The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-my-computers-big-fat-foot-in-the-door.mp3[/podcast]audio — my computer’s big fat foot in the door

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I occasionally wet my whistle in the fine taverns of Stanwoodopolis where I got a bartender who invariably asks me if I want a particular beer, hoping to curry favor by remembering what I might have had the last time.  Doesn’t much matter that she doesn’t know my name, just my brand of brew.  Some folks like this kind of consumer familiarity, maybe makes them feel welcome, a family member in their drinking society.  Me, I don’t much care for it.

My computer is doing the same thing.  Says hello by name even, then pops up stuff like what I looked at recently.  Shows me a picture, what it costs, maybe a special sale.  If I ever actually buy something on-line, my computer starts ringing, flashes lights, looks like a Vegas Jackpot.  It figures I’m a genuine, bona fide Consumer and it knows my brand, my preferences, my price bracket, my sales soft spot.  Maybe some folks like this.  Me, I hate it.

Welcome, I guess, to the new world of capitalism.  Kind of like having a salesman coming to your door, only he doesn’t have to knock, he just uses the key he took from you and comes right on in.  Every day.  Every week.  From here on out.  The Kirby vacuum guy can test drive his product forever.  Slam the door on him, he’ll be right back.  My computer now is a 24/7 Home Shopping Channel and I don’t even have cable.  I suppose there are folks who appreciate this service, but I sure never met them.

Most of us didn’t bargain for this when we bought a computer and wired up to the internet.  I didn’t read the fine print, apparently, but it must have had some subclause about the right to invade my privacy, sell my information, keep records on me and set up shop in my house like some kind of shirt-tail relative who goes to my refrigerator, grabs himself a snack and offers me a beer.  Knows what brand I like.  Just helping out.  Unlike my bartender, though, he’s never leaving….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-political-divide.mp3[/podcast]audio — political divide

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Politics down here on the bucolic South End isn’t much different than most everywhere else in the Red/Blue USA, meaning, we’re a bruised Purple too.  Signs get vandalized and letters to the editor warn about Farmageddon if so-and-so wins.  Pastor Paul at the Little Church in the Ravine rails about the medical nettle legalization issue and turns downright apoplectic over the same sex marriage initiative.  He doesn’t even like the word SEX on the ballot much less Same sex.  Even God Hisself doesn’t use the word in the Holy Book, he fumes.  And the congregation either nods approvingly or sits in the back with their arms crossed.  More like Little Church in the Schism, these hot button days.  With only two weeks to the election, it’s touch and go whether the Flock can hang together.

These days even the South End has a south end, it’s that polarized.  We got the newcomers who want more fire and police, figuring, I guess they need quick response time emergency services for their next heart attack and some police protection for their BMW’s.  The old timers are too suspicious of government, even one they never see, to trust in much else than Smith and Wesson and a snarling dog chained near the porch.

Not that the dividing lines are so easily drawn.  We got libertarian anti-abortionists and we got Tea Party medical marijuana opponents.  We got folks who want government off their backs but want it in their bedrooms.  Well, YOUR bedroom.  We got folks who demand less taxes but more police.  We got folks who want less police but wanted Colton caught.  We got the people who vote based on Scripture and folks who want separation of mosque and state.  We got free range clammers and clamorers for free range.  It’s enough to knock the South End off its axis.

In the end I suspect it’s all sound and fury, much ado about nada.  You got a government that’s out of money, it’s broke all right.  Folks kind of forget we live on Camano, the Tijuana of Whidbey, the ugly step-sister, and on top of that, its keester end.  Vote yer conscience or vote yer wallet:  you’re still a long day’s drive from the reach of Rome.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-zen-and-the-art-of-tweeting.mp3[/podcast]audio — zen and the art of tweeting

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I can’t figure out whether we were bored BEFORE the internet and smart phones …. or whether they MADE us bored.  Ruined our concentration, shot our attention spans full of holes, filled every waking minute with text messages, snippets of celebrity gossip, news flashes and crawler messages on the bottom of our brains’ screens.

We check our phone messages every 3 minutes (if we’re older than 40) or every 15 seconds (if we’re under 40).  The older crowd checks e-mail 20 times a day.  If you still get a newspaper, you got most of the articles from newsfeeds on your computer anywhere from a few hours ago to a full day.  It isn’t ‘news’ you get in a newspaper these days.  Everyone’s got a cellphone now and by god, they paid for it and they plan to use it — as often as humanly possible, whether they’re driving in the freeway passing lane or taking a whiz in the airport urinal.  They’re connected, linked up, every waking hour of every day, I guess forever until the day they die or their phone plan expires.

It’s hard to believe this has happened, not just in our lifetime, but in the last decade.  If we thought the Rat Race was hard, well, the digital rats are on steroids, cranked on meth and just a little too busy to slow down to consider what’s happened in the last few years.  Too busy for sure to read a book or write a letter or just disconnect from the Hive half an hour.  Watch a 15 year old and see the Future — it’s here!  30 minutes ago.  17 tweets.

Even on the South End there’s no escaping the tsunami of this incessant incoming information.  At least until the winter storms.  For those 6 of us who refuse to own a cellphone.  Or buy a generator.  Or even go down to the Diner to keep abreast of the breaking gossip.  In a few days we’ll try to catch back up.  Course, by then the world will have accelerated another few miles per second.  And we’ll be those objects in your rearview that aren’t anywhere near as close as they appear.  Best of luck when you get where you’re in such a hurry to get.  You got a second or two, send us a postcard.  We still get mail….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/audio-teaching-kids-to-take-candy-from-strangers.mp3[/podcast]audio —- teaching kids to take candy from strangers

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With Halloween cranking up full volume in stores right after Labor Day, Pastor Paul down at the Little Church in the Ravine made it his mission to warn the South End about a holiday devoted to Devil Worship and the celebration of Evil Spirits.  He’s been pounding the pulpit three Sundays in a row now and we still got three more before Fright Night actually arrives.  No doubt he’ll need chiropractic work on that right hammering hand.

Most of the congregation is my age, meaning they remember when Halloween really was a spooky affair.  Outhouses got moved a few crucial feet back, wagons got disassembled then reassembled on the shed roof, burning bags of dog poop were set on fire in the driveway.  Trick or Treat was no idle threat.  Now, of course, the only Trick is the one played on us by the candy industry.  Like most every holiday, holy or not, Halloween’s been popularized, commercialized and sanitized.  Now they’re profit industries.  Economic engines.  Job creators.

I haven’t seen a kid in a skeleton outfit come knocking on the shack door in decades.  Pastor Paul is maybe a bit overwrought about the flock’s grandkids serving as Spawn of Satan when maybe we ought to worry more about the little tykes dressing up in $50 Star Wars outfits, becoming subjugated Slaves to Obesity.  The poor little high fructose sugar beggars haven’t got the foggiest clue what Pastor Paul is worried about.  And their parents, who’ve driven them to the lucrative candy-rich suburbs of Stanwoodopolis, mostly worry about child predators and sewing needles stuck in apples.

Nowadays Halloween ends before dark and the security lights come on.  Hardly matters with Mom and Dad sitting shotgun in their SUV idling by the curb….  Now, I’m not advocating we go back to the days of cruel tricks.  But it did encourage some creative thinking.  Although maybe this is what Pastor Paul is railing about.  He’s got a steep hill to climb down here on the South End, is all I know.  That, or he should look into Exorcism as a second profession.  Be a cash crop down here.  And not just around Halloween.

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