The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Finally, scientists have solved the mystery of those odd symptoms exhibited by our Cuban ambassadorial team, the headaches and migraines, dizziness and inability to concentrate, that ringing in the ears and general discombobulation. Neuroweapons. You heard me. Some kind of microwave blaster or space raygun focused on the embassy and wreaking havoc with our state department personnel down there. Those whacky commies, always up to something! Revenge, no doubt, for trying to assassinate Fidel.

But you know … and I do too … this may explain more than just our Cuban victims’ symptoms. Yes, Virginia, I’m sure you can see the obvious conclusion of these scientists’ theory plain as the ringing in your ears, loud as the flashes behind your glasses. The White House is being bombarded by neuroweapons!! These invisible emanations are disorienting our leaders, causing them to turn on one another, leaving them nearly insane with withering headaches and burning brains. What other possible explanation is there?

Neuro skull scramblers. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? Those endless tweets after a night of no sleep and a microwaved mind. You wouldn’t trust anyone either after months of migraines left you with only the ability to watch Fox and Friends because anything more complex than that would tax your jumbled cerebral cortex beyond its ability to comprehend. Try reading the entire text of that New York Times op-ed tell-all and if you thought yesterday’s migraine was nuclear, just wait til the second paragraph!

The arms race has definitely taken a dark turn when a microwave oven can be turned into a delivery system for the enemy. We tried our own brand of heinous inventions to destroy the minds of prisoners of war without violating the Geneva Convention. When the Panamanian leader Gen Noriega holed up in the Vatican Embassy, we blasted him with non-stop Guns N Roses, Elvis, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister and even, God forgive us, Kiss. Non- stop, high decibel, repetitive. And when that didn’t work, they resorted to … yes, Brittany Spears. Ears bled, amigo, and if this isn’t torture, what is???

Neuroweaponry, the next stage. We now have the sad debacle of a White House babbling like chickens in a shitstorm, unable even to comprehend the attack, much less surrender. No one steps up to take credit. No terrorist group admits to this sort of inhumanity. We may never know if the Russians were behind this or if some loser sitting in his folks’ basement took a measure of revenge for his lack of a decent job. We do know this: none of us are safe. And there is no refuge. No doubt the Defense Department is stockpiling Brittany Spears. Destroying our President’s brain must be met with fire and fury, shock and awe. And if necessary, Barry Manilow and Madonna. The price to be paid for reducing our fearless Leader to a babbling imbecile needs to be grave, collateral damage be damned!!

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I suspect by now you’ve wearied of trying to sleuth out who the op-ed mystery writer was, which ‘high level’ staff or cabinet member of Donald’s dropped the grenade in the middle of the White House. And now you’re wondering who, if any, are the supposed ‘adults’ in the room. Personally, I’ve narrowed it down to one or two. And if you’re like me, you feel secure in knowing that these brave souls are responsible for keeping the President and all the rest of the temporary residents in Clowntown from steering the ship of state straight off the edge of the known world.

We’re in good hands, that’s for sure. While everyone in the Administration is running around with their hair on fire, issuing denials and no mea culpas, these stalwart few are grabbing treaties off the President’s nearly empty desk and hiding the nuclear trigger in the butler’s coat closet. I sleep more soundly now and I bet you do too knowing they’ve put a V-chip in his cellphone that blocks pornography and incoming messages from foreign leaders (with the possible exception of Vladimir). No one, not even the adults, wants to piss off Putin, no pun intended.

These are dangerous days in the Clown Palace. Who can trust who? Who is the spy in the house of love? Everybody and their third cousins are all singing to Bob Woodward the cacophonic symphony of an Inner Circle hurrying to build the Wall or lock up immigrant children or propping up those private colleges that gypped their clientele into thinking their degree was worth something. Many have left in disgrace, victims of their own hubris and greed, pigs at a very big trough too gluttonous to believe anyone would begrudge them the perks of Louis the Fourteenth. Certainly not their Republican brethren, hyper-ventilating to get their agenda rammed through the sausage grinder before the mid-term blue wave sends a tsunami crashing down on their hopes and dreams. They’ll pay a terrible price for casting a blind eye to the antics of their leader, but not before the courts are stuffed with their ilk and the economy is dragged down by trade wars and tariffs. All we can say is thanks. Thanks to the adults in the room. Thanks for hiding the toys and the marbles from the other kids. Lord only knows how much worse it might’ve been….

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Amazon, those pesky little dudes whose only dream is to control the entire world, submitted an idea to the Patent Office for a cage that sits atop their robot factory assemblers that can carry a human being. Now, in all fairness, the idea is to protect us homo sapiens from being run over on the warehouse floor by these scurrying machines intent on rounding up our orders. They can send a flesh and blood being into the maw of the warehouse on top of one of these gizmos safely encased in a wire cage where, presumably they won’t be roadkill for the robots. The office will decide if this is a unique enough invention that it can be patented to Amazon.

