The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Sarah and I were down at the Suds and Duds laundromat doing what our own machines wouldn’t do last week. Mine was leaking water from somewhere in its enameled casing and Sarah’s just wouldn’t turn on anymore. While we were idling over the noise of washers and dryers, we got to complaining about life in the 21st Century, a favorite pastime for us South Enders. Sarah had a bottle of wine discreetly hidden in a paper bag and I was working through a six pack of beer I’d picked up on the way to the Suds and Duds at Tyee Store. We made quite the pair.

“So I bought one of those gizmos,” she was telling me, “you know, the little canister that has a brain. Alexa.” I shook my head, no, not sure what she was referring to. “It’s a device, Skeeter, to hook up all your other gizmos. Answers questions, puts on songs you request, orders stuff online. Seriously, you never heard of this?” she asks and pours herself another glass of merlot from the paper bag. I assured her I had not. “Some people put one of those in half the rooms in their house.”

“So it’s like a TV remote?” I asked, quite the Neanderthal. And popped my third bottle. I could see my sheets spinning in the big Maytag, round and round, only another quarter hour or so, then I could go home to my broken washer and my deviceless home.

“No, it’s not like a TV remote,” she said in a voice a mom would use on an exasperatingly stupid kid. “It’s like a computer that listens and learns. It figures out your likes and dislikes. Plus it answers all the questions you can throw at it. Like a talking encyclopedia. But here’s the thing,” she whispers, lowering her head close to mine, as if we weren’t the only two people in the place. “It listens to you all the time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean it hears what you’re saying. The other day I was talking to a neighbor over coffee and I mentioned the washer was busted. An hour later my computer started getting ads for appliances. Washers on sale.” She said it was no coincidence. It had started happening all the time. “Now,” she told me, “I’m afraid to turn it on. I unplugged it. And I’m still not sure it isn’t listening.”

“So it’s sending all this back to Headquarters?” I asked, not sure where headquarters might actually be. Sarah nodded, took a long hard pull on the wine, looked nervously around the laundromat, the poster child for Artificial Intelligence Paranoia. “They’re listening, Skeeter. They’re keeping tabs on us. Right now they just want to sell me a washer dryer combo, but I don’t know what else they’re thinking about.”

A truck pulled up to the front door. Sarah pulled away from me like she’d been hit with the voltage from a cattle prodder, like this Alexis thing had commandeered a vehicle and come to check on her. Maybe ask if she needed another bottle of merlot ordered and then delivered by drone. By the looks of her, she could use two. I figured I had time for maybe one more beer.

There’s a lot of chatter lately about removing the Mad King from office. Insanity, they say, is grounds for dismissal. The Democrats mostly want the Presidency restored to its former glory, made great again, the Republicans are afraid the Trumpster’s constituency will come after them with pitchforks and Confederate flags. I hate to admit it, but the GOP have a well-grounded fear of reprisal. We all should.

Half this Land of the Free Home of the Brave voted for this guy, not because they didn’t understand the crudity of the real estate developer, not because they thought he would be high minded, not because they couldn’t see he was a pussy grabbing dog whistler. He told you so himself. He went before the Christian Right and professed his sins, not confessed them. They went right ahead and voted for the sinner. Anyone who thought he would change his ways once he was elected probably had bought a bridge from him in New Jersey. The rest of us knew what we were getting.

So now we got what we were getting. Hell no, I don’t like it. Hell yes, I’d like to jerk the jerk right out of the White House, haul him up on any and all charges Mueller can make stick and hope Mike Pence doesn’t offer clemency under the bogus defense that it would irrevocably cripple the nation. Mike Pence doesn’t give a fig in Hades about what would hurt the nation. He’s a lap dog with ambitions to be the lap. Personally, I’ll take the Mad King.

But here’s the deal, artless or no: the citizens of this experimental democracy voted in a vicious little nutcase. They listen to hot talk radio and read faux news that says the real news is phony. They believe what they want to believe and how do you convince them otherwise? It isn’t quite the definition of crazy, but it’s close enough for me. We elected the Man of Our Times. Crass, sexist, narcissistic, oh cripes, why list them again, the huckster is known to all of us. He’s the sinister little voice in the back of our heads that whispers go ahead, do what you want, anything goes, there’s no punishment, just reward. Lash out, you’ll feel better. Knock the old lady to the sidewalk, she’s been asking for it. Never ever pull your punches, that’s for losers. It’s dog eat dog, baby, and you better sharpen the canines.

The 25th Amendment as a remedy for this? C’mon, you’ll need an amendment to stop the ignorant from voting. Welcome to democracy circa 2017. Welcome to the New America. You huddled masses, if you’re tired or poor, it’s your own fault, go home or shut up.

Let Them Eat Cake … or Twinkies

“We built a program to solve the problem of malnutrition in America, and now we have a problem of obesity,” Rep. (R) Steve King said recently, referring to Michele Obama’s nutrition in schools program.

What Mr. King is suggesting is that we build the border wall using the money from food stamps as well as the defunding of Planned Parenthood. King wants that wall built and he’s happy to use EBT card money to get the job done. After all, he says, the nutrition program of Michele Obama’s school program worked so well that now the poorest citizens are overweight. Thanks a lot, Michelle! You’re probably responsible for the diabetes epidemic in America too. Why aren’t we investigating your role in the murder of innocent people across this once great nation? And why isn’t Trump tweeting on this?

We elect these folks. My fellow Americans elect these people. Yours too, by the way. These are the people who want to end Medicaid and substitute health care you can choose, not something dictated to you by the damn government. Of course it will cost more, a lot more, but when you reach the point you can’t afford to buy it, that’s your decision, see? That, claims Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, is freedom. Freedom to choose.

