\u201cHere we go again!\u201d Jihad Jack shouted at the big screen over the bar at the Pilot Lounge the other night, Ladies Night as it were, a new gimmick by John the new owner to attract more business — or maybe to dilute the testosterone of the usual rowdy crowd. Near as I could see, it wasn\u2019t working, not a lady in sight, just a table of the South End Slammers, our women\u2019s roller derby queens and if anyone called them ladies, god help them. They wee mean mamas, leave it at that.<\/p>\n
Jack was on his hind legs at the bar, beer glass clenched in a meaty fist, obviously more angry than usual. \u201cNow it\u2019s a new epidemic. Mpox my monkey ass! It never ends! Covid, measles, AIDS, bird flu, what\u2019s the new one, the fever?\u201d Brenda at the Slammer table said, \u201cDengue. Dengue Fever. Makes your bones feel like they\u2019re breaking.\u201d She seemed to know this, maybe from the rinks, what that would feel like I was betting. Couple of body blows at the cantilevered turns, she probably knew firsthand.<\/p>\n
Jack turned his attention from the TV news report and considered her and her information. \u201cAll I know,\u201d he said, maybe to Brenda, maybe to the rest of us swillers, \u201cthe government wants you to put on masks again, get more of those weird vaccines, make us damn slaves.\u201d No news to us regulars — we\u2019d had more than a few earfuls of Jihad\u2019s Covid conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
But Brenda apparently hadn\u2019t. \u201cYou think this stuff is all made up, fella?\u201d she asked with a slight smirk on her face. \u201cYer damned right they make it up. All just a master plan to scare the stupid sheep into doing whatever they\u2019re told.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brenda took a long slow swig of her beer, burped loudly and said, \u201cThat\u2019s the most ignorant BS I\u2019ve seen all week. And I work cleaning stables at the equestrian place north of Stanwood. Bullshit, horse pucks, all the same.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jihad could hardly believe his ears. \u201cIf you weren\u2019t a woman \u2026\u201d he started. But Brenda was out of her chair and up in his face before he could finish the sentence. Jack\u2019s a big blowhard but he\u2019s not a big man. Brenda had him by four inches and twenty pounds. Every breath in that bar was on hold for the thirty seconds it took Jack to see there was no winning hand here. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust stating an opinion,\u201d he finally squeaked out. \u201cFree country, ya know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brenda just grinned and patted him on the shoulder. \u201cYes it is,\u201d she said, \u201cbut sometimes it pays to keep those to yourself. If you don\u2019t mind \u2026.\u201d Jack said he didn\u2019t. Brenda said thank you \u2026 and that, I suspect, was the last Ladies Night we\u2019ll see at the Pilot House Lounge. Probably a government plot, but for what nefarious purpose, who knows? Other than Jack, certainly none of the rest of us boyz. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHere we go again!\u201d Jihad Jack shouted at the big screen over the bar at the Pilot Lounge the other night, Ladies Night as it were, a new gimmick by John the new owner to attract more business — or maybe to dilute the testosterone of the usual rowdy crowd. Near as I could see, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6746,2434,3868],"class_list":["post-18137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-mpox-hoax","tag-pandemic-hoax","tag-vaccine-nano-trackers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18148,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18137\/revisions\/18148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}