The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you’re like me, a little oblivious to the latest trends in fashion.  My last haircut, for instance, was 2019 B.C., Before Covid, but lately I’ve gotten wind of social media sites that allow you — and I use that word hesitantly — allow you to adjust and enhance your profile image.  You want fuller lips, less chin, more nose, wider eyes, they got a program that can do that … and much much more.  You think folks wouldn’t want a virtual facelift, botox without the neurotoxins, breast enhancements or a digital youth serum, hoo boy, stand over here by me, the Nerd Geezer Club.

In the universe of selfies and eternal Facebook updates, what else would you expect?  The computer mirror reflects back our enhanced image, not quite real but then, why do we use make-up, eyeliner, lipstick, mascara and hair coloring?  We’re obsessed with our self-image and now … we can alter that image through the magic of digital plastic surgery.  And if you like that ‘look’, that new and improved you, well, there are real plastic surgeons waiting  to assist you with implants, injections, fat burning, lipo-suction and scalpels.  Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it can be yours for free on the internet or at a price in the doctor’s office.

Sure, I can be disdainful, after all, no touch up or even major surgery is going to help me at this late stage.  Too late for this old fart.  Although … I could use a haircut, maybe a little off the side and a foot off the back, color up those gray hairs, move my ears back a bit, make my eyes look wise — and while we’re at it, how about a hat that wasn’t half beat up?  Okay, how about just the hat.

Some computer programmer recently entered his digital painting in an art competition — and took first prize.  Much to the disdain and outrage of the artists who lost to that computer generated artwork.  Now, to be fair, photoshop has been competing with photography for years and any photo can be turned into a watercolor or a pencil sketch or a poster at the click of a command, then printed on canvas or watercolor paper or poster board.

This particular prize-winning painting was hyper-realistic … but had elements of classic styles that gave it a retro modern artworkiness.  Obviously the judges were impressed, if not the competition.  Get ready for the Future, y’all, it’s already here, suitable for framing.  You don’t think Artificial Intelligence will analyze the entire encyclopedia of poetry, then create a moody amalgam that will stand up to its human created peers, you been spending too much time on Instagram.  These plucky binary bibliophiles will be writing sonnets, rap songs, plays and novels before you can say Billy Shakespeare.  Paintings, music, literature, they’re boning up on styles and techniques, analyzing what we humans prefer, copying this and improving that, next thing you know they got a bestseller, a hit song, a Pulitzer Prize, the next Big Thing.

I’ve been warning my artist cronies since I got my hands on photoshop, you need to up your game, move into the future before they have a chance to copy you.  Course, they may beat us there anyway, but I say give them a run for their circuits.  Sure, it’s a losing fight, but hey, if that wasn’t your goal at the outset, maybe you picked up the wrong profession.  Probably should’ve gone into Coding, program your own computer to do your art.  Just saying …..

I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island.  The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack.  I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who became my friend too.  Ironically, I may be one of the last Owner-Builders in Island County.  I don’t think my permit was ever signed off on so I may well be the last official O-B.

I guess maybe they figured the codes got too complex for us amateur housebuilders, all those R-factors for insulation and E-glass in fenestrations and X-factors for our marriages.  Or maybe it was this:  a permit for an Owner-Builder was next to nothing, something like $50 when I got ours.  The county might’ve done the taX-factor and realized us hippies were costing them revenue.  Maybe some of us built our own palaces to save the permit expense, but I would’ve paid full freight just for the right to build my own place the way I wanted.  A few hundred bucks wasn’t gonna stop me.

I spoze we can still build our own Xanadu, nothing to stop us.  Just have to disclose that a rank amateur threw the hammer and ran the saw, flashed the windows, shingled the roof, installed the electric and plumbing and if you’re the prospective buyer, best beware!!!  The people at the county sheds told me I’d be a Total Idiot to apply for an Owner-Builder status.  Boy, he read me like a book.  A comic book, I’d bet.

By the time I got our permit, us Owner-Builders had to meet the same codes as any fly-by-night contractor, go through the same inspections, all the rigamarole as the Big Boyz.  In other words, the government here doesn’t allow for hippie shacks or slam-bang cabins.  We got to build our parents’ suburban homes.  Might explain why kids just stay with their folks now — why bother building the same damn place twice?

