The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I did not have sex with that Ukrainian President! No wait, that was a Democratic President who was lying. This is different, fundamentally, different. We did not talk quid pro quo on that phone conversation. In fact it was a perfect phone conversation, perfect. So perfect we locked it up in the super secret Cone of Silence at the Deep State Data Bank Vault, but we have a transcript, not quite as perfect, mind you, but pretty perfect. You can judge for yourself that I’m innocent.

Well, okay, I did ask the comedian president, Zelenskiy, or Zorro or whatever his goofy name is, for some help cleaning up corruption in that shithole country he’s running. Sent Rudy right over there, see what’s what, get it cleared up before things get worse and they elect a clown for president. They got the goods on Biden and his kid. We just need to get them to dig a little, find something we can use before the 2020’s. You believe that guy, Sleepy Joe, using his name to get his kid a 50K a month gig on their oil board? Corruption! They both ought to be in jail. High crimes and treason.

So what if Little Adam Schitt has a whistle blower, fake news, third hand rumors, who cares? There was no quid pro quo, I only asked Zorro to look into Biden’s boy, big deal. What, another whistle blower? First hand information? There’s treason, you ask me … the guy ought to be outed and shot. Along with Shifty Schitt. So yeah, maybe I did put the chill on those weapons we promised Zorro to fight the Russians. Who, by the way, aren’t bad people if Putin was being honest with me and I think I know honesty when I hear it and I hear it louder than anyone ever has now or before. I hear it like a bell beat by a gong, a huge gong. It sounds great.

So I asked for a favor if he wanted those weapons. I admit it, big deal, who cares? That’s how we do business. Maybe you read my book, The Art of the Deal? I still have some copies you can buy. I’m the deal guy, the best, nobody like me since Kubla Khan, and I could take him with one hand behind my back. If I could reach that far ….

Trading influence for political gain? I don’t think so. Read the transcript. Perfect phone conversation, I won’t say too many times again. No, the real one is locked up. You’d just cherry pick it, twist it around, make me look like a crook. I’m not a crook, I’m a businessman, that’s why you morons elected me, time for a change. I just want to weed out corruption, nepotism, drain the swamp, make America Great Again. Go look at what Biden did, it’s a crime, a real felony, why pick on me? China, you listening? I’d take any help I can get. Give me a call. Rudy’s got a jet ready to roll.

Impeach me?? Who you kidding? Rick Perry is who you want. Made me call that Zorro guy. Now the coward has quit. Looks guilty as hell, quitting like that. Talk to him, I don’t know anything about it.

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Okay, so now that Mr. T has tweeted his opinion that those 4 Congresswomen should go back to where they came from and been informed that 3 of them come from the same place he does, well, time to focus on the Somalian who he claims hates America. Meaning, she has found some faults here that she, as an elected official in the United States Congress, hopes to address. For that she is labeled a hater, unpatriotic, possibly a felon and probably a terrorist. So much for tolerance in the Yew Ess Aye.

Today Rand Paul, another elected official, apparently comfortable with throwing stones now that others are throwing them first, stated that he would buy Rep. Ilhan Omar a ticket back to Somalia so she could learn what a great country we really are, kind of ironic considering the tone of intolerance of Sen. Paul. Criticism by someone born outside his country evidently doesn’t cut it for him. Best damn country in the world. Best damn country ever. How dare anyone who came from somewhere else find fault! Fly her back and he’ll pay the airfare.

Excuse me, but one of the things I happen to like about my country, and yeah, I was born here, is the right to free speech. Also the right to criticize. And absolutely the right to find fault and maybe even suggest ways to correct those faults. Call me unpatriotic, call me a terrorist, call me a Muslim sympathizer, call me late for dinner, but HEY, guys like Paul and Trump, they’re the threat to this country. They’re the subversives. They’re what scare the bejabbers out of me. Maybe Sen. P should go visit some totalitarian countries, the ones who squelch dissent and suppress opposition, to get a better sense of what makes this country great. Maybe we could all help him with the airfare. First class, of course.

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Down at the forward thinking South End, we were New Age before it became Old Hat.  Herbal remedies?  You bet!  Nettle-opathy has been practiced in the hollows here since old Ma Wexler applied a poultice of the fresh stingers to her Erectile Dysfunctional husband’s non-working parts and boy howdy, things livelied up at the Wexler homestead after that, let me tell you.

Nettle-opathy is a country cross between acupuncture and herbal cure-all.  Apply a few fresh spring leaves to the correct chakra, you can cure everything from shyness to arthritis, halsitosis to insomnia, hair loss to memory loss, seasonal affective disorder to major depression.  You won’t have time to think of much else other than that panacea tickling your chakra.

We’ve been brewing medicinal nettle tonics about since Prohibition forced us to seek alternative medicines.  We got hefe-nettle, nettle stouts, IPA’s, nettle bock, all available in a handy 12 oz. dosage.

Aromatherapy?  Sure.  We got everything from burn barrel poly-blend to chimney cedar to compost leaf mulch/food scrap.  A few minutes of olfactory stimulation, you’ll forget most of those insignificant cares and woes that nag your good mood all day long.

Hypnotherapy.   You want a spell put on you, just wander down to the South End Hotel and belly up to the bar, listen for awhile to the whoppers these old time fishermen spin over a few bottle bass.  You’ll be buying Penn reels and downrigger gear and a boat and motor too — you’ll be broke but if fishing doesn’t cure what ails ya, god help you.

