The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You gotta love the promotional competitiveness of our fast fat food industries. I know I do. Whoppers, Big Macs, fries and 72 oz. Cokes, what’s not to like? Especially if you’re a diabetes doctor in the time of gluttony and morbid obesity. These folks are the new Tobacco industry, purveyors of disease and possibly early deaths, nothing, they’ll testify soon before congressional hearings, they knew anything about. Just selling the public what it demanded. Junk food.

They’ve paired up with the movie industry to sell Star Wars and Jurassic Park toys to the tots in their Happy Meal deals, they’ve got games and contests, they’ve spent billions to sell us fatty foods so we won’t have to bother cooking nutritious meals at home. Thank you, McDonalds! You’ve done about everything we could ask without bragging that your saturated fats make us smarter.

Course now Burger King has upped the ante. The Russian chains have offered any woman (or girl, I guess) 47,000 dollars plus all the burgers she can eat for the rest of her life if she can get herself impregnated by a World Cup soccer star. I missed the part of the deal that spells out whatever proof Burger King needs for the pregnancy. DNA tests, video recordings of the blessed insemination, soccer star autographs?

The athletes must have been inundated with offers over there in the land of the Tsar, maybe give them half their lifetime Whoppers for a night of Whoopee. I know, it sounds tempting to me too, but then again, I’m not a world class soccer star. But I can see the ad wars heating right up. Wendy’s offering lifetime chili for babies born from golf stars’ sperm, Taco Time countering with burritos AND hot sauce for the moms and the kids born from football star trysts (unless they had taken a knee during the Star Spangled, of course). McDonalds would have to up their ante with franchises in China for the lucky woman who seduced the NBA team that won that year’s championship. Sex and fries, babies and burgers! The kids born out of wedlock in this fast food competition will be the new stars themselves. We’re all winners, looks like to me. Or as McDonalds likes to say: I’m lovin it. Although not as good as the new Burger King slogan: She’s gettin some.

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Let me review the previous episode of Plumbing Hell in case some of you missed it, ignored it or, like me, probably tried to forget it. We had a leak in the upstairs bathroom’s sink, enough to run down through the ceiling into the basement bathroom. No big deal, you’re probably thinking, but if that’s what you were thinking, then I know you are the type of person who dials his cellphone for the closest plumber to come out and fix the problem. For us on the South End, that has never been an option. The trip out and back costs more than whatever was wrong in the first place.

No, we do what our predecessors here in the nettle jungles of the backwash have always done. We shudder, we perspire, we break into palpitations and finally, after an appropriate procrastination, we take a good hard belt from straight from the whisky bottle and without bothering to wipe our chins, we bore in. Tools come out, the cursing starts, the whimpering follows. If you recall, I had no more begun to work on that sink when an obstinate inlet valve snapped off the hot water line, spewing 40 gallons of a fast draining hot water heater onto the floor until I finally got a bucket or actually two under the floodwaters.

Yesterday I reassembled the entire kit and caboodle, what we semi-professional plumbers refer to as the ‘whole shitaree’. Got the valve on okay, lifted the hundred pound century old pedestal sink into position, got the drain pipes reassembled and voila, turned on the taps. And yeah, the same stupid leak was still there. Plus a new one. Sure, I cursed, I cast blame near and far, I wept. But … I knew this was the probable, not the possible, outcome. Plumbing is not a one step venture. It is a journey of a thousand miserable steps.

I’m not going to bore you with a litany of what followed; suffice it to say, the procedure was reversed, more parts were disassembled and since they are a century old, small washer screws inside the brass faucets crumbled and had to be drilled out. Of course the screw threads had dissolved with time too. An experienced hand at plumbing like myself, KNOWS this will happen. It’s why he didn’t replace them the last time even though they were leaking then. This time, however, I dared to tread where others dread, a motto I may copyright for when I incorporate my plumbing bizness.

I’m into the third day, three or four trips to the hardware store, and no, I haven’t rehooked up the water yet. What’s the rush? The mizzus is out of town galavanting in New Orleans, so what if I have company coming in two days. Plenty of time for a pro to make the necessary repairs, clean up the damage, put away the tools and pretend that all is well in the homeland. Picture of idyllic rural living, eh? If things don’t go well, and you and I both know it’s looking iffy as of this moment, the guests can do what I do, wash their hands in the bathtub, brush their teeth over the toilet. At least I’m not making them use the outhouse.

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We just got back from the American Outback, ready for the dreaded Chores with happy hearts, exactly what a vacation is supposed to do for ya. But life is always full of those surprises that are meant to provide an extra helping or two of Humble Pie. So we woke to find a puddle of water on the downstairs bathroom floor. After mowing some lawn I went in the upstairs bath to do the dreaded troubleshooting. I am very very familiar with the sadistic tendencies of the plumbing gods and I do not trespass lightly on their turf, not with the scars I could offer up as proof of their capricious cruelty.