I suspect the humans who work in the distribution centers of Amazon already feel like they’re caged. But the patent office may find this new wire pen distinct and patentable. Maybe you’re like me, the idea of a cage-carrying robot with one of our species penned like a monkey to its headless shoulder is, well, disconcerting. I know, it’s for our protection. But that’s what the automated voice on our phones says when they inform us we’re being recorded. It’s for our own good. And you believe that, right? Even chickens are getting freed from their cages these days of touchy-feely. But Amazon wants to haul us around the warehouse in one.

We’re all so busy mistrusting the government in this fact-free world we’ve tunneled into that we maybe missed the bigger threat. Amazon, Google, Facebook, all these tech-types rushing toward the future fast as their algorithms and artificial intelligences can take us. Somewhere along their digital highway, humans seem to have been bumped to the back seat of their self-driving vehicles. Most of us are happy enough, kind of like kids with their x-boxes in the back of the SUV, so long as we have our pacifiers. Give us an I-pad and a DVD player, leave the driving to Them.

I just worry the day will come when the door of the vehicle doesn’t open. Or worse, we won’t really care….

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I am not Lodestar, let me say that right off the get-go before I’m got gone. And yes, I will take a lie detector test if the President asks for one. The trouble for the Donald, of course, is that we all might flunk that test. We all think the guy is mentally deranged. And there seems to be no way to get him sedated, shackled or impeached before he does irreparable harm.

Now we have the spectacle of a White House full of spies and moles and leakers. Everyone is suspect and between you, me and the New York Times, we’re all guilty. We’re all cowards. We’re all claiming to be patriots. Welcome to Clowntown. The Volkswagen keeps filling up with more, impossibly more, all those cabinet members and staff, one after the other crawling into that tiny space with big shoes and rubber noses, how in hell can it hold us all?? I didn’t write that op-ed piece, we all testified. Not me. No, Mr. President, I wouldn’t say that out loud. At least not until you leave the room.

Clowntown sleeps fitfully these dark days. Was it him? Could it be her? Did that Bible thumping Pence, he of the ‘lodestar’ phrase, pull off the palace intrigue of the century? Will he poison his boss’s Big Mac next? The Republicans call the perpetrator a coward and if anyone would know what cowardice is, well, step right up and hop in that Volkswagen, boys, it’ll hold a thousand clowns .

It’s a circular firing squad, a Ringling Brothers Big Top Tent Show, a Gun Expo and a Revival Meeting at the AA weekly all rolled into one. The Greatest Show on Earth, Ladies and Gents, playing nightly on Netflix and Amazon Prime!! With no net beneath these high flying acrobats, watch their death-defying leaps across logical space!! How can you NOT watch? How long can they escape the plunge?
Who will be the next to fall? Who will take their place? Who do you believe? Who really cares anymore? The Show is Everything. And the Show Must Go On …. Step right up! Step right up! I did not write that op-ed. I am not Lodestar. I think it was the guy on the trapeze. Or maybe the last clown that got in the Vee Dub. Does it matter? Keep your eye on the Ring Master. You paid your money, take the ride. Step right up, it’s the Greatest Show on Earth. Clowntown, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls! Like nothing you’ve seen before. Like nothing you’ll see again. Step right up!

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The Donald hosted a dinner for a group of prominent evangelicals at the White House the other day and warned that if they don’t get out and vote for Republicans, there will be blood. There will be violence. There will be a return to the Dark Ages of integration. Dark times, indeed! The good and righteous reverend of one of the largest Southern Baptist megachurches in the country, Bob Jeffress, when interviewed and asked how a good Christian could vote for Trump, a philanderer, a serial liar, a bully President, answered first that Trump was more moral than Hillary Clinton and second he was, like all of us, a sinner. And if we’re all sinners, where’s the moral line?

I’m glad I’m not a member of this guy’s flock. If everyone is equally a sinner (except of course Hillary Clinton, who is a huge sinner), how do we judge the differences between, say, a serial killer and a shoplifter? Forgiveness, no doubt. Repentance and forgiveness. Not that the Donald is repentant or asking Rev. Jeffress for forgiveness, much less the Lord God Almighty.

Now, I’m all for forgiveness. Say you’re sorry and apologize for those murders, it’s okay from now on. But golly gee, don’t ask me to vote for you as President. Not when you keep doing all the things you say you didn’t do and refuse to stop, much less apologize for. And Reverend, one more thing: some of us aren’t serial transgressors. Some of us are pretty decent human beings. Some of us don’t quite fit the category of Sinner. Not that I would be the right one to cast the first stone….

I guess what the evangelicals really believe is the End justifies the Means. And if Donald J. Trump is the vehicle to put the Christian God back in the courthouse and our schoolrooms, well, sir, he must be an instrument of the Lord who, as we have too often been told, works in mysterious ways. The Path of Righteousness for these folks is a 10 lane interstate if you want prayer back in our courthouses and the 10 commandments in stone out front at the entrance. And don’t forget the Nativity Scene at Christmas. This is what the Lord wants. He wants a state religion, not the perversion of a polytheologic universe where we have the right to believe what we want without persecution.

The Christian Taliban think otherwise. And now they have their crusader in the White House. Fine. We’ll weigh in on that next election. In the meantime, don’t hand me that nonsense about all of us being sinners. Hypocrisy may not be a sin, but it doesn’t feel compatible with what we used to call Truth.

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