The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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?

Give the man credit, the sheer creativity in his myriad excuses for why he stole or borrowed or kept or forgot about those classified documents  he had squirreled away in his Mar-a-Lago basement and in his closet is worthy of any late night comic.  He declassified them, he claims they belong to him, he needed them to write his memoirs, they were planted by the FBI, the raid was illegal, he ran out of toilet paper, the excuses are endlessly entertaining and best of all, they never seem to stop.  Today I read that he needed to keep them for his, get this, presidential library.  Give me a break, if I don’t stop laughing pretty soon I’m going to give myself an aneurysm I swear to god.

The Trump Library.  Pause a minute between guffaws and milk spewed out your nose.  The man watched TV.  That was his intellectual mode.  He didn’t read a book or daily briefing reports, he never wrote anything that didn’t need flushing shortly after, he deleted his phone calls and emails, he took a page from the mafia dons who understood these dropped crumbs quickly become incriminating evidence in future trials.  A library?  C’mon, the guy never set foot in a library in his life, I’d bet my banjo.  Sure, put a gold toilet in the center of the floor with a copy of that infamous photo where he flushed the latest memo.  Stick a plunger next to it for when the plumbing clogs with the lost history of the Donald J. Trump presidency.  Run a continuous loop of his rally speech, pretty much the same one every time and in another room play his Hannity interviews on a big screen TV.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Trump Library.  If you think it needs beefing up, well, add a room for the first lady’s modeling photos, billboard size nudes, got to be over 18 to go in there.

Okay, I’m being unfair.  The man had all those boxes of documents.  I know, they could fill a room or two.  The Love letter from Kim Jung Un could get its own room.  The note Obama left on the Oval Office desk could get another.  Maybe we need another wing, one exclusively for the Giuliani Proverbs.  But I’m kidding, the Library will be in the basement of Trump Tower.  Open sporadically, hours limited.  I wouldn’t plan a vacation around a trip there.  Take the kids to the Smithsonian instead.  Or just your local library.

What a difference a few months make in the minds of Republicans.  What a difference in a few days or even hours.  Was it my faulty memory or do I remember the grand old party screaming bloody murder about defunding cops?  The FBI conducts a legal search of Trump’s hacienda to retrieve what we are told are classified documents he refused to return, something akin to a felony if anyone but the Donald had ignored the Justice Department demands, and now the howls can be heard from sea to shining sea.  Defund the FBI!  Investigate the Department of Justice!!

What ever happened to the party of Law and Order, those proud defenders of the Constitution, those self-acclaimed patriots?  Gone, almost all gone.  Their Commander in Chief is above the law, they must feel, Untouchable.  He weathered two impeachments, he pardoned his favorite allies, he has yet to be indicted and if he is, well, time to defund the courts.  And best of all, when the party of Law and Order gets back in power, clear your calendar you G-men, you heads of the Justice Department, they’re coming for you.  How dare you investigate the Donald!  What were you thinking?  The man is above the law, get that through your partisan heads.

Donald J. Trump is going to learn the hard way that he is no longer President of the United States.  He is going to be subpoenaed, indicted, fined and probably convicted of voter fraud, conspiracy, tax fraud, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and who knows what else.  But … his day of reckoning is coming, you can take that to the bank.  And yes, 80% of the GOP will scream bloody murder, call it a witch hunt, threaten the judges and the courts and the FBI and their Democratic counterparts.  If he thinks he just brought Liz Cheney down in Wyoming, better think again, buddy.  The woman will have her revenge, you can be sure.

The FBI, those g-men from the Deep State, raided the home of the President-in-Exile awhile back.  Oh sure, they had search warrants, probably phony, no doubt printed on stationary stolen from some federal judge’s office, all to embarrass the man who might choose to run again for the office he claims repeatedly he never lost.  His followers, MAGA hats bent out of shape, and his political allies, egg slimed on their faces, screamed bloody murder, claimed the Justice Department was politicized and weaponized.  They protest too much, methinks.  DOJ asked nicely six months ago for the classified documents Trump squirreled from White House to Mar-a-Lago to be returned, something about felonious theft of public documents the National Archives were supposed to safeguard.

