The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The trouble with times like these where the Idiot King twitters whatever happens to spark across his busted synapses, is that there’s no one left to revel in the crazed lunacy that lies at the smoldering heart of a nation gone batshit crazy, no one who covers politics with a guano shovel rather than an Apple laptop, no one who sees the humor in the dystopian ruins of post-rational America where Medals of Freedom are passed out like consolation prizes to crooks and crankpots. Somewhere, I have no doubt, a few refugees of the drug wars must be bunkered into their underground warrens, chronicling this Mad Hatter era with a jaundiced eye and a needle still dangling in a pock-marked arm with soft chuckles at the damage done.

Slug another beer, slam a shot of Jack, skip wiping the chin and head right for the coke, the waning of Pax Americana has got to be good for another punch line or two. A reality show huckster becomes President! What satirist worth his advance would scrib a plot so preposterous? And yet. And yet. Heeeeeere’s … Donny!! He says what’s on his mind and the masses love a politician who tells it like it is. Or isn’t. Or who cares, the man is a showman, a clown, an angry bully, a narcissistic idiot whose blowhole spews gaseous venom. He’s entertainment from dawn to dusk. He’s the President of the United States, proof the syphilitic disease that’s burrowed into the national consciousness has festered and grown. Orange hair covers the tumor, the white eyes from the suntan goggles practically glow, the piggy lips pout and spit … step right up, ladies and gentleman, step right up, the Angry Rich Man, 25 cents, see him rage on the stage, watch him burn his enemies, witness the Sight of the Century!! 25 cents. Step right up! The Pissed Off President!! You voted for him, now see him snarl in person!!

A bull in the China shop, all right. He’s got a hunch the coronavirus numbers from the experts are too high, way too high. Just a hoax, folks. Stay calm, he’s got this covered, vaccines will be at your pharmacy tomorrow. Meanwhile, you got symptoms, go to work, nothing more than a cold, really, nothing to worry about. You’ll feel fine before you know it, ignore the chill and fever, the hacked up chunks of lung. He says the experts can’t believe how knowledgeable he is about medicine, about disease, about all things scientific, probably good genetics. After all, he has a relative at MIT. Smart guy, seriously smart, no wonder he’s a genius president. Genetics — beats studying. Let the morons study, he’s got hunches.

If a neighbor said this to you, you’d laugh in his face, tell him to sober up. When the Idiot King says he’s wearing really fine clothes, his attendants describe the color and fabric. We have a pandemic under way, we have economic problems, we have global warming as an existential threat, we have international crises.

But … he has a hunch.

I have a hunch that the country is sliding toward a slow insanity, where we believe only what we want to believe and the rest is phony. We follow tweets, we spend half the day on Facebook, we text rather than talk on a phone, we live in our own virtual bubble, quarantined from reality. Call the doctors, I think we’re sick…. Go to the office anyway, we’ll be fine. I’m sure of it. We’re in good hands. Everything’s okay.

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The South End Diner, usually a cauldron of corny jokes and bad but upbeat behavior, fell eerily quiet the other morning in the wake of the growing coronavirus tsunami. Big Walter stirred his cream into his coffee for what seemed like half an hour without saying more than four words, which were ‘I Can’t Believe It’. The back table where the Flatheads held court was devoid of the usual vintage car talk, as if the mere mention of carburetors, hemis, dual mufflers or V-8 engines had been banned by edict from the Governor along with school attendance in the area and any event with more than a few hundred potential Typhoid Marys.

The Diner patrons, mostly those at high risk for the viral onslaught sweeping the world like a new Spanish flu, still gathered in their morning groups although a few were muttering that it would probably be best if they avoided the café in the near future, ‘at least til this thing settles down’. When Ralph sipped his coffee, sucked a little down the wrong chute and fell into a coughing fit, the entire place held its collective breath thinking they’d all been exposed to Covid-19. To a slow and miserable death itself. Little Jimmy left half his breakfast, lunged for the counter where he paid his bill and fled. A few others quietly laid aside their forks and coffee cups and followed Jimmy out the door to their antique vehicles and a nervous ride home.