I love Republicans.  Seriously, who else would run candidates based solely on their complete allegiance to Trump, a con-man, a crook, a liar, a sexual predator and, famously in the words of his then Secretary of State, a f…@$%…g! moron?  Take Dr. Oz.  Please.  What better GOP MAGA candidate but a quack snake oil salesman, literally.  But better yet, take a gander at Herschel Walker running for the Senate in Georgia.  Football star, MAGA man, a poster child for Complete Idiot.  On climate change he speculated how the Chinese had moved their dirty air over here and now we would have to move it somewhere else … or something like that, who knows?  He certainly didn’t.  Addressing the Inflation Reduction Act’s provision to combat climate change by planting more trees, he asked why we would need more, got plenty already.  Why stock fish, I want to ask.  Why worry about reservoirs evaporating or aquifers going dry, got plenty of water already.  Floods in plenty of places, move it to the lowering aquifers.  Along with that dirty Chinese air.  The point is, do we need an IQ test for these candidates?  Some minimal acquaintance with reality, at least.  Sure, Trump lowered the bar pretty close to the ground, but do we have to dig trenches now?

A dumb football star for Senator, why not?  We had a reality TV star as President, a know nothing who wouldn’t bother to read briefing reports, ignorance being bliss, I guess.  Just watch his fawning Fox phony news guys and see what works for them, that’s plenty for his highness.  We’re talking grown men here, a lifetime that might have been spent looking for answers to the questions that might arise if they held the public office they seek.  But no, too much trouble, too many facts … and we know what they think of those.

We’ve grown pretty accustomed to neo-fascist candidates offered up as worthy office seekers, Qanon acolytes, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and science deniers, and yeah, it might be worth testing for neural activity, but lately the pool of political aspirants seems to be a drying puddle of flopping tadpoles hoping to evolve legs and lungs after a primary race to determine who is the whackiest of the whacky.  Alert the executives of Netflix, this is reality TV at its most entertaining. Except, of course, the joke is on us.  Plenty of trees?  Sure, but hey fellas, where’s the forest?

So you don’t like your job, probably hate your boss, think you should be paid more for all the hard work and overtime you put in, maybe your co-workers look like mindless drones these days and retirement seems a lifetime away (it is!) … but quitting isn’t an option, not when you would lose your health care and your apartment, the apartment that already costs more than you can believe.  What’s a person to do?

Well, apparently, quit in place.  Stop killing yourself.  Stop sucking up to your boss.  Refuse to take overtime.  Slow down, relax, daydream a bit, take a long lunch break, sneak a joint in the john.  It’s a brand new workplace.  The go-go years have gone gone gone, good riddance.  The company treats you like a robot, act like one.  One pace, steady and slow as she goes. Do as little as possible, same as they would do for you.  They’re no longer loyal to you employees, why be loyal to them?  This is the New Work Ethic.  Congratulations and welcome to your new cubicle.

Personally, I always believed in Quitting.  Seemed like a good strategy.  Course, apartments didn’t cost an arm and a leg back then and health insurance wasn’t in the cards.  Pensions, 401-K’s, fergettaboutit.  I was part of the gig economy decades before it had a name and by the time it did, I was self-exiled to the South End where employment was marginal to non-existent.  So I did what the rest of us layabouts did down here, worked for myself.  Sure, the boss was a jerk, but that’s the joy of self-employment, you can look him in the eye and tell him to go to hell.  Won’t affect your wages one iota.  And end of the day you can have a beer or two together, gripe about the same issues, maybe decide neither of you will work the next day.

I recommend it.  But quitting in place.  I dunno.  Seems like the days would just be interminable, slowing down, dragging feet, avoiding work.  You like that kind of job, maybe be a traffic sign holder, SLOW, STOP, for a construction company.  Hours like years, days like a lifetime.  Personally I like to work if I’m going to work, put a back into it, feel like it was worth the effort.  Time flies even when it’s not much fun.  But … don’t say you heard it from me.  And whatever you do, don’t tell my boss.

Maybe you read about the mega Inflation Reduction Act that just got signed into law, the one that addresses climate change and prescription drug prices and health care subscriptions … and gives money to fund some auditors for the IRS.  According to the social media platform Hair on Fire. com, this is nothing short of hiring Nazi accountants to raid your bank accounts, haul you in for tax fraud and probably throw you and your children into jail for non-compliance.  Just another government intrusion into your personal life and worse, your personal finances.

Now, if you’re like me, a guy near the bottom of the economic totem pole, I honestly doubt the IRS will come to my door, turn me upside down and shake the pennies and nickels from my pockets.  What I do think they’ll do is finally go after the corporate tax dodgers who use questionable deductions, shaky strategies and outright tax dodges, fully expecting no audit, no accountability and no risk for taking a shot on their tax forms.  Who wouldn’t if you had high powered CPA’s and tax lawyers on retainer who say, well, it’s worth a shot.

