The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you look in the phone book — okay, if you Google up local acupuncturists — first name you find will be AA Acupuncture. I know, seems unnecessary to stick a couple of A’s in front of the name to get first billing. I mean, how many needle therapists do we have near the South End? But worse, the double A’s conjure up Alcoholics Anonymous so maybe this business is possibly a 12 step program for needle addicts??

I made the mistake of asking Rhonda, the sole owner and practitioner, that very question. The darts she sent from her glaring eyes convinced me she might apply her skills to funny bone repair, nothing I was going to suggest out loud for fear of more than her frowning disapproval — and besides, I have always had a phobia around syringes, vaccines and most any penetrating sharp pointy objects. I can’t watch an injection. Not my own, certainly, not even the ones on TV or in a movie.

So the thought of dozens of twirling little needles punched through my skin and rotated, well, not likely Rhonda will be seeing me professionally soon as one of her patients. Or victims.

Nevertheless … I have friends who do let her pierce them. Back pain, joint pain, tennis elbow, erectile dysfunction, you name it. When traditional medicine fails, who ya gonna call? They’ve tried prayer, couples therapy, hypnotists, drugstore supplements, chiropractors, weight loss drugs, cannabis and more liquor. Why not Rhonda and her magic needles?

And besides, most claim positive results. For awhile anyway. Maybe it really works, this acupuncture, or maybe it’s just placebo, does it really matter? And if there’s therapeutic result in administering pain, well, consult your dominatrix, it might work too. Although you might consult your spouse first….

A study cited in the morning’s lying press showed statistics that kids were less likely to do drugs these days. The thesis these researchers had come up with was they were doping themselves on social media, a steady drip of dopamine pleasure, nearly constant in their waking, if somnambulistic, hours. Social media as narcotic….

You live down at the tail end of an island far from the tentacles of Facebook, you forget sometimes you’ve set yourself adrift from the continental shores of 21st century modernity, but as the riptides sweep you away and the land lines tear loose from the walls, those messages from the Mainland become fader and more indistinct, Morse code from telegraph poles rotting in the relentless rains.

For a confirmed xenophobe, this desire to stay in constant contact with strangers and family and friends is bemusing, like stuffing messages in bottles all day long and setting them loose on the tides. I had a buddy back in high school who was a ham radio operator tapping out code to other hamsters overseas and across the globe, who stayed up late in his room on the chance that meteorological conditions were ripe for some far away contact. “I talked to a guy in England,” he would tell me the following morning.

“Whadja talk about?” I’d ask. Invariably, nothing much, just name, serial numbers and rank. Where they lived. Age, maybe. I guess we just have this desire to make contact, to let someone know we’re out there, that we’re not alone. Same reason we send radio signals into space. Same reason we write blogs. Ironically, my buddy the ham radio operator slowly became afraid of human interaction of all kinds, what the shrinks call agoraphobic. I tried getting in touch with him some years after the last time I saw him, but he’d lost his job, moved away from his house in Missoula and now even Google can’t locate him. I imagine him holed up in some desolate place, tapping Morse code late into the comforting night, listening for an answer from folks he’ll never have to meet, all his bottles crashing onto lonesome beaches in places he’ll never see.

Now I love used car dealers as much as the next guy. You put an alligator in a white shirt, cheap shoes and some black slacks, give him a commission for every victim he drags into the sewer lagoon, I think you got a pretty accurate image. It’s a dog eat dog world, we all know that, but even in the jungle the beasts of prey don’t take smirking joy at dragging down their dinner. A used car salesman, he takes the kill the way we take a joke.

Just when I thought there was pretty much no lower bar these reptiles could belly down to, along comes Missionary Motors in town. What lemon would Jesus drive? You know, if he was thinking of trading in the donkey. Got a nice Calvary Cross where the T is in Motors. I don’t know if these folks read the chapter in Trump’s favorite book or not, the one where Jesus turns over the tables in the temple where the merchants had set up shop, but I sort of doubt it. Course neither has Trump so maybe they can be forgiven, no pun intended. But there’s something sacrilegious about using your religion to sell cars. Or mattresses. Or real estate. Or breakfast cereal. Or just about anything else outside ecumenical material. If you ask me….

I wonder what we would think if Moslem Motors rolled into our fair city and set up shop. What would Muhammed drive? Mostly I think he would be driven out of town. Which is where I hope Mission Motors goes next.