Maybe they knew the guy who notoriously destroyed memos, deleted emails and otherwise hid his activities from view might want to flush more classified documents down the toilet in his back bedroom.  Must have gone through their minds when nothing they said or did could convince Team Trump to turn over those boxes of missing documents, no doubt mistakenly moved, might have thought they were wedding pictures of the kids.  Probably nothing incriminating in there.

The resulting furor erupting from the Trump Universe varies from a call to Civil War to threats to investigate and ultimately hang the Attorney General and anyone else who authorized that search warrant once Republicans return to power, who cares that it is a High Bar to obtain a warrant for anyone, much less a former President of the United States.  Who cares that the Trumpster wanted to weaponize not only the Department of Justice but the military too?  Who cares that they subjected Hillary Clinton to an endless round of investigations over email servers and Benghazi?  This, though, this raid on poor innocent Donald, cannot be tolerated.

Politics, the art of the absurd.  Trump, in another legal setback, was ordered to show his tax returns.  He’ll be in New York federal court today, no doubt pleading the 5^th, but asking his followers for donations to help him fight against the endless Witch Hunt he’s being subjected to.  Write a check to the Save America Fund, he begs.  It gets increasingly harder to tell what America he and his minions are talking about.  Nothing I recognize anymore.

A buddy asked me to meet him at a local pub for a beer recently, even said he’d buy … so naturally I overcame my hesitancy for imbibing alcohol and met up with him outdoors at the tavern at Terry’s Corner.  He was with a friend and by the time I’d stood in line waiting to buy my own ale, he was joined by another friend.  Soon after I got introduced, one of our artist buddies shambled over, then another late arrival and we had a picnic table party on our hands.  It was all pleasant enough chatting it up with a few new folks and old, but finally I swilled the last of my beer, pushed up from my seat and said, ‘Boyz, I got to get on home and save a marriage.’

They protested mildly but as men of the world, they understood.  Can’t be staying out all night drinking and carousing.  After all, we’re not twenty-somethings anymore.  Yesterday my pal rolled into the shop while I was working and after some amusing palaver he asked me what I thought of the folks I’d met the other night.  Nice guys, I said.  He gave me a querulous look and I said, what?  ‘Zorba’, I finally said, ‘maybe I missed something the other night.  I left early, remember?’

‘What do you think about the idea of getting together once in awhile?  On a regular basis.’

‘A drinking society?’ I asked.  ‘No,’ he said, ‘more like a men’s club.  You know, discuss issues.  Men’s issues.’

Jeepers, creepers, the idea of sitting around bellyaching about my man problems just never entered my mind, I guess, so I said as politely and delicately as I could, hell no, life’s too short.  The drinking part sounded okay, but the rest, not so much.  I’ve been in writers’ groups, artists’ groups, music groups … and trust me, I don’t recommend them to anyone unless they have a deep seated penchant for masochism.  I used to join boards back when I thought cross pollination might bring cultural awareness to our little island, so I attended countless meetings, sometimes one a day, for over a year.  Talk talk talk and nothing ever got done.  And we didn’t even drink at those which made it all the more senseless besides a total waste of time.

Zorba must have read my mind.  ‘We could drink too, you know.  Maybe discuss age related stuff, senior issues, old timers like us.’  Oh boy, now that would be fun, you tell me your latest surgery story and I’ll tell you about my trick knee.  Misery loves company, so they say, but I don’t think it cares for guests.  ‘Count me out, man, I’m too young for that.  You old farts have at it, be something to take you away from Wheel of Fortune if nothing else.  You want to start a Woman’s Group, I might consider it, but no way some drum circle with a bunch of men.’

So I missed my golden opportunity to join a Men’s Club.  My chance to air my grievances, my white male diminished privilege, my Viagra stories and bladder issues.  Fortunately for me, I have this blogsite.  Unfortunately for you…