The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The Flatheads were holding court at the Diner the day after the FDA approved the women’s new sex drug.  Lined up like an ad for an automobile museum, their Nashes and Oldsmobiles, Packards and Pontiacs gleamed in this summer’s endless sun.  Tork ‘The Wrench’ Anderson was musing over his Santa Fe Omelette how life was going to be nitro-charged from here on out.  “I may have to start jogging again,” he declared to the assembled geriatrics, “just to keep up with the mizzus.”

Randy, who once owned the O-Zi-Ya Body Shoppe before he sold it and retired, put down his second cup of decaf coffee and shook his head sadly.  “After my last heart attack I decided to slow down on the bedroom.  Too much stress on my ticker.”  Freddie howled from the next table.  “I bet Cindy thought her prayers were finally answered.”  Randy closed his eyes and nodded.  “I don’t think the pink pills are for her.”

Brenda breezed through the back room about then with a coffee pot.  “Whaddaya think, Brenda?” Joey asked when she poured him a refill.  “Gonna be a big run on that women’s Viagra?”  Brenda stopped, all eyes on her as if she were the Dr. Phil of the Women’s Health Movement.  “That depends, I guess.”  “On what?” Freddie asked, holding out his empty mug, big grin on his.

“If you’re hoping a little pill is gonna make you old farts look good, I got some bad news for you boys.  You’re expecting a miracle.  It’s like those cars outside there.  They’re waxed up and ready for show, but you know and I know, what’s under the hood isn’t much.”

Ralph said, “Ouch, Brenda, that’s kinda cruel.”

“Sorry,” she laughed, “but you did ask.”  She held the coffee pot up. “More octane, fellas???”

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Who doesn’t love a good pandemic? Now that Covid has receded into our collective past of plagues, we’re treated to the guessing game of which disease is waiting in the wings.  Will it be monkeypox that sprints ahead or the avian flu?  How about polio, that creepy little virus from the past, emerging once again in municipal water systems? SARS? Ever heard of Langya virus?  Get ready, it’s about to go viral, at least in the news.  West Nile?  MERS?  HIV-AIDS?  E-bola scare ya?

They tell me there are more viruses on this planet than there are stars in the universe.  That’s a boatload of potential pathogens, all mutating like mad in a changing climate, most benign but it only takes one, right, to make your life a living flesh eating hell.  We all enjoy a good horror story, I guess, but lately the scares are real, end of the world kind of unhappy endings.  We’re all waiting expectantly for the Green Plague, stepchild of the Black One which killed off a goodly portion of the human inhabitants here on Earth.  You know, the planet we’re trapped on.  Bolt the doors, don the masks, immunize yerself!  The pestilence is coming, the pestilence is coming!

Out there in the jungle, here in the barnyards, down in the municipal water system, the little buggers are watching and waiting for their chance.  Maybe they’re coming in from all those rockets returning from outer space, alien bacteria and viruses and bugs, oh no!  What chance do we earthlings have against intergalactic plague?  None, I’m betting.  No N-95 hepa mask is going to save you, kiddo, not a hope in hell.  The monkeys spread it.  Bats.  Those Chinese labs.  The CIA experiments gone sideways.  Who you gonna call?  Doc Fauci?  Half the country thinks Doc Fauci made a fortune off Covid.  If you can’t trust your doctor, who can you trust?  Tucker Carlson? If you don’t believe in science, what chance do you have to survive the next pandemic?  Count on this: calling it a phony political plague won’t keep you immune.  That kind of superstition didn’t work in the Middle Ages and it won’t work for the next Black Plague.  The bugs are real.

But … on the bright side, at least the news media has something else to scare us with besides politics and war.  Lucky us.

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Yesterday I got a call from a nice woman who wondered if, by chance, I would like to sell my place.  I said, yah sure, you betcha, how much you offering?  There was a small pause, no doubt surprised that she had a live one on the end of her line.  I assume 99 out of 100 hang up after a few choice obscenities, so it must be a relief to get a landowner hot to sell.  Finally she got her heart pumping again and said, ‘What price do you have in mind?’

Without hesitation I said 2 million dollars and it’s yours, lock stock and barrel.  Barrels plural, actually, but I didn’t want to screw the deal by mentioning the acres of assorted antiques, junk, used equipment, etc.  We could negotiate a price for those on the side.  Later, of course.  She paused once more, not quite as long as before, then said, ‘well, that would depend on the answers to a couple of questions.’  And then she started to ask if I owned the home outright and …

I stopped her mid-question.  ‘You already know the answers to those if you’ve done your homework so let’s just cut to the chase.  How long before we can close this deal?  Two million, it’s a steal the way the market is going.  Hang onto it a couple months, you’ll double your money.  Me, I’ll be in Rio de Janeiro with any luck, Carnival, cheap living.  Two million could probably buy a chunk of rainforest you and your consortium might be interested in logging.’