In all honesty — full disclosure here — this New Age stuff, old to us, is really mostly a placebo.  But then, isn’t that the New Medicine now?  And really, who cares so long as it works.  Not our fault the South End itself is really why we live longer, smile more, work less and basically just have most of the answers to life’s tough riddles.  Placebo?  You bet.

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76 trombones led the big parade. With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.

Aw, who doesn’t love a good parade, marching bands, twirlers, floats and banners and our boys in uniform? Women too now! And Transgenders! Followed by tanks and artillery, jets flying overhead in formation, bunker buster bombs carried on carriages two blocks long. Formation after formation of the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force. Battalions and generals and military hardware. The Commander-in-Chief looking down from the stage specially constructed for his viewing pleasure, salutes to him as thousands pass by rank and file, hail to the Chief!!

Damn the expense! If we can’t put on a good military parade once a year, what kind of cowpie country are we? Let the rest of the world cower before our display of drones and cruise missiles moving mile after mile down the banner festooned streets of D.C. Patriotism on Display!! Military Might on Display!! Who doesn’t love a good parade?? Forget that Mickey Mouse balloon stuff. Homer Simpson three blocks high. We’re talking about Fire Power, not Star Power. Save the Disney stuff for the Mummer’s or the Rose Bowl or Mardi Gras. Bring on the Bradley Fighting Machines, the 1126 Stryker, the MK19 grenade machine gun, the Black Hawk helicopters, the MK-54 torpedoes, bring it all out and let the world tremble.

Shock and awe on the streets of the USA, that’s what we need. You wonder how we won the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, well, sir, check out that hardware we’re selling to every hungry dictatorship around the globe. What’s on display here is more than Uncle Sam’s mighty muscles, it’s a runway for arms sales, pure and simple and who better to brand that than the Trumpster himself, Captain America. You need a second generation jet, we got em. You need some Surface-to-Air missiles, we’re your supplier. Just don’t resell them to terrorists. Don’t want those SAMs falling into the wrong hands like that time with the Taliban back in the cold war days when they were fighting the Soviets.

No, give me a good parade any day. Celebrate the weapons of destruction. Hell, drop a nuclear bomb out in the countryside, nothing too big, just a little show of atomic power, a warning to the enemies of liberty. Small mushroom cloud over the capitol, better than the 4th of July. Guns and God, let freedom ring. 76 trombones and a huckster Music Man, is this a great country or what?
4th

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We got our fair share of veterans down here, heroes of the wars, past and present, maybe too many wars, you ask me, but nothing anybody should voice too loudly any particular night at the VFW Hall.  Patriotism means a lot of things to every person, but most of the veterans I know pretty much believe they got the patent on it.  Maybe they do.  After all, they marched into the fray and a lot of their buddies didn’t march back out.  You don’t question the loyalty of these vets, not ever, and you don’t doubt their patriotism.

The other night some of the boyz were waxing nostalgic over a bottle of some privatized CostCo single malt Baghdad Bill had brought to the Marina and Bait Shop for the usual Friday night poker game.  Two Toke was there, and Big Larry too after closing up the grill at the Diner, plus me and a few other draft dodging, student deferred, anti-war types, and what with the 4^th rolling right up and the fireworks stands about to set up red white and blue bunting to sell incendiaries legally, we naturally gravitated to holiday talk and that led to Independence Day, not just here but for Iraqis and Egyptians and Afghan women, and that got us going on wars, good and bad, won and lost.  Two Toke was about one toke — or at least one shot glass — over the line when he started musing about Viet Nam.  Two Toke was there during the Tet Offensive.  He lost most of his unit and a part of a knee there.  He doesn’t have one good word to say about that war, and really, none about any since.  I guess he earned the right.  Bill was in Iraq.  He argues with T.T., but it’s like arguing with a Stanwoodopolite whether they’d like to be annexed into Camano Island.  You’re just asking for some vicious yelling.

Big Larry served in Korea, meaning, we got about all the wars covered since WWII.  Except maybe Granada.  Okay, Panama and Bosnia too.  Some nights we even have Jimmy Z sit in for a hand or two and he was in on the tail end of the Big One, kind of the grand old soldier, and when Jimmy’s sitting in, not even Two Toke questions the point of the latest wars.  Jimmy, though, doesn’t talk much about his two years in the Pacific theater, which took him through Iwo Jima and some nasty business on the beach and then back in the jungle.

Two Toke was wondering aloud if the Revolutionary War was fought so we could just march back over to some foreign country and make life hell for somebody else while Big Larry and Bill were starting to take swigs with every one of Tom’s verbal shots.  I might’ve let them duke it out if it wasn’t for the fact that I had 3 kings over a couple of jacks and the pot was by far the fattest it had been all night.

Boyz boyz boyz, I said, trying to sound like the cool head I never am.  Let’s agree to, you know, not agree.  But hellfire, we’re all in this together, aren’t we?  We got food to eat, a bottle to finish, we got friends and family, some of us got jobs, we got the great good luck to be born here and not in Smokey Point, let’s just be a little thankful, shall we?  4^th of July is coming and we can all at least be glad we’re sitting here in the Land of the Brave Home of the Free.

Course, that set Larry off, fuming over mangled quotations, and before I could get my bets down, the Marina was its own 4^th of July, fireworks ablaze.  I don’t know who won the argument by the end.  I know this: one of us lost a plump pot while he held a winning hand.  Poker, I guess, is a little too much like war.  But we’ll all be at the table next Friday night.  Probably fight about privatizing liquor.

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Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip.  The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up.  Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm.  And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.

In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest.  Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime.  Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman.  Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it…  Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring.  The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers.  Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.

Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald.  It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks.  One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight.  Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.

If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s.  But I probably won’t tell the boyz…

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