The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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One of the traits of great leaders, I suspect, is the ability to distill complex problems to their simplest core, examine them without the distractions of critics and solve them in an expetitious manner. This, you may have already deduced, is Donald J. Trump’s genius. The man can wade past annoying facts, barking journalists, pesky Congressional opponents and drive directly to the easiest solution available. Usually denial. Fake facts, uncomfortable pseudo-truths, troublesome investigations — he can bounce them off his magic shield like Captain America before astounding his enemies and supporters alike with yet another avenue to making this country great again.

Today he proposed a government global television network to rival the failing CNN. Brilliant! Just positively brilliant! He didn’t mention banning the rivals to this station, but you know that’s next. And yeah, I know, Fox News is basically a government television network already. At least for this particular government. And okay, I guess if you want to shrink bureaucracy down to a size you can drown in the bathtub or a toilet, maybe adding another agency is counter intuitive. But c’mon, you gotta give the man credit. If you hate the news coverage of your administration and your family and your business dealings and your ties to Russia and Saudi Arabia, all those damnable lies coming at you from every side every hour every day every tweet, what’s the solution? You gonna keep answering every phony question these yammering yahoos throw at you? He tried throwing out reporters from the briefing room. Big mistake. All Acosta’s buddies came to his rescue screaming First Amendment! First Amendment! Geez, you’d think he’d waterboarded the guy.

No, better to create Trump Network. Only the news that will make America great again. And maybe some programming to entertain a country desperately in need of more entertainment. Forget Oprah, we got the Ivanka Show. I! Bring back The Apprentice, only this time we call it The Cabinet. One week McMasters gets the hook, another one Tillerson bites the dust, next week who will it be? Tune in to Trump Network News to find out. Half politics, half reality TV, all advertisement, 24/7.

Be honest with yourselves, the man could sell shoes to amputees. He knows how to market the Brand and if the Brand is America, what’s not to love? He’s a marketing machine, Trump is. If he could rename America most of our problems would dissipate in a single network season, trust him on that one. Trumperica? Okay okay, maybe not quite it yet, give him some time. Meanwhile, Radio Free Trump and Trump Television Network. A government network that is more fair and balanced than anything you’ve ever seen. CNN, you’re fired!!

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Maybe you haven’t set up your funeral arrangements yet, nothing you really want to spend time thinking about while you’re healthy and mobile, not when you need every spare moment to cruise the internet. Chances are you haven’t even drawn up a will or one of those Do-Not-Resuscitate living wills so the Hippocratic docs won’t keep you on life support until the relatives are bankrupt. I haven’t done any of that either so I’m not casting the first stone, believe me.

But I was reading about a woman who wanted to be planted under a Gravenstein apple tree, her favorite fruit, great for pies and so she was launching a company, Recompose, that would compost your mortal coil, dust to soil, then spread on the garden you may or may not have. Nothing like a Grammy Pie, you’re thinking. And yeah, I get it, waste not want not, but it seems like an idea whose time has maybe not quite arrived if it’s even left the station.

We have a compost pile by our garden, toss in the kitchen scraps and the last of the garden when we do the fall cleanup, maybe some leaves and occasionally some manure, some wood ash and there’d still be room for grandpa. The squirrels forage there and probably some rats who check out what offerings we tossed in today. A lot of red worms, plenty of bugs that like decomposing vegetable matter. A regular ecosystem down there. And when it’s done composting, we spread it on the flowers and vegetables and fruit trees. Part of the cycle of life.

I kind of like the idea of returning to the earth, not with a silk lined casket, just toss the shovels of dirt directly and let nature do its job. Cremation, well, it’s cheap and sanitary and for those who like keeping a bit of the Loved One on the mantle, probably fine. We have a glassblowing buddy who makes little glass vessels using some of the ash, very elegant, nice paper weights. My mom is in a cheesy urn at the old man’s house. Kind of gives me the creeps, tell you the truth. My neighbor, Guitar Bob, keeps his papa in a coffee can, says he’s going to take him back to North Carolina someday. He won’t. His dad will end up in the Camano Island recycle with the bottles and cans and plastics, count on it.

