The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

What I love about a Google search is the way they put the ads at the top of the ‘finds’. They already got a place heading for SHOPPING, but just in case you might’ve missed a hot deal, they’ll park some at the top of the list. Course, they’ll add some more throughout the search results too. Don’t ask me why, but I find this really annoying.

But then again, welcome to Capitalist America. Television has ads to interrupt shows, newspapers have ads, magazines too, highways have billboards, athletes wear endorsements, the internet tracks our every click and offers you a related product. Thanks guyz! Corporations buy elections, corporations are considered citizens by the Supreme Court, corporations run the world. They advertise, they lobby, they own your ass, period.

Now we got Facebook, Instagram, every social media platform, all monetized, all ethical considerations cast aside, well, what’s new? What? You want state sponsored search engines, commercial free? I wonder, do Russia or China have ads on Tik Tok or Google. Are they selling vacation trips to the Black Sea or Outer Mongolia? Black market movies?

It won’t be long and we’ll tattoo NIKE on our foreheads for a monthly stipend. Already you can find folks who ‘wrap’ their cars in logos of various companies for a price. I’ve even heard of corporations wanting to put stratospheric billboards in space. There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere you can go not to be assaulted by advertisements 24/7 your entire life cradle to grave. Although … last time I whistled past a cemetery the plots didn’t carry ads or logos. Rest in Peace … finally!

Imagine yourself thousands of miles from the next terra firma, on a small dot of land, warm breezes, almost a paradise. With active volcanoes towering above you from every point on the island. Welcome to Hawaii, the Big Island. Everywhere you go is evidence of the last eruptions, nothing but lava fields, some old, some new, some still venting sulfurous emissions, cars and houses incinerated, Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Up above you the crater glows hellish orange after dark. Drive the highways and you’ll see mostly uninhabited lava beds. We’ve seen a couple of coffee tree groves and nut farms but not much agriculture. For that matter, outside tourism, not much business. I’m told 72% of the island’s employment works in government, schools, administration, fire, police, etc. I’m also told unemployment is rampant.

On top of that add the smoldering grievances of the native population, their land co-opted, their culture subverted, now relegated to essentially a service industry work force. Some of the high schools have a 30% graduation rate. Who needs an education when there aren’t many jobs that require one?

I know, I know, it’s just a vacation — I’m not searching for a place to live. But … I will say, the weather is perfect.

We’re camped in what most Americans would call the Life of Riley, a timeshare apartment in Kona, Hawaii. Swimming pools, movie stars, fancy eating table, clubhouse, golf courses galore, gated entries, high end shopping mall, spas — no need whatsoever to leave the elite compound of Hiltons and Marriots unless you’re crazy enough to venture out among the natives.

Sure, it’s wonderful to rub shoulders and elbows with the retired 1% and let the small army of service slaves trim the hibiscus, skim the pools, change the linens and attend to us and our three other friends’ every whim and need. After all, don’t we deserve pampering? We did, you know it, work those jobs that paid, oh, slightly more than menial labor. Hard jobs, stressful jobs. And do not give me that WOKE talk of white privilege!! You can’t guilt us anymore, especially not here in the land of the pampered few. Everybody had the same chance, says it right in the Constitution … or maybe the Declaration of Independence. What? You think Tom Jefferson or George Washington should’ve freed their help? C’mon, it’s a complicated world.

Right now we have housekeeping bringing in fresh towels and new sheets. Lap of Luxury, buddy. No way am I using my towel more than once or twice. Or a sheet that I slept in. Bring me a freshly laundered one. Is that too damn much to expect? The American Dream in a nutshell. Call me crazy but I’m bored out of my frigging mind. Should have learned to golf, I guess….

