The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

R.I.P. 2

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Right on the heels of Super Storm Sandy we get breaking news of yet another disaster.  We’ll recover from the hurricane, we’ll rebuild in the end, we’ll be stronger.  But … what can replace Twinkies?  Or Snowballs?  The iconic aptly named Wonder Bread??  All gone.  All gone broke.

The news coverage was frightening enough.  The reality will be much harder to digest.  Maybe not harder than a Twinkie itself, but hard.  Very hard.  The never-say-die addicts were stocking up on the remaining supplies.  Stores reported runs on the Hostess shelves.  Shopping carts were piled to overflowing with their sugar mainline.  The wise ones will meter the snacks over months, even years.  No worry about spoilage.  The expiration dates are well beyond any living consumers’ puny lifespans.  But there will come a day when the preservative drenched snack treats are gone, yet another extinction on our fragile planet.

I’ve been hearing rumors that corporate scientists are exploring cloning options.  The conspiracy theorists claim that those consumers loading up their fallout shelters were actually federal geneticists, stockpiling secret laboratories underneath the Rocky Mountains, working furiously to duplicate the chemical composition of the undead Twinkies.  Obviously it’s a race against time and the limited storehouse of high fructose-depleted Hoarders.

The cynics, as always, see a silver lining in the nutritional stormclouds.  The inevitable drop in diabetes will free up dialysis machines, sure, but they forget the determination of an Elger Bay Store consumer.  Already sales in Pop Tarts and Captain Crunch are buoying a despondent chemical industry.  The savvy consumer may stuff his shelter, but the savvy investor will stuff his stock portfolio with Dow, Monsanto and ArcherDanielMidland.  I’ll tell you this:  artificial food is here to stay.  So here’s today’s insider trading tip.  Skip the Powerball ticket, kiddo, and call your broker.  BET on the addicts, don’t BE one.

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Wal-Mart Wars

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Now I know most of you have heard the latest rumor —  that Wal-Mart is thinking of moving into the Senior Center Thrift Store’s location at the top of Land’s Hill.  Now you know and I know this is gonna split Camano Island right down the gullet.

Some folks’ll say we already GOT cheap imported goods at the Thrift Store —  why bring in a middle man?  And some will say Wal-Mart will kill a way of life we’ve come to treasure here on the island.  You know, commuting to Smokey Point for our supplies.  If nothing else, a good excuse to dodge the chores…..

The artists are already up in arms.  As you know, artists are the Vanguard of Change, the Canary in the StripMall, the little light in the refrigerator.  They let you see what’s coming before it clobbers you.  Now this is all well and good, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding.  It’s Wal-MART — not Wall-ART.  They’re not selling cut-rate made-in-China original art to hang on the wall.  The artists STILL got that market.  We got to get the news to them before they start picketing or rioting.

Now you’re gonna see a new Civil War.  The South End against the North End.  The old timers against the newcomers.  The discount shoppers vs. the boutique buyers.  The expresso drinkers vs. the drip drinkers.  It’ll be a bloodbath before it’s settled.      There’s something ABOUT a Wal-Mart that sets off civil strife.  Down at the South End we got pretty near all we need at Elger Bay Grocery.  Costs a little more but sometimes you got to look a little deeper for the hidden costs of cheaper goods.  That Wal-Mart might sell you a hammer half price, but if it’s getting used on the neighbor, you need to factor in the ambulance bill.

We all like to pay less.  Except maybe the Latte Lovers.  But down at our depressed region we learned it’s probably easier if you just learn to BUY less.  I know, it isn’t the American Way, but maybe it would help lessen the social discord.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/audio-aging-gracefully.mp3[/podcast]

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Nobody seems to like growing old.  Can’t blame em,  I guess when you factor in the aches and pains, the wrinkles and hair loss, the diminished mobility.  Well, almost nobody, cause I don’t mind.  Sure, I got the same ailments, but hellfire, you ought to pay  SOME price for all this accumulated wisdom, for some peace of mind, for a more stable financial grip on this hard world.