A few years back I stopped to get gas at Elger Bay Mega-Shop and was accosted by a guy in a panel truck with a fish on his tailgate and a business name stenciled across the side: Hiz Biz. Hiz being, you guessed it, God. Me, I had a fish too, but inside the fish it said DARWIN. He asked in an accusatory way if I knew what that DARWIN fish meant and I said I had a pretty good idea, something to do with evolution if my memory served me well. He spluttered, “They sell those fish at the erotic bakery in Seattle!” I said, “You could have slapped me with a mackerel, but what’s your point?” He told me they baked cakes that looked like penises.

“This will come as sad news,” I said, “but why would I care? It’s a free country.”

I guess it’s a slippery slope, freedom. And maybe I need to shut up about selling cars for Jesus too. Or Muhammed. You got to buy em from somebody.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine they brought in a new minister, Rev. Baxter. He’s replaced Pastor Paul’s Bible thumping, fire and brimstone, Hell and damnation sermons with ‘prosperity preaching’. Forget worrying about the eternal furnace of Hell as punishment, imagine the temporal rewards of riches Right Now. “The Lord,” Rev. Baxter intones in unctuous, perfectly enunciated promises, “will reward you with fiscal manifestations for your belief in His good works. Ask,” he tells the flock, “and you will receive.”

This is good news in the pews. The South End, never really as worried about punishment after death as the one they live daily, was more than ready to receive money, not manna, from Heaven. That bunk about the meek inheriting the earth stuff Pastor Paul occasionally mentioned paled in comparison to the high wattage of an eternity of blistering boiling retribution. Brother Baxter promised the earth and heaven too and forget about being meek and modest. Ask for the moon. Ask for more! You deserved it and when you got it, that was proof of your worth, that was the Keys to the Kingdom, hallelujah!!

“Have faith in the generosity of the Lord,” Rev. Baxter admonished with his wide gold tooth smile and his expensive watch sparkling occasionally beneath the sleeve of his purple robes, proof itself of the truth in his words. “He will bless you until the end of your days. He will make you rich. There is no shame in wealth, only evidence of your devotion and the Lord’s beneficence.”

Well, he is the minister, the congregation reminded skeptics who quoted that chestnut about a rich man squeezing through the eye of a needle trying to get into Heaven or whatever the hell it said, better to be poor and miserable, old time mumbo jumbo, suffer and ye shall receive. Maybe it was time to try Rev. Baxter’s version, they argued. Try the caviar of optimism instead of the gruel of pessimism and self- denial.

Christmas, it looks like, has come to the South End to stay and God, if Brother B. is correct, is going to be a whole lot better than Santa. Folks at the Chapel are making their lists and checking it twice. Amen to that.

A few weeks ago some Silicon Valley bazillionaire announced he thought it was highly possible this little reality we live in is some sort of computer simulation. Yesterday I read where two physicists were theorizing the universe is actually two dimensional, not three or four, but similar to a holographic image. I guess they’ve all been watching too many reruns of The Matrix.

It’s a discouraging notion, this idea that the Creator is a computer programmer, at least to me, a boy with nary a binary bone in his body. The tech boyz must think God was created in their own image, but I suppose if I’d invented the silicon world and made a fortune, I might see it their way too. Life, as the Bard once said, is but a dream and maybe it’s a cyborg dream after all, some simulation by an artificial intelligence where we all live in a fractal virtual world.

I’ve never been much interested in this kind of speculation, the stuff that religions are based on and faith revolves around. The universe is way too large for me to get my mind around and I only get to live an incredibly brief lifespan in the big scheme of things. I just figure there must be better ways to spend my time than dream up explanations that aren’t provable, then try to convince others they’re true and maybe have them worship at the font of this ersatz wisdom. Maybe even have them give me money. Maybe fight wars with the infidels who refuse to see the Light and the Way.

I know it’s appealing to create a world in our head. We probably do it all the time, every day, year in and year out. At least I do. Reality is pretty slippery and if you don’t believe it, you haven’t done psychedelic drugs or you don’t have friends who have lost their moorings. Reality is pretty much a misnomer, something I hate to admit in this newspeak world of ‘alternative facts.’ The truth is (if I can still use that word), if reality is relative, we haven’t got any solid ground to stand on. But I can still walk the beach, hike the woods, till the garden. One day I may wake up and find it’s all gone. More likely, someday I just won’t wake up. Then, maybe, we should reprogram, check for updates, add some apps, reboot. Hopefully then things will revert to normal. You know, if you believe in normality.