The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The first book I ever published, the mega-selling ‘Skeeter Daddle Diaries’, I got some advice from a friend who convinced me, against my better judgement, I needed to Step Up my promotional skills and get myself an account with Amazon. Not being real tuned into what Amazon was, I hemmed and I hawed, but eventually my buddy convinced me to at least try it, see what it would do for me and my budding literary career.

So I went Online with Amazon, filled out their complicated forms, signed their many contractual arrangements, sold off paternity rights to my firstborn children and got ready for some serious BookSelling. A couple e-mails down the road, I was informed my book was in their index, photo of the cover was up and running, even had a pithy description I’d been kind enough to offer. A day later they informed me I could send a copy to their warehouse, across the country, West Virginia maybe. One copy………..

I guessed they maybe were hedging their bets on a blockbuster best seller right off the Get-Go. That, or they were shuffling the shelves of the warehouse to make room for the Skeeter Daddle Diaries, you know, downsize the number of Da Vinci Codes and the biographies of the Kardashians and maybe the 6 week Ethiopian Weight Loss Diet books, then have me start shipping crates soon as possible.

A single book cost me about $5 to ship first class with a box, plenty of handling. With Amazon’s generous commission, minus my printing costs, I figured I would only lose 2 bucks per book. My guru buddy said once sales started up, I’d be able to send more books at a time. I figured great, maybe only lose a dollar each sale…

Show you how smart Skeeter is, I did this about half a dozen times. One book at a time. Tax write-offs every sale! Losing money isn’t all that unusual for me, being an artist and all, but what finally frosted my B-hind was when I discovered my books on their used book list, SIGNED by the author, in like new condition, for less than half my cover price even WITH shipping and handling. It was like competing with myself in a knife fight and both of us had one arm tied behind our necks.

They don’t call Amazon Amazon cause they want to be the pygmies of the corporate world. The Amazon is the biggest river on the planet and it’s filled with piranhas. They want total world domination. All these companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, they want dominion over the plants and the animals, the moon and the stars. They’re flesh-eating viruses and you better believe, they’re probably going to win.

But!! There are still those brave small furry mammals hiding under the foliage of nettles and ferns, under the radar of Amazon T-Rex and its razor-toothed velocipede companions, and who knows, maybe corporate evolution will favor those with pure hearts and good intentions….

Naw…. It’ll be like Bambi vs. Godzilla, venison toejam. Nevertheless, tonight let’s root for Bambi. And let’s give a round of applause for Kristine and Tom for inviting us all here and especially for waging the Good Fight against overwhelming odds.

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Well, Christmas on the overcast South End is gonna be a little less jolly this year. Naw, not because most of us can’t afford presents for our loved ones, what with this half decade recession keeping us in the ranks of the chrononically unemployed, but because of the news that Santa was being investigated by a grand jury on insider trading charges with MasterCard, Visa, Capitol One and American Express. Turns out old St. Nick was nicking all of us all along.

Tis the season, I guess. The media blitz for total consumer obedience is cranking up earlier than Thanksgiving now, urging us to buy buy buy whether we can afford it or not. Personally I like the car company ad that has the kids on Santa’s lap explaining to the bewildered old poop in his droopy cap and fat guy velvet suit how they want a full size pick-up truck or a fully equipped sedan. Captures perfectly the true spirit of the holiday, you ask me. Cash or credit on that? Hmm, Santa probably figured out which side his toast was buttered either right then and there or else it was the umpteenth millionth kid with the minimum wage parents wanting an X-box and a few thousand dollars of video games.

Even worse news for the soon-to-be indicted Mr. Claus and his sweatshop up in the Arctic Circle is the rumor of a class action lawsuit by his undocumented elves for withholding overtime pay and denying them sick leave. He may ultimately avoid legal sanctions and some frigid prison time if he’s got a good attorney, and you can bet he does, but the brutal publicity may take some of the shine off his squeaky clean grandfatherly image. The wolves are circling up there at the Circle and there’s little doubt the Justice Dep’t. will soon start investigating that offshore account of his, North Pole Equities, to see where the money leads. Even if it’s all perfectly legal, the spokesman for Christmas Past and Christmas Present may not get the nod come Christmas Future. The Powers That Be don’t need a cloud of guilt hanging over their pitchman and potential sales threatened by scandal.

After all, Christmas is as American as an ATM machine and the Lotto. For all the bogus controversy about the government clamping down on what might once have been a religious holiday of some sort, let’s be honest with ourselves, it IS about religion. Capitalism. Whatever else it WAS has been swept asunder under a consumer juggernaut that feeds the economy. Keep playing Bing Crosby songs at the mall and haul out the cute reindeer for a few months, most of us are so anesthetized we’d gladly go deeper into debt to shut off the saccharine insanity. This year, put an automobile under the tree. Santa’s getting 1% kickback on every credit card purchase. This year, let’s help the old guy out…. and the economy too. Fa la la la laaaawyer, as we say down here.