I’ve never understood why Joe Sixpack would be afraid of the IRS.  Buddy, the laws were written by the rich, not by the factory workers or the fast food folks, whatdja think?  Or were you thinking at all?  C’mon, Joe, the game is rigged and if you haven’t figured that out since 5^th grade, you need to get off social media and pay some attention to the alarm bells in your head. The rich don’t get richer because they follow Instagram and Tik Tok, they get rich because you do…. Wake up and smell the money, pal.  They wrote the tax laws, amigo, and they have attorneys and CPA’s and accounting firms to worm their way around the intricacies the rest of us won’t understand in a lifetime of Turbo-Tax fill-ins.

So if you read that the IRS is arming themselves with AR-15’s so they can come to your rental apartment or your trailer door to squeeze another couple bucks from your puny wages, think it through a little harder, why don’tcha?  You really think some white collar decent wage goon is going to audit you, find that math error on your 1040-EZ, probably lose money on the time spent, but report back to his supervisors that the investigation lost hundreds of dollars but hey, we put it to the guy all right, we showed him who’s boss, he won’t forget to doublecheck his additions and subtractions next year, that’s for sure!  So yeah, stop the IRS from collecting from the rich and the corporations.  You probably feel okay about funding the Defense Department  all by yourself.  Or do you think we have an army so they can subjugate you next?

Oh, and here’s something else.  They don’t need to.  You’ve already volunteered for slavery.

I got a pile of friends who claim to be envious of my so-called Lifestyle.  Get up when I want, work for myself, do what I feel like doing, live off the calendar and my wits and off the beaten path.  Who wouldn’t like that?  Unless we factor in the poverty, the hand-to-mouth, the lack of pensions or retirement.  There’s a reason hippies became extinct and it has nothing to do with an asteroid slamming Earth.

As the mizzus will gladly attest, I took this road — this choice? — because I don’t play well with others.  And certainly not managers, supervisors or most any other bosses.  I didn’t like the city.  I didn’t like most jobs.  Okay, all jobs, any jobs.  And since poverty never scared me, the Path of Least Resistance led to here, a place remote and cheap, and not surprisingly, a backwash without much opportunity for employment.

Perfect!  All I had to do was learn a few skills.  Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, truck repair, subsistence living.  Education — it never really ends.  Something they  neglect to teach most of us in school.  The School of Hard Knocks doesn’t need a post-graduate program.  Tuition’s not exactly free, but it’s reasonable.

Folks who claim to be envious of my lifestyle really aren’t.  They didn’t have the appropriate skill sets.  If they did, retirement would be easy for them, a hippie vibe with a fat income guaranteed.  Who could ask for more?  But … like I always say, it takes more than a little while to learn bohemianism.  And if you’ve spent most of your life paying for insurance policies to protect yourself from the vagaries of existence, chances are it’s too late to become a latter day beatnik.  Don’t feel bad, you’re probably the Lucky Ones.

The Flatheads were holding court at the Diner the day after the FDA approved the women’s new sex drug.  Lined up like an ad for an automobile museum, their Nashes and Oldsmobiles, Packards and Pontiacs gleamed in this summer’s endless sun.  Tork ‘The Wrench’ Anderson was musing over his Santa Fe Omelette how life was going to be nitro-charged from here on out.  “I may have to start jogging again,” he declared to the assembled geriatrics, “just to keep up with the mizzus.”

Randy, who once owned the O-Zi-Ya Body Shoppe before he sold it and retired, put down his second cup of decaf coffee and shook his head sadly.  “After my last heart attack I decided to slow down on the bedroom.  Too much stress on my ticker.”  Freddie howled from the next table.  “I bet Cindy thought her prayers were finally answered.”  Randy closed his eyes and nodded.  “I don’t think the pink pills are for her.”

Brenda breezed through the back room about then with a coffee pot.  “Whaddaya think, Brenda?” Joey asked when she poured him a refill.  “Gonna be a big run on that women’s Viagra?”  Brenda stopped, all eyes on her as if she were the Dr. Phil of the Women’s Health Movement.  “That depends, I guess.”  “On what?” Freddie asked, holding out his empty mug, big grin on his.

“If you’re hoping a little pill is gonna make you old farts look good, I got some bad news for you boys.  You’re expecting a miracle.  It’s like those cars outside there.  They’re waxed up and ready for show, but you know and I know, what’s under the hood isn’t much.”

