The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Yesterday a rocket landed on a platform floating out at sea about the size of my shack. Landed nose up, thrusters down. Buck Rogers to earth, Buck Rogers to earth, come in earth… The future, as we seldom say down here in the savannahs of the South End, is here. Dick Tracy videos on our watches, robots building cars that drive themselves, computers designing the next generation of computers, space stations and satellites orbiting overhead, drones delivering bombs and Amazon packages, probes that have left our solar system and out into the galaxy beyond — this has all happened in half my lifetime.

Me, I’m still burning wood for heat. I know, you’re surprised I’m not hunting mastodons for meat. Maybe in a few years, you know, after they clone a few and re-introduce them into the swamps here. We got cell towers dotting the landscape now even though I don’t own a cellphone. Or a smarty one either. The dumb one I have seems somehow more apropos for my Neanderthal lifestyle. My techno pals say it’s time to move into the 21st Century so they can text message where to meet me for a cold one at the nearest tavern. A woman in a huge black SUV drove across her lane right at me yesterday and at the last moment swerved to avoid killing us both. I could see the phone resting on her steering wheel where a message coming in or going out meant more than suicide by text.

I know if I can live long enough without becoming a traffic statistic, I might not miss some more of this science fiction coming true, but as you can tell I’m kind of a pessimist when it comes to the future I see ahead. I wouldn’t trust a robot for one nano-second, not when they get smarter than us. If there’s life in outer space, I figure we’ll be a food source. The aliens won’t think that Chuck Berry soundtrack we sent them is going to save the human race. Wars aren’t going to get better because we fight them with drones, c’mon, who’s kidding who? The kids growing up today in the digital world aren’t going to care much about the real one. Global warming? We’ll dither until it’s too late. Maybe we’ll adapt. Although … if I’m any role model for that, good luck to the rest of ya.

I went in for my bi-yearly haircut today. In the old days I’d haul in to Stanwoodopolis at Carl’s Barber Shop for a clipping and gossip and heated debates. Sadly, those days are long gone and Carl’s retired from his long tonsorial career. Back then I didn’t mind waiting for a turn in the leather swivel chair, mostly an excuse to put a finger into the political winds.

Now I’m forced to go to the chain haircut joints. Salons, I guess they call em. They’re quick, painless and anonymous. They take your phone and name, but not for socializing, strictly for data-mining, frequency of visits, favorite hair gel maybe. At the door of Great Clips I was asked even before I took my hat off if I’d made an Online Appointment. No, I said, do I need one? Not at all, I was told.

But … a couple of folks who had made an online appointment but who hadn’t arrived just yet, were before me. Be about 20 minutes. “Do you have a cellphone,” my would be stylist asked, telling me next visit I could be one of the favored few. Wouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes next time. Mrs. Jenkins, my first grade teacher, used to make her point to us ignoramuses in the exact same sing-song voice. I didn’t like it then and I sure as gel didn’t care for it 60 years later. Call me irascible, but I’m not sitting in the chrome and mirror sterility of a chain haircutting factory more than 20 seconds. Twenty minutes is inconceivable. I mean, look at the magazine rack. Us and People? Kill me with a scissors now!

I headed for the exit, heads newly coiffed turning to ogle this ogre. “Will you be coming back in 20 minutes?” my headhunter asked, sensing customer dissatisfaction. I said no. “It’s only 20 minutes,” she explained, obviously figuring since I’d waited 6 months for the next haircut already, 20 minutes was a blink in my tonsorial universe. “Come back and see us again,” she said, half a question. “I will,” I said, “soon as I get a cellphone.” She knew — and I knew too — I’d have hair down to my toenails by them.

Little Walter, Big Walter’s oldest boy, was sucking on a Marlboro, one boot up on the chrome bumper of Harry’s newly restored ’64 Nova, waving his can of Pabst in the ketone-laced atmosphere of the Tyee Paint and Body Shop. He was addressing the assembled masses on this particular Friday afternoon, the boyz’ favorite day. Not because it signified the end of a work week; after all, most of us layabouts are unemployed, self-employed or just employment challenged. Naw, we just like to remember when Friday was PayDay and Friday night was a night of freedom. Now everyday is a day of freedom and it seems like a subtle form of slavery.

