clogging up the roof and growing moss.  Just unlimited power for all your electrical needs, everything from your Tesla charging station to the 10,000 bulb Christmas display, all yours thanks to the nuclear community and its teams of physicists.

Oh sure, at first the price for your nuke chamber will be a little on the high side, but once production costs come down and demand rockets up, you’ll wonder how you ever thought that gas furnace was a reasonable way to heat your home.  Plus, a gas furnace couldn’t run the microwave, now could it?

The car of the future might not be a battery powered one.  The car of the future will be a Fusion fueled beast, zero to 60 in one second.  What’s under the hood?  Check it out, no more gas guzzling engines, just the hum of lasers squeezing hydrogen into pure raw unlimited power, buddy.  How cool is that?  Tesla, go suck on a lithium ion battery.

The secrets of the Atom are ours now and the future’s so bright we’ll all need shades. The world is saved, the planet should cool right back down, all is well in our universe.  Thank the Tech Boyz once again. Science, a powerful tool.  Now if we can just figure out that cure for the common Covid.

It’s encouraging to know that the start of this new year of 2023, major issues are being raised by my members of Congress.  For the past year the GOP has pounded their fists of fury over immigration and inflation, the big I’s.  So when they finally gained control of the House, you might expect legislation to be advanced on those two hot button fronts, plenty of time the last couple of years to plan for policy directives.

And well they might have, my friend, if not for more pressing, far more urgent priorities the American people need addressed first.  Gas.  No, not gasoline and its high price.  Natural gas.  Propane.  The gas used in stoves to cook your eggs.  Rumor started spreading that the government was considering incentives to move our household chefs from their gas stoves to electric ones, the reasoning having something to do with eventually transitioning to alternative energy sources.  The Republicans cried foul, claimed it was more government meddling in our lives and then passed resolutions banning abortions, which, apparently, is not meddling in our lives.

I have a gas stove, full disclosure.  I like the thing.  I’ve had electric stoves too and I liked those.  And just so I’m completely transparent, we’ve still got a wood kitchen stove.  They all work fine.  They all boil water for tempests like this in a teapot.  I could stand outside on my porch and rant and rave about the government wanting to force my neighbors to stop using wood stoves, something the government mandates during warm air inversions.  But something in that just doesn’t ring true, like I’m manufacturing outrage for a non-existent problem in order to camouflage that I’m maybe moving my property line into my neighbor’s woods.  The neighbors probably don’t mind a little extra soot in their air.

This is the political climate of 2023.  Hot stove issues about insignificant problems.  Today it’s gas ovens, tomorrow it’s candles.  Either way we can light up social media.  Plenty of heat to warm our houses.

Maybe you’ve already heard about the company that you can hire to call airlines, airbnb’s, car rental companies, insurance firms or just about any corporation that has a customer so-called service which will put you on hold until you’re ready for assisted living.  The corporations where you just give up and go away.  Now you can let white privileged women do your complaining, pitbulls of the grievance, gals who refuse to take no for an answer from some garbled English speaker in a call site somewhere in Mumbai, relentless pursuers of refunds who will out-wait the delay tactics of even the most recalcitrant of cable TV providers.  Patience is not their virtue.  They want to speak to your supervisor and they want to speak to him right now! Or else!

For a small fee you can put these attack dogs onto whatever dirtbag company refuses to make good on their overcharge, their no refund policy, their hidden fees, their whatevers.  They’re willing to wait on hold for hours listening to mind stultifying elevator music and the every 30 second message that their operators are currently busy but your call is important to them so please stay on the line.  You have a life to live and holding for hours isn’t part of that plan.  But Karen doesn’t mind.  Karen will wait until Armageddon.  She’ll wait two days after Armageddon if that’s what it takes.  Karen is relentless and privileged and white and channels your anger and outrage at being manipulated by uncaring corporate greedheads who will wish they’d never answered a customer service call with her chewing her way past supervisor after supervisor until she finally, inevitably, reaches some vice president of god only knows what who figures whatever this woman wants is far less valuable than the time he has to spend holding his phone a foot away from his ear.

