The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A rose is a rose, so it’s said, and smells just as sweet by any other name.  Perusing our newspaper of record, the Crab Cracker now that the Stanwoodopolis Gazette has abdicated its role of reporting local news, I came across a notice that a new group had formed in the area for those coping with the loss of a loved one.  Death Café.  I know, I should be more sympathetic, possibly even supportive, might even be in need myself someday … but golly, Miss Molly, couldn’t they have come up with a better name?

Death Café.  I don’t know, it just … well, it just … it has a certain morbid and cadaverous quality to it.  I mean, you get to wondering what’s on the menu.  Eggs 6 feet under, easy over.  Soup de jour, eye of newt in a tomato bisque.  BLT’s, blood lettuce and tomato.  You can hardly stop yourself from imagining the worst sorts of breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  Zombieburgers, cooked rare.

But these are the times we live in.  Touchy-feely in a modern and alienated world.  Probably better than a bunch of tweets from people you barely know on Twitter, I suppose, but c’mon, Death Café for the luvva…. ?  Why not, oh, I don’t know, Heaven’s Gate Diner, or Streets of Gold Chop House (okay,  maybe not), Pearly Gates Beanery, Adios Amigo Pizza Parlor, Ashes to Ashes Tavern —anything but Death Café, even Death Anonymous.

The trouble, of course, is a lot of us secular humanists, having renounced the old school religions of our parents (who are now gone too late for the Death Café), don’t know how to deal with our grief for the dearly departed since there’s no, let’s call it ‘closure’.  Imagine there’s no heaven, Lennon sang.  No hell below us, above us only sky.  You think that’s going to make folks feel better when their loved one bites the bullet, think again.  John says you may think that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.  Swell, John, just swell.  He says he hopes one day we’ll join him and the world will live as one. One what?

If John were around today, he’d be the fry cook at the Death Café, no doubt about it.  Actually, he’d be head chef at the Imagine Bar and Grill.  Happy Hour all day long….

Fairline Freddy was parked at his usual table at the Pilot Lounge with a few of his vintage car buddies, watching the ballgame Sunday and drinking early.  Sam and myself had just rolled in, said hello how are ya two IPA’s, thanks Jerry, then pulled up at the only open table next to Freddy’s.  The game by then was out of reach, hopelessly lost and the mood next door was decidedly unpleasant.  Nothing new there, I figured … and as usual was wrong.

‘So my daughter wanted a blowout wedding,’ Frank was saying, ‘big Hall, hundreds of people, Big She-Bang.  And she’s 35, husband is 40, been married once or twice already, him, I mean, but they want a Cinderella wedding and I’m spozed to foot the bill.’

‘You shoulda done like I did, Frank,’ Freddy says.  ‘Tell them to elope and you’ll give them a pile of cash.’

Frank shakes his head.  ‘I tried that, Fred, I offered them 10 grand but my baby wants a fancy wedding.  Cake, florist, five bridesmaids, an open bar at the reception.  That offer work for you?’

Frank confesses that it did not.  ‘I don’t get it either, Fred.  Kids nowadays want a splash, photographers, something special.  They been living together for four years, for godsake.’

‘But here’s the thing.  The Hall I rented for Her Highness, I took a tour the other day, see how it sets up, where the band goes, the bar, all that — yeah, yeah, a band, you believe that? — and the lady who runs the Hall shows me the back side door and there’s this bum sleeping in the doorway when we open it up.  You believe that?  Guy’s got a sleeping bag and sacks of god only knows what and he’s out cold middle of the damn morning.  So I tell the woman this guy had better not be here when we have this wedding, all I can say, and she says, get this, she says he sleeps there every night and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘Looks to me like she’s dealt with this bum before and he just keeps coming back so I walk over to the guy, tap him with my boot to wake him up and I tell him if he comes back here he’ll be one sorry sonofabitch, now get moving.  That’s how you deal with freaks like this, probably some meth head, cops don’t want nothing to do with him, but hey, I don’t want him screwing up my kid’s special damn day, know what I mean?’

