The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a knee that’s been bothering me. For about three years. I finally figured it wasn’t going to heal up so I went to my local clinic, got a checkup and was sent into town for some X-rays, then back to the original doc who took ten minutes before we both came to the same diagnosis: I was NOT Fred with the bad wrist. When we finally got Skeeter’s medical file, he told me he didn’t see anything particularly wrong, no doubt scribbling in my chart after I left — HYPOCHONDRIA.

A year later and no improvement in that knee, I switched clinics and tried again, this time asking the attending physician for an MRI, which he scheduled along with more X-rays. The MRI, I was certain, would show him the cause of my knee pain, hopefully something easily repaired. When I scheduled my consultation after the MRI came back and my answering machine mentioned ‘torn cruciate ligament’ I was confident we were going to get to the root of my chronic problem. At last!

My next doc mentioned he hadn’t had time to read my MRI’s yet, but he took a moment to have a look. “I see some arthritis in that left knee,” he told me and I told him my problem was in the right knee. “Not much arthritis there,” he said after studying the photos, “but that must be it.” (I’m sure he underlined the aforementioned HYPOCHONDRIAC in red ink.)

“I know I’m shy a few credits on my medical degree,” I protested, “but it sure feels like something’s wrong in there. A tear maybe?”

He patiently explained he was an osteo-surgeon and if I wanted a knee replacement, he was my man. “Whoa,” I said, “I’m not shopping knees today, I just want to figure out what this problem is.”

Disappointed, I went home, back to Plan A — see if it would heal itself. A month later my brother asked how the MRI’s turned out. When I told him, he said let’s look at your charts (his wife is an RN) and when I told him I hadn’t seen them, he explained it was almost two decades into the 21st Century, they would be available On-line, let’s have a look, so we did and right there in black and white on the MRI report were my two ligament tears, anterior cruciate and posterior too.

That was three months ago. I know I should go back, get a 3rd opinion, see if this knee can be repaired. My trouble is, I figure 50/50 they’ll amputate the leg. Probably the left one. So for the time being, I’m sticking with Plan A. Seems a helluva lot safer bet.

Maybe you’ve heard recently about the 40,000 acre data center just approved in Utah. Sure, it’s huge, a black hole going to suck water and power for Northern Utah. If you’re like me, data centers and the protests against them are fairly new to my radar. When I searched, probably with unasked for AI assist that seems to be ubiquitous now, I discovered there are over 5000 data centers in this country, more than the total of the next top ten combined, ten times more than the closest two, Germany and the UK who each have a little more than 500. China, in case you were wondering, was next with over 400.

How is it we missed these things? Well, for one thing, they’re being built in primarily rural areas, places that might think jobs are coming to save the day. And maybe didn’t realize the amount of water and power they’ll be consuming. Their water and power that will soon cost a helluva lot more than before the Center went online. Lately, tho, the public is waking up, if belatedly, to the proliferation of these things. AI is here and where did we think all that computation was being done?

Utah is, or at least was, trying to conserve water. The Great Salt Lake is drying up after years of drought. But 3 county commissioners approved the application anyway. When two podcasters threw themselves into the scrimmage, those commissioners accused them of being spies for the Chinese. No doubt the People’s Republic has plenty of espionage teams in the Mormon State, keeping an eye on polygamy maybe.

It looks like this genie is definitely out of its bottle. AI has seeped into our everyday lives without most of us noticing. College and high school students use it for a little more than research. Forget Cliff Notes, they can pop out a research paper in less than a minute. Amazon just limited the number of new books by any one author to three. A day! Writer’s block? I don’t think so. One musician I read about in this morning’s fake news had 7 albums out this year already. He was not one bit or byte embarrassed to let us know he used AI. Just another tool in the box.

It’s a brave new world. Just not our world anymore….

My old buddy Marco is getting evicted four days from now. He’s got a court date to tell a judge why he shouldn’t be thrown out on the street for not paying his rent. He’s not paying his rent because he hasn’t worked in half a year because his knee is blown out and L&I won’t pay for an MRI to see what’s wrong in there. He has a court date with L&I too, but by then he will be evicted.

Marco’s girlfriend, his latest, isn’t working either. She has a 3 year old child that she’s taking care of for her daughter and yeah, you probably guessed it, the daughter is too drug addled to take care of her own kid. So Marco and Debbie take care of the tot. The hard –hearted among us will no doubt see this as just another story of the poor making bad decisions that lead to them becoming poorer. And they got a good case.

