The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You maybe have been a little too busy lately with texting and Facebook updating, Google searching and e-mailing, to pay attention to the world accelerating at the speed of algorithms. You probably don’t remember exactly when you got your first calculator (I got one back in 1975) or your first computer (we got one in, oh, I’m guessing, 1988 or thereabouts). The point being, not that you can or can’t remember the date, but that it happened in recent history, it happened in our lifetime. And in the few intervening years, it became an integral part of modern living. It changed everything. It is, just as the invention of the spinning jenny and machinery was, a revolution. The world will never be the same.

Now we take it for granted. Only took a decade, maybe two. Future Shock, just as Toffler predicted, is here, picking up speed, faster than we Cro Magnons can possibly adapt to the changes. Oh, sure, you can send twitters, you can e-mail, you can download movies on your TV, easy as pie. And if it’s hard, the kids can show you how. My parents, not so much. They’re a bit too calcified in the Industrial Age to manage much more than the basics. Try to explain trickier navigations, they’re boggled immediately. The old man keeps a set of directions for operating his TV that his grandson wrote down for him five years ago. Oh yeah, he uses it every time he wants to switch from cable to DVD.

Everyone now, except me and two other Neanderthal knuckle draggers on the planet, carry a cellphone or a tablet or an I-pad everywhere they go. They’re ‘connected’ to the hive in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago. I don’t know if the world has shrunk so much as it has become denser, jammed with data and information, more coming in at the speed of light. If our attention spans have truncated to about 20 seconds max, it’s little wonder, we have to move on to the next new incoming. The world, once external in our early years, is now internal, virtual, digitized and flying at us at incredible speed.

If you’ve been around kids the past decade or so, you know they no longer live among us. They might be in the same room, sleep in the beds upstairs, mumble occasionally when they enter or leave the house, but no, they’re already gone. The Pied Piper of PC and Apple have taken them to a different place, one where you and I won’t be going. You might have learned a few tricks, but they’ve internalized the circuitry. They learned from the machine and the machine is how they think now. Eventually they will add chips to themselves, apps, all that stuff they carry in a box now but will soon be inserted into their physical body. You think tattoos or lip rings are invasive, you’ve got some shocks coming. It’s a brave new world, old timer, and we’re the last of the humans.

Just when you thought you’d dodged the swine and bird flu pandemics, along comes another black plague to end civilization as we know it. This disease, spread by the usually suspect mosquito, comes with a twist. It doesn’t kill its victim outright, it destroys the fetus it carries, something right out of a science fiction movie. Every day the media reports the northerly spread of the disease in America. Today the numbers hit, get ready if you’re not already sitting down, 30.

30. Not 30 million. Not even 30,000. Not 3000. Not 300. Thirty. Two and a half dozen, if my math is correct. More people were shot in Chicago yesterday than Zika has infected all year. But … I don’t live in Chicago and Zika is spreading!!! Well, okay, it’s mostly in Miami. Not really close to the South End, Miami. Chicago is a thousand miles closer. And even in Miami it’s sort of in a small area. BUT!!! It could be here any day now, what with air travel and all. You know an infected Typhoid Mary could get off a plane at Sea-Tac then get bit by a mosquito up here and before Yahoo News could sound the alert, half of Puget Sound would be Ground Zero for Zika.

AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT!!!

Well, you could maybe not be pregnant. And you could stay indoors. And if you had to leave the bunker fortress of your house, you could maybe wear bug spray. I don’t know about you all, but I’m for bombing Miami, get rid of the threat before it reaches Ft. Lauderdale or Tampa. Or the South End!!!! I know, it sounds harsh, but these are desperate times, judging by this year’s election speeches. If we’re feeling a little squeamish, hey, we can use a drone to do the dirty work. Collateral damage, I think it’s called. Millions of lives are at stake here. Decisions have to made. Think about it, but not too long.

The Flatheads were parked at the Diner, their vintage machines waxed and gleaming in the packed dirt parking lot. They meet every Wednesday morning, rain, shine or engine check warning, slide a few tables together, then hold court as they argue after-market carburetors and auto body strategies. And, of course, politics du jour. The rest of us customers either avoid Wednesdays or else come for the show as a willing audience. I count myself in the latter.

Today’s improv started out with a lively discussion of Jerry’s newly purchased ’50 GMC 5 window pickup, original paint, completely stock, nearly immaculate except for a small rust hole in the left quarterpanel. The Flatheads debated whether Jerry should leave the original paint alone or go for a new spray job, an old argument between the purists and the car show enthusiasts.

But somewhere between the spray booth boyz and the ‘let er be’ crowd, the conversation veered without warning into the deep ditch of this year’s elections. Fairlane Frank, a proponent of two tone Fords, had tossed a fork with a clatter on to his half eaten chicken fried steak, splattering white gravy across the formica DMZ. “Trump’s no Republican,” he growled in a mouthful of rage and food. “He’s hi-jacked the whole party.” Pat, proud owner of a 1972 Gremlin and recipient of countless jeers and guffaws, cheerily suggested the time might be right for a 3rd party. “The Know Nothings,” he suggested as a name.

