New Shit

ICE is made up of the same unemployed, security guards who showed up in many cities across America to defend Kellie-Jay Keen. They dress the same with gaiter face masks, urban aka “fashion” camo, bulletproof vests, and lethal weapons, mostly guns but some other as well. Those same security guards were nowhere to be seen when activists tried to jump & attack women at the end of the protest. They literally just left. 

Violent actors did not distinguish between women who did & did come from the fences, where they had been caged in like chattel by the police, while protesting. It was the National Guard members who protect the Liberty Bell & Philadelphia’s own police officers who protected women from being beaten down in the street that day.  

I took a photo of a man in my family’s deli in September wearing a “U.S. Customs & Border Protection” shirt which was a 🚩 to me that a round up was coming because he has never been in before & I felt like we were being canvassed by someone ordering food. To see if we employ any noticeable immigrants in our kitchen (we don’t, but I know of many local places that do). I noticed him because I was sitting at a little two seater table & he was standing at the counter wearing camo pants that I immediately recognized as “fashion camo” of some sort because my ex husband was in ROTC as a teen & remained very interested & educated in various differences between different branches of the military even though he abandoned that plan as a teen & decided not to join. I am always glad because he wouldn’t have been around or my type if he stayed a war lover instead of becoming a peace lover & we wouldn’t have had my son & those 10 really fun good years of raising him together. 

So I asked a current former Navy friend Which camo it is because he is a good guy who reminds me of my ex husband but who Actually did go through with signing up & having to live on a submarine & handle nuclear technology as a young man. He knew it was Dessert Storm Chocolate Chip. I then used my photo to find the “uniform store” where I could easily buy those today online for cheap even though the military stopped using it around 1992-1993. 

My love of military history & study comes from my dad & our love of Orson Scott Card the problematic closeted Mormon author who introduced me to the world of men as a child but who also introduced me to a lot of concepts around philosophy & culture I wouldn’t be as interested in otherwise. Other than getting me obsessed with Ender’s Game my dad also had me watching things like The Last Starfighter. It is incredible to watch his worst fears come to life. Where Call of Duty & Battlefield Modern Warfare were actually used to train an entire segment of the young population to cheer for war & sometimes to participate in it. Where even my dad has become the evil DT supporter cheering for the deaths of innocent civilians. Even though he was ringing the alarm bells before anyone else. Through drugs & television he’s living in his own version of Fahrenheit 451. Another sci-fi book/movie that should have made him immune to what is happening but didn’t. 

I googled why the CBP agents are here. We don’t have a “border” other than the Atlantic Ocean & I’ve never heard of people being dropped by boats into NJ from other countries for illegal immigration before in my life. It turns out that in July of 2025 the Lakehurst Naval base started housing 1000-3000 immigrant detainees. There was a minimal backlash online in local news orgs but then it seems something else distracting must have happened in the news because nothing came of that & it seems it just happened without anyone really noticing or doing anything about it. 

I also read about the places in New Jersey where ICE & CBP members have eaten a full lunch at an establishment like my own & then arrested all the people who work there & served them. 

The men who are getting off their jollies from finally being able to put on a makeshift “uniform”, while probably being kept out of every other sector of the military or militarized amerikan police force because of their glaring 🚩 s, are now assassinating civilians in the street for peacefully resisting their illegal tactics that go against our the Constitution which is what makes these States in any way United. 

The same type of goonish imps that are doing the killing in Putin’s name in the Ukraine 🇺🇦 & who are murdering civilians & starving children in Gaza 🇵🇸 in Netanyahu’s name are the ones here who are fine with brandishing weapons & acting like this is some HBO show or video game where people aren’t actually hurt by gunfire instead of real life. 

The answer is not to manufacture more guns. It is not 3D printing guns. Guns will never free humanity. Humanity can only be freed when we stop worshipping violence as an end to any means. It isn’t. 

Destruction can never build the society we all want. Destruction can never give us the future humanity is capable of & that we deserve. 

We will survive without oil. Humanity will survive if it gets hotter. We will never survive without others. Humanity only achieves through collaboration. 

Love,

Jackie Lane 

We all would have voted for Robin Williams

But the man hung himself with a belt. 

Donald Trump tried to enact a coup in 2020 that was unsuccessful. In 2024 he successfully enacted a coup by using billionaire technocratic oligarchs to buy the election & install new digital  & more easily hack-able voting machines. 

I have been thinking a lot about the movie Man of the Year. How right now we have someone who was elected purely on reality TV popularity alone. Our very own Zaphod Beeblebrox to hide the actions of the paper pushing Vogon war generals. 

The thing I hate most about Elon Musk is how he’s clearly one of those bros who pretends he’s read certain books to seem smart or “one of the group” when you know at most he read the google summary & watched the movie. 

