The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’m starting to realize I live in a nuthouse. Every day I wake up and the howling is louder from down the block, the crazies banging their heads and smearing god knows what on their walls, a cacophony of madness that disturbs my sleep. They think most everything is a conspiracy of some insidious sort, plots by the government, deep state master plans to control their lives, schemes by the corporations to manipulate them in evil ways. The election was a fraud, the Plague is phony, climate change is a hoax, Black Lives Matter is an insurrection, General Robert E. Lee is a true American Hero, the list never ends.

This week the Conservative Political Action Conference cheered when they were told the vaccinations for Covid hadn’t reached the percentage the current Administration had hoped for. Hurray hurray! It’s something like applauding when the fire truck gets to the apartment complex completely ablaze too late to save the occupants. Hurray! Hurray! Government employees, those fire fighters, bad, bad! They claim the government is going door-to-door encouraging you to get vaccinated. Supposedly to protect yourself and your neighbors. Oh, right. Like our government cares? What next, door-to-door gun confiscation, they ask.

Their hero, D.J. Trump, actually snuck out and got himself and his mizzus, wait for it, yup, vaccinated, jumped right to the head of the line. Didn’t want to make a public scene of it, just wanted to protect himself. When he contracted Covid, he got all the drugs and care a President is entitled to, but … god forbid he would admit that he might have died without those extras that you and I wouldn’t have access to. That’s leadership. Real leadership.

I talked yesterday to some folks from Eastern Washington. They don’t believe the Covid is real, just another form of a flu, nothing to see there. I mentioned how over 600,000 Americans had died of that form of flu, call it what you want, the Spanish Flu was nothing but a flu either. They said they didn’t believe the numbers. Forget about arguing that the numbers are probably under-reported. Nice folks, but hey, it’s hard to have a discussion or a debate when anything you say is countered with a simple I Don’t Believe That. They did mention that they made a homemade concoction of elderberry remedy in a gummy bear to ward off colds and flu for their kids. Worked too!

What do you say to that? Do you hope their children contract Covid to prove your point? Or do you run to the supplement store and buy remedies for that loud howling in your ears every morning? Money back guarantee, no doubt.

A lot of my cohorts are boiling mad about the folks who refuse to vaccinate, blaming them for the latest surge in Covid cases, hospitals filling up and kids dying of the virus. They blame them for the mask mandates that are being imposed and the shutdowns that are sure to come. When they see footage of anti-vaxxers and Proud Boys attacking journalists, they see red. When they hear the governor of South Dakota welcoming the 700,000 bikers at their yearly Sturgis rally, they go practically bonkers. If you get can calm them down for a few moments, they’ll grow apoplectic about Texas and Florida where mandates are handed down outlawing mandates, what my pals see as government intervention to prevent government intervention.

I can’t say I blame them for their outrage. I’d like to move beyond the plague, maybe turn my attention to the Afghanistan civil war, another wasted effort by the United States, trillions of dollars, lives lost, a hopeless quixotic attempt to bring democracy to a country barely out of the Stone Age and apparently happy to stay there. We never really learn, do we? Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, not quite ready for prime time, but we figure, this City on the Hill, we can bring the news to these folks even if we have to ram it down their throat. Somebody forgot to tell the powers that be these people have a civil war on their hands and nothing we do is going to change that. I mean, Duh.

They just have to fight it out, terrible as it is to watch, but nothing we do will prevent it. Course, we could always just sit back and sell them weapons, get it over with soon as possible. Twenty years in Afghanistan. Now we’ll blame the Democrats for leaving too soon. Or we’ll blame the Republicans for declaring we would be leaving (too soon). Some folks want to stay there another 20 years, some folks want to shut the door, pull the shades and pretend it never happened.

My war was Viet Nam, something about a Domino Effect, communism sweeping through Indonesia. The French gave up and their civil war kicked right back into gear. The Russians left Afghanistan and … well, here we go again. The Taliban are back, fun loving warlords that they are. Maybe Putin is itching for a sequel, but I sort of doubt it. And don’t look for Kabul Part 6 from our own Department of Defense. We took awhile, but I suspect we learned our lesson.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, my cohorts are mad as hell and they say they aren’t going to take it anymore. MAGA folks and Proud Boys are bashing in the Capitol doors, taking it to the street. I guess we got our own civil war to worry about here. Hopefully some Do-Good country won’t decide to intervene.