Marco’s planning to move his and Debbie’s stuff out of the rental house this weekend, haul it to a storage unit that costs $150 a month, then go stay with his brother out of state until they figure out which end is up. I think I already know which of their ends is up, but here’s the kicker. Marco wants to adopt his girlfriend’s granddaughter. I mean, why not? He can’t afford a place to live, he hasn’t got a job and he doesn’t have any viable prospects for one. His girlfriend, if history is any indicator, probably won’t be with him long and he wants to adopt the kid.

Marco has a good heart. His trouble isn’t his heart, although judging by his physical condition, that may not be totally accurate. His trouble is his brain. He keeps making dumb decisions. He walked away this year from a house he owned with his ex that they sold for pennies on the dollar because no one would clean up the pigsty they’d made of it. Marco probably didn’t care; after all, his ex was going to take what profits were left from any sale. And did I mention Marco found his way into opioids and finally heroin? No? Well, there you go. Gateway drugs. To poverty.

I wish Marco all the luck in the world. The trouble is, most of it will be bad. You know it, I know it, probably in his lucid moments, Marco does too. The man is 60 years old and driving off the road into the scenery. If you wonder where the homeless hail from, well, some are from the South End. I just hope that 3 year old kid he wants to adopt gets a break. But the poor, often times, do get poorer.

Back when the Stanwoodopolis Gazette was still, more or less, a viable newspaper — even if it only published once a week — I thought it would add some zest to the Letter to the Editor to run myself, Skeeter Daddle, for Island County Commissioner. Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t developed dreams of grandeur or plans to use my influence for personal profit, maybe hold the office for a term, run for the Senate, all stepping stones to the White House and immense wealth. Sure, okay, I had been asked by some politico in Island County politics at some event if I was indeed the infamous Skeeter D., and when I mistakenly admitted that yes, I was the very same, she asked if I would consider throwing my hat in the ring for Commish.

Anyone who knows me would break down in tears of mirth at the idea of my battered hat tossed into the political arena. Which may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with my deteriorating hat. As I told the good charwoman, if nominated, I would not run, if elected, I would accept the salary … but no, Skeeter was not the standard bearer she was hoping for.

Nevertheless, it put the idea in my head to send letters to the editor, John, a friend of mine who took my bus driving route years prior, some supporting my candidacy whole heartedly, and the following week, some apoplectic that anyone in their right mind would consider voting for this total moron. John could see where this was headed by the second or third letter, a pitched battle on the editorial page for and against a candidate who wasn’t actually running for any office.

“We have a policy to run every letter,” he explained sadly over the phone. “But this will only cause confusion and mistrust. I’m asking you to cease and desist. Please.”

As the sort of guy who would take an inch and stretch it into a kilometer, I hated to drop the hilarity, April Fools every week. But I did. Looking back all these years, pre-Fox News, bogus social media, fake journalism, all I can say is I was man ahead of my times. Just didn’t have enough sense to monetize my prescience….

Roll over Gutenberg, let Google give you the news! Amazon recently set a limit of 3 books per author on their website. 3 a day. One of our local libraries has set aside an AI-Free Zone strictly for books written by humans. I just listened to a dozen you-Tube videos of an old delta blues musician that were all written and sung by AI. Fooled me.

How long do you think it will be before most writing and most music will be AI generated? A year? A decade? You want to write a mystery novel, just pick a style, a favorite author, you can crank out an entire series, dozens , hundreds, only have to wait a day to post the next 3, means you could publish over 1000 a year.

If you think it’s easy to tell a computer generated artwork, be it poetry or novels, movies or music, think again. Even in these earliest years of Artificial Intelligence, the baby androids are really very proficient at mimicry. If you think imagination or creativity are some sort of evolutionary zenith, maybe even God-given, no way will some machine intelligence paint a Guernica or write Crime and Punishment, maybe just jingles for cereal commercials or mediocre sitcoms for Netflix … you’d be lulling yourself into optimistic complacency.

Two years ago I heard an NPR report that asked AI to write new lyrics for America the Beautiful, which it did in less than a second. The radio hosts were wowed by the speed then mocked the lyrics as second rate at best. Pardon me, but they were no worse than the originals from where I sat listening. The Delta blues songs I heard last month were great, lyrics, instruments, vocal, video. I didn’t know they weren’t human produced. My bandmates didn’t either when I sent them the links.

Most art springs from the art that precedes it. Already there are plenty of my fellow artists using AI to “assist” them in their work, you know, let the android do the tedious grunt, we’ll provide the creative spark. It won’t be long we’ll see the students surpassing us mentors. Creativity isn’t proprietary for us humans anymore. Although … I bet we will still sign our name on the canvas. Who’s gonna know the difference?