The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t stick my hand in electric sockets or lick frozen playground posts with my tongue either. Life is tough enough these days without self-inflicted torture. But I do take notice that there are plenty of folks running around with their hair on fire over Elon Musk buying the company for 50 billion bucks and some spare change, fearing, I guess, that the Tesla Man will be good to his word that the social media platform will be open to any and all whackjobs, right wingers, MAGA nuts and conspiracy theorists. Free speech, he calls it. And to some degree, it is.

But gee, somehow I feel like we passed that Rubicon years ago. Sure, Twitter kicked the President off, tired of his lies finally, but last time I looked, the guy had plenty of outlets for his Big Lie, TV and radio, the entire Republican Party. No problem getting the word out that he was not a Loser, he was a Victim, the election was stolen from him.

I remember back when news programs were required to air both sides of a story. Fair practices, I think it was called. Simpler times, I guess. Fox News arrived on the scene, calling themselves the Fair and Balanced network, implying that CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS were biased. Give the listeners what they wanted to hear, don’t worry too much about the facts. Pretty soon the talking heads were presenting the ‘news’ without much filter between opinion and old school reporting. Walter Cronkite must have rolled over in his grave and turned his head face down.

Hot talk radio rolled in, pretty much the only ‘news’ source in most of the nation beyond the urban centers, Rush Limbaugh and the brothers stirring up grievances, giving vent to the anxieties of a rural decline. Facebook and its imitators followed, not claiming to be a news source but a news source for most of its subcribers anyway, loaded with fake bots, misinformation, a veritable National Enquirer on the virtual newsstand, muddying the water between truth and fiction, alien abductions and political dirty tricks.

Free speech. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The genie is out of the lamp now and if you think you get three wishes, wise up if you think one of them will be to return to the lamp.

I hear rumors to the effect that Kool-Aid is served from 55 gallon oil drums down in the palace at Mar-a-Lago where the president-in-exile holds court. The steady stream of Republicans in more than name only drink directly from the drums, ignoring the oil slicks on the surface while Mr. Big Pants nods approvingly. Or, in a few instances, hilariously screams You’re Fired! before summoning the next contestant. All the right wing power brokers line up at the front gate, waiting their turn, terrified they might offend His Mightiness and lose an endorsement.

This is the state of politics in America. Thank god we can be diverted by the Russian onslaught of Ukraine, a war that makes Sherman’s march through Georgia look like a Boy Scout outing. Oh my, the bad bad Putin is threatening the democratic institutions of Europe! What can be done! What can be done? Or inflation, what about inflation, why doesn’t Sleepy Joe do something about inflation???

Meanwhile, in hearings, in courtrooms, in the mainstream press, His Importance is being sued, litigated, investigated and probably eventually indicted. No matter to the legions who Believe, who think the fat man behind the curtain is really Oz the Magnificent, who would vote for him a third time despite two impeachments and an endless stream of tax evasions, incitements for insurrection and plenty of testimony from his sexual abuse victims. Parse it, explain it, hypothesize, draw your own conclusions, the sad sorry truth is a goodly part of our population, our neighbors and relatives, believe the lies and mumbo-jumbo they read in Facebook.

I don’t like to say it too loud, sure don’t want to irritate the already irritated masses, but … the Deplorables are winning. The Republican Party thinks they can ride this tiger, play on their fears and their anger, and still maintain control of their agenda, whatever that is these days other than obstructionism. They forget all too soon that the mob in the Capitol January 6th was calling for Pence to be hanged. The guillotines might be coming back….

When you read in your newsfeeds that the Russian people are under the impression that the so-called war in Ukraine is really an intervention to save the Ukrainians from the Nazi government that subjugates them, you might wonder how it is, in this Information Age, how misinformed they can be. Granted, the Russians pretty much control the news outlets and if you were to say the intervention was really an invasion, well, good luck to you, Comrade, in your new home at the gulag. The internet still works, the truth is actually out there, available at the click of a computer, a little curiosity might uncover the facts.

But no, the Russians are like us, intellectually lazy, gullible as folks who send money to help Nigerian princes and altogether more interested in stories that feed their gripes and grievances. Those damn Ukrainians, discriminating against Russian speaking citizens, preventing them from rejoining the Soviet Union. One of the tenets of democracy we used to be taught in grade school was that we all have the right to express our opinion. So be it. But let’s agree that not all opinions are equal and some are undeserving of respect.

