The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Let’s say you got a bizness like mine and maybe Ford Motor Company. Most of us corporate types worry about short term profits to keep our investors happy and our shares on the Dow Jones up. But we always plan for the future, five years or so at least. If we have a regime in power that gives incentives, say, for buying Electric Vehicles and maybe supports government investment in public art, particularly stained glass art, me and the Ford boyz will probably tool up, upgrade our facilities, plan for additional hiring and basically veer in that direction rather than, say, stick with fossil fuel guzzlers or, in my case, residential bathroom window art.

Now the Detroit crowd can’t run around the country installing tens of thousands of charging stations that will incentivize EV purchases, even with some heavy discounts on pricing, which means their investment needs that kind of infrastructure support. You drive a Model T cross country back in grandpa’s day, you wouldn’t go if you worried about locating a gas station in Nowhere, South Dakota. You might not even buy a horseless carriage at all, just stick with the nag and the buggy. And if the government’s Art in Public Places Program disappeared, why would I buy extra inventory, rent a large studio or hire assistants when all I need is a table, minimal supplies and just myself as underpaid employee?

What me and my corporate companions need most is some consistency in our government. The last thing in the world Ford MoCo wants or needs is the New Regime rolling in with a pledge to drill baby drill, discontinue buying incentives for EV’s and cutting the infrastructure funds to build a nationwide network of charging stations and loudly proclaiming that fossil fuels are the real future of America. All those cheap and very competitive EV’s being built in China, well, we’ll just ban them from being imported into our country. Trouble is, China will sell them to every other country in the world. Competition, the capitalist motto? Fuggetaboutit!

And as for public art? Well, let’s be honest here, we used to build courthouses, fire stations, university buildings, city halls and all the rest with the idea that the architecture and the art would inspire its citizenry. Think Rome, Athens, Paris, London, Stanwoodopolis and Smokey Point. They didn’t build the cheapest and quickest construction. They built modern day secular cathedrals. Those days are past for this capitalist yahoo. I only hope folks still want some artistic privacy in their privvies….

I’m reading a book this week. Yes, a real one, not an audiobook, not an E-book, but a Gutenberg ink-on-the-papyrus novel that’s 500 plus pages. I can guess what you’re thinking: I’m missing 500 cat videos, nature flicks, influencer suggestions and who knows what else on Tik-Tok, X or Instagram. I got friends now who can’t wade through a two paragraph e-mail, not after Twitter convinced them less is more. Or at least enough.

Without ratcheting into an essay on loss of concentration, short attention spans, ADHD and the evils of social media, I just wonder how libraries still survive. Or bookstores. Or the U.S. Post Office. When was the last letter you got? How about the last letter you ever wrote — and no, that Christmas card with your signature on the bottom does NOT count. Forget about claiming your name has six letters in it, don’t gaslight me!

Sure, by year’s end AI will write whatever you want for you. Even write a 500 page novel. A poem. A short story. An essay. Lyrics to a song — and the music too.

The Tech Boyz will tell you this is the Brave New Future, faster, better, way more intelligent. Oh, I know, at first we’ll tell ourselves the Bots are merely an adjunct to human creativity, an appendage, not crutch. And anyway, you can probably tell the difference, poorer quality, so you think. But have no doubt, the machines will go beyond mere mimickery, they’ll learn our tricks and they they’ll become, for want of a technical term, creative. What, you think humans are that special?

So okay, maybe I read books to escape the world I see passing me on the shoulder of the digital highway. When I find out the author isn’t human, just a box of algorithms, those cat videos may look damn tempting. Course by then the Bots will probably be making those too.

START THE DAY BEFORE NOON

At least on work days. The other five days, sleep in. You earned it.

LEARN HOW TO READ
Writing is no longer essential, but … the successful South Ender can tweet, twitter and text, even if spelling is marginal.

LISTEN TO OTHERS
Especially on Facebook and other social media. Keeping track of friends’ and enemies’ likes and dislikes is an invaluable tool in the South End toolbox. Decision making is easy, just see what the herd is doing.

WORK AT LEAST ONE HOUR A DAY.

No matter how severe the hangover, the lethargy, the ennui or excess hedonistic activities. Work isn’t ALL bad.

WORK OFF THE GRID

No South Ender worth his or her salt works in order to pay half his or her income to the IRS. Barter heavily with your neighbors and friends. Crab, clam, trap, fish, hunt or grow it! Food is free and food is fun! If you buy your dinners, food is neither.