The table knows exactly what Frank means, nods all around, a couple of good for yous.  Sam, before I can drop an arm on his wrist as warning, feels compelled to weigh in, liberal snowflake that he is, the kind of man who thinks holding your tongue is tantamount to being complicit.  ‘Who deputized you, Frank? The guy bothering you or what?’

Frank says,’ hell yes he was bothering me! And so are you.’

‘Good,’ Sam says, ‘that’s the idea.  Who made you God?  Here’s some character, down on his luck, you don’t know one thing about him, parked in a doorway, cold, probably hungry …’

‘Hungry?’ Frank shouts, ‘the guy is holed up across from the damn Food Bank.  He’s eating 3 squares of free food a day, no job, no worries, life of Riley.’

‘Life of Riley?’  Sam is suddenly on full boil.  ‘Life of Riley, really?  You ever been homeless, Fred?  You ever go without a meal?  Ever lost a job?  Ever been down on your luck?  Have a little compassion, why don’tcha?  But naw, go over and kick the guy awake and threaten him, that’s nice, that’s big hearted.  Geez.’

Frank gives Sam a long woeful stare.  I’m expected fireworks, overturned tables, broken glasses, blood on the floor kind of violence.  But instead Frank suddenly deflates.  ‘I lost my job once, Sam’ he says in a quiet voice.  ‘Boeing laid me off and I lost my house.  My wife left me awhile after that so I lost her too.  She took our daughter and I got the boot.  I been there.  I didn’t live in an alley but I had to hole up in a friend’s basement for a year.  I know what bad luck is.  I just don’t want my daughter’s wedding screwed up for her.  That’s all I’m asking.  I’ve screwed up enough things for her.  She just wants this damn wedding to be special and I want everything to go okay. ‘

Our two tables go church quiet although the ballgame is still going, other tables are groaning and cheering, the place is full.  Sam fingers his glass and finally, after a long silence, holds it up to Frank.  ‘Cheers, Frank, you’ll have a great wedding for your daughter.  One she’ll appreciate.  You’re a good dad.’

‘Too late for that, Sam, too late for that.’  But Frank lifts his glass and so do the rest of us.  Too late for all of us, I think.  Later I’ll wonder where the guy in the doorway ended up, but for now, all is well in the world.  Or at least the Pilot Lounge….

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the President-in-Exile has to turn over his tax returns, much to the howls of Donald out there in the wilderness of Mar-a-Lago.  So unfair!  What the returns will show, according to testimony by his accountant, are losses every year for a decade.  700 million in 2009, 200 million the following year.  Chump change for a highly successful businessman like His Highness, proof once again for his minions that the man knows how to navigate the system.

In other words, you paid more than Donald J Trump in taxes most of your life.

Digest that for a few minutes.  Or a day or two.  Even if you believe that the man who claims to be one of the richest men in America honestly made money by losing fortunes every year for a decade, an extraordinary feat even for the Trumpster, you might question if this is the right man to drain the swamp.  Or you might wonder if this is why Republicans fight tooth and nail to defund the IRS.  Donald claimed he couldn’t turn over his returns because of ongoing audits by the IRS.  Ya think?

And do ya think the corporations that manage to avoid paying federal taxes year after year thanks to loopholes, subsidies, deferments, offshore accounting and all the other sleight-of-hands by teams of tax accountants willing to fight for shady offsets and deductions, full knowing the audits aren’t coming so why not, do ya think this is smart business?

Most of you get your taxes taken out directly through your employer, not much wiggle room for sneaky deductions.  You pay more than one of the richest guys in the country.  Maybe you think this is fair.  He gets rich and you pay for the schools and fire fighters.  He lives like a pooh-bah while you fund the building of highways and bridges.  He rents hotels to government visitors at astronomical prices while you have the honor of hiring police and paying for the military.

Drain the swamp?  No, the alligators are doing fine just the way it is.  Vote for the guy again, why not?  But whatever you do, ask not what he can do for his country.  He expects you to ask that of yourself.  Thank you for your service, sucker!