Bill Gates gave a speech the other day saying he was surprised, surprised!, that people would accuse him of creating vaccines that are dangerous and deadly. He argued that his vaccines had saved countless thousands of lives. What the ….? he wondered. You can still hear folks out there in the hinterlands of talk radio screaming for Fauci to be locked him. Or worse. If the mobs can call for the heads of people who have dedicated a goodly part of their lives and money toward helping mankind, what do you think they would do to you when they come looking for new culprits, fresh scapegoats and more targets for their rage.

Ignorance might be bliss, but not to those around the ones whose beliefs are based on mumbo jumbo and hot meat politics. Keep an eye on them, they’re arming themselves with pitchforks and AK-47’s. And one of our political parties seems to be encouraging them….

Some of the boyz down at the Marina got to talking about that Ma Day Studio Art Tour that’s been building steam since before the turn of the century, hauling traffic in for 14 years and now has expanded not just to 3 days instead of the original 2, but 2 weekends instead of 1. Before long, Cap’n Jack worried, it’ll become the Mother’s Day to Father’s Day Art Tour, an entire month of traffic backed up from the South End Diner to the Stanwoodopolis freeway exit, all those art lovers and their U-Hauls for carrying back their purchases to Bellevue, Seattle and beyond. They remember when the Tulip Festival was just a small bulb in the imagination of the growers …. before cars eventually outnumbered the flowers. And it makes em nervous.

It should! The South End Economic Development Council holds secret meetings at ReFlux Realty, scheming to sell properties to art aficionados who, in turn, will become artists themselves in the primordial paint soup of the South End, buy easels and brushes, learn raku, break glass and build stained glass panels, sculpt auto wreckage and ultimately double, triple, who knows, the size of the Tour. It’s a self-replicating Beast. And when they all begin to starve through overpopulation, they’ll still need to pay those mortgages on their dream studios. The only other ‘jobs’ here, of course, are real estate agents. So the vicious circle completes itself. More artists, more art, more wannabees, more starvation, more real estate agents, more sales, prices rise, properties subdivide, underwater mortgages swell …. and so the bubble becomes bigger than the egoes of the artists who planned this Tour back in the 90’s.

Some of the Marina layabouts wanted to stop this in its tracks before there was no turning back. Keep the missuz from going studio to studio Mother’s Day weekend. Course, the Tour was planned from the Get-Go to be their default escape from marital duties. Let Ma go traipsing through the art while they’d watch some ballgames. And now, 14 years later, they’re only starting to realize the true price of their mistake. Too late, guyz!! Way too late now!

Education? We don’t need your stinking education!

See Dick. See Dick Run. See Jane. See Jane Run. You probably remember that first reader you had. Two white kids, Dick and Jane. Heterosexuals. Last thing you’d want is for your kids to see one of those children as a minority. Or a person with a disability. Or … god forbid, a person who wasn’t a Christian. Boy, howdy, me neither! What is this country coming to when we can indoctrinate our youth with woke notions and I’m not really sure what woke means. No sir, let the Texas book companies purify our textbooks, let them do their job and for god sake, keep liberals teachers from making our kids uncomfortable teaching history that suggests this country did anything, even one single thing, wrong.

In fact, defund the schools! You heard me, do what these snowflakes want to do with the police. Our taxes are going toward paying commie pinko libtard so-called educators to indoctrinate our children. So what if the Supreme Court has declared LGBT sinners have equal rights? Doesn’t mean we have to teach it. Hard to believe they let these sodomites into a class with our own kids, no doubt for grooming future pederasts and cannibals. Shouldn’t even let the children of Democrats in a classroom with our own wholesome sons and daughters. No wonder half of us want to homeschool, about the only way we can insure our progeny aren’t propagandized … or worse!

We didn’t get racism shoved down our throats when we went to school. We didn’t have teachers who questioned the values of the greatest country in the world. In all the history of the world! No sir, we got the 3 R’s, reading, righting and racism, we turned out just fine without all the touchy-feely anti-religious crap they foist on kids these days. Stand up for parents’ rights, dammit, before they brainwash all your kids. And be sure to vote for Republicans. They love children and believe me, they don’t eat them.

