The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Yesterday we had a shootout at the freeway park and ride. Most of these are drive-by shootings, but this one, no siree, this one was a genuine wild wild west pull-your-six-shooters and blast away from close range in true vigilante justice, see who’s standing when the cylinders are empty. After this hail of bullets ended, one guy was shot four times and carried away to the nearest hospital where he’ll most likely live. The others, well, they had some serious explaining to do.

It seems one of these yahoos had his chainsaws stolen, so when he ran across an ad in Craigslist featuring the exact same saws, well, he decided to call the thief up and arrange a meeting to buy them. He got his son and a couple of buddies to come along to the meetup at the park and ride and then, just to be on the safe side, he called the sheriff’s department to meet them there too. So now we got the Earps, we got a posse, we got plenty of guns and we got a nice public spot.

The seller must not have suspected too much or else he never watched the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but he came alone, no gang, no family members, just him and a couple of chainsaws. When the Earps got tired of waiting for the Law, the buddies of the aggrieved theft victims decided to approached this guy’s truck, no doubt pretending to be the interested buyers of the saw, but in true comic fashion, they came with guns too. Drawn. And the seller, realizing something bad was afoot, produced his own weapon and commenced to firing. Chaos, of course, ensued.

These things get out of hand sometimes. Sure, they should’ve waited for the sheriff. Maybe they could’ve left the guns at home. All easy to imagine in hindsight. But a man’s chainsaw is his chainsaw and a rope is too good for the mangy dog that stole it. Or so it seemed. Until the purported thief, in interviews with the police, claimed he’d owned those saws for years and even identified marks and features that seemed to validate that claim. And the attackers did mention that they’d really only seen the photo in the ads and that, yeah, it might not have been their saws. Saws tend to look a lot alike since they do look a lot alike. And yeah, it might’ve been smart to wait for the sheriff.

No doubt there are some lessons to be learned here. But probably none gleaned by us South Enders. Me, I’ve started locking up my two chainsaws. I don’t want to have to duel it out for the time I have to get them back from a thief. Probably better just to bargain him down rather than shoot him. Especially if I found out later they weren’t my saws….

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This past week I hauled up north to my dentist and had my teeth cleaned. For most of my life I’ve been told that flossing is next to godliness, that it’ll prevent plaque build-up and gum disease, that if I were to neglect it, I would probably be at risk for everything from halitosis to heart attacks. Today, the news told me and all my floss flagellating friends, this is scientifically unprovable. Flossing, according to the latest studies, makes no more difference to my dental health than if I gargled with holy water.

Great. A year or so ago I received the news that baby aspirin, forever touted as a hedge against plaque build-up in arteries and therefore heart attacks, was probably not much help. Might even be offset by increased incidents of stroke. So much for the wonder drug of aspirin. So much for listening to the advice of health professionals. You wonder why folks go down to the supplement store and spend fortunes on snake oil, maybe this is why. You might as well believe what you want, the so-called experts are just as phony.

One year whole milk is a killer, better drink skim, this year a study claims we need that kind of fat. Butter, might as well eat DDT, now it’s margarine that’s demonized. Sugar, holy moley, white sugar will eat you alive. Now the diet stuff, worse yet. What’s a poor boy to do???? I don’t know about you, but I like to believe — and science may contradict me tomorrow, then support me the next week, etc. — that we are creatures of the planet Earth, most of us, and we evolved with a diet of natural stuff. All those foods we made easier to cook or made from chemistry labs, well, I’m not saying they’ll give you cancer and make your hair fall out or your teeth rot, I’m just saying we didn’t really get exposed to those things in our climb from the ooze to the treetops.

Folks think science will bring them closer to immortality, and don’t get me wrong, I believe in science, but we’re really looking for magic bullets, pharmaceutical panaceas, artificial remedies, all those medical cures advertised to us old farts on TV every damn night. Just ignore the cautionary list of adverse effects, then go bug your doctor for a cure-all anyway.

I don’t know if I’ll keep on flossing or not now. I probably won’t lose sleep over it, but if I do, I’ll check with my pharmacist and take what he recommends. Just so long as one of the side effects isn’t gum rot.

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We’re less than a month into the Second Coming of the Trump Administration and already the temperature down at the Pilot Lounge is hotter than a New Delhi tenement in the last summer’s global warming. Jolene’s Beauty Salon, thanks to Ronald’s constant up-to-the -minute hair on fire news commentary, has resulted in the loss of three of Jolene’s most reliable clientele, a fact which she has tried to impress on her gay beautician without much success. A couple more and Ronald will be going with them, she thinks. Although, truth be told in these post-fact times, Rebecca Arnold pretty much instigated the argument when she announced to the entire salon that she was happy the Man in the High Tower had declared that only two sexes were admissible in the new definition of gender. No trans and, according to her, maybe no gays either. Red flag to Ronald’s bull.