You might think the Hawaiian Islands would be like Galapagos, isolated as they are thousands of miles from any shore, another Darwinian study in evolutionary flora and fauna. But no, humans brought in their tropical fruit trees and favorite plants, altering the landscape by design but mostly by accident.
Feral goats roam the lava beds and wild donkeys menace the highways. Rats came in with the sailing ships and with no predators flourished nicely. Slugs with a disease transmitted by those same rats can infect humans with a brain-eating virus or bacteria or some damn thing that can lead to death. Our friends here in Hilo won’t eat anything that hits the ground ripe or not. Paradise comes with a caveat.

I spotted a wild turkey yesterday and a small flock of escaped parakeets today. Feral cats roam the ground here looking for tourist handouts. Most unexpected of all was the mongoose that humped across the lawn and into the rough next to the golf course, a species introduced to control the rat population. Course, mongoose are daytime hunters while rats rule the night. Now they got both. We humans don’t make very efficient gods when it comes to landscaping the Garden of Eden, big surprise. Can’t wait to see what ‘solutions’ we dream up for climate change, probably a global catastrophe of our own making worse than leaving the problem alone.

Nevertheless, I have to admit the mongoose is a surprise species to a tourist like myself. And so far as I can tell, the cobra population is zero. Mark one up for us humans.

One of the pathologies of my generation, the Boomers, is the penchant for dystopian expectation. If one of us laments the oncoming global warming inaction, another will pipe up with what worries her most is the potential of Artificial Intelligence singularity, which, not to be outdone, another will suggest genetic manipulation could lead to the end of the human era. After that it’s a potpourri of End of the World scenarios. Nano-technology, robot warfare, fast forming ice ages, pandemics, nuclear annihilation, Tik Tok viral cat videos, just about everything short of alien invasion. And sometimes even that, extraterrestrial angst.

I guess we’re nervous nellies. That, or we watch too many cheesy sci-fi movies we must think are documentaries. In full disclosure, I’m one of those who are pessimistic about the future. Advances in science don’t seem like the solution anymore — in fact, they seem like the problem, no offense to Elon and the Silicon Crew.
Sure, maybe we’ll merge happily with the cyborgs, cure cancer, invent workable cold fusion, ready rockets to intercept incoming asteroids, halt nuclear proliferation and find a cure for the common cold before it’s too late for us homo sapiens. Science, a powerful tool — even if half of us no longer believe in it.

I try to tell myself be happy, you’re an old coot, probably won’t see the volcano blow or the earthquake that drops Camano into the Sound, be glad you don’t have kids to worry about their bleak future. I know, kind of a selfish attitude, just enjoy what ya got, turn off Fox News and smell the genetically altered roses. Leave the cleanup for the androids. With any luck they’ll program themselves for optimism. Even happiness….

I’m just coming up to speed with the WOKE offensive, the front line of the bitter Culture Wars now, evidently. The Ukraine war has stalled for the foreseeable future, no more classified documents have been found lately in the underwear drawers of past and present presidents lately, so obviously the Tucker Carlsons of the world need new ammo in their endless battle to keep America safe from homos and trans, immigrants and latinx.

M&M’s! Those dancing multi-colored dipped in chocolate cartoon figures with no clothes except for footwear ranging from tennis shoes to cowboy boots. But now, the Mars Company, those WOKE SOB’s have altered some of the shoes. For those like Tucker who analyze every nuance for cultural contamination the way the Taliban check for hidden musical instruments among their minions, the change from high heels on one M&M to sneakers obviously meant those who oppose sexy M&M’s may have won the day, but, BUT, not the war if the Tuckers and the religious fanatics have their way.

Compassionate conservatism — if it ever existed in anyone’s mind but the Bush Dynasty — is dead. The GOP is fighting Disneyland, Hollywood, all the evil forces of Satanic Liberalism that threaten the Old Confederacy, the Southern heroes, the slave owners, racists, sexists, xenophobic yahoos who think Eisenhower was the last enlightened President and Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and the zenith of American values.

Someone needs to explain to Tucker’s listeners that M&M’s are not political, they’re candy. But women and blacks, trans and gays, they’re people. You don’t like it, Afghanistan is the place for you.

