The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Just when the news couldn’t get much worse – or so you thought – along comes the finishing blow. Impeachment hearings, a billion animals burned alive in Australia, the Middle East set in turmoil, the revelation that the government has known for years that Afghanistan was unwinnable, the North Korean push toward nuclear weapons, our precipitous evacuation of Syria then the return to ‘protect our oil’, sure, these were heavy lifts for those of us who need a methadone program for news addiction.

How much worse can things get, we asked ourselves, knowing, of course, that climate change is not only here, it’s accelerating. Unless you’re one of those who think burning more coal is a great way to get re-elected (and I think the prime minister of Australia may be re-evaluating that premise now that the public is asking for his head), you know the coming decades are going to be hotter. And wetter. And wilder. And possibly, in every sense of an overworked word, existential. If not for you, then for your kids and certainly their kids. You maybe even thought: it can’t possibly get any worse.

Things can always, always, write this in stone and sleep with it under your pillow even if it induces nightmares, things can always get worse.

So this week the cruelest blow arrived across the banner headlines of the internet and the dying print media. Meghan and Prince Harry are leaving the royalty. Roasted koalas were pushed to page 3. Starving polar bears didn’t make the comic page. Jetliners shot down in Iran, c’mon, who cares when the tragedy of the prince and duchess vacating their rightful place in aristocracy takes up all the oxygen of a planet stuffed with carbon dioxide. Where, in the name of all that’s holy, is a Shakespeare to lift our spirits from absolute despair to something akin to art?? Must we take the blow in isolation when a seam has been torn in the fabric of social stratification? Can we endure the suffering without some slight, if tenuous, hope for rectification? Will Harry and Meghan regret their decision? Will the Queen’s heart break in this, her 90th decade? O England! The sun is setting on your colonies! And those poor dear anglophiles, can they endure another Masterpiece Four Season anthology of Harry and Meg? Because I certainly cannot. I did my husbandly duty with that idiotic Downton Abby to the point that I wanted to force the mizzus to subscribe to ESPN and leave the channel on to whatever crapola sporting event was commercialized for the entertainment of aging high school jocks, see how she likes that! Enough is enough. And Meg, you too Harry, best of luck making a living on your own. You only got 5 million, Meg, and Harry, last I heard (and I do hope it’s the LAST), you have to make a go of things with a mere 40 plus million. I suspect you both will do just fine. If things go south, hey, buy a small country and declare yourself king and queen. Just leave the rest of us out of it.

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