The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There’s a bar in Seattle that planned to open its doors at 4 am so patrons can watch a live feed of the royal wedding this morning. Oh sure, I thought about staying up and driving down to catch the marvelous matrimony, but then I decided it’s been, oh, nearly 250 years since we declared independence from the Mother Country, probably enough time to have moved beyond fealty to the Crown. Not that I wouldn’t love to know what the royal couple wore and watch the play by play pageantry live on TV.

I’ve never understood the fascination some of us have for the Royals. I don’t even understand why the Brits still keep them on their payroll. Princess Di, Prince Charles and Whats-her-name, the whole inbred bunch all endlessly under the microscope not only in their home turf but here in the land that declared independence. Every wedding, every birth, every scandal. They can knock the latest mass shooting at another high school right off the headline. They can even outshout Trump. Blimey, limey, what’s up with that?

Kings and queens and a joker that’s wild. I gotta thank George Washington for preventing us from reinstating royalty into the American body politic. He could see the national passion for a monarchy and he wanted no part in it, not after fighting the British all those hard years with farmer soldiers who went shoeless in the snows of winter. These were our overlords, our masters, the folks who taxed us without representation, who ran the colonies for their profit. These were our Romans. These were the good folks who waged genocide on the Irish.

Oh, they seem benign now, not the ruthless bastards who made serfs of their minions, who conquered lands near and far, who ruled with a whip hand half the earth. Cute princesses and dashing princes, the telegenic offspring of slave traders and treasure pillagers and outright murderers. What’s not to like? Me, I prefer not to worship our leaders. Trump, of course, thinks he’s King and his family all royalty. And of course there are plenty of us who think a coronation might be in order. Maybe we should teach history again in our schools.

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Seattle, like a lot of large cities, has a homeless problem. Not too surprising, really, when you consider that the average price of a house in the Emerald City is somewhere above the rainbow, well over half a million dollars. Rents are skyrocketing accordingly and if you aren’t employed or if you work at minimum wage jobs, chances are good you can’t afford to live in a house or an apartment. If you own a car, running or not, you can park it and call it a home. If not, the options are not real good for you. Check out the freeway overpasses and bring a tent.

Seattle’s City Council decided it might be time to address this situation and so they floated a plan to tax the largest companies and corporations a head tax on each of their employees, the money to be used to house the homeless. I guess the idea was that these folks had benefited from Seattle’s attractive work environment, the one before traffic gridlock and income disparity had created a model for the Have – Have Not society, and that taxing them would begin to address some of these discrepancies. Might even keep Seattle an attractive city for corporations.

Amazon, that posterboy for corporate bully, the Godzilla in the Godzilla vs. Bambi movie, weighed in and promptly stopped construction of two projects in the downtown area. The steel worker’s union literally shouted down the councilwoman they have who is a socialist and probably their most ardent supporter for fear their jobs on the Amazon towers would be lost. So much for worker solidarity, comrades. It should be noted that Amazon’s objection to being taxed to help support the folks they bear some responsibility for comes at the same time they pay zero federal taxes. Zero, as in none, nada, zip, zilch. I know, it boggles the mind, at least mine. I pay more federal tax than Amazon. The folks under the freeway overpass probably pay about the same.

In the end Amazon forced a compromise, cutting the head tax in half. I guess this was a victory for the Job Creator, one small step for Godzilla, one helluva toejam for Bambi. If you’re poor, it’s time to leave Seattle. Kind of why I left 40 years ago.

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Your Master’s voice may be the next voice you hear. Google just announced it has developed a robot that can mimic to perfection the quirks, halts, slang and cadence of us humans. To prove it they had their automaton call up a restaurant to make a reservation. The machine responded to the restaurant’s questions, asked a few of its own and if you didn’t know who was on the line, you’d never guess the caller wasn’t part of our species. Another machine called for a hair appointment, same drill, different gender for the voice, same result. You just listened to the future.

Siri, Alexi, roll over, let Beethoven give you the news. Now when you get a phone call, that pleasant voice without the Pakistani drawl will sound as familiar as your Uncle John’s. I know, this is comforting news. No more garbled conversations with outsourced help lines in India, just clear enunciated solicitations, surveys, scams and advertisements from companies utilizing robotic ventriloquy. Google thought enough of the technology to parade it out for the listening public even in the midst of an outcry concerning fake news, Russian bots, Artificial Intelligence warnings and robotic outsourcing of human jobs. Wring your hands if you want, the overlords of android production could care less.

