The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island.  The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack.  I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who became my friend too.  Ironically, I may be one of the last Owner-Builders in Island County.  I don’t think my permit was ever signed off on so I may well be the last official O-B.

I guess maybe they figured the codes got too complex for us amateur housebuilders, all those R-factors for insulation and E-glass in fenestrations and X-factors for our marriages.  Or maybe it was this:  a permit for an Owner-Builder was next to nothing, something like $50 when I got ours.  The county might’ve done the taX-factor and realized us hippies were costing them revenue.  Maybe some of us built our own palaces to save the permit expense, but I would’ve paid full freight just for the right to build my own place the way I wanted.  A few hundred bucks wasn’t gonna stop me.

I spoze we can still build our own Xanadu, nothing to stop us.  Just have to disclose that a rank amateur threw the hammer and ran the saw, flashed the windows, shingled the roof, installed the electric and plumbing and if you’re the prospective buyer, best beware!!!  The people at the county sheds told me I’d be a Total Idiot to apply for an Owner-Builder status.  Boy, he read me like a book.  A comic book, I’d bet.

By the time I got our permit, us Owner-Builders had to meet the same codes as any fly-by-night contractor, go through the same inspections, all the rigamarole as the Big Boyz.  In other words, the government here doesn’t allow for hippie shacks or slam-bang cabins.  We got to build our parents’ suburban homes.  Might explain why kids just stay with their folks now — why bother building the same damn place twice?

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I love Republicans.  Seriously, who else would run candidates based solely on their complete allegiance to Trump, a con-man, a crook, a liar, a sexual predator and, famously in the words of his then Secretary of State, a f…@$%…g! moron?  Take Dr. Oz.  Please.  What better GOP MAGA candidate but a quack snake oil salesman, literally.  But better yet, take a gander at Herschel Walker running for the Senate in Georgia.  Football star, MAGA man, a poster child for Complete Idiot.  On climate change he speculated how the Chinese had moved their dirty air over here and now we would have to move it somewhere else … or something like that, who knows?  He certainly didn’t.  Addressing the Inflation Reduction Act’s provision to combat climate change by planting more trees, he asked why we would need more, got plenty already.  Why stock fish, I want to ask.  Why worry about reservoirs evaporating or aquifers going dry, got plenty of water already.  Floods in plenty of places, move it to the lowering aquifers.  Along with that dirty Chinese air.  The point is, do we need an IQ test for these candidates?  Some minimal acquaintance with reality, at least.  Sure, Trump lowered the bar pretty close to the ground, but do we have to dig trenches now?

A dumb football star for Senator, why not?  We had a reality TV star as President, a know nothing who wouldn’t bother to read briefing reports, ignorance being bliss, I guess.  Just watch his fawning Fox phony news guys and see what works for them, that’s plenty for his highness.  We’re talking grown men here, a lifetime that might have been spent looking for answers to the questions that might arise if they held the public office they seek.  But no, too much trouble, too many facts … and we know what they think of those.

We’ve grown pretty accustomed to neo-fascist candidates offered up as worthy office seekers, Qanon acolytes, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and science deniers, and yeah, it might be worth testing for neural activity, but lately the pool of political aspirants seems to be a drying puddle of flopping tadpoles hoping to evolve legs and lungs after a primary race to determine who is the whackiest of the whacky.  Alert the executives of Netflix, this is reality TV at its most entertaining. Except, of course, the joke is on us.  Plenty of trees?  Sure, but hey fellas, where’s the forest?

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So you don’t like your job, probably hate your boss, think you should be paid more for all the hard work and overtime you put in, maybe your co-workers look like mindless drones these days and retirement seems a lifetime away (it is!) … but quitting isn’t an option, not when you would lose your health care and your apartment, the apartment that already costs more than you can believe.  What’s a person to do?

Well, apparently, quit in place.  Stop killing yourself.  Stop sucking up to your boss.  Refuse to take overtime.  Slow down, relax, daydream a bit, take a long lunch break, sneak a joint in the john.  It’s a brand new workplace.  The go-go years have gone gone gone, good riddance.  The company treats you like a robot, act like one.  One pace, steady and slow as she goes. Do as little as possible, same as they would do for you.  They’re no longer loyal to you employees, why be loyal to them?  This is the New Work Ethic.  Congratulations and welcome to your new cubicle.

