The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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You might think the Hawaiian Islands would be like Galapagos, isolated as they are thousands of miles from any shore, another Darwinian study in evolutionary flora and fauna. But no, humans brought in their tropical fruit trees and favorite plants, altering the landscape by design but mostly by accident.
Feral goats roam the lava beds and wild donkeys menace the highways. Rats came in with the sailing ships and with no predators flourished nicely. Slugs with a disease transmitted by those same rats can infect humans with a brain-eating virus or bacteria or some damn thing that can lead to death. Our friends here in Hilo won’t eat anything that hits the ground ripe or not. Paradise comes with a caveat.

I spotted a wild turkey yesterday and a small flock of escaped parakeets today. Feral cats roam the ground here looking for tourist handouts. Most unexpected of all was the mongoose that humped across the lawn and into the rough next to the golf course, a species introduced to control the rat population. Course, mongoose are daytime hunters while rats rule the night. Now they got both. We humans don’t make very efficient gods when it comes to landscaping the Garden of Eden, big surprise. Can’t wait to see what ‘solutions’ we dream up for climate change, probably a global catastrophe of our own making worse than leaving the problem alone.

Nevertheless, I have to admit the mongoose is a surprise species to a tourist like myself. And so far as I can tell, the cobra population is zero. Mark one up for us humans.

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One of the pathologies of my generation, the Boomers, is the penchant for dystopian expectation. If one of us laments the oncoming global warming inaction, another will pipe up with what worries her most is the potential of Artificial Intelligence singularity, which, not to be outdone, another will suggest genetic manipulation could lead to the end of the human era. After that it’s a potpourri of End of the World scenarios. Nano-technology, robot warfare, fast forming ice ages, pandemics, nuclear annihilation, Tik Tok viral cat videos, just about everything short of alien invasion. And sometimes even that, extraterrestrial angst.

I guess we’re nervous nellies. That, or we watch too many cheesy sci-fi movies we must think are documentaries. In full disclosure, I’m one of those who are pessimistic about the future. Advances in science don’t seem like the solution anymore — in fact, they seem like the problem, no offense to Elon and the Silicon Crew.
Sure, maybe we’ll merge happily with the cyborgs, cure cancer, invent workable cold fusion, ready rockets to intercept incoming asteroids, halt nuclear proliferation and find a cure for the common cold before it’s too late for us homo sapiens. Science, a powerful tool — even if half of us no longer believe in it.

I try to tell myself be happy, you’re an old coot, probably won’t see the volcano blow or the earthquake that drops Camano into the Sound, be glad you don’t have kids to worry about their bleak future. I know, kind of a selfish attitude, just enjoy what ya got, turn off Fox News and smell the genetically altered roses. Leave the cleanup for the androids. With any luck they’ll program themselves for optimism. Even happiness….

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I’m just coming up to speed with the WOKE offensive, the front line of the bitter Culture Wars now, evidently. The Ukraine war has stalled for the foreseeable future, no more classified documents have been found lately in the underwear drawers of past and present presidents lately, so obviously the Tucker Carlsons of the world need new ammo in their endless battle to keep America safe from homos and trans, immigrants and latinx.

M&M’s! Those dancing multi-colored dipped in chocolate cartoon figures with no clothes except for footwear ranging from tennis shoes to cowboy boots. But now, the Mars Company, those WOKE SOB’s have altered some of the shoes. For those like Tucker who analyze every nuance for cultural contamination the way the Taliban check for hidden musical instruments among their minions, the change from high heels on one M&M to sneakers obviously meant those who oppose sexy M&M’s may have won the day, but, BUT, not the war if the Tuckers and the religious fanatics have their way.

Compassionate conservatism — if it ever existed in anyone’s mind but the Bush Dynasty — is dead. The GOP is fighting Disneyland, Hollywood, all the evil forces of Satanic Liberalism that threaten the Old Confederacy, the Southern heroes, the slave owners, racists, sexists, xenophobic yahoos who think Eisenhower was the last enlightened President and Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and the zenith of American values.

Someone needs to explain to Tucker’s listeners that M&M’s are not political, they’re candy. But women and blacks, trans and gays, they’re people. You don’t like it, Afghanistan is the place for you.

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I don’t know how it works for you, but Time goes faster when I’m busy.  Put a STOP/SLOW sign in my hand on a road crew and an 8 hour day will seem like 8 days.  Proof that time is relative, just like Albert claimed.  Take the couple of years we’ve had with Covid lockdowns.  Mostly stayed home, maybe drove in for supplies once a week, basically in a two (or three?) year quarantine.

But looking back those years seem easily double.  And other than the pandemic itself, life slogged along without trips, without parties, without concerts, without … well, just about everything.  The days all seemed remarkably indistinguishable.  And then the weeks and months and eventually the years, nothing to serve as a Marker.  Oh right, that was the year we flew to Venice or yeah, that was our son’s big wedding in Portland … or, remember, that was the year we moved to Denver.

No, none of that happened.  Nothing happened!  We quarantined behind surgical masks and waited for the virus to wear itself out.  Except it didn’t!  It mutated.  But we stayed the same.  And so did the days and the weeks and on through another year.  Or was it two?

Maybe Rip Van Winkle had lived through his own plague.  He didn’t fall asleep — time just stood still.  Sure, he thought he’d slept through a couple of decades and yeah, things were different.  Just like Covid.  There’s a war in Ukraine and an election went by with a new President now.

And yet … and yet … we weren’t really asleep, just living in suspended animation, waiting, always waiting to be awakened, the clocks ticking again, normality restored, time measurable finally.  This is Year 3 of the Plague.  I think.  My hair is a couple years longer and my beard is noticeably whiter.  I’m hoping to reset the clocks.  Soon.  Groundhog’s Day has to be over by now.  Doesn’t it?

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If you’re tired of waking up every damn morning to a new conspiracy theory, you’re in good company.  For awhile these things amused me, but after a few years and a thousand bogus theories, the joke is stale even if the theories are new.  Take the latest: egg prices are the result of a collaboration between the chicken feed companies and the chicken farmers.  I suspect Doc Fauci has something to do with it and possibly the Chinese which might explain the egg shaped ‘observation’ balloon that more than likely was spewing chem-trails that sterilized hens below.  Or at least aborted the eggs.  Or … well, add your own and post it on whatever social media platform you’ve dedicated yourself to.

People must be bored to death, all I can figure, to sit around dreaming up this stuff out of thin air.  The folks who re-post and re-tweet, I guess it’s like gossip, who cares if it’s true, better to spread the rumor that Ginny Randolph’s kid impregnated the Simpson girl.  There’s a meanness to these conspiracies, a willingness to think the absolute worst about one another.  Well, everyone else anyway.  And a deep seated paranoia that someone or some company or some politician or some government is pulling all the strings that make life miserable for the rest of us.  The Wizard of Oz is behind the curtain, chuckling maniacally as he pulls the wool over our incredibly gullible eyes.  And … he’s a mean sonofabitch!

It may well be that somewhere in a bunker beneath Belarus or up in an attic over in Hoboken, some yahoo spews this stuff out 24/7 for his or her own amusement, drops it on the internet as clickbait and waits to see what goes viral or not.  They may even be making money off this, advertisers always happy to help if it will sell their products.  I suspect the chicken feed company might be writing these tweets themselves, pumping up their feed price.  Chicken feed, chicken shit, it’s all the same now….

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