The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Billy Jean ran the art gallery down here at the aesthetically swollen South End, the only paid employee. The artists who showed their wares could pay extra commission or work 10 hours a week. Since they rarely sold their art, the extra commission was zip so why should they work? The first year the co-op, the South Fork Art Barn, was closed most days when no one was willing to sit in the vacant Second Hand Shoppe they’d leased. Finally, after mounting rental bills, the South End Arts Council voted to hire a staff person to do what they wouldn’t.

Billy Jean interviewed for the minimum wage, no benefits job and was hired the same day, primarily by dint of NOT being an artist herself, the main criterion the Council set for qualifications. Not having been around artists, B.J., who thought the position would mostly be running the store, tracking sales and receipts, closing up at the end of the day, well, she never dreamed the job actually was Ego Masseuse. The first day Sarah Jenkins came in early to demand her watercolors be moved front and center where they would cheerily greet the customers before they decided to leave empty handed. Billy Jean nodded and smiled, but eventually pled ignorance of the rules by virtue of being the New Hire. She would, she vowed, check with the Council and the Co-op Board. Course, it turned out the Board had their art front and center so a rule was made on-the-spot to keep the current display configuration.

The first week various grumpy artists brought forth their complaints, moved paintings or hung new ones, argued their cases with Billy Jean and wished her luck. Meaning, sell my work! By Friday she felt like a vise had scrunched her ears into one auditory pancake of pain. She was, she told her newly unemployed plumber husband Brent, nothing but a glorified Cat Herder. Brent, still in shock over his sudden layoff, told her she’d get the hang of it, just stick with it, Honey, we need the money, a refrain she later could have embroidered in needlepoint and hung front and center by her own front door and called it art or literature or just a motto for the rest of the South End.

Barely a week has gone by since the Great Debate Debacle, two old geezers in a WWF Smackdown with wet towels. One ranting and ducking, the other just a deer in the headlights, all in all a sad spectacle most of my libtard snowflake friends turned off in less than 15 cringe-worthy minutes. Me, I stuck it out til the end, no doubt hoping Joe’s Red Bull would kick in and he would respond with outrage to some of the lies and evasions of his goofy opponent, but I was more than disappointed, alarmed even that this election looked like a gimme to the goof.

Wildfires are raging across the country in the unprecedented heat waves. Mostly hair on fire among the Democrats wondering what now? What now, indeed. Their candidate, the one who says he was jetlagged after his European D-Day junket, plans to fight on. But … maybe only from 10-4, no more evening interviews, debates or, well, much of anything beyond milk and cookies. So what to do, what to do?

I like Joe, I really do. I loved my Old Man too but when he reached 100, I understood he’d gone past his expiration date a few years earlier. And yeah, I get that Joe surrounds himself with good people, something Donald Trump wouldn’t understand when all he requires is absolute loyalty to Donald Trump. Joe could manage the office another four years with the folks he picks, I have no doubt. But so could plenty of others who are younger, more vibrant and energetic. There comes a time when a wise person should know he needs to step down. Joe has reached that time. His legacy is secure.

But if he pulls a Ruth Bader Ginsburg here and lets that moment pass allowing the country to vote for a vindictive, narcissistic, anti-democratic, probably insane authoritarian who is backed by legions of mewling sycophants, well, Joe, your legacy will be quite different. It’s time to take one for the team. For the country. Take a rest. You deserve it.

was watching an IBM ad the other night. They were touting their genius machine WATSON as an example of how we humans were going to succeed in the future. By out-thinking our competition. WATSON can beat any human in chess. WATSON can whip anybody in Jeopardy. WATSON is as smart as we are and getting smarter every day. We just need to make smarter WATSONS if we want to get anywhere in this brave new world. Down here on the South End we aren’t likely to cobble together an artificial intelligence. Or even much of a natural one, judging by our track record so far.

IBM is creating machine intelligence. WATSON is a machine, built by us, programmed by us, in service to us. In a couple years WATSON will build itself, program itself, improve itself and surpass its original creators in no time flat. The mega corporations and the defense departments of the world think this is the leg up for their profits and their success. WATSON and his brethren will simply out-think their competition. Trouble is, we’ll be the machines’ competition. Well, not much competition, judging by the South End, but hey, even MIT, Stanford, NASA, you name it, they’ll be left in the silicon dust too.

