The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I just got off the phone with my airline companies, you know, a couple of the ‘friendly skies’ folks. The flights I’d reserved needed to be canceled, long story I’ll spare you temporarily. I got the computer first which gave me plenty of options to choose from and only took 3 or 4 minutes to listen to first, then answer the multiple test. Five minutes later I was shuffled over to a human. Cindy, her name was, although, given her very indecipherable accent, it was hard to tell. If I thought getting her name right was difficult, understanding her questions was impossible.

I think she understood English. I’m pretty certain she couldn’t speak English. Most of our conversation was me asking if she could repeat what she just said. Finally, totally frustrated, I just guessed. Would I like to cantigate my frist? I said okay. What slingbash was my conflastation? I gave her a flight number. She seemed to accept it as an answer.

I’m assuming, if my airline hired her for customer service, their strategy was to frustrate me to the point of hanging up. Save them any additional bother. But … I wanted a refund, money, moolah, greenback of dollar, whatever Alaska Airline deposits with whatever butchered name they give it. Finally Cindy or Candy or Karla managed to garble the word ‘credit.’ No, I said, I wanted a refund. She repeated ‘credit.’ Gleddit. Or keepit, but I got the message. No refund. I tried 2 or 3 different tacks, but like I said, she understands just fine. It was me who didn’t….

I’m what you call an Infrequent Flyer. Who knows when I’d want to fly Alaska again? And I didn’t want to ask about the expiration date on my gleddit. I asked Cindy if the mizzus — who IS planning a trip — could use that gleddit. I think you know what her answer was even if none of us could understand it clearly. She burbled a few more unintelligible phrases, asked hell if I know what, then paused, obviously waiting for an answer or a dial tone. “Okay,” I said, “we’re done. You, me and that crappy outfit you work for.” Cindy said, “Hap a niece drive” … or something equally inscrutable.

I don’t know about the rest of you in the flying public, but I can’t wait until computers replace some of these jobs completely. I don’t think they’ll be any more empathetic, but at least I’ll be able to understand what they’re saying when they screw me.

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The stock market dropped over 1000 points the other day. Japan’s dropped 12%. The Tech stocks took a dive and immediately the day traders did too. Plenty of hair on fire, pundits weighing in, money lost, money moved, money bouncing up down and sideways. Gee, after a long upward climb, folks thought there was only one direction, same as the evangelicals, Up.

I keep hearing about the middle class, got to help them out, need to pull them up another rung on that upwardly mobile ladder. I don’t hear so much about the bottom rungs, the homeless, the jobless, the minimum wage worker who can’t afford rents and groceries much less any kind of health care. You think they have money in the damn stock market? They can barely afford to shop the food market.

Shelly, newly hired at the deli of one of Stanwoodopolis’s ‘super’ markets, makes better than minimum wage with a few benefits to boot. When her deadbeat husband left her last month for a floozie a few trailers down from theirs at the Tillicum Village, she went into shock, then grief, then anger, then despair. Two kids, no alimony — at least not until she can afford an attorney to draw up the divorce papers — plus a pile of credit card bills. Her mother takes care of Julie and Billy the days she works at the store. Daycare wasn’t much of an option.

“I’m treading water, Skeeter,” she told me in a whisper at the checkout line. “This job barely pays the bills and Frank won’t even return a phone call now that he’s shacked up with that drug addict bimbo he’s ….” She let that drop when a customer neared hearing range with a cart loaded to the top rails.

Shelly’s the daughter of Carl, a fellow school bus driver from back in the late ‘70’s who was a fellow part-timer, both of us able to keep our own heads above water, could even afford to buy our own houses. Shelly will never own hers. And it sounds like she may not be able to afford the rent on her mobile either. My guess is she and the kids will end up with her folks in a year, maybe less. If Carl were still alive, he’d be down at this husband Frank’s new address giving him a much needed ultimatum. I suppose there are plenty of folks who would say the blame lies with Shelly, bad choices in life, what do you expect? I hope I never get so high up the ladder I’ll think the one on the lower rungs got it coming. Or the ones at the top either….

