The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The other day I went looking for my sense of humor. I searched everywhere I could think of. I looked in all the closets, checked under the laundry, dug through cabinets and behind the sink, under the beds, in drawers I hadn’t opened in years. Nothing. It had to be here somewhere, it couldn’t have wandered off on its own. I’m sure I just put it down absent mindedly and walked off so if I retraced my steps, maybe I would run into it.

It’s been a few days and I’ve been to the studio, the shop, the woodsheds, back on the trails, down to the beach. Nothing. Not a trace, not even the shadow of a smile. It’s been raining nearly constantly lately and I’m worried I left it outside where it’s shrunk down to something small enough for the slugs to slime over, something I might not even want to find much less use again, just some icky sog of a remnant nobody would recognize.

The shortest day of the year is coming up and I really need to find that funny bone. The sun comes up about noon and starts sinking immediately, the rain drips off our clogged gutters, the storms keep blowing down trees in the back 40 and the news is too bleak to listen to anymore … at least without that lost sense of humor. I checked on E-bay to see if maybe someone had stolen mine and now was selling it, used, slight wear, free shipping. Not only didn’t I find mine, I didn’t find anyone offering a reasonable replacement.

Although, someone from Wisconsin had one for sale. “Funny bone, never used, won’t be needing it. Voted Trump. Best offer.” Bidding started at $25 with a $250 shipping charge. I noticed it had yet to get a single bid even though it had been listed since the election. The idea of an unused, nearly new sense of humor was seriously tempting. And at this point of desperation the exorbitant price was almost acceptable. But I’m going to hold out for one that’s more tried and true. That one from Wisconsin, I bet it’s dark and mean spirited. You know, if it even works. I worry that its idea of funny is to belittle and bully, then laugh out loud at the victim’s misery. Just make fun of others who are different, whose religion isn’t the same, who have a disability. I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to pay for that. At least not yet.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep looking for mine. It’s got to be here somewhere. I just worry if I don’t locate it soon, if I find it after prolonged inactivity, it’ll be like my flashlight batteries, pretty much dead. Inauguration Day is coming right up. I’m going to need to find it before then. That, or buy the one on E-bay and take my chances.

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Pulling the Wool

Sure, you’ve had two weeks to recover from the shock of this year’s presidential election debacle, two weeks to shake the hangover, two weeks to get back up and move forward … but … you still can’t get your head around it, you still want to wake up from that nightmare, you still crawl out each morning and realize, oh yeah, it’s a new day in America. The rich, surprise surprise, are going to get richer and you, yup, you know what crumbs you’ll be getting. It’s a new day, all right and it will last at least four years. Or maybe — I know you can’t say it out loud and I know you don’t want me to either — maybe this will be the rest of your life.

My brother swore an oath to go 60 days with a moratorium on talking about, commenting about or thinking about Donald J. Trump. I tried to Move On myself, took a vacation, pulled the sheet up a little higher. Most of you have too. And if I hear another yahoo tell me about the five stages of grief, believe me, they will get to pass through them in a furiously short time. I mean, shut your front door! And don’t talk to me about ditching the Electoral College!! You got more odds of emigrating to Mars than passing a constitutional amendment. We couldn’t even get the womens’ rights amendment through, fat chance of the misogynists who won with the College voting to make the next election easier for you next time. And this talk of the Electors switching their votes to Hillary for the good of the country….geez, c’mon, consult with a Realist.

Today the Green Party ponied up the money to recount Wisconsin. Check the voting machines, see if there’s a paper trail, watch for Russian hackers, look for malfeasance. God help us if there was a discrepancy in the vote counting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Trump always claimed it was rigged. Course, now he’s singing a happier tune, nothing new here since the election and his continual flip flopping. This from the man who sez it like it is.

Ever since the economic meltdown and the Great Recession, I’ve wondered why people weren’t in the streets with pitchforks. Wall Street particularly. Why the populace wasn’t up in arms crying for some justice. Why some CEO’s weren’t dragged from the High Suites and made examples of. It is the utmost irony that the beneficiary of that pent up rage was a billionaire non-politician with a potty mouth and a mean streak. The boy won, I’ll give him that, but the mob expects some swift action to alleviate their grievances. I suspect a few months into his term, they’ll realize politicians fudge the truth, they might even lie, but politicians at least know the difference. They voted this guy in with the slimmest of hopes he would shake things up based on his campaign promises. Fat chance he’ll get away with that phony baloney. Unless, of course, most of the rest of the country has pulled the sheets up higher too.

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Don’t ask me why, but every year or so I get this sudden impulse to get my hair cut. I hate getting my hair cut so about any excuse in the world not to get it cut works to dissuade me from the scissors and comb torture. My last trim was so poorly done that even after a mere six months it was driving me crazy. I avoided the bathroom mirror, I kept my hat on more than usual, I thought about taking a whack at it myself. So when I was picking up a plaque I’d ordered at Mr. T’s Trophy Shop in Mt. Vernon yesterday, I noticed a shabby building next door with the barber pole outside and walked on over. One chair. One barber. Old school before the SuperCuts and Hairmaster chains rolled in.

My new barber, a fellow named George was sitting in the half dark and I asked if he maybe had time for a haircut and he said sure, come on in, Bro, take a seat. We bantered a bit and then we got down to it, how much off, how short, behind the ears, all that barber lingo and I said I wanted a lot off, behind the ears, trimmed any way he thought worked, I didn’t much care. And I didn’t. It’s a new day in America and maybe a skinhead look would be appropriate in the Trump regime. Can’t beat em, join em. My barber George looked like he already had.

