The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some days the past comes calling. I was watering our garden this afternoon when an old friend hauled into the drive with a pack and a 5 gallon bottle of water he had lashed to a roller suitcase. Got off the bus that doesn’t run the last lousy three miles of island and walked here on his way to his brother’s cabin a mile south pulling that water along dirt road and blacktop. The cabin doesn’t have a well.

Tom’s been through some changes. Haven’t we all? I knew him back when … some 30 or 35 years ago. He was a hard drinking 20 something, distributed beer around the area, loved to tell stories of bars between Montana and California, the old saloons mostly gone now or restored to yuppie shrines. I nailed the ridgepole on the day we hoisted the 40 foot log up into position on his brother’s log cabin. Felt like I’d hammered the Golden Spike on the first transcontinental railroad. Quite an honor, definitely a privilege.

Tom moved down to Arizona, did the maintenance for the spring baseball, mowed, watered, all the stuff Mesa needs to keep a desert ballpark grassy and green. He got a bad back, developed an over-enthusiastic love of alcohol, had some physical breakdowns, went into rehab, took an early retirement on disability, discovered — or acknowledged — he was gay. He looked good today. Old, maybe, older even than me, but healthy old. Walking his gear two miles from the bus dropoff, 30 years from when I knew him.

I guess in a way we’re all old codgers now, pulling our water and our stories and our packs down the highway that runs back toward home … or some reasonable facsimile. He’ll stay a night or two, reminisce, commune with the stars and the skeeters, maybe have a campfire there under the big firs up where the dirt road to the cabin ends and something else, not memory, begins. I’ll be doing something similar, I guess, thinking of all the old campfires and the nights long ago up at that cabin. What I think is we’re all hauling water, we’re all dragging stories….

When I was in 8th grade my family moved us from the idyllic scrublands of Georgia to the decidedly urban swamp of Milwaukee where I went to middle school next to the giant silos of the Schlitz Brewery,’ The Beer’, according to the 10 foot tall letters on the towers, ‘That Made Milwaukee Famous’. Needless to say, the move was a culture shock for me and my two brothers. I sat in the back of my classrooms with the girls who had been booted out of Catholic parochial schools for … well, let’s just say, unbiblical behavior.

Even only 13 or 14 year olds, these banished babes were children in adult bodies, maybe not the brightest bulbs in my pre-pubescent firmament, but definitely the most sexual creatures I had ever had the pleasure to be seated next to. Not that I really understood on a cognizant level the attraction, but let’s just say the pheromones worked their magic. On some intuitive level I understood any appeal I might have for these fallen angels would not be the result of my skinny, geeky, shy self, nor my intellectual prowess, limited as it was. No, I needed something more, some heretofore undiscovered secret power, my own feeble alternative to male pheromones.

So I became a comedian. Parked far from the blackboard and our various teachers’ desks, I proceeded to entertain these girls with their padded bras, tight sweaters and short skirts with whispered witticisms, soft spoken sarcasms regarding our educators’ attempts to teach us math and science and conjugation. Every girlish giggle only encouraged me and gave me renewed confidence. Sure, the teachers noticed, usually admonishing the guilty laughers, not me, the clown with the innocent face.

The girls mostly flunked our courses. And no, I don’t blame myself for their distractions. These cuties wouldn’t need college — they had attributes the rest of us would have sold our souls for. Which the nuns figured these ladies had already lost.

Me, I graduated 8th grade for all the advantage it gave me. But … I did become a hopeless wiseass, no diploma, just an unaccredited degree. And girls, wherever you are, thank you, thank you, thank you. You all were my muses.

Well, it’s that time again to think about our New Year’s resolutions. Since we never expect to really quit smoking or cut back on our drinking, in fact, do anything much different than what we’ve always done since before the millenia. So why not super-size those rez’s this year?

For instance, why not resolve to quit scrolling your smartphone 24/7? Of course you can’t do it, but at least you acknowledge the addiction. Take mine — NOT to pay attention to the antics of our narcissistic ego-deranged president Fuhrer. I may as well resolve to look away from traffic accidents, just not going to happen. Let’s be honest, some things are beyond the control of us mere mortals. Might just as well resolve to achieve world peace or dial back the global temperatures, both worthy goals and no shame if you fail considering we’ve all failed.

About half of us made the same resolution every damn year — to lose 10 or 20 pounds, slim down, eat less, eat wiser. But now that we got Ozempic and about a dozen or two diet drugs we can skip that one this year, maybe just work on a diet for our credit cards. Which, by the way, Big Pharma is working on a non-injectible solution, just give them a year or two, a remedy is just around the corner.

In the non-scientific totally anecdotal statistics I’ve compiled here on the fairly resolutionless South End, those who did vow pledges for self-improvement not only failed miserably, for the most part they doubled down on addictions, sins, weight gain and device usage. Nearly all were quite content to do so. The only sensible conclusion would seem to be a resolution to skip the damn resolutions. Which, I’ll be honest, is mine this year. Good luck to the rest of my digitally addicted, chain smoking, overweight alcoholic neighbors. Happy New Year, same as the Old One.

Let’s cut right to the chase. AI is here and getting smarter every day. Super intelligence, that stage where machines totally surpass ours, is coming sooner than most thought possible. The machines program the Next Gen of themselves, leapfrogging ahead in giant steps. The question left to us mere mortals is the one that asks if these androids can be controlled or not. This, unlike, say, climate change or global warming, is truly an existential problem. Think mass extinction.

The Silicon Boys are using their billions to build ‘safe’ houses, bunkers more like fallout shelter mansions, their hedge against who knows what societal breakdowns will be unleashed. Musk wants to colonize Mars, leave this planet behind and hope for an extraterrestrial future, no doubt with himself as Techno Emperor. Quite a few of these AI creators are worried their invention will be a true Frankenstein, not much need for dear old Dad. Nary a one of them wants to put the brakes on for an all-out push for super intelligence.

They’re betting the farm. And the cities. And all of us. Billions and trillions of dollars are gambling that this will be homo sapiens’ greatest achievement, not its last. Like the Twilight Zone episode where the alien arrives with a promise ‘to serve mankind’, and in the final scene where passengers are loading for transport up to an alien Promised Land, they discover that To Serve Mankind is actually a cookbook before the spaceship’s doors close shut.

Ironic that science, rather than a boon to us, might create the vehicle for our own destruction. Unless, of course, AI is the portal to a Renaissance beyond our wildest dreams. The end of disease, even immortality, a society whose every needs are taken care of through the power of superior intelligence. No more food shortages, no more poverty, no more wars, just a harmonious existence, world peace, a new Garden of Eden where God is an all powerful algorithm.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Although, trust me on this … you don’t get to vote.