It’s like those school lunch programs Michele inflicted on our kids. Maybe they wanted desserts and pizzas washed down with Coke, not vegetables and fruit washed down with milk. Freedom of choice, freedom to eat what they want. Fast food vs. nutritious fare. Let the little tykes pick what tastes good to them. That’s the American Way. Not government intervention. Not a nanny state. Maybe offer them cigarettes too and a couple of shots of Jack Daniels. More options, good. Less options, bad. Land of the Free, see?

Same thing with science. Why shove evolution down our kids’ throats? Why not let them choose to study Creationism? Or witchcraft? Why limit their educational options? Why make those miners’ children in Kentucky study Global Warming when all those faux scientists’ claims will kill their daddies’ jobs? Doesn’t seem fair, doesn’t seem right.

Pity the fat kids Michele’s nutrition program created. We can’t help them now, but maybe we can help the next generation of children. Let’s take away their food stamps and cut out the Medicaid. They’ll thank us for creating new choices for them. Tough love, I know, but compassionate conservatism has to be.

Fresh off his victorious mistrial for sexual assault using quaaludes to drug his victims, Bill Cosby’s crack publicity team announced the National Funny Man would go on the road to conduct town hall meetings to educate us men on how to avoid being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. Presumably he would inform us how to court and spark with pharmaceuticals and not be convicted. At least not convicted on the first trial with a hung jury. If the second goes badly, Fat Albert may want to change the focus to something more attuned to his prison audience’s needs.

I guess Cosby has been watching politics lately judging by this chutzpah. If you’re caught in a lie, call your accuser the liar. If they tweet back, threaten them with lawsuits. If that doesn’t work, ramp up the lie. No doubt in my mind the President will offer courses at Trump University to help student/citizens avoid lawsuits on real estate deals that were fraudulent, on impeachments that were trumped up, on collusions that were really more egregiously done by others. Deny deny deny, but then go on the offensive. Blame the press, blame the jury, blame the crybaby liberals, blame those mean Democrats and those bitchy women. If you can’t rape em yourself, well, maybe there’s benefit in showing others how to do it. For fun and profit.

Cosby won’t pull this off, of course. Trump probably will. Donald has honed these skills from childhood and he has plenty of help now from the courageous profiles of his Republican shills. Plus, he’s already set up Trump U. The man is so far ahead of Cosby’s game, he makes Fat Albert look like a grossly obese donut addict starting his first marathon. The public has already judged Fat Albert, a ruined icon of American comedy, once a role model, now his own joke.

Trump, so far nobody’s laughing. But when we realize we’ve been fed date rape drugs and violated, when the drugs wear off, all the courses in his little faux University won’t help him either. Probably still make Time magazine’s Man of the Year and he’ll call it a Huge Success.

I guess I’ve been working in art for about 35 years. Some of it I’ve been doing okay at, even made a so-called Living at, and most of it, well, I’m not the poster child for Starving Artist, but maybe Anorexic Artist. We artists have a tough row to hoe in corporate America, that’s the truth, and so we try all sorts of strategies ranging from art fair booths to just giving up and getting a job, a real job. But probably too late for one that pays well or offers benefits and pensions. The money belongs to the Job Creators. Us creators, well, good luck.

I went up into the mountains this past weekend with a box of the Skeeter Daddle Blues, hoping to do a book reading and maybe sell a few copies. Ever since my old outlets for book sales dried up, I’ve been headscratching how to market these babies, get them out of my basement and into the hands of folks hungry for great literature. Tyee Store closed up and so did the Copy This Mail That office supply store that sold the first book Skeeter Daddle Diaries so well I ordered a second printing. The South End String Band CD’s sold like hotcakes too at those places, but when they closed shop, the only show in town was the Snow Goose Bookstore. And now they’ve shuttered their doors too. We probably sold two to three thousand CD’s before that. I sold maybe 1000 books. Not bad for a backwash.

This past year I haven’t sold more than ten books and the band is giving CD’s away at concerts for ‘the price we finally figured they were worth’. For free. One concert alone we handed out 150 CD’s.

A high tech, fast charging friend convinced me to try Amazon. Against my better judgement I signed on, figuring I’d be sending them a box of hot sellers they could pass out faster than candy on Halloween. But no, they wanted me to send one book at a time, priority mail, to their warehouse in Maryland or someplace far far away. I spent about $5 per book for mailing envelope and postage, losing a couple of bucks on each one. This went on for a couple of months, never enough sales apparently, to justify shipping them a full box. I might have continued this brilliant sales strategy right into bankruptcy but one day I noticed Amazon, love these guyz, had used copies of the Skeeter Diaries listed at 1.99 plus shipping. This was great. Me competing against me and the only winner was Amazon. It took me awhile to get out of this crummy cycle, the company not really responsive to any inquiries. In fact, they had no way to make inquiries.

I finally just kept sending them messages on the sales requests that the book was Out of Print. Which, finally, it was. Sadly, I buy my own book back from them occasionally just to have a few copies around. Cheaper than reprints by far. Bookstores competing against Bezos, like I mentioned at the last Snow Goose reading before they closed shop, are like Godzilla vs Bambi, it won’t be long before they’re toejam. Now I see where they’d like to be my printer too, print on demand. Probably ship them to me, then have me ship them back each sale. Lose even more money on every point of sale.

So I wish I had a tried and true strategy for you prospective artists out there looking for ways to sell your wares, I really do. It was always dog eat dog, but now we got Godzilla too. My only advice is to be like the little furry creatures during the Dinosaur Era, stay low, keep a close eye out, maybe move at night. I know, not much help, but the trick is to survive.