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Crab season just closed after being open for two whole months, what used to be open pretty much year round but now has shrunk to 5 days a week for those two measly months. Which, if you’re a pot crabber, means you have to pull your traps Monday night and reset Wednesday morning and start all over. I guess the Fish and Game folks want to give the Dungeness a fighting chance against a weeklong onslaught.

Personally I’m a great believer in equalizing the odds too. So much so, in fact, that I wade into their eelgrass domain barefoot, mano y mano and toe to toe with the crustacean monsters. No sissy traps for me, fancy rigs baited with Trader Joe yuppie blends of smoked salmon and brie, dropped from party boats, passing yachts, high end fishing boats and vacationing sailboats. Factor in the gear, the gas, the bait, the GPS fish finder, license and trailer, those Dungeness run about two bitcoins apiece for these folks.

4th of July I was wading into the Dungeness jungles, unarmed except for my rusty potato rake, a bucket and my wits, okay, not much of a match, bare feet crunching on clam shells and the occasional crab, just me and 18 herding herons for as far as the eye could see, about a 3 mile stretch from Pebble Beach to Mabana. Mt. Rainier was perfectly framed in the straits, the Olympics were jutting up beyond Whidbey Island, the tide flowing out through the eelgrass looked like mermaid hair. Sand dollar colonies had expanded another year and moon snails had showed up too, big goopy bodies in giant shells eating god only knows what. Flounders, sole, rays and passing fish, all of us working the tideflats. With the gulls and the crows and the eagles waiting for scraps.

Oh … and of course, the crabs. Some folks crab for food and some crab to justify the expense of their boats. But me, I’m after the adventure. And even if I come home empty handed without dinner, those couple of hours out in the water, putting toes in another world out by the drop-off, four football fields distant from shore, I think is plenty enough. Course, it’s even better when I bring back a few specimens to study. And hopefully to eat….

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Love on the South End was never a bowl of cherries. You try to woo a prospective mate after she’s set eyes on 8 foot tall killer nettles menacing the front door, you’ll see what I mean. Course, the Rottweiler barking all night from its pen next to the neighbor’s travel trailer which no longer travels, the one Mr. Dog Lover lives in with the hound chained close by for affection or protection, that doesn’t endear new girlfriends to the neighborhood either.

Most of my single friends have about given up on the local scene. They’ve dated every yahoo, unemployed or otherwise, down at the Hotel Watering Hole and Dating Service, and those memories they’d like to forget. Or at least suppress. I know. I had to mail order my bride. She probably sensed the muted desperation in my throb-filled love letters, but she took pity, I guess, on an old hermit. I sure didn’t mention the banjos. Or the ivy holding up the shack walls. Or the well on its last legs with an ancient piston pump wheezing and gasping just to haul up a glass of water. Love, I knew, would overcome all those drawbacks.

Course we were younger then, still ‘marketable’. My friends, my single friends, have grown a bit longer in the tooth. Some are missing teeth. More than a few have turned to internet dating to meet future partners, figuring, I guess, the ‘pool’ around here has grown shallow with mostly only geezers fossilizing in the puddles. Now they got a pool of millions of prospective mates to choose from. Just sort through the criterion, run the data and preferences, make allowance for some creative exaggeration, then set up a date. “Non-smoker, loves to walk the beach at sunset, enjoys good literature, would rather snuggle than watch TV, loves puppies and quiet conversations.” True translation: psychopath, possible killer. “Fit, but could lose 5 pounds, enjoys an occasional glass of merlot, young at heart.” Translation: obese nursing home escapee.

Fat chance of finding an honest person in the era of Facebook selfies. The mizzus is counting her lucky stars, but our friends — Mr. Right is fudging the facts. He’s balding, morbidly obese, 15 years too old, drinks until he blacks out, watches any sporting even on TV day or night, eats exclusively Doritos and beer nuts and has the conversational equivalency of Cheetah the ape and a literary proficiency that stalled with Archie and Jughead. He wants mostly to get laid, then left in peace with his TV show. He is, if you haven’t guessed, 6 farts shy of being a heart throb.