“This country,” Little Walt was saying, “went down the crapper when we started giving people all this free stuff. Socialism, that’s what it’s called, and it killed folks’ incentive to work.” Little Walter has been unemployed for most of his adult life. He’s currently laid off from the hardwood mill over in Arlington and for the past year he’s been living off the unemployment comp he gets plus some loans from his old man. Big Walter isn’t happy about this, but he places the blame squarely on the ‘ruined’ economy. He let the boy live in the spare bedroom of his double-wide and now he has to feed the kid too and fight over what programs they watch on his 50 inch flat screen entertainment center. They both have beefs.

“You talking about that tax break we gave Boeing?” Terry asked. Terry is the kind of guy who, if he knows someone is a hypochondriac, asks them how their health is, what we on the South End call a Pot Stirrer. He doesn’t really take a side, he just wants to light a fire.

“Hell no, I’m not talking about a tax break!! I’m talking about giving these people who don’t work for a living everything they need to keep on not working for a living, that’s what I’m talking about.” He crushed his Pabst can in his right hand and beer foamed out the top and onto Harry’s new paint job. Harry said Hey Man and Walter grabbed his dirty handkerchief and Quickly wiped off the suds.

Terry said, “You must be talking about those people on unemployment compensation then. Folks sitting around drinking and not looking for honest work. You mean people like that?”

Well, you can maybe guess where that conversation went. It’s just another day loitering on the South End, debating the issues of our time, nothing much better to do than drink beer and chit chat with the neighbors. Somewhere else they got wars and refugees, they got terrorists and beheadings. People starve, people are killed, people live hand to mouth. I don’t know much, but I know this. Things here aren’t too bad, they aren’t really bad at all. You ask me, and I know you’d hate to, it seems like complaining is damn close to a sin.

Like a lot of you, I get a news feed compliments of my internet. In my case I get Yahoo News. Well named! Being a news junkie, I thought at first this would be great, an up-to-the-nano-second breaking news report, keep me abreast of world events, the latest Trump polls, hurricane forecasts and imminent nuclear war. Alas, this isn’t exactly how it has played out.

Just for instance, here’s what’s on my Yahoo News right now. They got some coverage of the Brussels bombing, what you would expect, right? Next we have a flash that Sarah Palin is signing on for some Judge Judy gig. Hot dog. Tom and Gisele, who I haven’t got a clue who they might be, have ‘an insane diet when they go on vacation.’ I was afraid to look into what they might be eating away from their ordinary home meals. There’s a man who says he slashed a woman because she was white. Okay, that sounds bad. Two girls thought they were straight until they met each other. They were white girls and they weren’t slashed. I guess that’s good. There’s a list of 17 fast food restaurant flops. I bet there are even more…. Yolanda Foster went bra-less. Can’t say I know Yolanda, but I was tempted to peek.

The Supreme Court had its first tie since Scalia died. Bet it won’t be the last one. There’s an article on how to escape from duct tape when you’re kidnapped. I really should read that one. There’s another one about Hillary’s e-mail problem and how she should really drop out of the race. I only see two or three versions a day of that. Benghazi is pretty frequent too. Here’s one about parents rallying around a teacher who made racist comments on social media. Always good to side with the racists, I guess.

Michael Jackson’s kids aren’t going to get their inheritance, apparently. Not sure why, but not sure I care either. You can watch what happens when a piece of paper is folded 7 times under a hydraulic press. I suspect it looks the way my head feels.

Well, if ignorance is bliss, I’m thinking I might just give it a try. But I bet ignorance looks a lot like my Yahoo News. And bliss it really isn’t. Or maybe I’ll just let Judge Sarah decide.