The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you thought the Kung Flu came from China, like your President does, maybe it’s time to wake up. If you thought the Chinese Flu was developed in a lab or came from some so-called ‘wet’ market in Wuhan, forget about it. The truth is out there, as they used to say on the X-files. The truth is stranger than fiction. Or, more to the point, fiction is truth and truth is fiction and the folks on Facebook no longer argue which is which. Who cares, really, when we’d rather have interesting lies than boring truths.

You think this comet Neowise showing up in our solar system at the same time as the coronavirus was a coincidence? C’mon, think about it. UFO’s are circling the planet like bees around their disturbed nest. The government knows all about this, but they’re keeping it secret, as always, lobbing you misinformation about Russian election interference and Twitter hacks to prevent us citizens from asking too many questions. Like where did this comet come from? And why is it here? Who sent it and what do they want? Remember when the European Space Agency landed on a comet a few years back? What did they find there, eh? And why didn’t they let us in on that secret?

I looked at this comet a few nights ago. If that tail doesn’t look exactly like a sneeze loaded with coronavirus hurled across a crowded room by a maskless contagion superspreader, I don’t know what does…. Aliens are out there, my friend, and trust me on this, they are not your friend. They are planting the seeds of destruction in our atmosphere even as you sit there blithely reading this, unaware of extraterrestrial dangers. They have sent the Messenger of Death in the form of celestial bodies that we ooh and aah over, little suspecting we are being washed by plague mists continuously as the comet streaks over our heads. And you thought chemtrails were frightening! You thought vaccines were scary!

Another existential threat, can’t you see that for what it is? This isn’t pixie dust, pal, this is space plague. Oh sure, they’ll find a vaccine for it, you can bet your supplemental health insurance on it. But what’s really in it? Antibodies from another galaxy, that’s what. Go right ahead, let these enablers shove a syringe in your arm, but don’t come crying to me when your body starts to grow scales and your appendages begin to double. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.

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Here it is again, Groundhog’s Day in the Land of Covid. I think it’s Wednesday, or was Wednesday, or will be again tomorrow, but I’m not sure what week of what month. I vaguely remember the 4th of July awhile back but it might have been last year, I’m not prepared to wager any bets or testify under oath. I talk to my old man who’s 97 years old every day and invariably ask what’s new? He pauses to think for a minute or so, then invariably answers, Nothing.

He lives by himself, rattles around his two bedroom house, watches the news on two TV’s, cooks himself three meals a day, reads his subscription magazines that pile up, naps, watches movies at night until he falls asleep on his recliner. Next day he gets up and repeats the above. He likes the routine. Life distilled right down to its essence. Me, I’m not 97. But I’m locked in a similar routine and I really don’t like the same routine.

Oh sure, I love watching the news, reading the morning papers, digesting whatever new pandemic statistics roll in, marveling at the Trump Show, waiting for the election commercials to start gathering steam. Who wouldn’t? But if you ask me, like my old man does every day, what’s new? I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say Nothing. Grocery shopping once a week. There you go, there’s something different. Or fix the broken washing machine, a happy break in the monotony. Mow the lawn, same as last week, but this is this week, different, see?

Last night I hauled down the road at nearly midnight. Took two binoculars and a camera plus a small telescope hoping to find the comet that’s visiting our little solar system. Sure, it’s probably sprinkling viruses into our atmosphere, but hey, any visitor is welcome by me. I stood for half an hour in the middle of the highway without a single car driving by, looking toward the Big Dipper, and lo and behold, there it was, a small slash of light in the distance, my celestial intruder. I was gobsmacked. I was tickled pink. I was transported out of my ennui for at least a short time. A comet! In all my life I’ve only seen a couple. Admittedly this one was a little shy of a Double Rainbow event but I’ll jump up and down for any comet anytime anywhere. When my old man asks me today what’s new? I’ll say Comet. Tomorrow, of course, I’ll say the same thing if I manage to see it again tonight. Tomorrow is Wednesday probably, the day after I saw the comet. The day the conspiracy theorists start to spread the rumor that the comet brought Covid.

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I just read a study that proved ‘grumpy’ miserable people live just as long as the happy cheerful folks. This is good news to us seasonally afflicted South Enders, all us perennial grumpsters holed up in our dark shacks hoping Global Warming is true and it gets here soon. I can say for myself, at least now that I can rub this phony smile off my mug and go back to honest cynicism knowing it won’t cause cancer or a heart attack, it’s a relief. A smile, I don’t care how many times you sing it, isn’t much of an umbrella. Even face down ….

Course half of us down here don’t believe in science so a ‘study’ isn’t going to change most minds. Half don’t buy climate change or evolution or the coronavirus or the Round Earth theory. Just ornery, I guess. That, or they got religious beliefs we’re supposed to be tolerant of even if they’re intolerant toward everyone else’s.