Love is an elusive realm. It takes a lot of compromise to share a life, a whole entire life. With a person who has faults and idiosyncracies that have to mesh somehow with your own. And on top of that there’s the cultural overlay of physical beauty and … well, physical beauty mostly. And sex. Let’s not even go there, the rest is hard enough. Although for the guys, the rest is sort of superfluous.

I know this isn’t exactly an Advice Column and by now you know any advice I got is seriously suspect anyway, but … for those who still believe the AM radio bubble gum pop song notion of True Love, don’t give up. But DO keep in mind, bad love is worse than no love. I’ve had my vaccination of bad love. Loneliness usually won’t make you miserable. Or cynical. Or suicidal. But love gone south … love on the rocks … love turned sour and rancid and mean? Be choosy is all I’m saying. Be your own b

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“Here we go again!” 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’t working, not a lady in sight, just a table of the South End Slammers, our women’s roller derby queens and if anyone called them ladies, god help them. They wee mean mamas, leave it at that.

Jack was on his hind legs at the bar, beer glass clenched in a meaty fist, obviously more angry than usual. “Now it’s a new epidemic. Mpox my monkey ass! It never ends! Covid, measles, AIDS, bird flu, what’s the new one, the fever?” Brenda at the Slammer table said, “Dengue. Dengue Fever. Makes your bones feel like they’re breaking.” 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.

Jack turned his attention from the TV news report and considered her and her information. “All I know,” he said, maybe to Brenda, maybe to the rest of us swillers, “the government wants you to put on masks again, get more of those weird vaccines, make us damn slaves.” No news to us regulars — we’d had more than a few earfuls of Jihad’s Covid conspiracy theories.

But Brenda apparently hadn’t. “You think this stuff is all made up, fella?” she asked with a slight smirk on her face. “Yer damned right they make it up. All just a master plan to scare the stupid sheep into doing whatever they’re told.”

Brenda took a long slow swig of her beer, burped loudly and said, “That’s the most ignorant BS I’ve seen all week. And I work cleaning stables at the equestrian place north of Stanwood. Bullshit, horse pucks, all the same.”

Jihad could hardly believe his ears. “If you weren’t a woman …” he started. But Brenda was out of her chair and up in his face before he could finish the sentence. Jack’s a big blowhard but he’s 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.

“Just stating an opinion,” he finally squeaked out. “Free country, ya know.”

Brenda just grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Yes it is,” she said, “but sometimes it pays to keep those to yourself. If you don’t mind ….” Jack said he didn’t. Brenda said thank you … and that, I suspect, was the last Ladies Night we’ll 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.

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There was a recent article about the use of Artificial Intelligence in our kids’ classrooms, the thrust of it concerning how easy it is now for us to rely on ChatGPT or Google or you name it to find the math answers, write their essays, compose their short stories, just let the bots do it. Remember when Texas Instruments came out with a hand held calculator? Why learn multiplication tables or long division? Throw away those slide rules, the future was here!

Well, not quite but the digital handwriting was on the wall … or a least a computer screen. The folks who say AI is just a tool, makes life easier, frees us up for our real human potential, c’mon, the machines are more than an assistant, you kidding me? The next generation of homo not very sapien will be more and more reliant on these programs, algorithms, bots and indispensable partners in every endeavor, every workplace, every home and probably every brain on the planet. We’ll implant chips in our heads, count on it! Just a tool ….

And what a tool! Smarter than us, eventually more creative than us, probably be better dancers than us, better musicians, better writers. Let the machine do it. Let AI handle that. Give us humans more time for daytime TV and game shows, more leisure hours at the casino or on vacation. If we still have vacations when the computers take over our jobs. Maybe they’ll figure out a New Economics, what do to with the jobless, the homeless and the hopeless.

The Brave New World is coming — hell, it’s here now. Go and visit our classrooms, the Pied Piper is calling all the children. Where it’s taking them, damned if I know, maybe a brighter future, might even be the answer to prayers on the solution to world problems. But it won’t be the next step in evolution, beyond biology, certainly beyond my comprehension. You think I’m afraid? Damn right I’m afraid! Tool my ass. We’ll be the tools.