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I’m visiting my golf-crazed family this winter and so we’re watching the grass grow on manicured greens at the current tournament. I noticed the duffers are attired in caps and shoes, trousers and shirts, all bearing nearly as many endorsements from advertisers as a Ford Mustang at a NASCAR race. These guys are walking, putting billboards for everything from clothing lines to liquors.

What’s next? Politicians with suits endorsing detergents, ties emblazoned with corporate logos? Sure, I could lament the commercialization of the culture, but why? The battle is long lost. From TV to internet, the branding of America is a fact. Indisputable, irrevocable, irreverent and irreversible. Capitalism has won by a landslide. Corporations are legally people, freedom of speech, power of the purse, both unrestricted. I would be a fool to throw myself against this juggernaut.

Which is why I’m throwing in the towel instead and embracing total unbridled entrepreneurial enterprise. Us artists, for too long, have stayed serenely above the fray. But the time has come to … well, let’s not be squeamish any longer … the time has come to CASH IN!!

So … I’d like to announce that as of NOW, any corporations or companies or anybody with money can have their logo or product prominently placed in any and all designs of mine, tastefully of course, but big and bold, colorful or highlighted, in full view within my public glass artworks. My agents can work olut the details with your attorneys, but let the bidding begin. If the culture is indeed a reflection of our deepest aspirations, I would be an idiot not to make product placement the foremost statement of my art. Not to mention being all the poorer for not doing it. Beer logos, car brands, banking names, pop cans, cleaning products, airline slogans, cereal boxes, video gaming devices, all of them sprinkled among abstract designs can only enhance the artistic statement. Act now. I have a couple of projects on the design table, ready for your logo.

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I’m learning how to shovel snow again. Only been about 40 years since my brother and I had a client-base in Northern Wisconsin where we’d clear the neighbors’ walkways every storm. We didn’t get rich, but it was a good lesson in entrepreneurial startups, even if we never got to the stage of hiring illegal immigrants, all those frostbitten Ontarians seeking a warmer, richer life in the country where glaciers have receded, willing to work for sub-minimum wages in subzero weather.

Snowblowers are standard equipment in most garages now, as ubiquitous as John Deere lawnmowers back home here or leafblowers in Colorado or pool skimmers in Southern California. Big, loud, clanking metal wormscrews powered to push through a foot or two of fresh wet snow and hurl it up to the mountaintops of all the previous snows where, sometime near summer, the dirty iceball will finally melt into pools perfect for skeeter breeding.

I won’t be here long enough, but if I stuck it out until, oh, March, say, the action moves up, way up, past the gutters and onward to the chimney and roof ridge. Long seasons of snow build up some serious tonnage on the roofs, so yeah, we shovel those too and not just to make Santa deliveries less slippery. Nothing quite as homewrecking or heartwrenching as a cave-in of rafters giving way under a spring avalanche….

By this point you can usually walk right onto the roof, no ladder necessary. Just find the right drift on a windward side of the hacienda and stroll, shovel in hand, right into a winter’s worth of glacial accretion. Good luck, though, figuring out where to shovel it to, Nevertheless, it’s a breathtaking view up there. Ten foot tunnels connect to the street, to the garage, to the neighbors, a beautiful white ant colony of winter dwellers waiting for the Great Thaw or Global Warming or just a retirement in a trailerpark down in Tampa where you might see, in the little metal shed off the porch out back, a battered old snow shovel, scarred and bent, a relic of another era, as odd as a mastodon on a leash off the clothesline pole.

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Old Skeeter’s got to fly out to the tundras of Wisconsin this next week. Ma and Pa Daddle are getting up there in age and I need to go see them more often these days. Sure don’t want to look back and feel like these opportunities passed. I guess this is true for most everything. I  don’t want to find myself in the rocker on the porch of the Mabana Retirement Villa wishing I’d done that or wondering why I didn’t do this…. just watching the traffic out on the highway whizzing by while I’m waiting for my feedbag or the next group social hour in front of the bigscreen babysitter.

So I’m going to be basking in the warmth of the red state Heartland, talking to my folks with their twin hearing aids while Fox News is on 24/7 at a decibel level that would kill a liberal democrat. Over the years I’ve built up some pretty solid immunity, but then, you never really know, do you? Anyway, I’ll leave you some old stuff down at the bottom of the blogsite’s compost pile you can maybe scroll down to if you have the patience. I’ll turn the volume down before I go. But be forewarned: it’s going back up when I get home.

And don’t forget: I got a book reading and book signing at the Snow Goose Bookstore Friday the 13th, 7PM. Give you a fine opportunity to criticize the critic. Only fair….

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