We live in a world of machines now. Already machines run machines. Computers run factories, control the banking, game the stock markets, kill the enemy with their drones. They live in our office, control our entertainment, answer questions on our phone, connect us to other humans who have them too. We’re dependent already even though we think we’re boss. We even got em down here on the South End. Okay, we’re mostly using them for e-mail and Google. But we take them for granted already, just a couple decades since Bill Gates put the pods under everyone’s bed.

You think maybe I’m a Luddite. You think I’m paranoid. You think I don’t trust IBM or Microsoft or Apple to make the future a very comfortable place for me. You think we should just let them be smarter. Out-think the competition! You think maybe this is just another tool, like a hammer or a sewing machine or a spinning jenny, something we use to better our lives.

But I’ll tell you something: a hammer doesn’t get smarter. A hammer doesn’t figure out it could make next-generation hammers that self-feed, that replicates those with built-in mobility, that deduces new uses for nails, that realizes its potential as a weapon and identifies the new enemy. A hammer isn’t going to out-think even South Enders. Okay, maybe a couple of us. WATSON isn’t your friend, all I’m saying … and he won’t be your servant much longer.

So I’m sitting in the South End Clinic filling out paperwork they lost the last and only visit many years ago … when a young guy comes in with what he tells the receptionist is a very bad cut on his hand from work. His hand is wrapped in a dirty handkerchief held in place with duct tape. The receptionist explained they don’t do that kind of emergency — he’d need to drive himself to the next clinic down the road in Stanwoodopolis. About 10 to 15 miles.

But wait … did he have insurance, she asks. He did, but then he was told the clinic about two pints of hemoglobin away wouldn’t accept the insurance he had. Could he drive 15 to 20 miles further?

Healthcare, at least from my seat in the waiting room, seemed hazardous to this guy’s health, if he even makes it the 40 mile drive before blacking out at the wheel. No one asked him how bad the cut was, whether fingers were missing, if a transfusion was necessary. I know it’s not an emergency room, but it is, supposedly, a part of the health care system.

My brother, back in our days together in college, wanted to be a doctor … until the night he did a drunken back flip and hit the radiator in his dorm room with his head. His roommate ran him to the University ER where he sat for a couple of hours with other patients bleeding and vomiting and oozing fluids. By the time he got stitched up he had changed his major from Pre-Med to Don’t Know. Probably good to learn he was squeamish around pain and blood before he interned.

Sitting my turn at the South End Clinic, I know how he felt. Trouble was, I was a patient. On the South End we’ve always relied more on Self-Reliance than health insurance. But sadly, the time comes to all of us when we need outside help. Course, chances are good they’ll tell you to go further on up the road. Keep the gas tank full is what I’d suggest. And carry a tourniquet.

Johnny Fever’s got a cigarillo dangling from his lips, one arm out the window, one hand fiddling with the radio dial. He’s listening for clues in the song lyrics, he’s watching for numerological signs on license plates, he’s motormouthing a mile a minute flying down the interstate at 105 miles per hour, dodging semis as he weaves wildly, lane to lane. “There you go,” he shouts over the windnoise, flicking ash out the open window. “Two threes and a one, adds up to seven! Seven’s my number, man, seven’s my combination!”

I’m tightening my seatbelt, wishing I’d made my will, but it’s too late now and my only hope at survival is probably a state trooper with radar. “Hey, John, how ‘bout we slow down 50 miles an hour or so?” I say, not that I think he hears one word I say over the radio squawk. “Hear that?” he howls, hammering on the dash. “Van Morrison, man. Van the damn Man!”

Apparently this is a Good Sign. He’s smiling, hums to the words, flicks an ash and squirts between two behemoth diesels as if they were stopped, not doing their actual 65mph. They disappear behind us in the blink of a bloodshot eye. I’m white knuckling my armrest, saying between clenched teeth if I live through this I’m going to get my will in order first thing.

Johnny Fever is on a bender. He stopped taking his meds a week ago and now he’s untethered, a rocket moving into the stratosphere of his skull, homing in on Seattle, me as co-pilot. If I thought I might protect him from himself, I was sadly mistaken. I will be the victim of his unintentional suicide, more than likely.

“There!!” he bellows. “Right there!” I look to where his cigarillo is pointed, a truck license that has two sevens, a three and a four. “Triple sevens, man!! Whaddaya think of that?!”

What do I think of that? I think I’m not feeling too lucky today, is what I’m thinking … as we cut suddenly between a delivery truck and a BMW. Johnny Fever slaps the dash and dials the radio for another sign. “Gonna be a good day, Skeeter,” he yells, grinning happily. Where the hell are the State Patrol when you need em?