This is the Year of the Plague apparently. The watchword is ‘social distancing’. Meaning, to the boyz of the Diner, imprisonment with the mizzus. Most of the sports they usually hungered for were delayed or canceled. Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, ping pong — all a thing of the past, victims of coronavirus. The boyz were still in shock. What would they do evenings? Weekends? Trapped in their cage with nothing worth watching on their cable television? All that money spent on ESPN and now nothing to see. Was life worth living, really, without March Madness to occupy their time? Judging by the cavernous looks on their faces, the answer was a resounding NO!

Two Toke, trying to lighten the mood, declared that this might be a good opportunity at self-improvement, maybe read a book or two. Fairlane Fred growled, ‘That isn’t funny, Tom.’ And someone back near the restroom replied, ‘The libraries are closed, haven’t you heard?’ Two Toke decided to shut up. The mood was far too ugly. Driving home in my soon-to-be-vintage pickup, I knew I wouldn’t be going to the Diner tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the days after that. We would all hole up in our caves, no ballgames, no sports page in the newspaper, nothing to buffer us from politics and plague. The South End was going dark. For how long, nobody knows.

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These are strange and disconcerting times, as you may have noticed. And I’m not just talking about Ireland closing its bars before St. Patrick’s Day, something akin to the Catholic Church canceling Easter, both sacred events, holy of holy. The South End String Band had two, count em, two St. Pat’s Day gigs canceled which should qualify us for serious recompense when the Congress finally draws up its fiscal fix for the mayhem caused by the pandemic.

Fiscal fiddling is one thing, this being a full blown Recession in no time flat. The stock market boyz figured out the Administration is totally adrift, bouncing from advice to stay calm and continue going to work to an admission that this may be an epidemic that will be with us til the end of summer which sent the Market to an all-time drop on the Dow and the S&P. But what is more concerning to most of us as this quarantine drags on, confining Americans to their homes and their computers, is mental health. I’m talking, of course, about a pandemic of insanity. Men without sports, women with their husbands under foot, children barred from school and the usual escape from parental control.

In Spain, in Italy, the balconies of sequestered inmates sprout musicians playing for the neighbors, songs sung from high rise to high rise in a plaintive attempt to cheer one another up. Not gonna happen in the suburbs of Seattle or Baltimore. The other day the newspaper printed an article with a photo of a mom playing cello on the sidewalk with her son on drums. If that cheers you up, check with your health care provider. Next thing you know we’ll have the String Band out in the cul-de-sacs of the South End pounding out banjo tunes in the rain. You know, to cheer up the voluntarily incarcerated.

We’re in the initial phase of what is politely and inaccurately called Social Distancing. Hellfire, most of us have socially distanced since the invention of Facebook and the advent of the cellphone, nothing new there. But now that 90% of us are ordered to stay in our homes, the internet has overloaded and servers are crashing. It shouldn’t take much imagination to envision what mayhem will be unleashed when Netflix won’t stream, when Amazon shopping is curtailed, when apps are useless and when we’re left to, well, that imagination that’s been atrophied for years.

What is called for, what should be a national emergency, is an army of mental health professionals. Bad enough, this coronavirus, but millions of psychotic babbling neighbors trapped in a narrowing world with the attention span of mating rabbits? If your cellphone still works, call your representative, call your senator, call the governor … before it’s too late. Whatever you do, though, don’t call the White House. The stock market has taken enough hits lately, we don’t need a full blown Depression.

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As the Pandemic worms its way into our consciousness, it might be time to reflect on what we’ve learned thus far. If you watched the President in his last couple of fireside chats, assuring us that we have nothing to fear except maybe the fear of Fauci’s Facts, you learned that the virus was foreign, not American. Which, no doubt, is why he closed the border to European travelers. This coronavirus wasn’t really much worse than a cold or the annual flu (which kills plenty more Americans than Covid-19) and so he recommended we suck it up and go into work where we could keep the engines of the mightiest economic engine in the history of the world grinding away.