LEARN TO REPAIR

Your own car, truck, toaster, well pump, toilets, etc. You can’t barter or sell busted stuff and repairmen cost an arm and a leg per hour PLUS that service fee to drive half a day to and from your hell-and-gone address. Knowing a few handyman tricks can save you another part-time job at the fast food joints 50 miles away.

MARRY UP!

Chances are you’ve embraced an aesthetic lifestyle. You artists and musicians need supplemental income and unless you plan to work full time low paid minimum hour jobs, a second salary is essential. Marry one.

If none of these suggestions work for you, plan on moving soon. Life on the South End is mostly for those with alternative-fact occupational schemes. If you landed here thinking this was just a suburb of America, get yourself a GPS and head back to the mainland. Not guaranteeing jobs necessarily, but at least the possibility exists out there in Trumpland when America’s CEO brings them back. And those of us who stay, well, we could use the extra elbow room. Good luck to ya!

dabbling-made-easy

While I was cutting glass in the shack for a stained glass project, I was listening to a woman who won the McArthur ‘genius’ award for her theory on ‘grit. I think maybe by that she means stick-to-it-ness, what we South Enders call stubborn as a mule. If mules and jackasses are ever considered smart, we South Enders may yet win Nobels and Pulitzers, although maybe not the McArthur award.

This Grit Theory, though, caught my interest. Awhile back a fellow named Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book that postulated that successful people put in 10,000 hours of work before they reached competency enough to be considered successful. Masters of their Chosen Field. I guess it takes true grit to put in 10,000 hours of anything so maybe they’re saying the same thing.

Me, I consider myself a Dabbler. A dabbler, if you look it up in those old dictionaries nobody uses anymore, is a person who refuses to take himself seriously. Probably drinks, sleeps in, doesn’t read directions or take instruction, would rather cut off his right arm at the elbow than shoot for perfection, can’t be bothered with too many details, probably wanders the garden rather than finish an honest day’s work ….

I’m happy to be a Dabbler. I always intended to be a Bum, but dabbling saved me from the vicissitudes of bumhood. I found this old shack when shacks cost what shacks should cost. Then I stumbled into glass art and managed to dabble myself into gigs that kept me from working. I’d tell you I have 10,000 hours logged, but hell, I’m not going to waste time doing the math, all that multiplication, and anyway, I don’t punch a timeclock. Plus, then I’d want to do some long division, figure out my hourly wage and send myself spiraling into a deep depression.

Always dabble, that’s my preference, that’s my motto. Although, I will admit, I’m pretty gritty about it.

I listened to a guy the other day on the radio postulating how, in a few decades or so, robots will be so ubiquitous in our lives that we’ll actually marry them. I know, I know, it sounds whacked. Until you take a step back and watch your friends with their ‘devices’. I know people who sleep with their cellphones. I don’t ask them questions, I don’t pry, I don’t pass judgement. But it does get you to wondering. Me anyway.

I called up a credit card company yesterday and got the automated voice operator. Except now, instead of the usual 4 options to ‘her’ questions, my robotic friend could understand what I asked outside the parameters of her options when I asked to speak to a homo sapien, nothing that would surprise you folks with smartphones used to chatting it up with Siri.

I watch with no small dismay the frantic and pervasive text messaging of kids these days (and now my own friends) who prefer digital communication over the messy face to face of human contact. They have pretty much abandoned phone conversations too, once the preferred domain of the shy, and now correspond with thumbs and 140 character maximum messages. We are bonding with our machines. The Flatheads, our local vintage car guyz, probably could explain this in 20th century terms, this love of their Buick 88’s and ’56 BelAirs, all that waxing and rubbing, but so far they haven’t entered into matrimony. Although … Fairlane Freddy sleeps in his a night or two a month when the mizzus is fed up with his drinking. If it could talk reassuringly to him, god only knows where things might lead.

Trouble is, we’re making these robots smarter than us. Probably make them more beautiful too. If you thought artificial intelligence was frightening, couple it with a movie star body. We’ll be slaves in the time it takes to say pornlove. I suppose we won’t have to worry about children so in one short generation the androids will have won, no doubt part of their master plan. We’ll probably think it’s worth the sacrifice. At least Fairlane Freddy will.