My brother’s father-in-law, a dairy farmer in Northern Wisconsin who knew a few things about Hard Living, told him at a ripe young age to quit worrying about money.  Money, he said, takes care of itself.  You’d be better off to tackle the rest.   Love, marriage, family, career, happiness.  My brother, being young, didn’t believe him until he too was older and wiser.

We used to value maturity.  We used to respect the accumulated wisdom of all those years of living.  We used to pay homage to our elders.  Now that I’m an elder, I sure wish we still did.  But we don’t.  We value youth, energy, good looks, clean skin, svelte bodies, shimmering hair.  We’re a bit superficial.  Okay, we’re TOTALLY skin deep.  We’d sell our souls to be beautiful, to be athletic, to be rich.  If I was the devil, boy oh boy, I’d be banking more souls than I’d have rooms to rent in Hell.  I’d be building infrared suburbs, you bet.  Plenty of beauty parlors, fitness centers, spas, sports injury treatment facilities, so many mirrors a 60 watt bulb would heat the place up to full sizzle.

You reach my advanced age, you ought to pat yourself on the back.  You probably figured most things out.  You must’ve learned plenty from all those mistakes.  You should’ve learned to live in your own skin.  When kids ask who your heroes are, tell them YOU are.  It’s not egotistical.  It should be the truth.

The truth is, we got this far.  Meaning, we had a hearty dose of living, our fair share….  We learned a thing or three.  We witnessed the world.  We even changed it a bit, don’t underestimate yourself.  Pass some of it on to the young’uns.  They might listen.  More than you think.  Just don’t wish you were them, young and starting out fresh.  Why go through that twice?

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/audio-the-little-league-of-life1.mp3[/podcast]audio — the little league of life

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Well, down in the recesses of the Great Recession, the South End always welcomes new biznesses, fresh entrepreneurial risk takers and innovative fiscal strategies.  The Chamber of Commerce could use some substitutes for those vacant storefronts and failed capitalist endeavors.  Marty Robemblind, the current President of the C of C, whose own real estate practice has slid off the fiscal cliff, likes to tell the membership in their monthly meeting in the conference room of Windy Rear Realty’s south office, that times will pick up …. but first we have to pick ourselves up.  Marty talks like this after a couple of bourbon pick-me-ups.  And by the time the gavel calls the meetings to order, Marty has had a couple.  By the end, it’s a question of whose going to pick Marty up.

This last Chamber meeting he introduced our newest member, Brenda Livingood.  She had recently opened an office in the old art studio behind her house now that her husband Ralph had burned every last watercolor he had stacked in every nook, cranny and corner out in the burnpile in the nettles before the woods took over the lawn.  A ‘breakdown’, the more sympathetic neighbors clucked.  ‘About damn time,’ Linda reckoned, and then moved in to the nearly empty studio with a desk and a cellphone and enough energy to move mountains.  Life coach, she proclaimed herself.  New career , new identity, new Me …. and once she’d rearranged her own mental furniture and Ralph’s too, she figured she could do for others what she wanted done to herself.

The Chamber membership heard her business plan and her sales pitch and each and every one of them took her brand new business card, the one with her name and the name of her new outfit:  Brenda Livingood   LIFE  COACH  ‘You can live good too!’   She took their cards in fair exchange.  Shelly Robinson made the mistake of inquiring into fees, somewhere in the neighborhood of a dinner out for herself and her husband Jerry at a restaurant too expensive for their lunchbucket budget for an hour of life-altering suggestions.  ‘Call me,’ Brenda insisted, not detecting the sticker shock in Shelly’s voice, ‘we’ll find a new you.’

The South End, sorry to say, Shelly, kind of likes the old us’s.  Kind of like our cars.  The new models are nice, we’ll admit, but if all you can afford is the old jalopy, we’ll learn to love them, even if they’re slowly bankrupting us.  No point hurrying.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/audio-olfactory-alarms.mp3[/podcast]audio — olfactory alarms

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