And so it began…. Bel Aire Bobby retorted that we already have that party, opening up a wild round of just which party qualified before Brenda, coffee pot in hand, said, “Maybe you boys should stick with 4 barrel carburetors and dual hemis, leave the politics to the professionals.”

Frank started to object but Brenda stared him down with her headlights on high beam while she poured seconds and thirds. “Frank, I’m makin minimum wage here. No benefits, no insurance, no 401-K. Now my kid needs an operation. Trust me, you don’t want to get me going on politics.” And with that, she whirled to the next table. None of the car guyz said a word for a full minute. Like the man said, all politics is local. But when they left, the tip from the boyz, usually measley, was enough to buy Pat’s Gremlin and pay for a paint job to boot.

This past week I hauled up north to my dentist and had my teeth cleaned. For most of my life I’ve been told that flossing is next to godliness, that it’ll prevent plaque build-up and gum disease, that if I were to neglect it, I would probably be at risk for everything from halitosis to heart attacks. Today, the news told me and all my floss flagellating friends, this is scientifically unprovable. Flossing, according to the latest studies, makes no more difference to my dental health than if I gargled with holy water.

Great. A year or so ago I received the news that baby aspirin, forever touted as a hedge against plaque build-up in arteries and therefore heart attacks, was probably not much help. Might even be offset by increased incidents of stroke. So much for the wonder drug of aspirin. So much for listening to the advice of health professionals. You wonder why folks go down to the supplement store and spend fortunes on snake oil, maybe this is why. You might as well believe what you want, the so-called experts are just as phony.

One year whole milk is a killer, better drink skim, this year a study claims we need that kind of fat. Butter, might as well eat DDT, now it’s margarine that’s demonized. Sugar, holy moley, white sugar will eat you alive. Now the diet stuff, worse yet. What’s a poor boy to do???? I don’t know about you, but I like to believe — and science may contradict me tomorrow, then support me the next week, etc. — that we are creatures of the planet Earth, most of us, and we evolved with a diet of natural stuff. All those foods we made easier to cook or made from chemistry labs, well, I’m not saying they’ll give you cancer and make your hair fall out or your teeth rot, I’m just saying we didn’t really get exposed to those things in our climb from the ooze to the treetops.

Folks think science will bring them closer to immortality, and don’t get me wrong, I believe in science, but we’re really looking for magic bullets, pharmaceutical panaceas, artificial remedies, all those medical cures advertised to us old farts on TV every damn night. Just ignore the cautionary list of adverse effects, then go bug your doctor for a cure-all anyway.

I don’t know if I’ll keep on flossing or not now. I probably won’t lose sleep over it, but if I do, I’ll check with my pharmacist and take what he recommends. Just so long as one of the side effects isn’t gum rot.

I just read where the Lutheran Church up north was having a ‘Paws Prayers and Praise’ this week. Course, I checked to see if this was an April Fool’s Joke, but … it’s July, so I presume this is for real. Not that I think furry souls couldn’t use some ‘saving’. Doggie treats were being offered, I’m betting as puppy sacrament and no doubt wine in a bowl, blood of the … well, hopefully nobody brings their lamb to the PP&P.

Mainstream churches — so I’ve heard — are losing membership. The kids go for the evangelical mega-churches where the pastors are hip and wear Garth Brooks style microphones like the stars they are. We’ll have contests soon on cable TV: American Pastor. “That was great, Jimmy, really brought them to their knees.” “Sorry, Clyde, Cotton Mather was more fun than you.” “Got to kick you off the stage, Ralph, those collection plates were a little lean.”

It’s not easy selling religion to the masses these days, don’t kid yourself. You need an angle, you need a hook, you need a P.R. agent and you definitely need Facebook. Attention spans are pretty short and sermons, well, c’mon, if they won’t fit on a Tweet, they’re too long, get over yourself. Summarize, summarize, sum it up and move on to the Christian rock music.

You’re not going to lecture to a pet, that’s for sure. Butt sniffing, that’s about the longest they’re in for. Butt sniffing is not in the Bible, not the King Jim version for sure, maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls but I doubt it. And I don’t want to mention leg humping. I KNOW that’s not in the Old or New Testament. Not saying it’s a sin, but geez, in a church? A church that doesn’t even like human humping if it’s not man on woman. In the sanctity of marriage. Well, enough said about that….

I may have to go down to this Paws Prayer and Praise, see for myself. It does though, smack of … I don’t know … dare I say it? Bestiality. There, I said it. Animal love, is it wrong? Well, I don’t know but this seems desperate, a slippery slope of 4 legged forgiveness, feral feelings and potential poop scooping in the House of the Lord. If nothing else, hopefully anyway, it should be a joyful noise, all that barking.