My neighbor was over at the little park we caretake across the island when he saw a woman drive up to the library in the 60’s phone booth and proceed to take down the sign that hung there that read LITTLE LIBRARY. He figured she must’ve thought since the books were free, maybe the signs were too. But he decided to pull out his phone and photograph the woman as well as her license plate and car. Right, like the Island County deputies are going to track the thief down using all the information they need.

My neighbor hasn’t had much experience with the sheriff’s office. But I have. No, not what you’re thinking. I mean, okay, I’m not totally law abiding, don’t really follow the county regulations all the time, but hey, I try to do the right thing, don’t hurt anybody and hope that in the end, well, judgement won’t be too harsh. Me and the sheriff’s department, let’s just say I’ve reported a couple three sculptures stolen at this same park and about 25,000 dollars worth of a decommissioned bronze sculpture stolen down at Freedom Park at Terry’s Corner behind the also decommissioned Visitor Center we built for the Chamber of Commerce and yeah, I’m still pissed off that they rented it, the Chamber cheeseballs.

But I digress. The deputies at the sheriff’s office declined to take a report on the purloined artworks because, get this, I didn’t own the property. I said we all own the property, it’s county, same as you. They said uh-uh, no deed of ownership, no report. Trying another tack, I said I’m the contractor for the Visitor Center, how about that? And I’m the caretaker for the park. They shook their heads sadly, said it was out of their hands.

So you can imagine how likely they would take a statement about a stolen library sign worth about two bucks from some yahoo who claims he’s the librarian. In the end, however, a few days after my neighbor had collected all the evidence the FBI and a SWAT team would need, the sign shows back up, repainted and replaced neatly where it had been.

If there’s a moral to this story — and if you know me, morals always seem to be lacking, after all, I’m an artist — it’s that you should never trust your own eyes, at least sometimes anyway. But we might trust our fellow islanders. At least some of the time….

Mickey Mouse vs. Florida GOP

We all grew up with Disney. Mickey Mouse, the Mouseketeers, dead Bambi, Snow White, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo … Disney has been a part of the American landscape most of our lives. They’re mom and apple pie and unabashed wholesomeness that cloys in some of our hearts, but c’mon, give Walt some credit, he created Donald Duck and Epcot Center, Magic Mountain and Minnie. He was the ultimate capitalist cartoonist, bar none. You might think the Republican Party would celebrate him, probably revere him.

But not these days. Corporate Disney, usually averse to political anything, had the temerity to stand up for gay rights. What’s next, the Florida GOP probably wondered, support for civil rights too? These are partisan times indeed if the Republicans think Mickey Mouse is a threat to American Values. Mississippi next door is celebrating Confederate Heritage Month for crying out loud and here’s Walt and associates supporting gays and trans and probably blacks too. It’s too much! It’s an assault on all that’s holy in the gator state. Take your damn Goofy and Dumbo to a blue state, you pinko swine! Florida is for rednecks and conspiracy theorists and MAGA lovers … and home to the real President of the United States down there in Mar-a-Lago. They don’t need California liberalist propaganda at Disney World and Disney World don’t need any more tax breaks from the crackers in the Florida legislature!

This is what the culture wars have come to, a frontal assault on our collective childhoods! You call Mickey a gay loving commie, you got trouble, Mister! Right there in River City! Capitol T, Rhymes with P and stands for Prejudice. It may be time to stand up to these self-righteous bigots once and for all, I don’t care if they do have Dumbo for a governor. Don’t mess with Mickey if you know what’s good for you. And I suspect you don’t.

My name is Skeeter Daddle and I’m an art alcoholic. Stained glass art, to be specific. And now a chicken artist, to be precise. We hopeless addicts find ourselves in baffling and unpredictable predicaments, victims of the vicissitudes of economic necessities. Over the years I’ve made windows to keep neighbors from peering into clients’ bathrooms while they do their ‘business’, I’ve created art for kitchen cabinets that prevent viewing their mismatched dishware, I’ve designed murals for schools in red-leaning areas of the state that weren’t really wanted but were offered as part of a 1% for art program by our leftist government here in Washington. In other words I go where the money leads, no need to prove the adage of ‘starving artists.’

Just before the Covid plague swept the client base pretty much flat, I got a commission to do the neighbors’ barn, a series of five fairly sizeable windows that faced their new house. They seemed hesitant to ask me, assuming no doubt that Picasso wouldn’t paint the side of an outhouse if his neighbor asked, but … like I said, pride is not one of my virtues or vices. Art is art and barn art works just fine for me. And besides, most of my large scale glass murals in the realm of public art commissions were drawn on that barn’s loft floor once the hay bales were moved to the sides. It was actually an honor to do those barn windows.

