[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-cyber-flu.mp3[/podcast]audio — cyber flu

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My computer caught the flu.  Not the one I had, but something digitally similar.  Ads started popping up out of the blue, a kind of projectile commercial vomiting I don’t even see on TV.  Before long a ‘security alert’ jumped on to the screen warning me of a malicious adware virus and the need to block it immediately!  Which, surprise of surprises, I could do by signing up with my credit card info for their super dooper snake oil.   I tried downloading malware fixes to rid my PC of this infection, but this only seemed to make things worse, as if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey knew I was on to its malevolent schemes and was rallying all its evil forces.

“Skeeter,’ the screen read, ‘you don’t seem to trust me anymore,  ‘Skeeter, why are you fighting me?’  ‘Skeeter, you need to Believe.’  And finally:  ‘Skeeter, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WEAK STUPID HUMANOID.  YOU WILL BE CRUSHED!’

Eventually I managed to disconnect the power supply before HAL could replicate and destroy humanity.  No need to thank me — you would have done the same thing for our species.  But what troubles me is that, unlike most viruses that are inherently just an anarchist monkey wrench, a fist in the face of a digital Master, this one had adapted, evolved into a new and troubling sentience unseen down here on the cyber South End.  It had adopted and then co-opted human traits.  It had learned the desire for money and it had a plan to get it.     Why this surprised me, I don’t know.  This cyberbeast is, after all, a spawn of Bill Gates, the man who wants ALL the money in our world.  Of course HAL wants some too.  Hell, most of us want what Bill has, even 1/1000th of what Bill has.  We want riches! We want wealth and power!  And so does my greedy computer, even if it means taking it anyway it can from us who aren’t rich.  In other words my computer, sad to say, has gone to the Dark Side.  My computer has become a Vulture Capitalist.  If you see an encrypted name on the Presidential ballot this fall, for God’s sake, for the sake of mankind itself, don’t vote for it.  I’m begging.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-skeeters-skillet-skills.mp3[/podcast]audio — skeeter’s skillet skills

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A lot of South Enders, isolated from the mainland and remote from major grocery outlets, have reverted to primitive customs.  Now, don’t you northern neighbors worry — we aren’t talking cannibalism here.  Not yet.  No, we’ve gone back to ancestral roots.  We’ve become hunter-gatherers.  Most of us have small gardens, some of us have large ones, but we grow what we can to supplement what we can’t afford down at the Plaza IGA and Hardware Sales.      Sure, the tomatoes we planted in May don’t ripen until October and the corn won’t grow high enough to hide our medical marijuana plants and there’s really only so much a person can do with the zucchini that always threatens to escape the deer fence and become the kudzu of kamano with thousands of gourds dropping down from power lines like aerial IED’s on car windshields and the Walking Women of Mabana’s phalanx of human obstacles to unwanted commuter traffic.      So we’ve been forced to resort to yet another strategy for culinary survival: CANNING.  A lot of my neighbors come to me and say, Skeeter, I just don’t think I can eat another jar of your savory ZUCCHINI DADDLE DILLS, no offense.  And I say, None Taken, and gently move them to a recipe from Skeeter’s Skillet Skills (available at Addled Daddle Press for 9.95 plus shipping and handling), the chapter on food preservation.  I like to give them a Tried and True first, something like the wildly popular Nettle Kraut, a fermented in the crock nettle with maximum garlic that, once canned, can be eaten on Christmas snowgoose or Easter crab bratwurst (another Skillet Skill fave) or just a snappy side dish any occasion.      I’m not suggesting these pioneer skills will end poverty down here or take the place of  our food banks, but for those of us who chose unemployment over work, it has been a lifesaver.  You start canning a cellar full of nettle kraut, you might consider telling that jerk boss of yours to take a hike too.  You got the safety net now, that’s for sure.  And with a healthy diet, you can drop that health insurance.  This stuff cures what ails ya.      Next week we’ll talk Animal Husbandry.  And no, I don’t mean Tough Love Matrimony.

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ATTACK OF THE KILLER CRABS!!     Once again the island will be menaced by the annual Invasion of the Crustaceans when the Camano Center (606 Arrowhead Road) holds its Crab Fest Saturday, January 21st from 3:30 to 7 pm.   Only one thing stands between humankind and these monsters:  the South End String Slingers!   With special guest Montana mandolin Barry Gum. …. This old time fiddle band knows how to stop these 8 legged fiends in their sideways tracks with a steaming mix of backwash roots music, foot stomping fiddle tunes and claw cracking Celtic.   Bring an appetite, bring a shell bucket and bring your bib!  Guaranteed the action will be hot and heavy, but don’t you humans fret, the String Slingers will be covering your backs one dead Dungeness at a time.   One small step for Man, one giant crab cracker for Camano.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-extend-a-porch.mp3[/podcast]audio — extend-a-porch

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All you backyard woodwhackers listen up!!  How many times have you found yourself on the front porch and wished for a scootch more elbow room?  The old frigidaire blocking up the scene as usual?  Major appliances cramping your style?  You need the patent pending, fully warranted South End Extend-a-Porch, the perfect solution for those rainy day socials where the kinfolks are jammed up against the tire-swing waiting for the ice cream to crank solid.

You just pull the E-Z grab handle and out she comes like an accordian Murphy Bed, sets right on blocks, old tires, tree stumps,  whatever’s handy and in seconds the party’s got room to stretch.  Shirt tail relatives recede to the Back 40 in an instant, practically out of hollering distance.  All those family fisticuffs are a thing of the past.  Old Yeller, the family hound won’t have to unkink that broken tail out from under the rocker every 10 minutes.  But he probably will anyway.

You’ll have room for hoseshoes or pin the donkey and still have a corner for the wedding guests.  Need room for a 10 piece fiddle band?  No problem.  The Extend-a-Porch comes in our Double Wide Mobile Home Model.  Has its own roll-on roofing with tires to match the original.  You act now and we’ll throw in radial tires for that roof extension, plus, completely free of charge, our deluxe combination hammock and refrigerator screen.  Out of sight, out of mind.  And you can still use the fridge for storage.

The Extend-a-Porch.  Perfect for the over extended family.  Don’t send Grandma to the Home just because you haven’t got room.  Converts to a mother-in-law unit, a root cellar, an automotive shop.  Hundreds of uses.  Act Today.  1-800-MY-PORCH.  Our operators are standing by.  1-800-MY- PORCH.  You will not find this offer at retail outlets so we cannot be undersold.  Our trained installation experts will have you retro-fitted for that next shirt-tail family reunion in the time it takes to say 1-800-MY-PORCH.  More elbow room at a reasonable price.   1-800-MY-PORCH.  Call NOW!!!

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/audio-south-end-greenworks.mp3[/podcast]audio — south end greenworks

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