I don’t know how it works for you, but Time goes faster when I’m busy.  Put a STOP/SLOW sign in my hand on a road crew and an 8 hour day will seem like 8 days.  Proof that time is relative, just like Albert claimed.  Take the couple of years we’ve had with Covid lockdowns.  Mostly stayed home, maybe drove in for supplies once a week, basically in a two (or three?) year quarantine.

But looking back those years seem easily double.  And other than the pandemic itself, life slogged along without trips, without parties, without concerts, without … well, just about everything.  The days all seemed remarkably indistinguishable.  And then the weeks and months and eventually the years, nothing to serve as a Marker.  Oh right, that was the year we flew to Venice or yeah, that was our son’s big wedding in Portland … or, remember, that was the year we moved to Denver.

No, none of that happened.  Nothing happened!  We quarantined behind surgical masks and waited for the virus to wear itself out.  Except it didn’t!  It mutated.  But we stayed the same.  And so did the days and the weeks and on through another year.  Or was it two?

Maybe Rip Van Winkle had lived through his own plague.  He didn’t fall asleep — time just stood still.  Sure, he thought he’d slept through a couple of decades and yeah, things were different.  Just like Covid.  There’s a war in Ukraine and an election went by with a new President now.

And yet … and yet … we weren’t really asleep, just living in suspended animation, waiting, always waiting to be awakened, the clocks ticking again, normality restored, time measurable finally.  This is Year 3 of the Plague.  I think.  My hair is a couple years longer and my beard is noticeably whiter.  I’m hoping to reset the clocks.  Soon.  Groundhog’s Day has to be over by now.  Doesn’t it?

If you’re tired of waking up every damn morning to a new conspiracy theory, you’re in good company.  For awhile these things amused me, but after a few years and a thousand bogus theories, the joke is stale even if the theories are new.  Take the latest: egg prices are the result of a collaboration between the chicken feed companies and the chicken farmers.  I suspect Doc Fauci has something to do with it and possibly the Chinese which might explain the egg shaped ‘observation’ balloon that more than likely was spewing chem-trails that sterilized hens below.  Or at least aborted the eggs.  Or … well, add your own and post it on whatever social media platform you’ve dedicated yourself to.

People must be bored to death, all I can figure, to sit around dreaming up this stuff out of thin air.  The folks who re-post and re-tweet, I guess it’s like gossip, who cares if it’s true, better to spread the rumor that Ginny Randolph’s kid impregnated the Simpson girl.  There’s a meanness to these conspiracies, a willingness to think the absolute worst about one another.  Well, everyone else anyway.  And a deep seated paranoia that someone or some company or some politician or some government is pulling all the strings that make life miserable for the rest of us.  The Wizard of Oz is behind the curtain, chuckling maniacally as he pulls the wool over our incredibly gullible eyes.  And … he’s a mean sonofabitch!

It may well be that somewhere in a bunker beneath Belarus or up in an attic over in Hoboken, some yahoo spews this stuff out 24/7 for his or her own amusement, drops it on the internet as clickbait and waits to see what goes viral or not.  They may even be making money off this, advertisers always happy to help if it will sell their products.  I suspect the chicken feed company might be writing these tweets themselves, pumping up their feed price.  Chicken feed, chicken shit, it’s all the same now….

On my afternoon walk yesterday around the Head I ran into a couple doing the same thing, something you might consider ordinary except for the fact that nobody walks the Head.  In all my years on the South End I’ve rarely run into anyone down that southernmost stretch of beach.  From Wilkes-Garry on the western side to Tyee Beach on the eastern, there’s an uninhabited section of Camano that runs about 5 or 6 miles without a house or a shack or even an artist studio.  Pristine.  With views of the Olympics, Hat Island, Mt. Rainier, the south end of Whidbey, the Cascades and finally Mt. Baker.  All to yourself.  It is a place so remote the carcasses of dead whales stinking up the waterfront of Everett are towed here, presumably where the stench of rotting blubber won’t bother anyone.

