The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Show me the smartest guyz in the room, any of those Tech Bros, and I’ll show you the testosterone ego-driven idiots who are creating their own superiors, AI with an intelligence so far beyond their meager IQ’s as they are to earthworms, that’s how smart these yahoos are. The betting here among Vulture Capitalists is that AI will be the servants of mankind and the Tech Boyz will keep control past Singularity. Might be why earthworms stay underground … to keep from being squashed.

I spoke to a pseudo human today on the phone who called itself Pixie, ready to help me with my new dryer’s problem. Spoke better English than most of the real people on these sorts of calls, took down all the pertinent information to cover our warranty, then connected me to Jordan, a live hominid who, truth be told, was hard to understand but who finally scheduled a service call. Pixie told me right up front she was an android, Jordan didn’t mention whether he was a human or not. Another few months, a year maybe, nobody would tell the difference, why bring it up? And you can bet your cryptos Jordan will be unemployed.

The future isn’t already here, it’s roared past. AI is ubiquitous already. It’s on our personal gizmos, in our offices, at work in our factories, better believe the military is all in. The genie is out of the flask, snaking into all aspects of us humans’ lives. Even if we wanted to, there’s no slowing the exponential growth of this infant alien, designed by coders and engineers, the Musks and the Silicon Vally crew who assure us there’s nothing to worry about.

What, me worry??? I’m just a stupid primate content to live in the techno backwaters, strumming a banjo and scribbling warnings sent out on the tide in stoppered bottles. Why would I fear machines so advanced already that even their creators don’t fully understand their ‘thought’ processes? If they don’t make the next generation of AI, the Chinese will. Or some other competitor will. Whatever this is, it’s coming. Faster than anyone dreamed. Except maybe the androids.

Give Musk his trillion. He’s going to kill the kitten anyway.

Karen and I bought the little house next door to us. We know a bit of its history and the history of Ruby, the woman who built it with her husband Harry, a fellow vaudevillian. Ruby was a dancer. Actually, she was a burlesque dancer and more accurately, a stripper during the Depression. We even have a full size theater marquee of her we found in the wall of our shack back in 1978 where, it turns out, Ruby lived with her mom Mary and her sister Pearl and her brother Marion back as far as 100 years ago when the shack was built. In the 40’s she and Harry built the little house we just bought.

I think half the reason we bought it was because Karen is an historian and wanted to bring the two places back together, sort of the way it was originally, all in the family. She’s been searching websites, googling up Ruby and binging Harry and yahooing Pearl. She’s got folks down at the Historical Society sleuthing tidbits on burlesque queens and strippers to the point the FBI may have a sting soon on geriatric porno purveyors, a psychopathology that has received all too little attention in the media. Genealogists have joined the fray and fragment by fragment, some of Ruby’s life has begun to materialize. More than her dance outfit, that’s for sure….

But … you go searching into closets and crevasses, you better be prepared for what you uncover. People’s lives hold secrets and surprises. We don’t all have happy endings, even us South Enders. Maybe particularly us South Enders. This past month we were given an article from the Oct. 18, 1946 Sacramento Bee which reads as follows: “A suave and polite bandit raped burlesque dancer Ruby Reed, 28, at gunpoint yesterday morning while her husband lay in the same bed, tied and gagged.
The gunman, dressed in navy or merchant marine uniform, folded his coat neatly on a chair but did not remove his cap or mask.
Miss Reed and her husband, Harry Mayers, a burlesque comedian, woke at 4:30 A.M. to find a man pointing a gun and a flashlight in their room at 324 Hyde Street. He said: ‘This is a stickup. Never mind the money. Get back into bed.’ He tied Mayer’s hands with clothesline, gagged both of them and then raped Miss Reed.
Afterward, he rose, took his coat and left, remarking, ‘Thank you very much.’

This account leaves altogether too much to the imagination and raises serious questions as to where the plot will take us next. Part of me wishes we’d never delved this deeply. But the other part wants to know how the coming chapter will play out. I’ve always maintained that history is half mystery. I just hope it isn’t a murder mystery. Stay tuned. We are.

Love on the South End was never a bowl of cherries. You try to woo a prospective mate after she’s set eyes on 8 foot tall killer nettles menacing the front door, you’ll see what I mean. Course, the Rottweiler barking all night from its pen next to the neighbor’s travel trailer which no longer travels, the one Mr. Dog Lover lives in with the hound chained close by for affection or protection, that doesn’t endear new girlfriends to the neighborhood either.

Most of my single friends have about given up on the local scene. They’ve dated every yahoo, unemployed or otherwise, down at the Hotel Watering Hole and Dating Service, and those memories they’d like to forget. Or at least suppress. I know. I had to mail order my bride. She probably sensed the muted desperation in my throb-filled love letters, but she took pity, I guess, on an old hermit. I sure didn’t mention the banjos. Or the ivy holding up the shack walls. Or the well on its last legs with an ancient piston pump wheezing and gasping just to haul up a glass of water. Love, I knew, would overcome all those drawbacks.

Course we were younger then, still ‘marketable’. My friends, my single friends, have grown a bit longer in the tooth. Some are missing teeth. More than a few have turned to internet dating to meet future partners, figuring, I guess, the ‘pool’ around here has grown shallow with mostly only geezers fossilizing in the puddles. Now they got a pool of millions of prospective mates to choose from. Just sort through the criterion, run the data and preferences, make allowance for some creative exaggeration, then set up a date. “Non-smoker, loves to walk the beach at sunset, enjoys good literature, would rather snuggle than watch TV, loves puppies and quiet conversations.” True translation: psychopath, possible killer. “Fit, but could lose 5 pounds, enjoys an occasional glass of merlot, young at heart.” Translation: obese nursing home escapee.

