The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I must’ve been about 10 years old one April Fool’s Day back around 1960 when I came downstairs for my bowl of tasty and non-nutritious cereal. My mom waited til all us boys were face deep in our General Mills products before she announced she’d just heard on the radio that school was canceled today. You want your cereal to snap crackle and pop, this is how you do it. No school! Free at last, free at last, an entire day to spend on our own mischief. Hallelujah!

Needless to say we were jubilant, hopping on one foot then the other, clapping hands, laughing like baboons. Until finally she couldn’t help herself, she’d been waiting for the precise moment when she could pop our happy balloon, hollering April Fools! Call it sadism, call it cruel — we weren’t amused at our childish gullibility but you best believe our dear mom laughed herself nearly sick. People need psychotherapy for less trauma than this. Years after even.

Doesn’t seem like April Fool’s Day holds the same place in our modern culture. Maybe moms still jerk their kids’ chain, I don’t know, but I suspect we’re more reluctant to pull rugs out from under one another. We got the internet to do that. Social media. Biased news. Now even Artificial Intelligence. Every damn day is April Fool’s. And you ain’t seen nothin yet!!

Wait’ll you get the coming political ads, realistic animation of an opponent speaking in his own voice, all plausible, all looking and sounding exactly what you’d expect … but all bogus, all created to deceive you. And it will — at first. Every day, like the boy who cried wolf. Until you won’t believe anything, you won’t trust your own eyes or your own ears, you’ll just finally believe whatever you want to believe, why not? And the funny part — the machines will be the ones who get the last laugh. April Fool, Human!

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These are polarized times, as you readers of the Cracker undoubtedly know, enough so that the Editor is forever nervous about what grenade this Moonshine Wisdom and Wet Powder Wit column might drop in his lap. But you know… and I do too… these times call for courage. If men of conviction do not speak up, how can we look ourselves in the mirror when tyranny takes root? No, ladies and gentlemen, my allegiance is larger than just loyalty as a writer for the Crab Cracker. My allegiance is to justice. My allegiance is to truth. That is what a sardonic sense of humor represents. As I think you all know by now….

Today —despite the fears and admonitions of my fellow South Enders – the time has come to speak out. Damn the consequences! Oh, I know, we dare not weigh in on impeachment hearings, climate change, Middle East assassinations, trade tariffs and the upcoming elections. But we cannot stay silent on the burning issue of our time. No, trouble has come to our fair city, little Stanwoodopolis. I’m not talking about the decay of Viking Village, I do not refer to the suburban take-over up on Haggen Hill, I won’t even mention the need for a new library. I’m talking, of course, about a crematorium right here in River City, capital C, rhymes with T and stands for Trouble … if I can quote the Music Man.

And worse, as I’m sure you’ve all heard, the downtown Dust to Dust Ashes to Ashes Crematorium, fully approved by the City Council, now is applying to use the Hamilton Stack in order to meet the anticipated demands of its human incineration, their argument being that noxious aromas would be greatly mitigated with that higher stack. Pollutants would be carried out to Port Susan where only the seagulls might be troubled. And the occasional crabber.

It’s time to nip this in the bud. This isn’t just about carbon footprints. This is carbon whole body prints. This is Grandma Jenny going up in smoke, wafting on the offshore breeze down as far as the South End for heaven’s sake. Say no to the Hamilton Stack Incinerator! Call your mayor, call your city planner, call the lady with the alligator purse, but call somebody before they all go up in smoke! Do it for a Carbon Neutral Future! Do it for the Pioneer Cemetery! Do it for Grandma!
[Paid for by the Committee to Stop the Hamilton Stack Human Incinerator]

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Trump declares April National Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Somebody please tell me this is an April Fool’s Joke!! This is like Charles Manson declaring May Anti-Murder Month. Or Judge Roy Moore and Woody Allen announcing June is Leave the Little Girls Alone Month. Bill Cosby probably has July locked up for Rape Drug Truce Month. And the National Rifle Association requested an August debut of Assault Rifles for Pre-Schooler Training Month.

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Every year in the Pulitzer Prize nominated Crab Cracker, our local bastion of honest news reportage, we look forward to the one day when we can test our readers’ knowledge of alternate facts and verify vestigial funny bones. In the past we have run cutting edge, fast breaking stories about everything from whale sightings in the Stilly River to alpaca hunting season openings, from renaming the Mark Clark Bridge the Colton Harris Moore Causeway to the proposed 40 acre landfill on Camano’s South End.

Admittedly many loyal readers felt duped and some even canceled subscriptions … at least until they learned there were no subscriptions. It’s a free press in more ways than one, we informed our outraged gullible readers. But for the most part folks were mostly amused at our once a year antics. Those days, sad to say, are now gone. The Trump Administration yesterday issued an executive order via Tweet that henceforth, April Fool’s Day would no longer be recognized as a national holiday.

Reporters from the lying NY Times and Washington Post clamored for clarification, but White House spokesman Sean Spicer refused to accept questions from their faux news services. Fox News asked if rumors were true that the entire month of April would be designated Fool’s Month, but Mr. Spicer refused to validate those claims, saying the President and his staff would issue further information in good time.

“Isn’t it true, sir,” our reporter from the Cracker queried, “that Saturday Night Live is saying the entire year can now be declared April Fool’s Day?” which brought the press conference to a sudden conclusion when Spicer blamed the media and Hollywood for a profusion of phony stories like those. “You people twist everything!” he shouted before abruptly throwing down his microphone and walking to the door.

The Crab Cracker, no longer invited to further press conferences, if indeed there are more press conferences, was unable to verify rumors of a month-long holiday from truthful news, much less reports of a yearlong celebration of Alternate Facts. But … our investigation did reveal that Congress will soon introduce a bill in the Senate declaring May 1st National Truth Day. Watch for an update here in these pages.

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