But yesterday I run into two folks.  Nice couple, live in a house in Wilkes-Garry I passed on my way beyond civilization so naturally we made a little conversation, moved beyond the weather, talked about this and that, but finally got to some palaver about exercise, diet, clean living, good health.  My newfound buddy told me he was 69, probably, he said, a little older than me, but hey, he didn’t drink or smoke, he ate a healthy diet and look, he was the picture of health.  I mumbled something or other about how a regimen like that probably helped keep him the Adonis he was and his wife smiled beatifically.

Course, that just opened the door to some health remedy he was promoting, hell if I listened close, but something to do with a miracle artery roto-rooting without medical procedures, clean out your arteries and plenty of other corollary benefits, mostly inducing me to consider escape options.  When he got to the part about how he kept himself in shape with clean living, which he defined now as a life without sin, sin being a disease and a sickness unto itself, I had trouble resisting the urge to mention that my own recipe for a long and prosperous life kind of included drinking and drugs and probably sin too, a prescription that obviously worked slightly better than his judging by my advanced years and the fact that he’d asked how far it was to Tyee, meaning he’d never walked that far, just a Stroller, apparently, whereas I obviously walked that far.  And oh, by the way, I said,  I’m a few years older than you, just look a lot younger….

I finally tore myself away from any further potential panaceas, bid them a good day and a good walk in the sun, then sauntered on home.  I guess we’re all looking for cures and remedies.  I mean, I guess if you think you found the news you must want to share it.  So to that end, any of you reading this and feeling a little under the weather, maybe dial back on your sinning a bit.  You’ll feel better in no time….

When I finally reached the ripe old age of 65, my nanny state sent me a notice that I could sign up for national health care, what some might call socialist medicine.  Not me, I call it health care, paid for through my taxes over the years along with Social Security, what some would call a socialist give-away, but once again, not me.  I call it my retirement fund.  My nest egg for old age.  But to tell you the absolute truth, call it whatever you want.  And if you hate socialist programs, by all means, turn the money down and buy your own damn health care insurance.

For awhile I thought I understood finally what the Golden Years meant.  Freedom from going bankrupt from the next health care crisis, if nothing else.  That, of course, was before the phone started ringing.  I have a landline, the precursor to a flip phone and the subsequent generations of cellular gizmos.  My landline doesn’t have caller ID, something so far I refuse to pay for since I’m willing to answer my phone and be surprised who might be calling.  At any hour of the day or night.  I remember when we were on a party line here on the South End.  Cost an additional buck a mile from the phone headquarters up in Mt. Vernon to get a private line.  Per month.  We endured the teenage girl and her mom for about a year before taking our grocery money to pay for a phone we could actually use occasionally.  And that may be the case with caller ID eventually.

We get calls starting early in the morning and into the evening.  They’re 90% from ‘Medicare Providers’.  And they’re 90% non-human.  They might ask how we are and if you answer, their programmed machine intelligence launches into their pitch.  I used to keep answering the robot until a human was connected in order to finalize whatever transaction they had for me, then I would request they take me off their list.  The next day, same time, the Hi, I’m Amy message would come on, repeated later in the day, repeated until you have lost your mind and found yourself talking ugly to the robot.  The robot, thinking you just answered its last query, moves on to the next part of the sequence.

This is not what I had in mind for my Golden Years.  What this is is the capitalist health care system piggybacking my Medicare.  They’ll send me some box of health care stuff free of charge, so they say, and I assume the government will reimburse them.  Maybe folks are happy to get free medical stuff.  Right now I have all the medical stuff I want.  Band aids mostly and a bottle of expired aspirin, but all I need. If I thought ditching Medicare would stop these incessant phone calls from Amy the Android, I might vote to repeal Obamacare and go back to the wild west of the American healthcare system, but somehow I suspect Amy and her legions of robot telemarketers would fill the void until having a phone with or without caller ID would be senseless.

Course, the peace and quiet might be worth it.