The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The latest study on teen usage of electronic devices found that they spend over 9 hours a day texting, gaming, video watching and net surfing. And this is when they’re not in school. I can only assume teenage crime rates have dropped to near zero. When would they have time to shoplift? Or to plan a robbery?

Any way you slice it, this is one helluva lot of time spent on social media and the rest. More time than school, more time than … well, anything. Except maybe breathing. This is good news for Apple, Google , Samsung and Facebook. To call it a national epidemic, well, let’s not be Alarmists. To think of it as a national addiction, c’mon, we’ve had TV for most of our lifetimes.

One of my neighbors yesterday told me he’d bought a cellphone. I said say it ain’t so, Joe. Not you! He grinned the way a convert to Jesus grins, sins washed, iniquities atoned, born again, fresh start, brave new world. He told me the great deal he got — meaning I should haul right down and get one too. Just spreading the Good News, I guess, proselytizing the ignorant. You better believe I’ll be checking under the bed tonight for alien pods.

Join the Hive. Accept the Borg. Sign up on Facebook. Carry a cell. I’m the Last Holdout on the South End now, an anachronistic curmudgeon with one foot in the 19th Century, still got a phone plugged to the wall of my cave. Outside the cave I’m disconnected. Satellites can’t reach me, friends and telemarketers can’t call me, the mizzus has to holler or just let it go til I stroll back in. At the grocery store I have to make decisions without outside help. Do you want the pitted olives or the unpitted, honey?

Sure it’s lonely, course it’s eerily quiet, damn right it’s a life of isolation. Just the way I like it.

Am I legend? Naw, I’m just a living fossil, that’s all.

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I live in a state, a blue state, that has a regressive tax system. No state income tax but a pretty hefty sales tax. Meaning, the rich get off a lot easier than us serfs. Pay 10% on that item down at Home Depot, same for the gent making 7 figures as it is for the poor clod making minimum wage, what passes for fair in these times of income inequality writ large.

The rich will argue that their federal taxes are way higher than the rest of us in the lower brackets, say 30 plus % compared to 12% in mine. What they don’t tell you is that most of their wealth is either deferred or it comes in the form of stocks and bonds, taxed upon selling at a capital gain of 15%, about what I’m paying. Except I don’t have an accounting fir and a team of attorneys sheltering my income. Don’t kid yourself, the rich didn’t get rich on an equal playing field. The rich made the laws and the rich wrote the tax rules.

You have to ask yourself why anyone needs a billion dollars. Or even multiple millions. You figure maybe they’ll become philanthropists and give it back to charities? Maybe buy you a Maserati or a village in Tuscany? One billionaire, when asked how much money was enough, replied: it hasn’t been printed yet. Personally I don’t want the billionaires deciding where the money would do the most good, even if sometimes it’s admirable. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and we’ll let the damn people decide what’s priority. We already let them make money doing whatever the hell they want, whether it’s in our best national interest or not. You listening, Musk?

Don’t get me wrong. Capitalism isn’t the enemy to me — after all, I have a business myself. Not exactly Microsoft or Amazon … but unlike them, I pay taxes on my profits. Okay, probably wouldn’t buy the wing on a stealth bomber, but maybe a few titanium bolts, more than Amazon pitches in for.

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Some people are born to be businessmen. They know how to promote themselves, they understand negotiation, they embody what Donald Trump calls the Art of the Deal. I wish I had a couple of strands of those genes in my DNA. My kin, my ancestors, my genepool — all I can say is they climbed down out of the trees, but they never figured out they could sell the timber or develop the real estate. Plus we never remembered how to climb back up so now folks want to sell US the damn trees.

I actually have a business. I know, hard to believe. My right-leaning Republican relatives and in-laws shake their heads sadly to think I’m the only one in the two families who represents their bedrock GOP values of entrepreneurial get-up-and-go, job creation, small business struggles, all those virtues they hold dear. I sell goods. I buy materials, fashion them into art and then I have to sell the product. American? Well, it sticks in their throats, but yeah, as apple pie. Mom and country. Bootstrap success story. You might suppose, after 35 years, I’d be pretty good at it. I just made a stained glass entryway window for some new arrivals on the South End. Even though I’m cheaper than any glass shop in the Pacific Northwest … and even though my stuff is original artwork … I ended up giving them a discount. And they’re rich. You tell me what’s wrong with that picture.

I bought a new truck a few years ago when my old one almost caused me to miss a huge commission for a public art project down in Portland. You think I negotiated a lower price or argued for some ‘extras’? If you thought that, you don’t know me. All I asked my salesman was sell me the damn truck sitting out there in the lot, the one without any bells or whistles, and don’t screw around, I want to leave here ASAP, I don’t want to play the game, I don’t want the sales manager showing me an invoice proving you aren’t making any money on the deal, I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Yes, I’ll pay full price. No, I don’t want to take it for a test drive. Yes, I’m a complete idiot.

But …. I’m an idiot who would rather pay the full monte than get down in the pit and wrassle for a few dollars. I’m not going to lie and say money is beneath me. I’m frugal to a fault. I’m my Depression-era parents’ kid. I shop mostly at Goodwills, I buy Chinese, I’m so stingey I squeak. Money comes hard and it leaves hard too.

Sales is a tough job, at least for the likes of me. Buyer beware? I don’t think so. For me, it’s seller beware.

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It used to be that Flag Day fell on June 14th every year. Now it seems like it’s Flag Day most all of the time. The Colorado GOP just called for burning all gay pride flags. Justice Alito flies his American flag upside down and An Appeal to Heaven flag rightside up. You can find blue striped American flags, Pride flags and Don’t Tread on Me flags. Every day is flag day in these divided states of America. Upside down, inside out, backwards, sideways, all signifying something.

Just flying Old Glory itself, what used to be a fairly universal act of patriotism, now is more a rightwing ad co-opted by the Republican Party. Jam a couple in the tailgate of a jacked up 4×4 Dodge Ram and run them until they’re nothing but tatters, what better way to announce your love of country? Or run one up the flagpole upside down, let everyone know you think the country has gone to hell in a handbasket. Back in my day, the wild and wooly ‘60’s, we burned flags. Laws were passed by outraged Republicans banning those incendiary expressions of free speech. Now those same folks want to burn Pride flags. At least in Colorado.

Justice Alito claims his wife loves flags, him, not so much. He’s not really certain what his wife’s flags even mean. Probably the only guy in the country who isn’t which only proves, at least to him, how impartial he will be and why he shouldn’t recuse himself on cases related to, oh, say January 6th when those flags were used as battering rams at the Capitol.

When we built the Camano Island Visitor Center, we erected an historic flagpole from the Stanwood American Legion who apparently didn’t want it on their property. Invariably we would have outraged Viet Nam vets demanding that it be properly lighted, even before we could get around to it. Maybe you’d like to help, I’d ask. Not much volunteering other than their negative opinion of what we were trying to do. But I can attest that flags definitely get peoples’ attention, good and bad. Maybe we should just ban all flags and end all this acrimony. And while we’re at it, let’s ban Flag Day too. Run that up the pole and see who salutes….

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