It’s good, I guess, to have alternatives. No doubt the funeral homes will get a jump on this before the Gravenstein lady, show the bereaved the Cadillac compost bin with the imported French worms and the sterilized manure mixings. Maybe even provide the favorite fruit tree or an indoor house plant if eating dear old Uncle Fred makes the client queasy. If you can’t afford the Top End, they’ll have something akin to our own compost bin, sort of a mini-Potter’s Field. Hopefully without the rats, but then again, part of the Cycle of Life, right?

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They just auctioned off a painting done by a programmed artificial intelligence. Not real good, not exactly a Master, probably not of much interest other than the beginning of the Next Big Thing. Art by Machines. For me and my ilk, this is probably bad news, very bad news. Throw away those paint brushes, forget about learning to draw, quit kidding ourselves. The computers will do it faster, cheaper and maybe even better. All those galleries with watercolor paintings of boats in the harbor can replace those prints and originals with mass produced ones with beautiful sunsets and lighthouses at a fraction of the cost. And even better, to the untrained eye, no different than the one painted on an easel.

Photoshop can make a photograph into a watercolor or a pencil sketch with one keystroke. All my pals who paint from photographs should be looking for new careers. We can even print on watercolor paper now. Or on canvas. I spent a weekend this past few days with a friend whose daughter’s husband has a father who’s a sculptor. He even has a commission here in Stanwoodopolis. When he’s done, he makes a digital image and makes smaller versions using a 3-D printer, then sells those by the dozens to make real money. That, my paint-spocked amigos, is the future.

Oh sure, for awhile we’ll have a niche market, peddling our wares to the folks who want authentic, hand made art. But good luck when Wal-Art comes to town with a warehouse of mass-manufactured sculpture, paintings, crafts and design-it-yourself computer assisted artworks. Want a Picasso-like painting for the TV room, maybe in a slightly different size and color, just plug in the variables and scan a credit card, voila, head right over to the Pick-Up section for delivery. Stained glass window? Might take a special order, but UPS will have it at your doorstep next day.

The entire collection of paintings, music, literature is being uploaded bit by byte into the hard drives of super computers around the world, then analyzed, replicated, modified and eventually figuring out how to be ‘creative’. Remember those jobs being eliminated by robots and artificial intelligence? Well, add a few more to the list. Robo-art, why not? Why not let the computers have a shot? After all, it’s going to be their world soon. Human art, put it in a museum. Roll over Beethoven, let Siri give you the news….

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So the Tech Boyz have developed a spiffy little software that can identify people by the way they walk — Gait Recognition. Great news if you’re a cop or a spy, not so much if you’re a criminal or maybe just an ordinary mind-yer-own-business citizen. Apparently we all have very unique signature walks, ones not disguisable by pretending to limp, gimp or amble like a drunk chimp.

I know these folks have taken the bounce out of MY step, not that it will keep them and their ubiquitous surveillance cameras from spotting me in a crowd. Admittedly I’m rarely in a crowd, but with facial recognition, Gait I.D., voice recognition and soon-to-be-developed Hat Recognition, I might just as well tattoo a name tag on my forehead. Or just a barcode.

Nice to know our individual uniquenesses can be used against us. Or … if you’re a Law & Order type with nothing to hide, to use against the miscreants. Not YOU, of course. Just that neighbor you never really liked or trusted. Probably me.

Lately I’ve been stumbling across surveillance cameras strapped to trees here on the crowdless South End, camouflaged units with solar cells, probably for tracking deer or the Barefoot Bandit, I figured. Until I found one pointing at me in my little park. I ambled up to it with my one-of-a-kind hop jump one step forward half a step back gait, waved, said hello and now, no doubt, I’m in some data bank where my walk is being analyzed and stored. Half my neighbors have CostCo security systems, half a dozen cameras that can be monitored from their damn cellphones. I’m sure they sleep better these days, secure in their sleep-number slumber beds.

At least until they learn what the response time is for the Island Sheriff’s Department to answer a distress call.

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