The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I just read a study that proved ‘grumpy’ miserable people live just as long as the happy cheerful folks. This is good news to us seasonally afflicted South Enders, all us perennial grumpsters holed up in our dark shacks hoping Global Warming is true and it gets here soon. I can say for myself, at least now that I can rub this phony smile off my mug and go back to honest cynicism knowing it won’t cause cancer or a heart attack, it’s a relief. A smile, I don’t care how many times you sing it, isn’t much of an umbrella. Even face down ….

Course half of us down here don’t believe in science so a ‘study’ isn’t going to change most minds. Half don’t buy climate change or evolution or the coronavirus or the Round Earth theory. Just ornery, I guess. That, or they got religious beliefs we’re supposed to be tolerant of even if they’re intolerant toward everyone else’s.

I’m sure next year we’ll get a study on whether religion makes a believer happier. You’d sure think it would, not that they’d maybe live longer, but go ask the Taliban how cheerful they are without music or dancing in their lives. Some of our righteous neighbors seem too busy casting stones at the rest of us they don’t squeeze much joy out of their own lives, probably wouldn’t if every day was warm and sunny.

Personally I don’t think happiness springs from too rich a soil, not something that needs or wants much fertilizing. It requires maybe just the opposite occasionally, brings a little balance to the garden. Me, I sprinkle lots of skepticism, amend with some sarcasm, keep things a little on the warm side when I need to. I get plenty of bugs, worms, even critters. Gardening has its ups and downs, but the harvest, even if it’s on the lean side some years, is pretty good. Might not help me live longer, but it seems more natural, more honest.

And McDonald’s — you can go ahead and change the Happy Meal name, no health benefits, to what it truly is: Crappy Meal. You got science on your side now.

Another day, another Covid report. I notice I’m losing track of time, the days, the weeks, even the month, all just slipping by without signposts to mark some new event, a vacation maybe or a wedding or a birthday party for friends. Even the statistics of new cases and more deaths just seem drearily the same. And when the President tweets that this will just fade away shortly, sooner than you think, the joke is stale. I can only slap my head so many times with this boob.

But hey, he wore a mask two days ago. HE WORE A PLAGUE MASK!!! The news media went half crazy. The man wore a mask for the first time in public. Let’s see, that’s about 6 months into this plague, about 3 and a half million Covid cases in the country he presumably leads, 135,000 dead voters. I mean, what’s the rush? He told reporters he’s always thought wearing a mask was a good idea. You know, in the right place, the right time. And no, I didn’t slap myself upside the head when he said it, the dark humor has been drained right out of me. I live in an Alice in Wonderland world and I’m just trying to hang on without going too much further down the rabbit hole.

So when the Masked One ordered all schools to open this fall, or else!, I just grabbed one hand with the other and held it tight against my body, no point giving myself a self-induced concussion. All those states that came out of Lockdown, Florida, Texas, California, South Carolina, Arizona, well, just like the health experts predicted, they have huge spikes in cases. All those young people partying, drinking in bars, congregating at the beaches. Masks? Wrong time, wrong place, apparently. But if you thought those grim new statistics would matter, think again after you’ve duct taped your hands to your chair, the right time to open schools is a month away, the right place is a classroom with 30 kids and a teacher, maybe masked, maybe not.

Ignorance is bliss in the New America. So why not keep these kids home, forget virtual schooling or any schooling for that matter. Dumb them down, prepare them for the future. Plenty of jobs in a Trump administration for that kind of portfolio. High school dropout, Jimmy? No problem, the President is looking for a new Secretary of State. Welcome aboard.

I confess. I have a TV. Not a very big TV, not a drive-in theater size TV, a TV that our friends find maddening if we want to watch a movie together but that seems plenty big enough for the mizzus and me. I don’t want to build another house to make room for a 60 inch television. But I do want to watch the news and a few shows. And I don’t want to pay for cable or satellite. Not that I wouldn’t want to watch 100 stations with the weirdest content imaginable just to get PBS.