Personally, I always believed in Quitting.  Seemed like a good strategy.  Course, apartments didn’t cost an arm and a leg back then and health insurance wasn’t in the cards.  Pensions, 401-K’s, fergettaboutit.  I was part of the gig economy decades before it had a name and by the time it did, I was self-exiled to the South End where employment was marginal to non-existent.  So I did what the rest of us layabouts did down here, worked for myself.  Sure, the boss was a jerk, but that’s the joy of self-employment, you can look him in the eye and tell him to go to hell.  Won’t affect your wages one iota.  And end of the day you can have a beer or two together, gripe about the same issues, maybe decide neither of you will work the next day.

I recommend it.  But quitting in place.  I dunno.  Seems like the days would just be interminable, slowing down, dragging feet, avoiding work.  You like that kind of job, maybe be a traffic sign holder, SLOW, STOP, for a construction company.  Hours like years, days like a lifetime.  Personally I like to work if I’m going to work, put a back into it, feel like it was worth the effort.  Time flies even when it’s not much fun.  But … don’t say you heard it from me.  And whatever you do, don’t tell my boss.

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Maybe you read about the mega Inflation Reduction Act that just got signed into law, the one that addresses climate change and prescription drug prices and health care subscriptions … and gives money to fund some auditors for the IRS.  According to the social media platform Hair on Fire. com, this is nothing short of hiring Nazi accountants to raid your bank accounts, haul you in for tax fraud and probably throw you and your children into jail for non-compliance.  Just another government intrusion into your personal life and worse, your personal finances.

Now, if you’re like me, a guy near the bottom of the economic totem pole, I honestly doubt the IRS will come to my door, turn me upside down and shake the pennies and nickels from my pockets.  What I do think they’ll do is finally go after the corporate tax dodgers who use questionable deductions, shaky strategies and outright tax dodges, fully expecting no audit, no accountability and no risk for taking a shot on their tax forms.  Who wouldn’t if you had high powered CPA’s and tax lawyers on retainer who say, well, it’s worth a shot.

I’ve never understood why Joe Sixpack would be afraid of the IRS.  Buddy, the laws were written by the rich, not by the factory workers or the fast food folks, whatdja think?  Or were you thinking at all?  C’mon, Joe, the game is rigged and if you haven’t figured that out since 5^th grade, you need to get off social media and pay some attention to the alarm bells in your head. The rich don’t get richer because they follow Instagram and Tik Tok, they get rich because you do…. Wake up and smell the money, pal.  They wrote the tax laws, amigo, and they have attorneys and CPA’s and accounting firms to worm their way around the intricacies the rest of us won’t understand in a lifetime of Turbo-Tax fill-ins.

So if you read that the IRS is arming themselves with AR-15’s so they can come to your rental apartment or your trailer door to squeeze another couple bucks from your puny wages, think it through a little harder, why don’tcha?  You really think some white collar decent wage goon is going to audit you, find that math error on your 1040-EZ, probably lose money on the time spent, but report back to his supervisors that the investigation lost hundreds of dollars but hey, we put it to the guy all right, we showed him who’s boss, he won’t forget to doublecheck his additions and subtractions next year, that’s for sure!  So yeah, stop the IRS from collecting from the rich and the corporations.  You probably feel okay about funding the Defense Department  all by yourself.  Or do you think we have an army so they can subjugate you next?

Oh, and here’s something else.  They don’t need to.  You’ve already volunteered for slavery.

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I got a pile of friends who claim to be envious of my so-called Lifestyle.  Get up when I want, work for myself, do what I feel like doing, live off the calendar and my wits and off the beaten path.  Who wouldn’t like that?  Unless we factor in the poverty, the hand-to-mouth, the lack of pensions or retirement.  There’s a reason hippies became extinct and it has nothing to do with an asteroid slamming Earth.

As the mizzus will gladly attest, I took this road — this choice? — because I don’t play well with others.  And certainly not managers, supervisors or most any other bosses.  I didn’t like the city.  I didn’t like most jobs.  Okay, all jobs, any jobs.  And since poverty never scared me, the Path of Least Resistance led to here, a place remote and cheap, and not surprisingly, a backwash without much opportunity for employment.

Perfect!  All I had to do was learn a few skills.  Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, truck repair, subsistence living.  Education — it never really ends.  Something they  neglect to teach most of us in school.  The School of Hard Knocks doesn’t need a post-graduate program.  Tuition’s not exactly free, but it’s reasonable.

Folks who claim to be envious of my lifestyle really aren’t.  They didn’t have the appropriate skill sets.  If they did, retirement would be easy for them, a hippie vibe with a fat income guaranteed.  Who could ask for more?  But … like I always say, it takes more than a little while to learn bohemianism.  And if you’ve spent most of your life paying for insurance policies to protect yourself from the vagaries of existence, chances are it’s too late to become a latter day beatnik.  Don’t feel bad, you’re probably the Lucky Ones.

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