The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

You can lead a jackass to water … but you can’t make em think. Some years back a 1960’s rectangular telephone booth mysteriously appeared in Hutchison Park from out of nowhere or possibly outer space. Since I’m the de facto ranger of that most southerly of county parks, it fell on me to deal with its unlikely appearance. A friend, who at the time was head librarian for the Camano branch, suggested we convert it to a Little Library so we did just that, put shelving in and stocked it with books donated by her. Literacy had come to the South End. Or so I imagined.

A week later the library was sacked, graffiti written on the walls, the shelves and books thrown into the rain and some burned. Undeterred, I restocked the shelves, cleaned up the graffiti and hoped this would be a one time event. Ho ho. Not long after the place was vandalized again, the shelves knocked over and the books strewn outside. Ever the optimist, I restored the place and hoped for different results. Which, for a year or more, was what happened. Until one day a window was broken out.

My solution was to make a stained glass replacement. I’m a believer that art will triumph over ignorance, that installing an aesthetic fix might act as a talisman against future vandalism. And for awhile it seemed my faith was substantiated. Last night, however, a pal called to say he’d found the library knocked over on its side, the windows broken out and one sculpture and the stained glass window stolen. When I got there the hundred or so books were a sodden mess, shattered glass was scattered everywhere … and my optimism was too.

Today I’ll go clean up the mess. And try not to count this as a personal failure. But I will confess, this does seem like a metaphor for the times we live in now, braggingly ignorant, malevolently self-righteous, just happy brutes knuckle down in a world shutting the door on science and knowledge, reason and rationality. Then again, maybe it’s just a couple of dumb punks whose idea of fun is knocking over telephone booths, maybe better not to read too much into it. Either way, that library ain’t coming back.

In 1973 I worked at a dog pound in Madison, Wisconsin. What we called a Humane Society. We adopted 40 % of our mutts … meaning, we killed 60% of the animals, the correct euphemism being euthanized. The national average was 25% adopted so we patted ourselves on the back. My minimum wage job was to clean puppy cages and help kill critters. Let’s just say it’s a short career track unless you’re a practicing sadist, which I am not.

In fact, I adopted three dogs myself, maybe not a big deal if I lived on a country estate with acreage for the hounds to chase rabbits and deer for days on end, but I lived in a second story one bedroom apartment over a TV repair shop. Hard to believe now, looking back. No, not three dogs in a small apartment. That there used to be TV repair shops. When’s the last time you remember fixing a television rather than buy a new one?

One day at the pound they needed me to man the front desk, something I’d never done previously, something that might just lead me up a rung on the promotional ladder. I asked what was expected of me up here at the front door and was told I would direct folks to the kennels where could inspect their future pets. Beats shoveling shit, I thought.

My first encounter with the public was a woman bringing in her old dog and its 4 new puppies. “I can’t take care of these,” she said, pointing at the little wiggling pups in a cardboard box. I asked if maybe she might’ve considered spaying as an option. She shook her head. “Costs money,” she answered. “So you want to leave the mother too? Hasn’t she been with you awhile?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m tired of her too.” Oddly, this pissed me off.

I picked up the phone to our intercom. “Larry,” I said, “fire up the incinerator. We got five to torch.” My dog whisperer seemed suddenly alarmed. Shocked even. “You gonna just kill em?” she cried.

“Whadja think?” I said cruelly. “You think people are lined up for an old dog and her litter?”
About this time Larry emerged from the back, looked at the box of pups and asked, “These?” I nodded. Larry looked at the woman with measured contempt, picked up the box and went into the back where I knew he’d unload them into the puppy cages. He’d be back for the mother shortly. I started filling out the paperwork the way a guard at Dachau would, dispassionately. Name. Address. Reason for wanting your pet killed. Basic stuff.

I guess the woman called later to see if her dogs were toast because Mike, my supervisor, called me into his office. He explained — patiently — how our job was not to judge, our job was to take in unwanted animals so they weren’t drowned in pillowcases in the lake or shot behind the barn. “We want them to bring them to us,” he sighed, painfully aware I was unfit for further front desk duty.

I lasted a few more weeks. Larry lasted a month. There are, I’ve learned, some jobs that aren’t a good ‘fit’. My trouble, of course, was that was pretty much true of all jobs.