The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Well, buckaroos, it’s that time once again when old Skeeter doffs his battered hat and says adios for awhile. He’s got a little business in the Dairy State, Wisconsin, maybe check out Gov. Walker’s run for the White House, maybe not. He’ll be gone a week so if you need a Skeeter fix (and I know you don’t), scroll down to the beginning of this blogsite and start over. I don’t remember writing those early entries so I suspect you won’t remember reading em either. 1500 of em, that’s about 200 a day for the time I’m gone, ought to keep you busy. And best of all, NO TEST when I return. You really want to make it interesting, run em through Fact-Check and Snopes.

I read today that between our two political parties, only one really believes in fact-checking at all. The other thinks the media lies to them, why would they believe in checking for veracity. Might just as well believe what you want, right? Easier too. Kinda time-consuming doing the verifications. Truth, really just a relative concept. We got faith based science now, faith based charter schools, faith based politics.

But Skeeter’s Diaries? The Gospel, all of it, you got my word…. Okay, not the Word, like in the Word of God, but close enough for the South End. Where Reality is slightly shifty.

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The Southendomish Casino celebrated its Grand Opening last week. The ‘Big Hearted Little Casino” advertised itself as the gambling emporium with the most generous slots in Puget Sound. Unfortunately, a typo in the Gazette brought unwanted scrutiny from the Sheriff’s department and the gambling commissioner, but the next issue’s correction cleared the air. SLOTS. Probably a lot of disappointed johns … but it IS a gambling joint, not a brothel.

Even so a small group from the Little Chapel in the Ravine, led by Pastor Paul, picketed noisily in the parking lot until Casino Security asked them to protest somewhere NOT on their private property. Trudy Hawkins and her husband Bobby lobbied to stand their ground against the Devil’s Playground, but Pastor Paul argued for setting up at the highway where their placards would be just as effective where cars turned in to the casino’s fresh blacktop entry. WOULD JESUS GAMBLE HIS PAYCHECK??? DON’T BET AGAINST HELL! An hour of marching in circles on the shoulder, Trudy needed to use a restroom and so did Wanda Jenkins, but damned if they were going to go into the casino to relieve themselves. Pastor Paul, always the mediator, reckoned they’d made their point anyway so the little band of righteous warriors broke for a potty stop. By then the Casino parking lot was crammed with their neighbors and friends hoping to cash in on generous slots and inexpensive bar specials.

The South End doesn’t have a patent on Sin, but we sure welcomed a place to house it. At least the first few days….. Generous or not, the casino always won over time, although plenty of folks happily tell me they’re lucky at the tables. The Laws of Probability don’t apply apparently, or else their bookkeeping is sloppy. I don’t think the Southendomish are going to get rich, not so far from the freeway. But I’m betting they’ll do okay even WITH the folks who never lose.

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I was listening to a Hot Talk Radio jock on the way to renew my driver’s license. I like to keep tabs on the pulse of America, see what ‘the people’ are thinking these partisan days. My commentator was apoplectic the President had recently received a 48% approval rating, proof, he said, 48% of ‘the people’ were stupid, deluded or totally brainwashed. It might look like the economy was recovering, but he knew it wasn’t and we should know too. By the time I rolled into the Dep’t of Licensing office, it was painfully obvious that the country was going down the toilet. I wondered if getting a license good for 6 more years was really worth it, but … I’d driven all this way.

A few folks were camped by the front door waiting for the place to open. A Chinese woman was studying — in Chinese, no less — a manual on road signs, rules of the road, all that stuff I’ve forgotten since my test at 16. She was maybe 65. A grandma and I struck up a conversation while we waited. She’d lost her license and needed a replacement. She was worried they’d put her through hell to get one. I said naw, probably take new photo, no big deal. She wasn’t buying that. This was a government office and government, like my DJ said, was evil.  Corrupt. Out of control. Good chance she’d be taken into a backroom, never to be seen behind the wheel of a car again. Happens all the time, you just never hear about it. Blame the media.

We walked in together, lambs to the slaughter. Took me 2 minutes at the desk, took her 2 and a half, so we met at the camera for our mugshots. “Pretty painless,” I observed.

“Except for the money,” she replied.

“How much for a lost license?” I asked and she said $54, same as mine. Turns out she renewed hers too, 6 years. “Not bad, $9 a year. About 2 Big Macs.”

“That’s a dinner I won’t get to eat every year for the next 6 years,” she groaned.

It’s a cynical time, I guess, when you complain about what’s efficient, what works, what’s cheap. I walked out whistling, too dumb to know I didn’t have it this good. I decided to listen to music on the way home.

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Techno Tim was fit to be tied and I don’t mean he’d just watched 50 Shades of Gray. We were grubbing trail, all us volunteers, at the park the county doesn’t have the money to maintain, so we do it for free. Our last county commissioner, an avowed Tea Party anti-government yahoo duly elected by us citizens, proposed selling these parks we’ve put thousands of hours into — but that’s another kettle of fish for another time. T.T. was arguing with our artist of the group, Anabelle the watercolorist who’d matter-of-factly informed him he ought to use an Apple computer, not the PC he told her he owned.

Tim’s an electrical engineer, newly retired, and he had been arguing about a quarter of a mile up the newly cleared trail back into the nettle jungle that there wasn’t much difference between an Apple and a PC. Anabelle wouldn’t buy a word of it. “It’s way friendlier,” she maintained with renewed vehemence. “I tried to use my brother’s PC and I couldn’t make heads or tails.” Tim said they were the same, just different words for the commands. “It’s not like Apple has pictures, Anabelle. It’s got the same keyboard, the same interface. Bits and bytes. You use the same programs I do. Photoshop is Photoshop. Word is Word. There’s no difference.”

Anabelle didn’t beg to differ. She insisted. “I could barely turn my brother’s PC on!” she cried and took her fury out on a salmonberry bold enough to block her way, whack whack with her machete. Tim stepped back three steps. He knew, the way we all did, he could be next on that chopping block. “What IS it with you Apple people?” he asked. “It’s like a cult. It’s like Steve Jobs handed out the Kool-Aid spiked with fairy dust. It’s just a machine, Anabelle. Not a God.”

Anabelle turned, machete glinting a primeval light through the ferns and the firs. “Ask any artist,” she said through clenched teeth. “They’re not the same. Apples are for us. Stick with your PC, see if I care, but you’d think different if you were an artist.”

Tim threw up his hands. “Okay, Anabelle, okay. Let’s agree to disagree.”

You might think we’d argue the merits of a Pulaski vs a hoe, a machete vs a weed whacker, but these are modern times on the frisky South End and only a fool argues with a True Believer. Life down here is tough enough.

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