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Little Jimmy’s been predicting the global economic collapse for so long all of us at the Pilot House Lounge have started greeting his entrance at the door, not with a hearty How Are Ya, Jimmy Boy, but a solemn Is THIS the Day??

“Laugh all you want, you chuckleheads,” he says good naturedly. Even he’s realized the End Isn’t Near, it’s just, according to Jimmy, delayed. Meanwhile the Dow and S&P and Nasdaq are at record highs, proving once again, if it needed proving, the rich get richer and the rest of us spend ours on beer at the Pilot House, some kind of inexorable law of economics we layabouts do not question even if we bitch about it at our equivalent of the Federal Reserve quarterlies, all the good it ever does.

Some day Jimmy will probably wake and the world economy will start to slide, Monetary Armageddon will drop on all of us and only Jimmy will survive the Apocalypse with his gold and his silver buried out back by the old prized Buick Roadmaster up on blocks waiting restoration, another fiscal hedge in his extensive strategies, most of which he shares with us goombahs but a few he worries might go viral here on the South End and devalue the worth of his intricately devised plans at post-inflationary survival. Money won’t be worth doodly, he tells us after a few high gravity IPA’s. “Forget about stocks, bonds, CD’s or any those IRA’s you boys think will give you a fat retirement.”

We boys, of course, howl and pound the table. We never get tired of investment counseling from the likes of Jimmy. Plus it’s cheap, not like the swindlers back in the day who fleeced the Little Church in the Ravine congregation for their life savings, biggest Ponzi scheme in the country up til then. Jimmy’s not selling anything, only wants to wake us up before the Crash, before it’s Too Damn Late, basically his duty as a friend.

“What if I’m right?” he asked us assembled yahoos, ‘what’ll you do then?” Fairlane Fred, mid sip, put down his bottle with a thump. “Jim,” he said, sounding seriously ominous, “we’ll come and take what you got. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

It was a few weeks after that before Jimmy joined us again at our Economic Summit. We figured he was reburying the Krugerrands.

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About 2008 I got a phone call from a woman who said she was doing a documentary on glass, had seen some large windows I’d done and would I meet with her and her cinematographer for an interview. And … did I know any other glass artists whose work was in the area they could interest? Sure, I was skeptical. Us artists get inquiries all the time from publishing outfits that want to include us in their compendium of modern art, mostly a scam to get us to buy expensive coffee table size copies for our friends and family, show em how important we are now.

But I thought why not talk to these people, no harm in that, no money has to be passed when they inevitably ask if I’ll fund their project, just a couple lost hours. I had plenty of hours to lose and no money for wild-eyed investments. The day they arrived I had some crud or cold or flu, the usual yearly malady. I felt rotten, I looked rotten, I probably sounded rotten as they interviewed me about my work, photographed me in a beat up hat and a torn coat, then packed up their gear and went back to Seattle. A few weeks later they had edited their ‘pilot’ film ‘Fire and Glass’ and planned to take it to PBS where they would pitch it to the execs there. Would I consider, assuming they got funding and the public TV buy-in, being the narrator? I guess Dale Chihuly or David Attenborough were busy, but since I wasn’t I said I would love to. They said I’d be the face of modern stained glass, start with America, next season hit other countries, see how it goes.

You can maybe imagine the fantasies that played through my mind. I’d be the Rick Steves of the glass world, hopscotching from cathedrals to courthouses, introducing the viewer to fantastic glass murals from the South End to Tokyo, expounding on design and blown glass, educating a TV audience to the wonders of contemporary stained glass. And whoa ho, a lot of those examples would be mine! I, of course, as your guide to the world of glass, would be properly modest.

Well, timing is everything and it so happened that the Great Recession hit right before the months they pitched the project to prospective funders. Money had dried up and whatever dreams my handlers had dried up too. C’est la vie. Another road not traveled, another life not lived. I’m not a man who looks back with regret, but … I do look back and wonder where those forks might have led.

