The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/south-end-blues.mp3[/podcast]south end blues

Mama said there’d be days like this — dark, monsoonal, rivers-over-the-gutter- raindaze. No going outside without full slickers, no possibility of sunbreaks, no phone calls with good news, just a joyless unremittingly bleak nimboculumulus parked on the brainstem. Pull the covers up, go back to sleep, wait it out…. Otherwise you risk taunting the Fates. And do NOT think things can’t get worse. They can always get worse.

These are the days you don’t check your e-mail, you don’t answer those spine-trembling rings, you don’t look at caller ID, you don’t dash for the mailbox. If you get a knock at the door, for all that’s holy and sane, leave by the back door and don’t bother shutting it. Whoever — whatever — is scratching for entry, you don’t want to know. It isn’t Knowledge that’s bliss, pal. Not that bliss is in the forecast. Steady pain is. Intermittent pain. Painstorms followed by pain showers. And forget the umbrellas.

I’m not going to explore the chemical/ hormonal/ meteorological foundations for these days — wouldn’t help anyway and might give you reason for misguided optimism. What you need is the will just to hang on. Think of a splintered board floating by after the ship goes down. Straddle it and go where it takes you — unless it’s DOWN. If you’re a drinker, start early. If you’re employed, take sick leave (it’s no lie!). If you’re religious, beseech your gods. But don’t expect miracles, not today. Today the meek will not inherit the earth. Trust me, they’re the lucky ones…..

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/audio-where-we-are.mp3[/podcast]audio — where we are

A lot of folks ask me just exactly where the hell is this South End you keep carping about? I suppose that’s a fair question –IF you’re one of those people who uses a recipe, or reads the directions first or who actually owns a roadmap – but I can tell right off you aren’t going to find the South End that way, I don’t care if you got two of those On Board Computer GPS navigating gizmos, one with the map and the other giving directions out loud.

Someone asked me if the South End is south of the Dump Road or south of the Country Club or south of the State Park. Is it south of the Plaza or south of the Elger Bay Store. I tell em yes, it is and leave it at that.

I don’t really know how to tell you where the South End is. I tell most folks coming down our way to just relax – if you’re following someone, take the first turn he doesn’t. If you aren’t following somebody, you’re doing fine, keep on coming, you’ll get here shortly.

Folks are always asking how far it is to Boeing or Microsoft or Weyerhauser. They think they’d maybe like to Re-locate to where the Living is Good and how far is it to drive to work?? Pitiful. Just pitiful. I don’t have the heart to tell em the truth: you can’t commute from the South End. We’re the end of the line, the last stop, the final destination, the dead end, the Point of No Return.

This isn’t some bus stop, it isn’t a retirement home, it isn’t some Tourist Destination, and it SURE isn’t a bedroom community between office hours, no sir. Commute?? Damnation! Why’d we go to the trouble to build Smokey Point in the first place, I ask you….

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/audio-time-capsule-in-a-closet.mp3[/podcast]audio — time capsule in a closet

TIME CAPSULES IN THE CLOSET

I was going through a cabinet drawer the other day where I kept VHS movies.  Big black plastic spools of brittling old tapes.  Course I don’t have a machine to play them on anymore.  Kind of like having an 8-track to go with my CD player.  Although my CD player still has a hole for cassette tapes and I remembered I have another drawerful of those.

Anyone remember floppy disks?  All those computer storage stragtegies now as obsolete as print film?  I got a drawer of those too … plus the zip disks, plus the drivers.  Be worth a cool million on E-Bay someday or else I’ll be hauling them, along with my Beta Video Player and my 35 mm Nikon, to Antiques Road Show next time they roll in to the Stanwoodopolis Convention Center.  If you don’t think the world is racing right along lickety split, dig through a couple of boxes in the back of the basement or the top of the closet.  It’s a time capsule of the 2^nd half of the 20^th Century, the century disappearing in the rearview of your Prius.

Trouble with living at the beginning of the Industrial Age — or now the Digital Age — you got one foot in, one toe out, sort of like Stanwoodopolis and the mainland drifting breakneck away from the island.  The bridge gets rebuilt every few months and some of us just figure it’s easier to stay home.  Stay long enough and we’ll be swimming to get into town.  Fancy transponder, pay-as-you-drive booths, no cash or credit accepted.  Sign up on your computer, but you better have DSL and on-line checking.

I tell my buddies here on the South End who figure Time must stand still or else they’ll die in the Mabana Sunset Villa before they’re left hopelessly behind, fossils frozen in drying mud, they better get off their rocker and take a couple of computer courses.  Another few years and they won’t know how to turn on a TV much less figure out the latest changes in Windows 27.  Then we’ll see how Old Age in the 21^st Century looks to them without American Idol or Wheel of Fortune to fill an evening with electronic pablum.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/zuckerbrother.mp3[/podcast]

I just got done chatting with about the 15th neighbor who plans to go into commercial pharming.  Gonna set up a light system in the empty kids’ room and grow 16 legal cannabis plants for sale to those with various and sundry medical afflictions ranging from bad backs to severe ennui.  We got a lot of chronically ill folks down here on the care-free South End apparently.  And hopefully – at least for these gentleman farmers – a few left who don’t grow their own remedies.

I wish to hell I could figure out how this medical marijuana works.  Actually, I wish the State could figure it out, maybe pull in some desperately needed revenues on taxing the stuff.  Won’t be long before Big Pharma wants a tax break too as long as the small businesses aren’t chipping in.  Near as I can tell, all you need to Grow is a ‘doctor’s’ authorization, a Green Card, costs $100 or $200 and then you can start your plantation.  Unless you live in a place – unlike the South End – where the cops are far too b usy with traffic violations to bust pot growers, chances are you can pretty much count on minimal harassment, and no chance whatsoever of prosecution.  Prohibition, my friends, is over.  Just no celebration…..

Me, I’m thinking Old School.  I grew up in the long dark shadow of illegal grass.  Friends growing paranoid, flushing their stash at the first knock at the door.  I grew up a criminal in the eyes of America.  Folks went to jail and served serious time.  And now?  You can grow it in your front yard, for godsake!!  You tell me what I’m supposed to think about Law and Order.  Naw, I’m for keeping the stuff illegal.  Gives the South End a certain panache, an outlaw mystique, a badge of dishonor and so be it.  Hell, I’m even advocating criminalizing nettles.  We find em growing on your property, you’ll get the full force of the LAW, brother.  And worse, we’ll brand you as the Nettle Growing Miscreant your parents warned you about.