[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-a-big-tent-valentines-day.mp3[/podcast]audio– a big tent valentines day
Hits: 164
As most of you careful readers know, political correctness down here on the partisan shores of the steamy equatorial South End is probably not one of our more valued virtues. Maybe because we’re all trapped down at this skinny dead end backwash cul-de-sac, we’ve learned — the hard way usually —- that if we want to get along without civil war, we have to disagree without resorting to a full blown arms race. And believe me, we disagree. On most everything. That’s why we all ended up down here at the end of a tilting island at the end of America on the edge of a continental shelf sliding herky-jerky under another tectonic plate.
This week the talk down at Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Boutique revolved exclusively around the passage of the same sex marriage bill. Scissors and tongues snipped and clucked, but Jolene says no blood was spilled. Ronald, her frothy new beautician, might have intentionally miscolored Mrs. Adeline’s silver perm a tad on the electric blue side when she made the comment that ‘gayness’, seemed to her, was a lifestyle choice, but mostly the banter was affable.
Rhonda Wilkins did wonder out loud if the bill’s passage meant she and her no-account husband Tom’s opposite sex marriage would be annulled now. “That’s wistful thinking,” Wanda blurted from two chairs away in the middle of a henna touch-up on the minister’s mizzus who steadfastly refused to be drawn into a curling iron showdown, and if Rhonda hadn’t been curled herself and heat-lamped into her chair, she might have stormed out, but by the end of the drying cycle she was cooled down and still unhappily married to the love of her life whose zenith of ambition was to reach retirement before cirrhosis.
So Valentine’s Day on the metrosexual South End this year promises to be a cross between Mardi Gras and a Pink St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe no parades by the Diner, but a lot of closets opened for an early spring cleaning. Believe me, the South End could always stand a little more love…. And just in case Mrs. Adeline is right, some of us should think about renewing those old marriage vows. On the outside chance there really might be a statute of limitation.
Hits: 466
Hits: 158
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-naming-rights.mp3[/podcast]audio — naming rights
Hits: 48
Now that the Sinsemilla Tsunami is rolling across the Land of the Free, Home of the Bud, some of the defenders of American Values are banning the legalization of medical marijuana. Towns from Mt. Vernon to Everett are debating the pros and cons, weighing the consequences and scrutinizing consciences. Even Smokey Point, with its perfect name for cannabis fame is balking at allowing doobie dispensaries.
Down on the green shores of the South End of Cannabis Island, we have no qualms about serving the medicinal needs of the area. After all, we’ve risked arrest and public censure doing exactly that for 50 years. We don’t like to brag, but hellfire, our pharmers, both indoors and outdoors, have provided psychic relief to the chronically unemployed, the seasonally insane and most of the serious artists of the area.
Decades of hydroponic experimentation, lighting strategies, agri-chemical balancing models, forced budding techniques, nettle cross-feritilization genetics and spiritual incantations have made South End Sinsemilla the envy of the cannabis connoisseur. From ‘One Toke Smoke’ to the ‘Green Blitz’, our varietal selections provide a complete range of pharmaceutical panacea for all your medical needs in every price category. Marital problems — try Marital Blitz. Constipation — take a couple tokes of Canna-Colonic. Insomnia — one puff of Sinsemilla Insensate should do the trick. Employment Anxiety — Welfare Wowee.
The South End Economic Development Council is fully on board with the idea that we can be the region’s Medical Miracle Mile, a lifeline to Nirvana and an emotional booster for the entire Puget Sound Basin. We’re here to offer our euphoric expertise and our agricultural acumen. Profits are merely a byproduct, of course. But hey, Smokey Point, if you aren’t going to capitalize on that name, we’d be interested in purchasing the rights. Save you any future embarrassment, if nothing else. We’re here to help.
Hits: 110
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-insta-foto-fence.mp3[/podcast]audio — insta foto fence
Hits: 111
Neighbor, do you wake up mornings, look out your window over a cup of your favorite roasted coffee and discover the suburb you left behind two short years ago has followed you here to Paradise? Does it seem like four of your next door neighbors are saluting you with their Starbuck’s coffee? At night does it look like the sky is glowing an eerie electronic blue from 17 TV’s flickering out every living room window? During the day does it seem like every retiree from here to Elger Bay is mowing his weed and feed lawn on a precision close-order drill of riding John Deeres? Do you find yourself daydreaming of a place in the country where you’re the only lucky fella in the subdivision? Friend, stop thinking the grass is gonna be greener somewhere else… You know the chemical fertilizers aren’t any more effective there.
What you need is our newly patented, completely remodeled South End Insta-Foto Fence. Installs in just minutes with household tools! The Insta-Foto Fence not only repels stray dogs and unwanted neighbor kids, the life-like realistic scenes of rural retirement will lull you back into a reverie of country contemplation.
Lay back in your reclino-lounger with your favorite adult beverage and view scenes of rural bliss. We offer a full catalogue of bucolic photo options. Maybe you want an ocean vista, waves gently rolling on to your immaculate yard. Order ‘Sleepy Shores #17’. If Pastoral Paradise (#3) is more to your taste, a panorama of cattle grazing by far off trees on a gently undulating hillside will make you want put a straw in your mouth and a lemonade on the side table. Maybe the long monsoon months of interminable winter have got you long in the mouth. Try ‘Tropical Sunset foto-fence #6’ and forget those drizzly days of the past. Prefer something more exotic? Maybe a golf course scene in Hawaii is more your style with its happy duffers driving the fairways of your own backyard. Just order ‘Pebble Beach Hole #9’ and imagine that drive between the sand bunkers hitting the green every time. Twenty images to choose from, installed with no muss, no fuss. So easy and affordably priced you’ll want to change fences often.
Instant Foto-Fence. Because you deserve more than another man’s suburbs. Now available in electric for maximum dog repellant protection. Keeps out the deer too!!!
Hits: 305
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-trim-and-a-shave.mp3[/podcast]audio — trim and a shave
Hits: 109
Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip. The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up. Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm. And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.
In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest. Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime. Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman. Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it… Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring. The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers. Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.
Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald. It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks. One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight. Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.
If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s. But I probably won’t tell the boyz…
Hits: 1270
Hits: 127