Sometimes, when you think you might be the only person who can save the world, you have to commit acts that you know are wrong. The surf instructor who murdered his two kids with a spear gun and left them in a ditch told police that he knew killing them was wrong, but … the fate of the world was in his hands. The kids, he had learned through visions and dreams, were going to grow into monsters that would threaten life on this planet because they had serpent DNA.

I don’t know. Maybe they did. The Lizard People, as you must have heard, are among us. Alien beings infesting our gene pool. I suppose our surf instructor might have tried one of those DNA testing sites, see if maybe the serpent DNA was really mostly Balkan or Southern Mediterranean. A buddy of mine has 1% Neanderthal. If they can detect Neanderthal DNA, for sure they could find lizard DNA. Course, the surf dude was pretty certain his kids had serpent DNA without any damn test, which, at least for me, raises the question, where did they get it? Mom sleeping with alien invaders? Or … and this is the most troubling, did they get it from him??? (Cue the creepy soundtrack.)

Qanon believers are multiplying faster than lizard genes in the Land of the No Longer Free and it might be time we thought about banning spear guns before mass spear gun killings become commonplace. These are weird times, definitely, what with Covid, bat viruses unleashed on the world, climate change, self-driving vehicles and rockets buzzing overhead with billionaire passengers. The idea that Democrats are keeping children for their sexual and culinary appetites isn’t so far-fetched in these times. Lizard People living among us? Sure, why not. They’re probably the monsters who want to vaccinate an acquiescent population, pump their DNA into the veins of the unsuspecting, then take control of the earth. Spear guns don’t kill, Lizard People kill.
Don’t wear a mask, don’t get inoculated, don’t worry, be happy. The surfers of the world may unite and save us despite ourselves. And whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not get one of those DNA tests. Just gonna ruin your day.

Don’t, whatever you do, put down on their death certificate as the cause of death, Covid. It’s just too damn embarrassing. They never believed the lies of the mainstream media, not one bit, that coronavirus was worse than the flu. Don’t put Flu down either as a cause of death. Too close to home. No, put Underlying Causes. That’s it. Underlying Causes. Their relatives will be relieved and that, after all, is what matters, no point rubbing salt into their collective wounds.

I run into folks all the time who deny the claim that over 600,000 of us red white and blue Americans died of Covid. Not true, they say. Bullshit, they say. I say what do you mean and they reply most of these victims died of, wait for it now … Underlying Causes. The Covid was just the little shove over the edge apparently, but what killed more than half a million of us was … Something Else. At this point in the conversation I usually head for the door.

Nevertheless, it’s revealing that there are places in this country where the coroner will list other causes of death rather than Covid. I suppose he could put down Stupid, but that’s nearly as embarrassing as Covid. The sad point is that after a year and a half of this pandemic, with a vaccine that would save their lives, they refuse to get an inoculation. And sadder yet is that this decision is pretty much correlated to political party affiliation. Cause of Death: Republicanism?

Thanks a lot, Fox News, for spreading the doubt among your viewers, all you commentators who got vaccinated. Cause of Death: Tucker Carlson? Or the hundreds of social media sites spreading misinformation. Cause of Death: Facebook?

I guess Underlying Causes pretty much covers all of the above. But … I would prefer to list something a little more specific, even if we avoid calling it Covid: Darwinism. Course, most of the deceased don’t believe in that either. Rest in Peace, y’all.

Down at the Diner normality is slowly returning. Well, the New Normality, I guess. After being shut down briefly for non-compliance with plague masking, the café began to adhere to the governor’s edict that masks must be worn by customer and staff alike. As soon as some of the quarantines lifted, the Diner was first in line to rip those N-95’s off their ears and breathe free once again. Eager to recoup the winter’s lost revenues, they built a makeshift beer garden out by the parking lot next to the building, fenced it off and offered tourists and residents adult beverages near the gas pumps. Even brought in music, small groups and a night of open mic.