No sir, I intended to proceed with Utmost Caution! The leak, it was determined by my vast experience in matters household hydrologic, was in a recessed cranny up under the pedestal sink where only hobo spiders dared lurk. I tried tightening the nut up in there, but you know and I did too, that would be far Too Easy. I sensed a trap, no fool I. Ignoring any obvious warning signs, I began to disassemble drainpipe, cabinetry, any impediment to providing clearance to that obstinate brass nut. The first water inlet valve uncoupled with some considerable effort — the second the hot water, wouldn’t budge. A bit more force, I deduced … and snapped the half inch CPVC plastic pipe right off the wall. Hot water shot out in a 5 gallon per minute stream. I reacted with alacrity and stuck a finger in the gaping wound, the Dutch Boy Dike Strategem.

Only … how long could I wait? The Dutch Kid had a town to come and help. I had old age and slow starvation before help arrived. I pulled the plug, my finger, and raced to the basement shutoff, knowing the water was spewing freely upstairs. Got back up and no let up, just the hot water tank emptying its 40 gallons. I grabbed buckets, I threw down towels, I offered my first born to these plumbing gods, I swore, I emptied pail after pail and squeezed towel after sopping towel.

When it finished disgorging the tank, I was totally soaked, the bathrooms were swimming pools, the gas hot water heater was heating air. I finally shut off the gas, not sure if this would ruin it without water.

As I write this, the pedestal sink sits in the middle of the room while I’m mowing my little park across the island. I’m drinking a beer before the next grassy section along the highway. I’ve learned these things, plumbing, I mean, they take time. Lots of time. I’m sure glad to be home. You know … if I decide to return.

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Rumor has it that Ivanka and Melania persuaded the Donald to stop separating the kids from their parents down at the borders. Even the usually gutless GOP Congress became alarmed at the creepy optics of children torn from their moms’ arms, wailing and crying, something out of old Nazi propaganda films. The Trumpster declared he wouldn’t back down, but his wife and daughter made their case and lo and behold, the President did his first about-face since taking office. He takes lots of U-turns and detours, but never reverses course. This time he did.

Course, next day Melania cruises down to the sunny Southwest to take a peek at conditions at the rendition centers, maybe tour the cages where the kids sleep on the floor, a sign perhaps that compassion, even in the Time of Trump, isn’t completely dead, just somnambulistic. So she wears her fashionable jacket with the words I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U? in huge script on the back. My knee jerk reaction was it must mean something else and the liberal lying media missed the joke or chose to characterize it in the worst possible light.

I mean, who the hell would make a pilgrimage to the detention centers after convincing her husband to show a modicum of compassion, and wear a jacket that screams I DON’T GIVE A DAMN, DO YOU???? Did she think twice when choosing her attire? Was the jacket so fashionably pleasing that the message on the back slipped by her completely? Did her staff mention it to her on the tarmac, maybe just leave the coat on the plane, Mrs. T….?

It’s incomprehensible. It’s stupid. It couldn’t be an oversight, now could it? Doing a great job there, Brownie, on that Katrina windstorm! A spokesperson declared they hoped the press would focus on her compassion, not her wardrobe, that there was no message intended. No message intended? Jeff Sessions said yesterday they hadn’t intended to separate the kids from the parents. Which is a provable fib. The Prez sez no one wants to see kids taken from their moms. But now he’s back on the stump blaming anyone but himself and crowing about longer detentions. Compassion in this crowd? Melania pretty much hit it on the head. They don’t really care. Do you?

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So the World Health Organization just declared a new psychopathology, Gaming Disorder, the addictive propensity to sit for hour after hour with an X-box, disdaining sleep and food and exercise. Good diagnosis, guyz! But you forgot to include Facebook, You-Tube, computer addictions, porn and cellphone. Maybe, just maybe, they’re really all one disease. Ya think?

I guess the Facebook zombies actually stop to eat. And it could even be argued that this social media is really social. A new social, I guess, no face to face necessary, just tweets and instagrams, nothing too up-close and personal. Tim Cook, the new warden at Apple, recently declared sitting at a computer terminal to be the new cancer. Thanks, Tim, for asking the troops to stand up. How about asking them to go outdoors and exercise? Or quit their carcinogenic jobs? Or get a life?

We’re rewiring our brains, no doubt about it. B.F. Skinner and the Pavlovian dogs, peck a button and the bait, I mean the reward, comes tumbling out, time after time, predictable as an IV of opiods. Try this experiment if you’re a doubter: put away your cellphone, turn off your computer, unplug the TV and peripherals and devices, see how long you can last before the shakes and the fevers start. I bet about an hour. We might be missing important stuff. You know, Trump, Beyonce, Oprah, the photo from a friend you rarely see, Trump, the latest movie star scandal, did I mention Trump? If I did, let me add Trump again anyway.

This is our reality now. We even made a reality show huckster our Leader. We get what we deserve, the old adage goes in regard to a country and its rulers. Times certainly change and now they’re changing in hyper-drive. If anyone thinks, myself included, that there will be a cure for this disorder, we got another think coming. In about two tweets.

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