So for some reason I’m riding down the road in my truck and decide to see what the conservative folks are talking about today, same as I used to before Trump got elected, test the roiling waters of the right wing, put a finger into the wind and see which way the tornado is blowing today.  My moderator begins by saying, “I heard this on some newsfeed this morning and I didn’t have time to fact check it.”

This is a familiar lead-in to any of us who listen to these talking heads on the far right.  Not enough time in the day to double check their sources, but hey, it sounds true to them and so my guy says, “well, let’s just go ahead and imagine it is true, go from there.”  This is like a scientist saying, okay, I haven’t got a clue if this hypothesis is accurate but why don’t we go ahead and build a theory around it, find out if we like the looks of it when we’re done.”

The story my agitator has supposedly, but I doubt, heard, revolves around the rumor which he declares is suspiciously plausible, that Joe Biden tried to cut a deal with the Saudis for a promise of drilling more oil.  He would, this rumor has it, offer amnesty to the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.  He refers to the prince as MsB or maybe it’s MbS, either case, he tells his audience, you know who I mean.  Oil for amnesty.

Quid pro quo, maybe you remember the Trump deal in Ukraine, not that this will come up in the next half hour’s grinding of innuendo and speculation until the sausage is ready for the bun.  Now, to be fair, I have more time on my hands than our national Limbaugh clone so I punch up MbS and first article out of the chute is the CNN post that the U.S. Dep’t. of Justice cannot bring a case filed by Khashoggi’s wife because the guy happens to be the head of state.  They can’t sue Putin, they can’t extradite Xi, and no, they can’t bring a case against Mohammed either.  Kind of a different story than the unchecked one our national radio star is offering to listeners hungry for dirt on Sleepy Joe.

Now he knows his take is bullshit and I know his slant is bullshit and you probably know better than to even tune into talking heads like this … but, half the damn country listens to this boy and his ilk, twisting and fabricating and stretching the truth til it’s red meat down to the gristle for an audience starved for scapegoats and craving revenge.  You bet I turned my radio to a music station to remove the taste.  The true believers, I’m guessing they’re listening to this all day long.

I got a theory.  Not really based on anything I want to fact-check.  Just something I want you to believe.  Stay tuned.  Send money.  I’ll be back tomorrow with the news.

The rapper now called Ye, formerly Kanye West, made the pilgrimage this week to Mar-a-Lago, formerly a swamp near the Atlantic Ocean.  The President-in-Exile had invited Ye to a meeting, two very big brained men dining together and possibly discussing Trump’s 3^rd run at the White House when Kan-Ye surprised Donald by asking if he, Donald, would consider running as Vice President when Kan-Ye announces his own run and was then met with angry screams from the candidate who had already declared himself a presidential candidate.  When big brains clash, you have to expect explosions, I guess.

Apparently the tete-a-tete went downhill from there.  Mr. T purportedly made explicitly nasty comments about Kan-Ye’s ex-mizzus, the Queen Kardashian, mother of his children and so the chit chat rapidly slid downhill.  Nevertheless, the rapper turned politician released a two minute video of their encounter, Mar-a-Lago Debrief,  no doubt expecting potential voters might turn away from a man who loses his temper, calls Ye’s woman (bleep) and seems slightly if not totally unhinged.  Well, at least he gave Donald a chance to be his running mate which shows the incredible magnanimity of the rap star.  Despite his anti-Semitic remarks of late.  And the fact that he brought a couple of pals instrumental in white nationalist organizations.  The more the merrier in the clown car, looks like.

If you thought this would be a boring election cycle, you’ve been watching too much Tucker Carlson.  Hopefully you won’t be too troubled by the lack of policy statements, wonky analyses or cogent platforms.  The monkeys are out of their cages now and whoever was in charge has exited the premises.  Expect a barrel of laughs for the next few years.  My guess is Trump will make up and eventually ask Kan-Ye to run as his vice president.  Although … there are plenty of potential candidates to choose from.  Hopefully they won’t dial back on their meds.  We could use all the comedy we can get.