Course, they had forgotten about checking with the Liquor Board for permits for a beer garden, or if they had checked, went ahead without them. So for a time the music by the pumps and the open mics went on hiatus until the snafu was corrected. Damn government regulations! Last week I drove up to hear what the open mic folks might have to offer, maybe catch a beer and sit in the sun. And while it’s not Margaritaville or a sunset rich view of the Puget Sound, it’s pleasant enough. Unless you happen to be sitting next to the air return for the café’s HVAC system, 95 degree breezes fluttering your hat, although, to be fair, there are a few more seats further from the desert breeze.

I lasted one cold beer, at least until the guy with the saxophone stepped up to the microphone and butchered Duke Ellington. I was in 5th grade band classes with kids who could play like this, but I’m not in 5th grade anymore and I honestly believe before you perform in public, you ought to learn to halfway play your instrument. Just saying….

Saturday night the mizzus and me went to hear a very good fiddler play old time music, solo and then with friends. It was indoors after the only rain of the summer soaked the beer garden, all very convivial for a small super spreader event, the beer was good, the place was packed. After a dozen songs or so a 30 something woman parked next to me who started yelling in my right ear GET CLOSER TO THE MICROPHONE!! or YOU NEED TO TURN UP THE AMP!! or SING LOUDER!! until finally I got up and moved away from her. She immediately charged over to ask AM I ANNOYING YOU??

Now, a bigger man, a more mature man, a man mellowed by the South End laid back lifestyle might have said, no, ma’am, I just had my right ass cheek going dead so I thought I would move to a different seating position, nothing at all to do with the new tinnitus in my right ear … but, of course, that would be a different man than myself. When she took umbrage to my telling her hell yes you’re annoying me, you’re screaming in my ear louder than the damn band, she seemed suddenly enraged for some reason. To which she spluttered and told me YOU NEED A NEW HAT!!

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a new hat, figuring it probably wouldn’t lower the volume. I started to tell her she needed a …. stopped myself, then said, aw, let’s quit here, why don’t we? When the song ended, I grabbed The mizzus from across the room and left. Good times at the diner, obviously, are back.

I got a message a few days ago from a friend’s wife that my buddy was in the hospital and not doing very well, maybe I ought to hustle down there before it was too late. So I dropped what I was doing, jumped in the jalopy and headed south to the hospital where I worked graveyard shift weekends for ten long years back in the 80’s. If you want to hop a time machine, this is one way to do it. That Pain Motel was small back when I started, had an ER with maybe 4 or 5 rooms that burned up in a fire about 1982, then had one with about 10 but now sports 70 or so. Big city hospital.

I parked in the multi-story garage, got my temperature checked at the front door, followed signage to one of the two 8 story towers that now engulf my old haunts, took an elevator up to what they euphemistically called the End of Life Wing, got my buddy’s room number at the nurses’ station and went to the end of the hall to see him. His son was coming out of his room and we introduced ourselves. He said he had to step out a few minutes, that Dad was in a coma, had been for the past two days, but go on in, he might wake up any moment. Disappointed that I got there too late to find my pal conscious, I went in and sat down. After a few long minutes where I never saw a muscle twitch or a nostril hair ruffle, I finally put my hand on his forehead to check for temperature.

Now, I’m no doctor and I don’t play one on TV, but I did work in that hospital for 10 years so when I tell you he was dead, you can be pretty sure he was. There were no monitors attached to see if it had gone flatline, but this was, after all, the End of Life Wing. I stayed awhile longer, said my piece just in case and headed out. His son was exiting the elevator as I was entering. ‘You leaving already?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, kind of a poor conversation,’ I said. ‘Stick around, he might wake up any minute.’