The Diner, as always, is a hotbed of insurrectionist talk, liberal outrage, militia supporters and even a few customers who seem only interested in breakfasts and lunches. Even the Flatheads left off the usual arguments of stock vs. after market carburetor replacements, 6 to 12 volt upgrades, the only topics across their DMZ concerned now with geopolitics. Did Trump really mean he’d bulldoze Gaza and make a Riviera on the sea? Was Greenland worth a war with the Danes? Should we take back the Panama Canal? Fuggetabout carb overhauls and white wall tires, the vintage car guyz were weighing in on the Ukraine War, the China/Taiwan threat, the NATO debates. Don’t even get them started after two refills of Brenda’s high octane caffeine on the purges going on with the Musketeer crews or the confirmation battles split evenly down Party lines!!

The only thing that united these patriotic diners, the only thing, was their unanimous outrage when Anita inked in on every spattered and battered menu: “Due to the spike in egg prices all egg items will be $2 extra.” The great wailing and the drumbeat pounding of chests that emanated from the formica tables could have been heard clear to Stanwoodopolis. As Two Toke intoned once the hubbub had died down a few decibels, “It’s the eggonomy, stupid!” And for possibly the first time in months, we all laughed.

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There’s an old fable about a snake that asks a man to carry it across the river, promising not to bite. Before they reach the other side the snake sinks its fangs into the man. “You promised not to bite me!” the man cried out. To which the snake replied, “But I’m a snake. What did you expect?”

In Michigan the Moslem minorities are complaining bitterly about the man they trusted to bring the Gaza genocide to an end now floating the grand notion of evacuating the survivors to neighboring countries so that the United States can clear the rubble and rebuild on the ruins a fabulous waterfront mecca, a Riviera on the Dead Sea, pardon the irony. Mar-a-Gaza, owned and controlled by the United States and no doubt built and operated by Trump Global Enterprises.

Agreed that no one probably could have imagined this ‘solution’ to the Palestinian problem in any form or fashion, but c’mon, the same folks bitterly denouncing the scheme voted for the man or abstained from voting at all. They trusted the snake not to bite but of course the snake was true to its nature. The same is true for the rural red states, of course, who voted to drain the swamp, cut spending, slash departments and root out the cursed bureaucrats who are stealing their hard earned tax dollars. All that infrastructure money has been terminated, most of it going to those same states. Health care funding has been slashed and it won’t be long before rural hospitals begin to fail. Tariffs promised should soon jack up inflation, hurting the poorest the most.

There will come a wailing and pounding of fists from the heartland before very long. They will say they were betrayed, that all politicians are liars, that no one is to be trusted. I’m sorry, but you brought the snake on board. He did what he has always done. Sure, he said he wouldn’t harm you. What did you expect?

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I always wondered which American era the MAGA folks wanted to return to, maybe McCarthy and the communist witch hunts, maybe the slave era, maybe before women’s suffrage was passed. But this first couple of weeks of the new regime made me realize they want to go back to 1984, the book. Thought Crimes. Political purges. Weaponized government. Computer surveillance to weed out wrong thinking, contrary viewpoints and incorrect political beliefs. Fire the enemies then prosecute them. How many fingers am I holding? Big Brother asks Winston after secret surveillance revealed his doubts about the government. Who won the election in 2020? Who were the heroes of the Civil War? What is a female? Who started Covid? What did they put in the vaccines?

It’s not a far reach to go from firing anyone in any department who might have been involved in the DEI programs, the folks who mistakenly thought diversity and inclusion and equity were positive values, not crimes against the state. The history books will be purged of references to anything that does not ennoble the country. Racism will be erased from the textbooks, slavery was nowhere as bad as some suggest, the Civil War was a fight to protect states’ rights, the indigenous population was given generous reservation lands. Anything other than the official line will be considered a Thought Crime.

Our former enemies will now be our allies. North Korea, Russia, previously stigmatized, are now friends of the regime. Canada and Mexico suddenly are demonized, tariffs placed on them, little more than drug smugglers. Any suggestion of past alliances to the contrary will be erased from the data banks. “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?” Big Brother owns the media, Big Brother controls the executive, the legislative and the judicial. Big Brother Is Watching! We are all immigrants to him. We are all guilty of Thought Crimes. 1984 has finally arrived. Forty years late.

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