But we didn’t talk politics. Instead he launched into a story about a buddy his age, about 50, I’d guess, who had met a woman, “a ‘fine’ woman, Bro, about 30, who had a fantasy of making it with my friend in a barber chair.” The very chair I was now parked in. He said it was okay with him so long as he kept everything clean afterwards, but he had one request, he wanted the girlfriend’s panties left behind when they were finished acting out their little barberchair bucket list item.

I know, I know, you might’ve considered leaving about then, but I had made my mind up about getting my hair cut and that urge might not come again for many months, best to get this thing done right now, sex story or no sex story. “So next morning I come in,” George is saying, snipping like Trump tweeting at my locks, “and sure enough, the place is spic and span and there (he points at the table in front of us) is a pair of pink panties. My wife never comes in the shop here in the morning, but of course that morning she does and first thing she sees is that pair of panties on a bottle of hair tonic and she asks who do those belong to? I tell her they’re not hers so mind her own damn business.”

I know, I know, but it’s kind of late to be quitting mid-trim. And anyway, maybe you didn’t notice, but this is a new age in America. No more political correctness.
Those days are relegated to the same place my shorn hair will soon be deposited, the wastebasket. George snips and cuts and says, “I saw the video they made. She was fine, Bro, fine.” I said, “They filmed it?” “Oh, yeah, the whole thing. It was something. Something, Bro. I watched it twice. But later things went bad, you know, like that movie, you know the one? Where the woman won’t let go and things turn ugly? What’s that called? Fatal attraction, yeah, that’s it, fatal attraction. Turned ugly, Bro.” George shook his head sadly, handed me a mirror and asked what I thought. “Works for me,” I said, too nearsighted to see the back of my head and in no mood to care anyway.

You don’t get this kind of banter in Great Clips, let me assure you. This is barbering when barbering was a man’s world, not a salon, not a styling studio. Hunting magazines on the table, not People and Us. Playboys, not Women’s World or Good Housekeeping. Hell if I know whether I’ll ever go back, but I know this: if Donald’s making America great again, George will do just fine. Know what I mean, Bro?

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Back before Global Warming became Global Climate Change and the South End became a tropical paradise, we sometimes had early winters. Real ones. The kind with windstorms and snowstorms. Days without power! Without TV!! Without the internet!!! I know what you’re thinking and yes, suicide rates went ballistic. Those were primitive times and only the tough survived. And the terminally dumb. If nothing else, it kept the population down. WAY down.

Many a Thanksgiving was spent in the cold and dark. Us Old Timers cooked our feasts on the woodstove and dined by candlelight. I know what you’re thinking and yes, pregnancy rates skyrocketed.

There was one particular Thanksgiving we had a major blizzard, over a foot of snow, traffic in Seattle and Gomorrah stopped cold and the interstate became an icy parking lot. Stanwoodopolis seemed as remote as the North Pole to those of us who hadn’t bought Thanksgiving groceries ahead of time. Turkey Day promised to be a day of fasting, judging by the grim weather reports before the power finally failed.

But … our next door neighbors took pity and they gave us a snow goose from their freezer’s larder they’d hunted a few weeks earlier. If you want to know how the Pilgrims felt when the natives brought them a feast offering, we can tell you. That goose tasted like steak to us. That meal, with the oil lamps glowing and the world white with newfallen snow, was the one Thanksgiving we remember best.

I’m not advocating we all hunt snow goose to give to the South End Food Bank. But I do think we should all count our blessings. And even though the Hard Winters are a thing of the past for most of us, down here there are folks who still go hungry, not just on Thanksgiving, but all year long. Set a place at your heart’s table. And if you can, give more than just thanks this season.

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Back home here at Blog Central the wailing and gnashing of teeth continues non-stop, the phone keeps ringing, the e-mails are shrill and frightened, the news cycle runs its usual 24/7 with stories ramping up the national anxiety. The scare tactics of the media certainly paint a chilly winter here. Deportations, climate warming denials, deregulation, rescinding trade agreements, tossing out Roe v. Wade, Rudy Giuliani as Sec. of State??, the list goes on and on, the empire is crumbling, the center cannot hold and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There are marches in the streets of our major cities. Even the high school kids are pouring out to protest. The Trumpsters are taunting the minorities, figuring, apparently, that the country is now back in white Christian control. The Democrats are in full route, the Republicans in full battle cry. No one has told them Donald is no more a Republican than he is a Christian or a pal of the blue collar worker.

A few friends are considering emigration. For some reason not clear to me, New Zealand seems to be the favorite landing spot. Why not Canada? They’re a stone’s throw away with the added attraction of a liberal leader. Too cold maybe? I have friends who are certain their jobs will be destroyed, friends who have decided to delay having children, friends who predict the stock market will crash and a world wide Depression will follow. Last night was a Super Moon. Who knows what malevolence will follow such a portent. Who knows what a right wing Supreme Court will do. Who knows who this Donald Trump really is.

Jeez, take a pill. Take a deep breath. Take a long walk. The world as we know it is not going to end. Remember that line about shrinking government to a size we could drown in a bathtub? Well, trust me, easier to say than do. America is a big fat cruise liner. Turning it in a different direction takes awhile. Stopping it, even longer. But c’mon, we lived through Richard Nixon, the Viet Nam War, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and the Cheney mob and the Great Recession, the Iraq War and its weapons of mass destruction. And now you think it looks worse? Maybe we thought the Obama Years offered hope. Same sex marriage and gay rights. A black president. The possibility of immigration reform. Carbon footprint reduction. No more foreign wars.

Ho ho, ha ha. Presidents come and go. The real power brokers stay in town. Money talks, as a buddy told me long ago, and bullshit walks. We got a billionaire as president. Maybe we should’ve seen him coming. He says he’s not beholden to Wall Street. We believed him, I guess. Now we all get to take a walk.
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