The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I took a flight recently out of Stanwood International.  Being a citizen of the 21st century digital world, I got my boarding pass online and checked my bag.  $20 for the bag.   One way.  Nobody said things would get cheaper just because computers control the world now.  The baggage checklist asked if I was carrying explosives, firearms, flammables or radioactive material.  I answered NO and I bet the terrorists will too.   Honesty just isn’t high on the Values Chart for would-be mass murderers.
At the aerodrome I went through the cattle fence where shampoos are duly confiscated.  As are small penknives, fingernail clips, scissors, razor blades and any grenades we inadvertently slipped into our carry-on.  TSA agents are hired, primarily, I think, for their complete lack of any semblance of a sense of humor.  Not that most of us are laughing….    By the X-ray machine we are pretty much shoeless, beltless, hatless, walletless, keyless and clueless.  I doubt many of the Jews lined up for their shower at Dachau cracked wise either.  These are not joking matters.
My TSA guy, a middle eastern looking fellow who, if our positions were reversed, would have been profiled as TERRORIST: PROBABILITY HIGH, was pondering my pack.  In particular a harmonica I’d carried on.  “What is this?” he demanded, no doubt alerted by its multiple barrels for small caliber ammo.  I gave him a bad blues demonstration.  This made him smile.  Okay.  Music, the universal language of terrorists.
When I arrived home a week later, having repeated all of the above minus the blues harp investigation, I opened my suitcase and discovered a full box of 12 gauge shotgun shells.  Since I don’t own a 12 gauge, this was baffling.  The TSA had thoughtfully left a calling card that they’d opened and inspected my luggage.  And apparently added some explosives as an apology of some sort.  I know I sleep better knowing gunpowder and buckshot are being offered to nearly naked passengers.  That harmonica wasn’t a lot of protection — even if I could bring people to their knees squalling on it.  Next trip I’m hoping for a shiny new shotgun.   Security, it’s for our own good.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-arkansas-traveler.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — arkansas traveler

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I know this is hard to believe, but Skeeter’s going to be AWOL for a week or so doing a stained glass installation in the razorback country of western Arkansas.  This may come as a shock to some of you readers, but Skeeter has a day job that occasionally — okay, rarely — requires him to leave his life of blissful sloth to join the legions of migrant workers who do work no self-respecting gringo American would do for anything that paid twice the prevailing wage which isn’t exactly the minimum.
So while the Daddler is slaving away in the fields of art out in the parched rainshadow of the Ozarks, trying to impose his cultural vision on the unsuspecting black powder denizens of the hill country, you might scroll down to the old rantings and ravings at the bottom of this blog, see if you missed anything real important.  If old Skeet makes it out of the heartland intact, or at least not too scarred, he’ll be back to his old tricks before you can say Lazy Son of a ……

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-FutureFarm.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —FutureFarm

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The other day I bought a bag of Frito-Lay potato chips and as is my wont from my early reading days as an 8 year old studying cereal boxes, I read the packaging.  These potatoes, I was informed in a tidy paragraph written by public relations specialists who had no doubt conducted extensive customer surveys, were FARM-RAISED.  Imagine!  I’m guessing grown right in the ground.  Tractors, fields, insecticides, migrant labor:  farm raised.  BOLD TYPE.  Major advertising feature.  The oils used were ‘natural’ too and this was worth trumpeting.
Holy cow manure, Batman, what’s the NEXT big thing in the food biz?  Cheetos raised hydroponically?  Personally I’m not sure consumers are really ready for food grown in the wild.  Bugs, fungus, bacteria, all that creepy stuff a farmer is ill-equipped to handle outside a laboratory or a petri dish.  We can grow meat without legs now, protein on a rope, and rumor has it the burger chains are nearing a breakthrough on cloning buns, with or without sesame seeds, directly on to the meat patty grown in secret underground hermetically sealed bunkers of Monsanto and Dow Chemical.  You think they’re going to stick a filthy leaf of lettuce or a listeria riddled tomato on their antiseptically pure chemoWhopper?  Get real.  Not….
This whole Slow Food movement just flies in the face of 21st century culinary logic.  We invented TV dinners so we’d have the time to watch more TV instead of wasting countless hours messing with the cooking of raw potentially contaminated food.  These purveyors of old school eating call themselves environmentalists, but what about the damage from a bazillion cookbooks printed on paper from slaughtered trees?  Next thing you know, they’ll advocate recipes for bark.  A backlash is coming, count on that, the next step beyond vegetarianism.  Stop eating plants.  Stop the killing of carrots.  It’s not only cruel, it’s filthy with germs and dirt.  So Frito-Lay, nice try.  But I’m afraid the world isn’t ready — we’ve turned the corner on 19th century farm products.  Work on synthetic broccoli that tastes like Snickers if you want to stay profitable.  Hook the kids and you own the future.  Next time you need marketing advice, call me first.  Save yourself some embarrassment.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-of-gods-and-politics.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —of gods and politics

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I noticed the other day that Rick Perry mentioned that the Lord had made it clear to him the He had chosen the Governor to be President of the United States.  Ordinarily I’d’ve said let’s just cancel the 2012 election and install Perry on the throne, no point going against the will of God unless you really want pestilence, floods and wildfires, all of which we got plenty of right now.  But the trouble is, Michelle Bachman got the same call to serve from, well, the same Summoner.
Bad reception maybe?  That, or the Lord is like me, a little more forgetful these days.  And He’s a tad older, so I can only imagine trying to keep it together when I’m, oh, 500 billion years older than I am now, on the precipice already of dementia.  But what are we going to do with a dead tie for Anointee in Waiting?  Flip a coin and let one be vice president?  Take turns the next 16 years?  Check the message machine and see if one of those calls was a prank, Obama having a little sport here?  The Lord works in mysterious ways, I know, but I suspect I’d hate to be Called On and then find out someone else had too.  Rick and Michelle got some hard head scratching, I imagine.  And let’s all hope Sarah is serious about not running, we sure don’t need call #3.
I admit I’m not the most religious guy on the South End.  Live and Let Live is about as much rule and commandment as I can abide.  So it worries me to have a couple of Believers who think they got the News, all right, straight from up above, but their reception may not be high speed DSL and something might be getting lost in translation.
We got GOP debates ongoing so maybe we can get this cleared up.  Meanwhile I’m going to figure maybe God doesn’t get involved in primaries.  That, or the Hindus got it right after all:  there’s plenty of gods to go around.  Maybe even one who roots for the other side.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CLICK-TO-HEAR-SPENDING-MY-KIDS-INHERITANCE.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — SPENDING MY KIDS’ INHERITANCE

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