I’m not entirely immune to the idea of a miracle. Like I said, I worked there ten years and saw plenty of death and dying and okay, once in a blue moon someone come back to life in one of our Code Red drills in the ER. You get inured to pain, blood, horror, suffering and death working there. You see people who should have died but didn’t and you see folks who died when they shouldn’t have. My friend’s dying was no surprise, just a bit early and unannounced. I didn’t say to his kid his dad was gone and he ain’t coming back. Hope isn’t a fool’s errand, but then again, there always came a time when we stopped CPR and quit putting the paddles to the patient. The doc sometimes would ask us assembled in the room if anyone had any ideas. We never did. And no one ever said, let’s stick around, the patient might wake up any minute. Then again, the patient was never our father.

Okay, let’s stop the wishy-washy denials from the Radical Left, those poor saps who think Trump was a latter day Fuhrer bent on destroying American democracy. C’mon, the man was an exemplar of the Ayn Rand homage to capitalist captains of industry and commerce. He built the Trump Tower, after all, and it stood up to the 9-11 attack on the other towers. You think God didn’t have a hand in all of that? Of course he did! That’s why Donald J. Trump is the Chosen One!!!!

Maybe you didn’t notice the last four years or so most of the churches, the white churches anyway, supported Mr. Trump. If they didn’t believe the man was a serial porn star adulterer who cheated on his wonderful wife Melania, why would you? And they didn’t think he was a tax cheat, not for one Leviticus minute, no sir, he was doing what any of us with a few billion dollars would do, hire the best tax attorneys and take every deduction this corrupt Congress offered. When you’re rich — and everyone in America has the same opportunity to be rich — you’ll change your tune. And trust me on this, God wants you to be rich. He is, after all, on the dollar bill. So forget about trusting me, trust Him. Like Donald J. Trump, he wants you to be wealthy. And no, he doesn’t want your taxes wasted on welfare cheats, immigrants or alternative energy. Give me a break, if God wants to change the climate, there’s nothing you can do to stop that.

Anyone with half a brain knows that the End Times are upon us. You may not want to admit it, but deep down in your snowflake heart you can hear the drumbeats picking up. Global warming? That’s just the furnace of Hell getting closer. At least for you. For those of us who’ve been expecting the Second Coming, President Trump was the answer to our prayers. He moved the capital of Israel back to Jerusalem, didn’t he? Prophesies, partner, Apocalypse Now, baby!
Just like the Good Book predicted and it’s no coincidence Donald J. Trump’s favorite book was the Bible. Old and New both! Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth! Oh, he was sent here all right. To do the Lord’s bidding! You unbelievers, all you libtard politically correct crybabies, hard times are coming for you, hot times like nothing you can imagine.

No, God is a Republican. And vengeance is His, He saith. Tremble before His might, His terrible sword is coming down, His wrath will be like nothing you’ve ever witnessed and Congress will be returned to the GOP. Let it be written. Let it be done. Thank God for God!

It’s been over six months since Pelosi’s storm troopers, aka the Capitol Police, assassinated the patriot Ashli Babbitt in the midst of a quiet protest of Trump’s stolen election. Hysteria seems to have consumed the Democrats who claim the protest was a riot, or worse, an insurrection perpetrated by the President himself to prevent Congress from ratifying a fraudulent election when anyone could see for himself the citizens of this great country were merely protesting peacefully in the hallowed halls of their own legislature.

The time has come to make that day, not a day of infamy, not a shameful attack on our democracy, but quite the opposite, a day to celebrate patriotism. Bastille Day in America, a day when the populace rose up to oppose tyranny. Ashli Babbitt was a martyr to the cause, a woman who loved her country and her president, who refused to sit home while the Democrats destroyed any semblance of democratic values by ratifying a pretender to the throne, the evil Biden. A statue should be commissioned for the Capitol rotunda for all future peaceful visitors as a reminder of the price of our freedom. Let her name ring throughout history. Patriot Day. January 6th.

Oh, I know the Democrats will block the idea. They’d rather drag the American flag through the dirt with their Jan. 6 commission, hoping us citizens will be convinced the tourists who gathered peacefully outside their chambers were really revolutionaries bent on overturning a legitimate election. What a bald-faced distortion of the truth! They will try to convince us that many of the Senators and Representatives decried the President on that day, even those in his own party, even McConnell and McCarthy, but as we know, they have walked back those unfortunate accusations when the facts became clearer.