The President brought in a few of the corporate giants to help him make the point that shaking hands was okay, no need for tests even if we had tests and we would certainly have tests very very soon, except Doc Fauci said we wouldn’t, and the tests we wouldn’t have would generously be conducted in drive-thru Walmart parking lots or other corporate giants’ parking lots, thank you from the American people, thank you very much. Google itself would be setting up a website for all of us, be up and running tomorrow with all relevant information on this pandemic thingy, great people, the Google people, very grateful us, the nation, thank you for the algorithms. Google did put out a statement that unfortunately, no, it would take some time to get that up and running. More than a day, Mr. Prez, actually more than a week, maybe longer. Probably should have offered information and advice at the press conference. But we all have confidence in American corporate leadership, thank you, thank you very much.

Would he himself be tested, he was asked. No, he was in good shape, tip top shape, nothing wrong with him. Couldn’t he unknowingly be a carrier, after all, he’d been exposed to someone who tested positive. Sure, he said, he’d get tested. His doctor later stated that no, he wouldn’t be tested, didn’t need to be. A few hours later the Prez announced he’d been tested. Negative. See, he knew it all along. Wasted test. Someone who needed it could have gotten it instead.

Meanwhile schools here have been closed for at least 6 weeks, hospitals are doing triage in the parking lots, restaurants are closing and many are going broke, offices are sending their employees home, concerts and sports tournaments are canceled, the news is nothing but Coronavirus Pandemic. Photos show empty bars, bare shelves at the grocery stores, a buying frenzy for frozen pizzas and toilet paper. State after state has instituted closures and advice, each on its own, sometimes just cities. We didn’t want the federal government in our lives, we got what we wished for. Thank you very much, Mr. President, your work is greatly appreciated. Keep shaking hands at Mar-a-Lago, sir. It instills confidence in the rest of us.

One more press conference from the White House should calm any nerves still frazzled. Hopefully the president’s advisors will discourage further assurances. Nobody needs to hear Jared Kushner is handling this crisis along with all the others he has on his plate.

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Well, the liberals attempt to embarrass the President with all this talk of pandemic apparently is working nicely. The Doc-in-Chief came on network TV in a rare non-tweet appearance to calm the jittery nerves of a nation only beginning to sense the gravity of the tsunami of disease coming to our shores. He bragged about the strength of our economy, better than it’s ever been of course, as if the stock market would rebound in the morning and our money would show this virus who was really boss. He blamed the Europeans for not handling this plague and banned them from coming to our blessed country. He told us he had the very best medical staff working on the problem. He was going to delay the day we would ordinarily pay income taxes and give tax breaks to small businesses affected adversely by coronavirus.

This morning he tweeted corrections to most of the above. Ireland is okay to come on over. U.S. citizens could still fly. Co-pay for the epidemic treatments really meant just the tests for the disease. You know, when we get test kits. Needless to say the stock market plunged to new lows. Nothing like bogus reassurance to give investors major jitters. The plague is coming and no one is doing much of anything about it except blame foreigners and mumble how great America is. Again.

The Great Panic of 2020 is starting. Schools are closing for months at a time, sports are being played with nobody allowed in the stands, tournaments are canceled, concerts are canceled, the South End String Band was canceled twice! As a small but unprofitable bizness, the Band should see fiscal relief from this administration but I’m betting it won’t be soon, probably the true definition of ‘social distancing.’ What we saw last night was proof that nobody is driving the bus. And the bus is definitely off the highway now, headed who knows where. Trump is worried about the Dow Jones and his chances for re-election if the economy tanks. The rest of us are worried that it’s a long way off before November, plenty of time to do maximum damage. And I doubt we’ll be blaming the Europeans. Like the Man said a few short days ago, stay calm and continue going to work. Coronavirus is basically a bad cold. Nothing to fear but fear of the facts themselves….

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