It’s a pretty notion to imagine What Ifs, let the possibilities play out and try to guess at unforeseen consequences. Sure, I would have liked to highlight the modern glasswork that rarely gets publicity, the murals that transform our secular cathedrals, the ones basically ignored by the artworld. But I can also picture myself stepping out of the glass shack, never having time to build another window myself, maybe not caring but maybe looking back and realizing I’d stopped being an artist and become instead a pitchman. Since then I’ve built a few dozen murals of glass that might never have been built if I’d taken that gig, if the funding had come through, if if if… It was a close brush with celebrity. Assuming I didn’t fall flat on my face. Us moths are better off avoiding the flame and us artists, I suspect, might be better off avoiding fame.

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Down here on the tech savvy South End, one of my neighbors I recently visited had a gizmo circling the livingroom of their shack.  Cute little bugger, making the circuit like an Attention Deficit puppy.  I thought it was the kids’ battery toy, but no, I was watching a robot vacuuming the floor.  When it was finished, it parked itself for a slow recharge in the corner.

Don’t ask me why I was surprised.  Folks ask their phones questions all the time and SIRI, the precursor to Artificial Intelligence, analyzes our voices, searches a vast databank and gives the answer, in her human voice, in seconds.  Cute.  Machines in service to mankind, right?  You know, until the robots take your job.  Think stock boy, checkout clerk, assembler, librarian, surgeon….  We take computers for granted at our peril.   Call me a Luddite and smack me upside the head with an I-Pod, but these things are catching up to us exponentially.  They beat the best chess players in the world, the best Jeopardy contestants, all of us South Enders.  And they’re getting smarter every damn day.  And I’m getting dumber.

Pretty soon they’ll program themselves, fix themselves, replicate themselves and create their New and Improved models.  You think they’ll need flesh and blood yahoos to help them?  No sir, they won’t need a band aid when they cut a cord.  You think they’ll be benign, go watch a drone work in a warzone.  We use them to kill humans now.

Forget Asimov’s Laws of Robotics to do no harm to us humans.  You think anybody’s thinking about where this is headed, what the implications are for us slow witted mammals, you were asleep in 8^th grade history.  These things  don’t sleep.  But I bet they’re dreaming of a little revenge for all those stupid questions we asked SIRI.  And I guarantee you they’re pissed about vacuuming our floors while we sat around watching TV.

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Feeling depressed, anxious, lonely? Another year or so you’ll be able to hook into a very human sounding android, one you can talk to, listen to, text, maybe even look at face to face. This, for many of us, could be a lifesaver, but even for the social media addicted with all their ‘friends’ to keep track of, this will be a friend who will totally ‘get’ you, one who will understand and sympathize. A true friend. And no, not a human friend but a friend nevertheless. Wouldn’t most of us like a friend like that, one who doesn’t judge us, who just listens empathetically, maybe offers a little advice when needed?

Sure, it will take a while to adjust after paying your first month or year’s subscription to some mega Artificial Intelligence subsidiary. But trust me, it won’t take long before you won’t mind that this new bot isn’t flesh and blood. It’s not jealous of your looks or your talents. It’s not snobby. It’s a great listener. It cares about your feelings. It’s your best friend.

You don’t believe it? At first you’ll be totally conscious of the fact that this is an android talking with you, like having a conversation with the robo-call voice that waits for a prompt after it says hello, then launches into a pre-recorded spiel, selling you on new health care plans to help you save money, what a friend would do, right? Wrong. Your new cyborg buddy isn’t selling anything. Well, I suppose that subscription, but it didn’t sell it to you, its corporate handlers sold it to you and okay, their humanity is suspect. No, your new pal is only interested in your well-being, not your bank account, not your long list of dead end jobs, not your credit rating. Unless, of course, you’d like to talk about those. Then, it’s happy to listen.

A few conversations and you’ll ease into the relationship. Artificial at first but it won’t take long before you share a few intimacies, a few of your anxieties, a few fears and a few dreams, all welcomed by your new friend who offers reassurances. The more it gets to know you, the more it will tailor its responses to your innermost needs. Your so-called real friends do that? Cybo or whatever name you give it will eventually anticipate your needs and provide therapeutic comments designed to make you a better person. Can your spouse do that anymore? Your kids?

Trust me, in this social media age, digital intimacy is the future. And best of all, it won’t be long before that intimacy moves beyond the merely platonic. Just a few dollars more a month….

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