This week another corporation, Boston Dynamics, trotted out a video showing their robot running and jumping through what looks like Terminator or a Star Wars storm trooper traversing a field next to a suburb, nothing to get alarmed by if you were picking up the Sunday paper on your front porch and this mechanoid was jogging by. Just a cute robot sprinting across your lawn. Wait a few weeks and it will holler out a greeting with a southern accent, how y’all this mawning?

Once future shock has abated enough for you to accustom yourself to sharing the planet with artificial inhabitants, maybe then I’ll let you in on who is really writing these blogs. Have a nice day, y’all.

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Kilauea, the volcano menacing Hawaii, has been a welcome diversion from the daily mass murders, Trump tirades and political polemics we’ve all been getting accustomed to as part of our consciousness in the Land of the Free. It takes a huge natural disaster to push those out of the headlines, I guess, but thank you, Pele. Nice to have a breather.

Apparently, not so much on the Big Island where now the danger is from toxic gases belched up by the angry god. The locals have been leaving booze along the highway toward the volcano, mostly gin which is reputed to be a preference, with or without tonic or vermouth, but this did little to abate the magma flow and now the scientists are talking about explosive eruptions and poison gases. Maybe a better quality gin, guys….

Many years ago I had one of those early coil top refrigerators and miracle of miracles, it still worked but I made the mistake of moving it out to my shop back in the woods and managed to inadvertently puncture one of the copper coils. The thing began hissing as coolant escaped and I began to panic as I considered something fast that would seal it back up. Immediately, however, I noticed the leaves downwind curling and dying in what apparently was a toxic drifting cloud of death and then my nose began to smart and I was forced to retreat to a safe distance upwind from the scene.

Turns out the coolant was sulfur dioxide or something similar, which, when combined with H20 becomes sulfuric acid. The plants provided all the water necessary, a vegetable suicide. Me, I stayed away until the hissing stopped the next day. For a hundred feet or so all the plants in the dead zone were curled up and killed. It looked like Syria after the mustard gas. And, of course, I was the perpetrator.

Lately the media has been playing up the Ring of Fire, all our volcanoes that will be next, take cover, take precautions, take out insurance, stock up on gin. Course, chances are good it won’t be in the next century or two, but hey, beats thinking about the Mueller investigation, don’tcha think? Meanwhile, we’re all getting a cheap chemistry lesson.

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Gun Gospel

It’s been a few weeks since the Parkland killings down in Florida and Big Walter seems to think he’s Designated Spokesman for the NRA, judging by his non-stop harangues from the Diner to the Pilot Lounge. Last time I was fortunate enough for a reprise, he was on a soapbox in the big box grocery’s cafeteria off island presumably to spread his gun gospel to the gunless and misinformed citizens of Stanwood and Gomorrah.

“They could ban assault rifles all day long and not one life would be saved!” he fumed with a styrofoam cup of coffee waved to make a point. “Same with background checks. Any nutcase can buy a gun if he wants one. A psychiatric test, ha! He’ll just go buy one illegally on the street. Not gonna stop him! The only thing that’ll stop him is more guns … in the hands of the good guys!” Walter slammed his cup on the formica table and splattered coffee on the newspaper his victims had set down to listen all the better. Big mistake, but then, Walt was new to them.

Out here in the hinterlands the NRA P.R. machine is running full tilt. I guess if banning AR-15’s won’t prevent some other massacre, well, why bother at all? If some guy flunks the psycho test and buys a gun from a buddy, then what’s the use trying to stop him? The NRA sure doesn’t see the point when the correct answer is to arm everyone from daycare teachers to Walmart greeters. Next would-be massacre might look like the O.K. Corral, collateral damage sure, but the next psycho-killer would think twice, wouldn’t he? And if everyone’s blasting away, the cops are going to have a hard time sorting out the good guys from the bad guys, but that’s the price you pay for the god given right to bear arms, Walter would argue.

Meanwhile he’s explaining how he himself is ‘packing’ now. The lady at the table next door who’s evidently been listening suddenly picks up her tray of half eaten food and moves to the far end of the cafeteria, maybe figuring stray bullets would be considerably less likely. Me, I headed for the exit. Before I wanted to get a conceal carry myself. For Walter.

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