So when the same neighbors’ broached the idea of another window up at the barnyard, this time for a chicken coop, you can guess, rightly, that I jumped at the opportunity. Chickens need art too, you know, and maybe you didn’t know that a happy hen is a good layer. I suggested piping in classical music, create a veritable chicken cathedral up there, get ready to corner the egg market of the South End. So I accepted the challenge, happy to focus on something other than geo-politics, inflation, pandemic paranoia and partisan warfare. I can now turn my attention to a design that will maximize egg production. And hopefully not make the goats jealous of their cackling brethren.

We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil
Fighting for our Liberty, with treasure, blood and
Toil;
And when our rights were threaten’d, the cry rose near
And far
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a Single
Star! Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern Rights, hurrah!
Hurrah! For the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a Single
Star!

It never really ends, the Civil War. The one a century and a half ago. Not the one now. Although … maybe they’re the same thing. The good Governor of the proud state of Mississippi has named April as Confederate Heritage Month, April being the month that Ft. Sumter was fired on by South Carolina and the southern states seceded from the Union. Why not celebrate it, all you proud Mississippians?

Well, you white Mississips. Not too sure what I might feel as the ancestors of the slaves you folks fought so hard to keep picking your cotton. I had a neighbor tell me recently that racism was a thing of the past. You know, like the Civil War. Black folks have the same rights and the same opportunities as we do, he declared. Racism? Doesn’t exist in 21st century America. I started to argue, then decided nothing I could possibly say, statistics I could supply, nothing would convince him or any others out there that cops pick up more percentage of blacks, banks refuse loans to more percentage of blacks, more black children die in childbirth, blacks die younger than us whiteys. I might as well argue the Jews started World War Two. People believe what their prejudice wants them to.

But declaring April Confederate Heritage Month? Have we been fighting to take down those rebel flags on their courthouses, remove those statues of their traitorous heroes, maybe even teach the history of slavery in their schools … only to have them celebrate a war that killed off one fifth of their male population? Oh no, don’t teach critical race theory, Governor, you don’t need schooling on the subject. But you could use a little common sense. And some decency wouldn’t hurt either.

Undoubtedly there are those among you who think old Skeeter is a Neanderthal, burns wood for his heat, grows a garden for his food, hunts crustaceans for fun and meals. He doesn’t have a real job, doesn’t commute, refuses to own a cellphone, drives an old truck to the dump or the store once in awhile and still writes handwritten letters. He builds most of what he needs from banjos to boats, furniture to stained glass windows, sheds to houses. If this were the 1800’s, you might think of him as a pioneer, but those times are long gone. Now he’s just an anachronism. Or so you might think.

Let me dissuade you of that quaint and unfounded notion. Old Skeeter keeps up with the times, my friend, you best believe. Just because he uses a landline and eschews social media doesn’t make him a troglodyte, no sir, he’s a sly fox, careful to evade unwanted intrusions by the authorities or reality. He pays attention to the Trends and then, when least expected, jumps ahead of the Game. I’m talking, of course, about cryptocurrencies and non fungible tokens, block chains and hyper-encryption. And because you’ve been loyal readers all these years, I’m giving you front seat to the money making opportunity of your lifetime.

CryptoDaddle. Not just another cryptocurrency but a full service monetary alternative to the outmoded cash and credit card society that is, unless you haven’t been paying attention like Skeeter has, completely primitive and obsolete. You might as well be carrying wampum in your wallets. CryptoDaddle is the investment opportunity for futuristic visionaries like yourselves, a chance to get in on the ground floor of what will be the gold standard of the 21st century. Combining NFT’s with cryptocurrency, CryptoDaddle is an amalgam of digital artworks coupled with blockchained virtual monetary instruments, an elegant and lucrative hedge for those of you worried about inflationary trends, political upheaval and an increasingly unsettled global environment. NFT artworks of each and every creation of the Skeeter Daddle oeuvre will fast become the coin of the realm, gaining in value with each secure transaction. Finally aesthetics will dictate finance. And you, my friends, have the rare opportunity to … well, without being too crass … to cash in. Don’t delay, the future is yours and so is the wealth. CryptoDaddle, far far ahead of its time. Like Skeeter hisself.