I’m sure next year we’ll get a study on whether religion makes a believer happier. You’d sure think it would, not that they’d maybe live longer, but go ask the Taliban how cheerful they are without music or dancing in their lives. Some of our righteous neighbors seem too busy casting stones at the rest of us they don’t squeeze much joy out of their own lives, probably wouldn’t if every day was warm and sunny.

Personally I don’t think happiness springs from too rich a soil, not something that needs or wants much fertilizing. It requires maybe just the opposite occasionally, brings a little balance to the garden. Me, I sprinkle lots of skepticism, amend with some sarcasm, keep things a little on the warm side when I need to. I get plenty of bugs, worms, even critters. Gardening has its ups and downs, but the harvest, even if it’s on the lean side some years, is pretty good. Might not help me live longer, but it seems more natural, more honest.

And McDonald’s — you can go ahead and change the Happy Meal name, no health benefits, to what it truly is: Crappy Meal. You got science on your side now.

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Another day, another Covid report. I notice I’m losing track of time, the days, the weeks, even the month, all just slipping by without signposts to mark some new event, a vacation maybe or a wedding or a birthday party for friends. Even the statistics of new cases and more deaths just seem drearily the same. And when the President tweets that this will just fade away shortly, sooner than you think, the joke is stale. I can only slap my head so many times with this boob.

But hey, he wore a mask two days ago. HE WORE A PLAGUE MASK!!! The news media went half crazy. The man wore a mask for the first time in public. Let’s see, that’s about 6 months into this plague, about 3 and a half million Covid cases in the country he presumably leads, 135,000 dead voters. I mean, what’s the rush? He told reporters he’s always thought wearing a mask was a good idea. You know, in the right place, the right time. And no, I didn’t slap myself upside the head when he said it, the dark humor has been drained right out of me. I live in an Alice in Wonderland world and I’m just trying to hang on without going too much further down the rabbit hole.

So when the Masked One ordered all schools to open this fall, or else!, I just grabbed one hand with the other and held it tight against my body, no point giving myself a self-induced concussion. All those states that came out of Lockdown, Florida, Texas, California, South Carolina, Arizona, well, just like the health experts predicted, they have huge spikes in cases. All those young people partying, drinking in bars, congregating at the beaches. Masks? Wrong time, wrong place, apparently. But if you thought those grim new statistics would matter, think again after you’ve duct taped your hands to your chair, the right time to open schools is a month away, the right place is a classroom with 30 kids and a teacher, maybe masked, maybe not.

Ignorance is bliss in the New America. So why not keep these kids home, forget virtual schooling or any schooling for that matter. Dumb them down, prepare them for the future. Plenty of jobs in a Trump administration for that kind of portfolio. High school dropout, Jimmy? No problem, the President is looking for a new Secretary of State. Welcome aboard.

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I confess. I have a TV. Not a very big TV, not a drive-in theater size TV, a TV that our friends find maddening if we want to watch a movie together but that seems plenty big enough for the mizzus and me. I don’t want to build another house to make room for a 60 inch television. But I do want to watch the news and a few shows. And I don’t want to pay for cable or satellite. Not that I wouldn’t want to watch 100 stations with the weirdest content imaginable just to get PBS.

So it probably won’t surprise anyone to know that I have an antenna on the roof. Since everyone went to digital, the old antenna wouldn’t pick up anything. Nada, zip, zero. Thanks a lot, FCC. The first UHF antenna would catch a few stations, not most, and even then you had to haul up to the roof, turn the antenna, climb back down and see if that picked up the station you were after and when it didn’t repeat the above. Great exercise, not good viewing. Like the internet, TV reception out in the boondocks is for the birds. Sure, the providers promised high speed updates, but any fool knew they were lying. And now that the pandemic has forced us all into quarantine, the internet with everyone logged on is reminiscent of the old dial-up days with buffering that lasts longer than TV commercials.

A week ago I did some buffered research on TV antennas, ordered one online and got it a few days later. The old one, which actually wasn’t very old at all, had replaced the previous one that refused, no matter what compass direction I pointed it, to pick up PBS. PBS, we learned through further internet buffered research, had a slightly weaker signal than any other station this side of Portland or San Francisco. Close, but no cigar, so I figured get a slightly bigger antenna but maybe not as big as a large array telescope. With high hopes and plenty of pessimism I hauled the new aluminum job up to the roof peak, attached it to the metal mast, pointed it in the direction of Seattle and Gomorrah, climbed back down the ladder and turned on the TV. Wow. The stations were really a lot crisper, all of them.

All of them except PBS. Which didn’t come in at all. PBS asks us for contributions all the time. Maybe when they offer a repeater station instead of a cheesy coffee mug for a donation of 120 bucks a year, they might have a shot. Until then, they can quit asking.

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