If I were a customer service V.P. for Southwest Airlines right now, I’d be sweating bullets.  Capitulate now, buddy!  Karen is going to eat you for breakfast.

You got to give this Santos dude credit.  Here’s a man (maybe) who created himself out of whole cloth.  Or hole cloth.  Or … well, you know what I mean.  He wrote himself into existence, created an entirely fictitious George Santos, maybe gay, maybe an entrepreneur, possibly Jew-ish, definitely not anyone to be found on a google search and pretty obviously, no one out there in New York bothered to look him up.  He did this, mind you, in a world of surveillance, google searches, ran on his fake resume, used a fake operative to solicit funds from backers of real politicians and ran a political campaign devoid of facts.

And won!  Was it embarrassing for the party that nominated him, vetted him, supported him and now has seated him in the U.S. House of Representatives?  Not really, they got over it pretty quick.  Mendacity is not a fault for these folks, it’s an art.  And George Santos, if that’s really his name, probably should get named to head the investigative committee looking into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  Or the committee to look into those Jew-ish lasers in space that keep starting fires out there in California.

Oh sure, there are folks, woke types, snowflake people, who want George to confess, admit he did a little more than exaggerate the resume, ask for forgiveness and then step out of office.  Course, that might assume quite a few others should do the same.  Which, unless you live under a rock somewhere in East Texas, ain’t gonna happen.  And George will get to represent his district in the meantime.

I look at the guy, a supposedly gay Republican, Jew-ish, face as unlined and unworried as a Ken doll, and I have to wonder if he’s actually a human being.  Not that I want to start another conspiracy theory based on unfounded and unprovable suppositions, but c’mon, doesn’t it make sense that this man is not a man, but an android, created for the sole purpose of embarrassing the political system, just another wrench in the gears, one more black mark against the System.  If a non- human can be elected, what kind of democracy is this?  And who else is sitting in high office, more artificial Senators and Representatives?  Who can we trust?  Go ahead and set up another investigative committee, but seriously, you think Jim Jordan is one of us?  Cause I sure don’t.  Or Greene or Gaetz or Boebert or…. See what I mean?  This isn’t a Congress, it’s an Artificial Intelligence lab filled with defective attempts to create simulated homo sapiens.  If you aren’t afraid now, you will be very soon….

It took the GOP a week and about 15 shots to finally approve Kevin McCarthy as their leader. He had to make some major concessions to the far right extremists before folks like Gaetz and Boebert would cast a vote for the too-middle-of-the-road radical as Speaker, same guy who crawled on his belly down to Mar-a-Lago after suggesting the January 6^th insurrection made Trump unfit to be President one minute longer, another Profile in Cowardice for the historians to parse.  The Grand Old Party is now the Fun New Party of the Jim Jordans and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes whose sole purpose will be to conduct congressional investigations into the FBI, the IRS and Hunter Biden’s laptop.  Policy?  Trust me, they don’t need no stinking policies.

Welcome to the New Year.  I don’t make many resolutions after too many years of busted ones, but I was hoping to make 2023 a year with a lot less political shenanigans, not that I have much to say about it other than follow the comedy in the daily funnies.  Can you say Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi a few more times?  And please don’t tell me you’re worried about the debt ceiling or a default on U.S. loans when we need to investigate those folks who had the temerity to investigate the Jan. 6^th uprising when we all know the President had nothing to do with the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers or the search for phony electors to keep the Bad Biden Man out of office.  No, let’s cast more doubt and more dirt on the intelligence departments.

And did I mention the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  Hunter Hunter Hunter! Get used to that battlecry or bottleneck or whatever you want to call it, you’ll be hearing it daily soon.  If nothing else, it should keep our minds off the fact that nothing much but investigations is going to happen in this Congress.  Resolutions?  What would be the point?