The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Recently I was lounging with my fellow fiscal geniuses at our latest symposium at the Pilot House. Janet, our beverage management expert, had just brought our 3rd or 4th round of malt samples when Joker Jerry asked, “How ‘bout we pay in bitcoins tonight, Janet?”

Janet had a tray full of our dead soldiers and a bellyful of our smartass remarks. “Sure, Jerry, if you can tell me exactly what a bitcoin is.”

Jerry, ever the comedian, replied, “It’s cyber money, Janet. You could take my bitcoin tip today and it would be worth 10 times more week’s end.”

“That’s great, Jerry. What’s 10 times 50 cents? Probably my retirement fund, right?” Jerry muttered something sotto voce about no tip at all, but Janet was long gone and we were left to ponder cyber currency, yahoos who barely understood what president was on a bill beyond the twenty dollar bill and I sure don’t know who it is. Trump? Scrooge McDuck?

“So okay, Jerry,” Bobbie D. asked, “you’re the fiduciary whiz, what the hell is a bitcoin?”

Joe asked, “Is it a real coin you could hold in your hand or just internet Monopoly money? And how would you know what it’s worth if it’s jumping up and down like Venezuelan pesos.”

“What do you know about Venezuelan money, Joe? “ Jerry asked and Joe asked Jerry, “What do you know about bitcoins?”

“I know if you’d bought some a few months back, you’d be buying the drinks tonight.”

“And if I’d bought some a few weeks ago, I’d be drinking heavily at home.”

Billy, who sells real estate for Windy Rear Realty said it was like buying a house. “It’s an investment, that’s all. Not like you use it to buy a burger, ya know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Joe said, “that’s the point. What do you use it for?”

“Drugs,” Two Toke Tom declared. “So the Feds can’t track it.”

“None of us can track it apparently,” I mumbled, draining my $5 dollar beer, plus 8.9% tax and a bigger than usual tip for Janet. And so our seminar reached an inconclusive finale, but we will most definitely continue in-depth research and I’ll report back soon as we have a plausible answer. In the meantime trust in God and the money that tells you to.

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So this poor college student boarded her plane (name withheld under my attorney’s request) and the wicked witch of a stewardess informed her that her dear hamster wasn’t allowed to accompany her. Something bogus about not wanting rats on the jet, spreading Black Plague or frightening the other passengers. She explained to this corporate lackey that her cute little rodent wasn’t a rat, it was a hamster and furthermore, it was a ‘service animal.’

Just a few days prior a woman had been denied boarding with her service animal, a peacock. She too was quite distraught when the airline revised its policy pretty much right there in the boarding area disallowing peacocks from flying the friendly skies. Probably figured peacocks could fly by themselves with a little encouragement. The hamster, though, not going to grow wings and so, when the airline personnel barred the cute little bugger from taking its seat, the owner asked what was she supposed to do with Mickey? And was advised she could flush it in the nearest toilet.

Now … if you were the kind of fragile personality that needed a rodent for emotional support, just saying, telling you to go flush your support rat might just push you to the edge of a tall precipice. We are emotionally vulnerable people these dark days of the empire and if we need something warmer than a teddy bear or a blankey for comfort, I for one certainly understand. There are days when I can barely open up a newspaper without fearing for my sanity. Today in fact. The President the President the President. Blocking the Democrat’s answer to the Nunes memo. Defending his assistant chief of staff who, despite beating his wives, did a fine job. Or defending this abuser’s boss who knew about this months ago but also put out a statement …. Hell, it goes on and on and if I had a service animal, maybe a cute little wolverine or a school of piranhas, I might have an easier time of coping with a reality that seems to be slipping out from under me hour by hour.

And if I needed to fly someplace, maybe to a country that still held democratic values to be admirable, I’d want to take my support group with me, is that so hard to understand??? I’d keep them in a fish bowl or on a leash, whatever the jerk airline companies demanded. And don’t give me that crap about my fellow passengers complaining about wolverine bites or allergies or whatever whiney bellyaching they dream up, we all need a friend in these troubled times and I know I wouldn’t mind flying with their service animals. Might actually liven up the trip.

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76 trombones led the big parade. With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.

Aw, who doesn’t love a good parade, marching bands, twirlers, floats and banners and our boys in uniform? Women too now! And Transgenders! Followed by tanks and artillery, jets flying overhead in formation, bunker buster bombs carried on carriages two blocks long. Formation after formation of the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force. Battalions and generals and military hardware. The Commander-in-Chief looking down from the stage specially constructed for his viewing pleasure, salutes to him as thousands pass by rank and file, hail to the Chief!!

Damn the expense! If we can’t put on a good military parade once a year, what kind of cowpie country are we? Let the rest of the world cower before our display of drones and cruise missiles moving mile after mile down the banner festooned streets of D.C. Patriotism on Display!! Military Might on Display!! Who doesn’t love a good parade?? Forget that Mickey Mouse balloon stuff. Homer Simpson three blocks high. We’re talking about Fire Power, not Star Power. Save the Disney stuff for the Mummer’s or the Rose Bowl or Mardi Gras. Bring on the Bradley Fighting Machines, the 1126 Stryker, the MK19 grenade machine gun, the Black Hawk helicopters, the MK-54 torpedoes, bring it all out and let the world tremble.