Ralph said, “Ouch, Brenda, that’s kinda cruel.”

“Sorry,” she laughed, “but you did ask.”  She held the coffee pot up. “More octane, fellas???”

Who doesn’t love a good pandemic? Now that Covid has receded into our collective past of plagues, we’re treated to the guessing game of which disease is waiting in the wings.  Will it be monkeypox that sprints ahead or the avian flu?  How about polio, that creepy little virus from the past, emerging once again in municipal water systems? SARS? Ever heard of Langya virus?  Get ready, it’s about to go viral, at least in the news.  West Nile?  MERS?  HIV-AIDS?  E-bola scare ya?

They tell me there are more viruses on this planet than there are stars in the universe.  That’s a boatload of potential pathogens, all mutating like mad in a changing climate, most benign but it only takes one, right, to make your life a living flesh eating hell.  We all enjoy a good horror story, I guess, but lately the scares are real, end of the world kind of unhappy endings.  We’re all waiting expectantly for the Green Plague, stepchild of the Black One which killed off a goodly portion of the human inhabitants here on Earth.  You know, the planet we’re trapped on.  Bolt the doors, don the masks, immunize yerself!  The pestilence is coming, the pestilence is coming!

Out there in the jungle, here in the barnyards, down in the municipal water system, the little buggers are watching and waiting for their chance.  Maybe they’re coming in from all those rockets returning from outer space, alien bacteria and viruses and bugs, oh no!  What chance do we earthlings have against intergalactic plague?  None, I’m betting.  No N-95 hepa mask is going to save you, kiddo, not a hope in hell.  The monkeys spread it.  Bats.  Those Chinese labs.  The CIA experiments gone sideways.  Who you gonna call?  Doc Fauci?  Half the country thinks Doc Fauci made a fortune off Covid.  If you can’t trust your doctor, who can you trust?  Tucker Carlson? If you don’t believe in science, what chance do you have to survive the next pandemic?  Count on this: calling it a phony political plague won’t keep you immune.  That kind of superstition didn’t work in the Middle Ages and it won’t work for the next Black Plague.  The bugs are real.

But … on the bright side, at least the news media has something else to scare us with besides politics and war.  Lucky us.

Yesterday I got a call from a nice woman who wondered if, by chance, I would like to sell my place.  I said, yah sure, you betcha, how much you offering?  There was a small pause, no doubt surprised that she had a live one on the end of her line.  I assume 99 out of 100 hang up after a few choice obscenities, so it must be a relief to get a landowner hot to sell.  Finally she got her heart pumping again and said, ‘What price do you have in mind?’

Without hesitation I said 2 million dollars and it’s yours, lock stock and barrel.  Barrels plural, actually, but I didn’t want to screw the deal by mentioning the acres of assorted antiques, junk, used equipment, etc.  We could negotiate a price for those on the side.  Later, of course.  She paused once more, not quite as long as before, then said, ‘well, that would depend on the answers to a couple of questions.’  And then she started to ask if I owned the home outright and …

I stopped her mid-question.  ‘You already know the answers to those if you’ve done your homework so let’s just cut to the chase.  How long before we can close this deal?  Two million, it’s a steal the way the market is going.  Hang onto it a couple months, you’ll double your money.  Me, I’ll be in Rio de Janeiro with any luck, Carnival, cheap living.  Two million could probably buy a chunk of rainforest you and your consortium might be interested in logging.’

‘I think we could come to some agreement on price,’ she started over, ‘but first I need ….’  ‘Two million and a quarter, ma’am,’ I told her.  ‘Price is going up every time you ask more questions.’   Long pause…  Finally I said, ‘you really need to up your game, lady, set the hook, make the close, seal the deal.  Or were you hoping you’d get some old grandfather with dementia who’d sell the homestead for peanuts.  I just got a letter today from a gyppo logging outfit, nice stationary and everything, who would love to help me clearcut my property, get all the permits, drag in skidders and dozers, then clean up afterwards.  Nice sounding fella.  Like you.  I get a card from the local realtors showing me the house down the road that they just sold, big bucks, would I like to cash in too? ‘

The quiet sound of a dial tone greeted this last little rant.  The mizzus says just hang up on these people, but I think that’s rude.  Seems fair to poke the gator a bit.  After all, they’re going to get dinner on one of the next calls.  Not that I think I’m going to give them indigestion, but gee, I can hope, can’t I?