I dislike Tolkien because he’s such a narcissist that he wanted to “create” a fantasy history for “white” people because to be white is to be divorced from your culture’s actual lineage of myth. Whiteness (and blackness for that matter) basically means you have been successfully turned into a cog, a part, an extension of a type of person instead of actually knowing who you are & where you came from. It’s a lot easier to control people when you teach them that their families & histories were nothing but “abusive”. Instead of trying to understand & reveal the past in the modern era, many are trying to control the past & shoehorn it into a box it is never going to fit into. 

Donald Trump has us so focused on whether or not we’re going to “win”. He got us to completely ignore that some of us are just excited to play the game. Those of us who just want to be included and be a participatory member of society.  

The civil war of public shootings which have been enacted by a loud majority, upon a minority who is focused on peace, has been going on for quite some time. That is why we’re involved in the 3rd global war now. With russia, china, & amerika taking stake in their respective territories. I worry about the strength of the EU. The first blow by Britain was strong but came to be such a public mistake. I hope the continent where the people have actively chosen not to forget the 2 world wars, & are still very close generationally to the loss felt, will shield us from the worst of what is to come. And of course Canada has always stood up to amerika. The real North of the Civil War, where formerly enslaved people had to actually escape to, to be free. 

Right now we’re in the Wizard of Oz & the projector, the flame thrower & the hot air balloon are unfortunately how you’re reading this right now. Whether on your “phone”, “computer” or “tablet” I guarantee you’re on your favorite screen right now to read this. 

It’s the only way. 

We cannot throw away the baby with the bath water. We need incremental change to a world where we acknowledge, accept & understand the risks of these new technologies. Whether it be brain tumors & cancers from phone radiation & cell towers, poisoning everyone’s food & water with “data center” vampires to satiate our craving for content, or the unspoken mental health crisis gripping most of human society inflicted upon us by the technoligarchs who love to sell us addictive behaviors. 

The Sphere in Las Vegas is a great example of what I mean. The Sphere was obviously built by very wealthy people to be an attraction & make “profit for investors”. But somewhere out there are the (probably) young artists who got to work on the remaking of the Wizard of Oz. Some actual person embraced the idea of AI infecting the art world so early on that they were willing to take individual things on the screen & pull them out of the original 1938 film to make them feel immersive & as if they had come to life. Like the trees in the forest outside of Oz. 

A team of people invested a lot of energy into all that man made magic.

It’s no mistake that the Sphere & one of the most popular musicals of our time, Wicked, which is much more socially beloved than anyone previously thought a theater musical turned movie could become in this overly produced era, are both based on the political underpinnings of the Wizard of Oz which was written directly in between the amerikan civil war & the establishment of social services in the United States.

The artists who helped make the version of the Wizard of Oz for the Sphere & who worked on the movie version of Wicked understand that they can only do so much to effect change in this very anti-art, anti-history world the technoligarchs have created. That if they are to make any change at all, it will be with the help of their art loving friends & by using the powerfuls' resources against them, right under their noses, to tell meaningful stories. Stories that people who were given A’s for just being “who they are” will never be able to comprehend the depth of. So they can be hidden right in front of their eyes. They’re so zoomed in they can only see it as an invisible dot on an invisible dot. When those of us who know we’re part of a collective cannot help but have a macro view. 

My mom always says, “sometimes there’s only one person between you & the thing you want in life so you have to get along & negotiate with them.” My spin of that to my son was, “I don’t make the rules, we all collectively make the rules. If you want to have a say in who makes the rules you need to know what they are & how to play the game.” 

We are all in a gamified existence. We have limited choices. But for now we still Have Choices. We still have art. They are destroying the NASA library. But some wiley librarian out there has hoarded copies. I know it.  

We need to realize that we may be stuck in another man’s game but it is our choice whether or not to work together for the incremental changes & understanding that is needed right now, or to sit out & not play at all.  

Every gamer should know that most good games have a collective element & all the hardest games had a manual to learn from & later, a message board. Some of us are too focused on winning & have lost the love of the game. I’ve seen enough high school & college football games, to see my son play baritone saxophone & march on the field, to know that no one enjoys watching a massacre. Where one team is clearly stronger than the other & kids on the weaker team just keep getting dragged off the field hurt.

We saw during the 2024 US presidential campaign & when Luigi Mangione shot healthcare CEO Brian Thompson that the people who thought they were immune from war have been targeted. I am sure all people at that level have hired “private security guards” aka soldiers now & created another “billion dollar industry” so the bourgeoisie won’t get that chance again likely any time soon. Even the dogmatically pro-gun nuts, like Charlie Kirk was, must have hired “private security” soldiers now. Because nothing can stop a bad guy with a gun but another bad guy with a gun. 

Or so I am told. 

When will the violent majority stop being allowed to trample over our right to peace? 

I don’t know 

but I do know it will start with incremental change. With painfully convincing one person at a time out of their “us & them” mindset so we can start solving all these problems the technoligarchs are creating. 