Shock and awe on the streets of the USA, that’s what we need. You wonder how we won the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, well, sir, check out that hardware we’re selling to every hungry dictatorship around the globe. What’s on display here is more than Uncle Sam’s mighty muscles, it’s a runway for arms sales, pure and simple and who better to brand that than the Trumpster himself, Captain America. You need a second generation jet, we got em. You need some Surface-to-Air missiles, we’re your supplier. Just don’t resell them to terrorists. Don’t want those SAMs falling into the wrong hands like that time with the Taliban back in the cold war days when they were fighting the Soviets.

No, give me a good parade any day. Celebrate the weapons of destruction. Hell, drop a nuclear bomb out in the countryside, nothing too big, just a little show of atomic power, a warning to the enemies of liberty. Small mushroom cloud over the capitol, better than the 4th of July. Guns and God, let freedom ring. 76 trombones and a huckster Music Man, is this a great country or what?

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So I get this call just before dinner and this woman starts right in with Hi, How am I today and before I can say I’m busy here with some friends who are visiting she gushes Golly it’s good to talk to someone who wasn’t like the last person she called who was as cranky as her mother-in-law and I’m going, Holy Replay, Batlady, this is the same solicitor of two days before who had really pissed me to the gills.

Now, I could have just quietly hung up the phone. After all, I had guests who were listening in, wondering who I was talking to that it was so damn important to interrupt our conversation and usually with company I don’t answer phones, but … well, no excuses. I had violated my own directive and was guilty of abject rudeness. And the irony was we had been talking about this very solicitor a few hours earlier, me still wound up about it, and now here was my tormentor calling back with her canned little speech about her crummy mother-in-law.

Maybe you’d have lost it too. I don’t know. Maybe you’re like me, cranky as that woman’s husband’s mom. But whatever … I barged in on her pitch to save breasts, half shouting to shut her up, and said “You called me two days ago with this stupid speech and when I tried to explain why I wasn’t going to give money you hung up on me. YOU HUNG UP ON ME!” And then I told her to, let’s not mince words here, I told her to go fuck herself. Aiiii….

I know. One small rudeness doesn’t necessarily deserve another. And worse, I regretted not trying to tell her how her first call sort of put a dark blot on my day and even the next day. Silly, sure, but it did. And how maybe in the future she could respect people who for whatever reason didn’t put a check in the mail by not hanging up on them when the money wasn’t forthcoming. Sure, all those things you think of … later.

So now I’m remorseful, feeling bad once again, a victim of myself, another Trump banshee flinging his own feces against the wall. Does it mean I should get Caller ID? Do I need anger management mediation? Should I quit answering phone calls, stop watching the evening news, cancel my subscriptions to the paper?? Should I, out of guilt, send money to the breast cancer people? Not like I know which breast cancer group called ….

I just don’t know. And now, every time the phone rings, you KNOW what I’m thinking. I’m thinking it might be that woman one more time. Telling me how nice it is to hear a voice that wasn’t as cranky as that last caller. No, not her mother-in-law, the one who told her to go fuck herself. Jeez, if nothing else I got her mother-in-law off the hook.

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The South End Diner was electric this morning, everybody from the Flatheads to the Bible Study crew, all diverted from their usual meandering musings and cock-eyed conversations to a laser focus on the News of the Day. Not even a week after the State of the Union speech declaring victory over tax bondage, the Speaker of the House, evidently trying to one-up the President’s braggadocio, declared that the tax reform bill had already worked.

“How about you, Brenda?” Jerry Harden asked when Brenda came by with the coffee refills. “You get that big raise yet?”

“You talking about that secretary in Pennsylvania?” Brenda said breezily, “the one who probably thought she’d won the lottery after a buck and a half a week raise.”

“A raise is a raise, Brenda,” Jerry said, grinning and holding out his cup. I expected maybe Brenda would miss and scald Jerry’s hand up clear to his eyeballs.

Fairlane Freddy pushed his half eaten and coagulating plate of biscuits and gravy into the middle of the table like he was pushing chips on a bet in a high stakes poker game. “Speaker of the House said it would pay for her Costco membership.”

“I don’t have a Costco membership, Fred. Costs too much already without paying them to let me shop in their store. I’d be interested in what that secretary got for a salary BEFORE her big pay jump.” She topped off Jerry’s cup and moved to the Bible table, half a dozen men in white shirts trying not to splatter grease on their King James’s.

“Easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into the Kingdom of God,” Randall Morganstein intoned. He was a Jew for Jesus back in the big city, but out here in the boondocks, he joined up with the Little Chapel in the Ravine and rarely missed the Monday morning Bible Group session. “Be grateful for small blessings,” he added and that set Brenda off when her first impulse had been to keep her mouth firmly shut.

“That’s just fine, Reverend,” she growled. “If you’re a camel or a rich guy. The rest of us, we’re a little tired of that homily that we should just wait and we’ll inherit the earth. The earth is pretty much parceled up and sold for profits. How about some compassion for the poor?’

“Well, now,” Randall said, holding up a hand the way he might if he was warding off a blow. “I meant no disrespect, young lady.”

Brenda blew back a strand of her graying hair that had fallen across her angry face. “That’s all well and good, Randy, I guess I’ll see you at the back of the line at the Pearly Gates. I just hope there’s a quota.”

Bible Study yesterday was shorter than most weeks. Maybe it was the lack of coffee refills, who can say?

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