‘I think we could come to some agreement on price,’ she started over, ‘but first I need ….’  ‘Two million and a quarter, ma’am,’ I told her.  ‘Price is going up every time you ask more questions.’   Long pause…  Finally I said, ‘you really need to up your game, lady, set the hook, make the close, seal the deal.  Or were you hoping you’d get some old grandfather with dementia who’d sell the homestead for peanuts.  I just got a letter today from a gyppo logging outfit, nice stationary and everything, who would love to help me clearcut my property, get all the permits, drag in skidders and dozers, then clean up afterwards.  Nice sounding fella.  Like you.  I get a card from the local realtors showing me the house down the road that they just sold, big bucks, would I like to cash in too? ‘

The quiet sound of a dial tone greeted this last little rant.  The mizzus says just hang up on these people, but I think that’s rude.  Seems fair to poke the gator a bit.  After all, they’re going to get dinner on one of the next calls.  Not that I think I’m going to give them indigestion, but gee, I can hope, can’t I?

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Give the man credit, the sheer creativity in his myriad excuses for why he stole or borrowed or kept or forgot about those classified documents  he had squirreled away in his Mar-a-Lago basement and in his closet is worthy of any late night comic.  He declassified them, he claims they belong to him, he needed them to write his memoirs, they were planted by the FBI, the raid was illegal, he ran out of toilet paper, the excuses are endlessly entertaining and best of all, they never seem to stop.  Today I read that he needed to keep them for his, get this, presidential library.  Give me a break, if I don’t stop laughing pretty soon I’m going to give myself an aneurysm I swear to god.

The Trump Library.  Pause a minute between guffaws and milk spewed out your nose.  The man watched TV.  That was his intellectual mode.  He didn’t read a book or daily briefing reports, he never wrote anything that didn’t need flushing shortly after, he deleted his phone calls and emails, he took a page from the mafia dons who understood these dropped crumbs quickly become incriminating evidence in future trials.  A library?  C’mon, the guy never set foot in a library in his life, I’d bet my banjo.  Sure, put a gold toilet in the center of the floor with a copy of that infamous photo where he flushed the latest memo.  Stick a plunger next to it for when the plumbing clogs with the lost history of the Donald J. Trump presidency.  Run a continuous loop of his rally speech, pretty much the same one every time and in another room play his Hannity interviews on a big screen TV.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Trump Library.  If you think it needs beefing up, well, add a room for the first lady’s modeling photos, billboard size nudes, got to be over 18 to go in there.

Okay, I’m being unfair.  The man had all those boxes of documents.  I know, they could fill a room or two.  The Love letter from Kim Jung Un could get its own room.  The note Obama left on the Oval Office desk could get another.  Maybe we need another wing, one exclusively for the Giuliani Proverbs.  But I’m kidding, the Library will be in the basement of Trump Tower.  Open sporadically, hours limited.  I wouldn’t plan a vacation around a trip there.  Take the kids to the Smithsonian instead.  Or just your local library.

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What a difference a few months make in the minds of Republicans.  What a difference in a few days or even hours.  Was it my faulty memory or do I remember the grand old party screaming bloody murder about defunding cops?  The FBI conducts a legal search of Trump’s hacienda to retrieve what we are told are classified documents he refused to return, something akin to a felony if anyone but the Donald had ignored the Justice Department demands, and now the howls can be heard from sea to shining sea.  Defund the FBI!  Investigate the Department of Justice!!

What ever happened to the party of Law and Order, those proud defenders of the Constitution, those self-acclaimed patriots?  Gone, almost all gone.  Their Commander in Chief is above the law, they must feel, Untouchable.  He weathered two impeachments, he pardoned his favorite allies, he has yet to be indicted and if he is, well, time to defund the courts.  And best of all, when the party of Law and Order gets back in power, clear your calendar you G-men, you heads of the Justice Department, they’re coming for you.  How dare you investigate the Donald!  What were you thinking?  The man is above the law, get that through your partisan heads.

Donald J. Trump is going to learn the hard way that he is no longer President of the United States.  He is going to be subpoenaed, indicted, fined and probably convicted of voter fraud, conspiracy, tax fraud, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and who knows what else.  But … his day of reckoning is coming, you can take that to the bank.  And yes, 80% of the GOP will scream bloody murder, call it a witch hunt, threaten the judges and the courts and the FBI and their Democratic counterparts.  If he thinks he just brought Liz Cheney down in Wyoming, better think again, buddy.  The woman will have her revenge, you can be sure.

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