[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-arkansas-traveler.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — arkansas traveler
I know this is hard to believe, but Skeeter’s going to be AWOL for a week or so doing a stained glass installation in the razorback country of western Arkansas. This may come as a shock to some of you readers, but Skeeter has a day job that occasionally — okay, rarely — requires him to leave his life of blissful sloth to join the legions of migrant workers who do work no self-respecting gringo American would do for anything that paid twice the prevailing wage which isn’t exactly the minimum.
So while the Daddler is slaving away in the fields of art out in the parched rainshadow of the Ozarks, trying to impose his cultural vision on the unsuspecting black powder denizens of the hill country, you might scroll down to the old rantings and ravings at the bottom of this blog, see if you missed anything real important. If old Skeet makes it out of the heartland intact, or at least not too scarred, he’ll be back to his old tricks before you can say Lazy Son of a ……
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-FutureFarm.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —FutureFarm
The other day I bought a bag of Frito-Lay potato chips and as is my wont from my early reading days as an 8 year old studying cereal boxes, I read the packaging. These potatoes, I was informed in a tidy paragraph written by public relations specialists who had no doubt conducted extensive customer surveys, were FARM-RAISED. Imagine! I’m guessing grown right in the ground. Tractors, fields, insecticides, migrant labor: farm raised. BOLD TYPE. Major advertising feature. The oils used were ‘natural’ too and this was worth trumpeting.
Holy cow manure, Batman, what’s the NEXT big thing in the food biz? Cheetos raised hydroponically? Personally I’m not sure consumers are really ready for food grown in the wild. Bugs, fungus, bacteria, all that creepy stuff a farmer is ill-equipped to handle outside a laboratory or a petri dish. We can grow meat without legs now, protein on a rope, and rumor has it the burger chains are nearing a breakthrough on cloning buns, with or without sesame seeds, directly on to the meat patty grown in secret underground hermetically sealed bunkers of Monsanto and Dow Chemical. You think they’re going to stick a filthy leaf of lettuce or a listeria riddled tomato on their antiseptically pure chemoWhopper? Get real. Not….
This whole Slow Food movement just flies in the face of 21st century culinary logic. We invented TV dinners so we’d have the time to watch more TV instead of wasting countless hours messing with the cooking of raw potentially contaminated food. These purveyors of old school eating call themselves environmentalists, but what about the damage from a bazillion cookbooks printed on paper from slaughtered trees? Next thing you know, they’ll advocate recipes for bark. A backlash is coming, count on that, the next step beyond vegetarianism. Stop eating plants. Stop the killing of carrots. It’s not only cruel, it’s filthy with germs and dirt. So Frito-Lay, nice try. But I’m afraid the world isn’t ready — we’ve turned the corner on 19th century farm products. Work on synthetic broccoli that tastes like Snickers if you want to stay profitable. Hook the kids and you own the future. Next time you need marketing advice, call me first. Save yourself some embarrassment.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-of-gods-and-politics.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —of gods and politics
I noticed the other day that Rick Perry mentioned that the Lord had made it clear to him the He had chosen the Governor to be President of the United States. Ordinarily I’d’ve said let’s just cancel the 2012 election and install Perry on the throne, no point going against the will of God unless you really want pestilence, floods and wildfires, all of which we got plenty of right now. But the trouble is, Michelle Bachman got the same call to serve from, well, the same Summoner.
Bad reception maybe? That, or the Lord is like me, a little more forgetful these days. And He’s a tad older, so I can only imagine trying to keep it together when I’m, oh, 500 billion years older than I am now, on the precipice already of dementia. But what are we going to do with a dead tie for Anointee in Waiting? Flip a coin and let one be vice president? Take turns the next 16 years? Check the message machine and see if one of those calls was a prank, Obama having a little sport here? The Lord works in mysterious ways, I know, but I suspect I’d hate to be Called On and then find out someone else had too. Rick and Michelle got some hard head scratching, I imagine. And let’s all hope Sarah is serious about not running, we sure don’t need call #3.
I admit I’m not the most religious guy on the South End. Live and Let Live is about as much rule and commandment as I can abide. So it worries me to have a couple of Believers who think they got the News, all right, straight from up above, but their reception may not be high speed DSL and something might be getting lost in translation.
We got GOP debates ongoing so maybe we can get this cleared up. Meanwhile I’m going to figure maybe God doesn’t get involved in primaries. That, or the Hindus got it right after all: there’s plenty of gods to go around. Maybe even one who roots for the other side.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-SPENDING-MY-KIDS-INHERITANCE.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — SPENDING MY KIDS’ INHERITANCE
The other day I was trailing behind a 40 foot RV trailer, sort of a McMansion on wheels, reading their bumper sticker that announced: SPENDING OUR KIDS’ INHERITANCE. Pretty hilarious stuff. I bet the kids fall over laughing when the folks come rolling in for a month to visit. $200,000 for the camper. 3-4 bucks a gallon times multiple crisscrossing of America. Yah, I’d say the joke has some real mileage. Great punchline. Put another sticker on the SUV they’re towing, you got a bellybuster.
I know these people. They think they’re taxed like a Roman peasant. They think government is mostly the real enemy, spending their hard earned money on welfare and food stamps and mental health clinics and emergency relief and worse, wasting it through inefficiency and bureaucratic ineptness and just plain graft and greed. They think minimum wage should be lowered and taxes eliminated. They got theirs and good luck to the rest of you suckers. The road they’re riding can crumble into blacktop sand after they sail by.
They know the country is in trouble, big debt, bad balance of trade, recession, all that economic mumbo jumbo. But they’re not going to help get us out of the mess they helped put is in. The bumper sticker they got, they could slap on the White House or Congress or any county courthouse. They got the union jobs before unions were corrupt. They worked for the government sector before government was evil, they fought for tax breaks for the rich once they were rich and if you missed out, tough luck.
I know these people. They’re my friends and my neighbors and I can even see them in my own bathroom mirror. They don’t believe in sacrifice … or the common good … or downsizing … or that the American Dream is supposed to be for all of us. It was for them. The rest, the huddled and tired masses, the immigrants, the poor, the weak and the infirm —- they got some hard news for you. They’re spending your inheritance. Ha ha ha, ho ho ho. Get the joke? Do ya, huh? It’s on you!
My generation will maybe be remembered, not as the most selfish sonsofbitches on the planet, but as those whacky comedians at the End of the American Century. By then, of course, nobody will be laughing.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/got-urine.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —got urine