[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/audio-plumbing-procrastination1.mp3[/podcast]audio — plumbing procrastination
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So I had a leak in my shack’s only working faucet, a drip I couldn’t stop by twisting as hard as I possibly could without breaking off the rusty handle. Big Deal, I decided, I could live with a dribble or three, the motto of a seasoned procrastinator, a truly lazy man, a complete South Ender. Never fix today what you can repair tomorrow. And, if you can follow the inescapable logic of this maxim, tomorrow is ALWAYS later on. NOT today. Calculus, for you math majors, is built on this notion. In other words, the South End is beyond most of our comprehensions.
Drip drip drip, day after day, and tomorrow never quite arriving….. Of course, though, the Piper finally does arrive. Sure as sunset follows sunrise. Yesterday — and oh yeah, yesterdays pile up — I came down to find the sink full. Slopping water on to the floor. Great. Just great.
I grabbed my trusty plunger, gave it a few robust shoves and voila, down she gurgled. Next day, I repeated the process. And the next. And … well, all those tomorrows were showing up with teeth and claws and I suppose I could’ve continued until the shack itself rotted under its own sheer entropic weight and collapsed into the waiting nettles, sparing me my Sisyphean ordeal. But then the toilet finally wouldn’t flush. This, fair reader, is what Plumbing Hell looks like: dominoes all leading to further breakage, more repairs, endless hardware trips, gnashing of teeth, busted knuckles, demented curses, fear and finally loathing…. The Gods of Plumbing are cruel and implacable. They do not care one spigot about your puny plight.
I am now three days into this. My back porch deck has been deconstructed. A hole has been dug large enough to bury King Kong in. Cedar roots the size of Kong’s leg have been chopped and mangled and removed. A mountain of dirt is rising like Babel in the backyard. A cast iron pipe has been located. It oozes black stinking slime a drip at a time through a tangled mat of roots and dirt and … let me spare you the rest. My back is aching and my wrists feel nearly broken as the pipe 5 feet down in the trench.
We take our indoor plumbing for granted, I guess. But I’m seriously considering a return to simpler, more agrarian times. I’m talking, of course, Outhouse. No pipes, no plumbing, no plugged drains. Course, there is that problem of what to do when it fills up. But, as you know, that is a problem for tomorrow….
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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/audio-vacation-planning.mp3[/podcast]audio —vacation planning
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When we go off on our occasional vacations, we pack up most everything we own and then, either in Stanwoodopolis or out by the freeway, we go right or left, north or south, then head where our noses point us. I guess some folks would say we’re Planning Averse. And really, I admit it, we are. This trip, however, we threw a dart beforehand and hit British Columbia’s east side. So we looked at the map and picked a place called Winlaw high above the Washington/Idaho border. Folks asked what was there we were interested in and we said we’ll have to tell you when we get back.
I got friends where half the fun is planning the trip, getting reservations, collecting guidebooks, studying the geography and geology of the place they’re going, building up the excitement to fever pitch months before they go. If they have time, they learn a bit of the native language; you know, Eastern Montanan or Boston brogue, Canadian backwoods, eh? Obviously, that is not our style. And okay, for the record, we’ve gone down some bad roads, although I won’t go so far as to say they made for a bad vacation. A vacation to us is a get-away. To anywhere, any way, any time. It isn’t home. It isn’t routine. It isn’t scheduled. It’s a surprise every day. It’s somewhere ELSE, not just physically, but mentally. Why on earth would we want to plan it, review it, fact check it, practice it, create expectations and then go repeat it all. Probably be disappointed if it wasn’t all that we thought it would be. Or bored if it was. Let’s just go home. Practically seen it and done it thirteen times already.
Our traveling, I think, is the detour to all that. Turn off the highway and try the dirt road. Sure the tires might go flat, but we got a spare. Usually. If nothing else, we get more interesting stories to tell. And the places we go aren’t half as crowded as Disneyland or some disease plagued cruise boat. At least not yet ….
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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/audio-immigration.mp3[/podcast]audio — immigration
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I know most of you are worried about this immigration issue as much as I am. The state built a new bridge onto the island and we might as well have put a digital signboard overhead scrolling day and night: BRING US YOUR HUDDLED MASSES. Now they’re raising the roadbed and building another bridge just westward, probably a drawbridge for the newcomer’s boats to pass underneath.
There’s no guard station, no visa checks, no customs for regulating the flow of goods and contraband. The border is wide open and all those yearning to breathe free are rolling in like radioactive tsunami debris. Homeland Security is nowhere to be seen. Already it may be too late. The barn door’s been open a bit too long. They come here with their odd customs and cuisines. They live in enclaves with their own kind. And little by little they grow in population until eventually they’ll outnumber us. Up north it’s already happening. They got gates and they got walls. They got private streets and private security services. Now it’s US who are kept on the outside.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: we’re ALL immigrants really. Or maybe you’re one of those who figure we NEED folks to do the chores we won’t stoop to doing any more. But these newcomers aren’t working. They’re retired. They check their stocks and bonds half the livelong day. They sail in their yachts or vacation in their 40 foot travel trailers. They have no interest in our way of life other than to hire US for yardwork or appliance repair or vehicle maintenance. Oh, sure, they’re superficially friendly. But use the service entrance, will ya? And take yer shoes off, we just had the new hardwood floor laid.
I’m not saying we should close the bridge. I’m just saying let’s get a quota on these immigrants. One dot.com millionaire a year maybe and nobody who has more money than the rest of the South End combined. We got a culture worth preserving here. Let’s don’t dilute it with cold hard cash. That’s not the South End Way.
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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/audio-fact-checking.mp3[/podcast]audio — fact checking
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Now I shouldn’t have to tell you folks out there that these stories I tell here are really, at most, half truths. As a certifiable Half Wit, I’m not required to offer up the usual admonition that The People and Events Depicted Here Are Not Based on Any Person Living or Dead or Returned as Zombie or a Zumba. The opinions and viewpoints expressed here are not those of the editorial board or anyone else with one ounce of common sense or the least bit of sobriety. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
But … I have learned that more than a few of you out there are Literalists. A literalist is not a political viewpoint so don’t get hot under the collar right off if I call you one. A Literalist is a person who believes what they read as absolute gospel. They do not dream yahoos like myself would look at the world satirically. Not burdened with ones themselves, they might not realize some people have metastasized funny bones instead of the more normal cortical grey matter. Guyz like me not only don’t write the truth, we don’t believe in truth. We’re just here to deliver the punch lines. Fox News understands this explicitly.
I make posters for the South End String Band and warp reality using a computer program called PhotoShop. The fun, of course, is that a lot of folks still believe what they see, same as what they read. Magic works exactly the same way. We want to believe what our 2 eyes are telling us is real.
Get over it! Fair warning. You live among jokesters, pranksters, con artists, politicians and the pirates of reality. Even art itself is a kind of subterfuge. Artifice, right? Playing around with your comfortable world, pulling out foundation supports one at a time until your house is floating on the air of imagination, reality becomes untethered and everything is possible. I offer this not in the way of apology, but as a small caution. Read these at your own risk! On the South End, at least my end, we don’t take much of anything at face value. Or the other anatomical end either.
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