So it probably won’t surprise anyone to know that I have an antenna on the roof. Since everyone went to digital, the old antenna wouldn’t pick up anything. Nada, zip, zero. Thanks a lot, FCC. The first UHF antenna would catch a few stations, not most, and even then you had to haul up to the roof, turn the antenna, climb back down and see if that picked up the station you were after and when it didn’t repeat the above. Great exercise, not good viewing. Like the internet, TV reception out in the boondocks is for the birds. Sure, the providers promised high speed updates, but any fool knew they were lying. And now that the pandemic has forced us all into quarantine, the internet with everyone logged on is reminiscent of the old dial-up days with buffering that lasts longer than TV commercials.

A week ago I did some buffered research on TV antennas, ordered one online and got it a few days later. The old one, which actually wasn’t very old at all, had replaced the previous one that refused, no matter what compass direction I pointed it, to pick up PBS. PBS, we learned through further internet buffered research, had a slightly weaker signal than any other station this side of Portland or San Francisco. Close, but no cigar, so I figured get a slightly bigger antenna but maybe not as big as a large array telescope. With high hopes and plenty of pessimism I hauled the new aluminum job up to the roof peak, attached it to the metal mast, pointed it in the direction of Seattle and Gomorrah, climbed back down the ladder and turned on the TV. Wow. The stations were really a lot crisper, all of them.

All of them except PBS. Which didn’t come in at all. PBS asks us for contributions all the time. Maybe when they offer a repeater station instead of a cheesy coffee mug for a donation of 120 bucks a year, they might have a shot. Until then, they can quit asking.

I guess if protesters are clamoring to have Confederate traitors’ statues removed, the correct response from the White House obviously is to commission new statues to replace the old ones. Why not? Who doesn’t love Davy Crockett? The President no doubt watched those TV shows with Fess Parker, probably should make a statue of Fess too. Or Daniel Boone who ‘killed a ‘bar’ when he was only 3.’ I know plenty of guyz who have closed a bar at only midnight, earlier than 3, probably not heroic enough to get them into the National Garden, I’m betting. Billy Graham is on the list. Everybody loves old Billy, who beget Franklin, who beget the religion of hate. Plenty of folks on that wishlist, some sort of controversial, like Douglas MacArthur, the General who wanted to bomb the Chinese back to the Ming Dynasty. Or Ronald Reagan who was beloved by the Republicans even as he cut deals with the Iranians before he was elected President.

But my purpose isn’t to make the list shorter by questioning the nominees we have now. No, the more the merrier, I say, so let’s add more to the Garden. Why limit our heroes? Why not create a Pantheon of Popularity? If need be, if space is a limiting factor and the White House lawn doesn’t have room for Rushmore sized monuments, we could always downsize a bit, maybe hundreds of bobble-heads lined up by the security fences. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. The Three Stooges. Stormy Daniels! Definitely Stormy Daniels. Ooh, Rambo, who doesn’t like Rambo? But hey, why should I be the arbiter of national popularity? We could have American Idols winners sculpted, soap opera stars, Academy Award nominees, lottery winners, beauty pageant contestants, NASCAR drivers, even fictional characters. Billy Jack, Rocky, Bullwinkle too!, Donald Duck, Jared Kushner (I know, he’s supposed to be real but he’s practically a plastic cutout now), Rooster Cogburn, Beaver Cleaver, Maynard G. Krebs, hell, the list could go on and on. What a Garden!!! What a Pantheon!!!

Plenty of work here for all those unemployed artists, that’s maybe the best part. Set up a public works project, hire sculptors, put em to work the way we did during the Great Depression. They’ll work for peanuts and fame, count on that. Maybe get the kids working on this too, from grade school on up, plenty of public participation, every parent proud of their little progeny. A Garden of Idol in every town! Forget about Christopher Columbus and those rebel generals, time to upgrade! Time to celebrate new heroes! Every citizen can nominate his or her favorite. Hell, each of us could nominate ourselves. Hero Worship, is that so bad?