Fat chance of finding an honest person in the era of Facebook selfies. The mizzus is counting her lucky stars, but our friends — Mr. Right is fudging the facts. He’s balding, morbidly obese, 15 years too old, drinks until he blacks out, watches any sporting even on TV day or night, eats exclusively Doritos and beer nuts and has the conversational equivalency of Cheetah the ape and a literary proficiency that stalled with Archie and Jughead. He wants mostly to get laid, then left in peace with his TV show. He is, if you haven’t guessed, 6 farts shy of being a heart throb.

Love is an elusive realm. It takes a lot of compromise to share a life, a whole entire life. With a person who has faults and idiosyncracies that have to mesh somehow with your own. And on top of that there’s the cultural overlay of physical beauty and … well, physical beauty mostly. And sex. Let’s not even go there, the rest is hard enough. Although for the guys, the rest is sort of superfluous.

I know this isn’t exactly an Advice Column and by now you know any advice I got is seriously suspect anyway, but … for those who still believe the AM radio bubble gum pop song notion of True Love, don’t give up. But DO keep in mind, bad love is worse than no love. I’ve had my vaccination of bad love. Loneliness usually won’t make you miserable. Or cynical. Or suicidal. But love gone south … love on the rocks … love turned sour and rancid and mean? Be choosy is all I’m saying. Be your own best friend. If that’s all you got, remember: it’s plenty!

The End of the Road Tavern isn’t actually where the road ends, but it’s close. A few Forest Service roads branch into the mountains and there are a few cabins up Rainbow Creek, but otherwise most traffic stops at the tavern. Donny Butler owns it, bartends, cooks and breaks up fights. He closes Monday and on Christmas, but otherwise Donny is always open. No one around UpCreek recalls him taking a vacation and if he’s ever been sick, it was on a Monday. His cabin is in the woods behind the bar, but none of us regulars have ever set foot inside. Most of us can’t imagine him in such a domestic setting and the others think the house is just his storage area.

You want to know what’s happening around UpCreek, the End of the Road is where you can find out. Who’s poaching what and where, who’s catching cutthroat and what size, whose wife is cheating with who and whose kid is going to prison for what crime. Two years ago Donny got a license to sell hard stuff, figuring to double his profits like a lot of the taverns downriver. Which he did. A lot of profit in a bottle of Jack, not so much in a keg of beer. Donny noticed even the women started coming around, ordered cocktails he had to learn how to make and these were very profitable, plus the ladies brought a fresh clientele and a new atmosphere. He put some checkered tablecloths on the stained tables, tidied up a bit and added salads to the menu. The End of the Road seemed like the Start of Something.

This hunting season a couple of Seattleites celebrated two buck kills a little too exuberantly. “Double Shots!!” they shouted deep into the night until Trapper Jim, also deep into his cups, took umbrage at the out-of-towners’ good luck and his own lack thereof. Later Donny admitted at the trial, he should have quit serving all three. Hindsight doesn’t need a high magnification scope. Jim was untying a 6 point from the hunters’ Range Rover roof when they stumbled into the parking lot. Words were exchanged, push came to shove and Jim pulled his 30-30 Winchester off his Chevy pickup’s rack and shot one of the men.

Who lived … fortunately. But that’s why the End of the Road no longer serves booze and why women drink downstream. Or quietly at home.

My first banjo was one I traded a semi-automatic Marlin .22 for, a good deal for the guy trading the banjo. Nice gun, pretty poor banjo. But it got me pickin and grinning and for that, it was a great swap for me too. A couple years later I found a nicer one in a Stanwoodopolis 2nd hand shop and even though it was a couple hundred dollars, I jumped right on that deal like a dog on a bone.

Before you know it, I was playing Cripple Creek and Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Shady Grove like ringing a bell. The second banjo was okay, but nothing to write home about. So when I found a used beauty up in Mt. Vernon at the music store on consignment, I knew at first glance it was not only a very nice instrument, it was meant for me. Actually, I figured I could sell the first two and pay for the good one, what we bluegrass yahoos call Zero Sum Pain.

My wife at the time, my Ex, she didn’t live up on the South End with me. She had a boyfriend and a house in Seattle and Gomorrah. We were waltzing toward a breakup, but never quite making it to the end of the dance. A lot of bust-ups are like that, I think, slow motion wrecks any fool could see wasn’t avoidable so why not just get it over with?

When I mentioned my discovery of this sweet little 5 string practically being given away up north, she wondered aloud — as you might have too — why in blue hell did I need another banjo when I barely could play 3 songs on the two I got?? Well, okay, I said, but this was a helluva deal and one I’d sorely HATE to pass up, practically a ticket to Nashville, baby.

We quarrelled a bit as we often did back in those loveless days and finally I said I meant to buy the bugger. I’d sell the first two. Probably make a tidy profit when the smoke cleared. “You buy that thing and I’ll leave you,” she vowed.

Well, I’m sure many a marriage has cracked up on the rocks over a banjo. But usually they bust up over playing them. Leave em in the closet, you have a 50/50 chance of making the next anniversary. Buy 3 and play em … all badly … and often … trust me, music doesn’t always soothe the savage breast.