We should, as many have suggested, investigate Nancy Pelosi for failure to prepare the Capitol police for peaceful tourists minding their own business. And the thug who assassinated Ashli Babbitt when she was merely coming through the broken window of the assembly where the legislators were huddled in misguided fear should be charged with first degree murder. Democrats will try to confuse the facts by suggesting she had re-tweeted a few hours prior to her killing that Vice President Pence should resign and be tried for treason and that Chief Justice Roberts was being blackmailed in a scheme to rape and kill innocent children. Rather than investigate her claims, they would prefer to make her the villain, not the true victim.

But truth, as always, will find a way to the surface. Today is August first and President Trump has assured us he will be reinstated in the White House on this day. Let freedom ring, my fellow Americans, and what better bell to toll than the one on January 6th, the future Patriot’s Day. Keep the Dream alive. Write to Pelosi and tell her to resign and she too be tried for treason. May God have mercy on their souls!

Florida is open for business! The good governor of that state, De Santis, the man who would be President, has decreed that no masks be worn, no vaccines mandated, no schools closed, no quarantines imposed. Oh, sure, the number of hospitalizations from Covid are approaching the peak reached a year ago, but as the Governor stated to loud applause recently, ‘we will not back down!’. Instead he would choose ‘freedom over Fauci-ism’.

Fauci-ism, if you look it up in the Breitbart internet dictionary of NewSpeak, means phony science spouted by socialist medical experts. Freedom, well, it means nothing left to lose. Except maybe your life. DeSantis’ campaign is already selling koozies that say How the Hell am I Going to Drink Beer with a Mask on? And T-shirts inscribed with the admonition Don’t Fauci My Florida! You can easily imagine the anti-vaxx crowd wearing T-shirts with Don’t Salk My America. Polio to them would be no worse than the common cold. And Jonas Salk should have been locked up.

Even Disney has imposed masks on visitors indoors. Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character, but nothing like the Governor of the Great State of Florida. The bet, I guess, is that come 2024 and the Plague Hoax has passed, he can run as the brave and lonely soul who stood proudly against government overreach. Like the woman said on a radio interview this morning when asked why she refused the vaccines, “The government thinks it knows better than me. The government thinks I’m too stupid to know what’s good for me and my family.”

Well, I do too.

Let’s be honest with ourselves in this post-pandemic bubble that will no doubt be replaced with a pre-pandemic surge created by the variants and the folks who refuse to mask and refuse to vaccinate. These freedom loving, don’t-tread-on-me yahoos aren’t going to help us end this plague, no way, Jose, not when all they hear on their Facebook feeds are the fair and balanced opinions of the commentators and congressmen who think Fauci is a lying criminal, the government is a nanny state and the Covid epidemic is phony.

We’ve tried reason, we’ve tried bribery, we’ve tried appealing to their patriotism and they’ve only doubled down on their resistance to masking and to vaccinating. They aren’t going to be convinced and we’re wasting our time. Sure, some states and some cities will go back to wearing masks. The airlines will keep that rule for the foreseeable future, but they won’t be friendly skies, not with the folks who think wearing a mask is halfway to the gas chambers run by the Deep State. The federal government will require vaccinations, sure, they don’t mind injecting nano-trackers for Bill Gates who no doubt is funding most of this propaganda.

If you live in Texas, this last week 214 of you died. Florida, 360 died. California, 183. There were 258 deaths in the United States on July 19th and the number is going up. Sure, this is way below the peak of the plague so why worry just because the numbers are going up daily? If you prowl the internet you can find websites that claim the number of deaths from vaccinations in a recent week jumped up 2000 and that the total number of deaths was greater than from Covid itself. Facts don’t lie any more than guns kill. People do.

We will probably come out of this pandemic with a few less citizens, that much is true. That bothers me, but hey, it could be worse. Worse is the next creepy disease that kills in far higher numbers, some Ebola flesh eating monster that dissolves its victim in days and is more contagious than internet bullshit. The good folks among us who refuse to protect themselves or their kids or their neighbors, well, they’ve shown us what we’re up against. We’ve met the enemy and it looks like them.