Until Next Time… 

Love, 

Jackie Lane 

P.S. - Usually one, or at most, two people inspire a thing I am writing & this one came with many muses. I never name people directly but I know whomever it is would notice which part of what I wrote came from them. 

 PPS - This was written on January 6th, 2026 & never pressed the post button. I should have because I now find this entire piece irrelevant or at least missing a huge part because of the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. I am writing another piece about that but it does not belong here & may take me a few days to edit as I have a lot to say. Or at least I want what I say about it to be very specific. Anyway I hope this is in some way relevant or enjoyable to anyone. Love and revolution be with you all.  

Bones

I broke my toe at a Gogol Bordello concert & I broke my back in the ocean one time getting slammed down by a big wave. Both still crack on a good day. A friend, I am not friends with anymore, helped me learn to enjoy rainy days. They can repeat the story of how you’re a “dangerous person” for years but they can’t take away your love of Julia Cameron or your appreciation of rainy days.

 It has been an epically beautiful fall. Every football game & band competition has had beautiful weather. I guess…Except for that one day with the spontaneous rain shower out of nowhere. That the weather apps kept changing the forecast of dramatically in the moments leading up to. Laying off most of the people at NOAA left the weather a lot less accurate. We had a couple really advanced & accurate years happening right before what has happened now.

It’s a lot easier to control people when they’re hungry.

I read somewhere that people who serve food are going to be the least food insecure in the coming battle over our counties healthcare rights. I guess it’s because small business owners are never eligible for government aid in the first place. So we don’t rely on it ever.

Not to mention what just happened to Talia C. Teneyuque who used her food stamps to sell baked goods & feed Even More people with those measly “necessity” ingredients.

I raised a son in a household with no adults with a college degree. I know how to stretch a food dollar. When we were eligible for aid during lockdowns I turned every single weird canned industrial kitchen item into a delicious meal. I survived & thrived well in the years following Hurricane Sandy. Food was so cheap compared to now. I learned to rely on Farmers Markets & small local groceries. Back then you could coupon at some of the bigger stores like Shoprite or A&P & do insanely well but I don’t recommend that now. You can get some good manager’s specials sometimes at those bigger stores but be leery of their meat departments now that they outsource butchering. Supply chains have been damaged & interrupted. The people who inspect the quality of the meat & vegetables you eat have been fired.

“You’re fired.”

It is up to you to use your own eyes & ears to inspect what you eat, every single time & no matter how hungry you are… Don’t eat bad food!

I never really liked reality TV & I thought if I abstained it would make a difference. I don’t think what we want makes a difference when it comes to “reality” TV. It is reality in the way that “artificial intelligence” is intelligence. It’s what they want to sell you to keep you in the mindset of “a consumer.” Only now we don’t just consume products they sell at Target or Amazon or Walmart, now they sell us each other as well.

I did a social experiment because I kept seeing references to it this summer. I watched some more mainstream current TV. I didn’t learn anything good. Let’s put it that way. I still can’t get over some of the things I saw on Love Island. We had to fast forward through the most objectifying parts but there’s still references to those things constantly as the plot lines develop. The “games” people were made to play could be called nothing but dehumanizing. Spending most of my life consuming art in the forms of live poetry & music & an occasional art gallery, book store, museum, or historical park. Small coffee shops & one off restaurants often contain little tidbits of local history held only there.

We also watched White Lotus & 9 Perfect Strangers as well which was a different sort, of fictional, dark & disturbing. But nonetheless disturbing in a way I was not aware people were so desensitized to. In another era of my life I watched The Walking Dead & Game of Thrones but they were too much then & we’ve only gone farther now. I tried to rewatch Dexter with my current partner & couldn’t get past the first episode. How was this just what I was used to? I loved Law & Order in all its iterations at another age. I could never stomach that now.

One time we told a group of friends, “everything you watch is full of pornography & murder” they couldn’t imagine thought provoking emotional plot lines that just involve relationships, life & death. People who fantasize hard about living “off the grid” when they don’t spend a single day not sitting at their computer for hours playing video games. It’s a fantasy to ignore how dependent they are on other people, by nature. I’ve lived in the woods, with well water, & nothing good within walking distance, almost no one would like it they way they fantasize they would. It is lonely even with “the internet”.

I’ve started making chicken soup for my family’s deli out of an entire carcass. Calling it bone broth soup or Bone Brother Soup (iykyk) to make it more palatable to the less Uber Goth portions of our demographic. I have been baking a lot of high fiber muffins too. I have always loved taking care of people with my hands but I really love feeding people with my food. With skyrocketing food prices & employees whose bills have skyrocketed as well it is any wonder there’s any restaurants left in amerika. But we mostly have a service based economy.

77 percent of the GDP is service industry. 23 percent is government, ya know the thing mostly unfunded & shut down at the moment. And Zero Percent is whatever the fuck billionaires say they do to deserve 1 billion dollars. Crypto isn’t real & when that bubble bursts & it will So Hard now that they are diversifying people’s 401Ks into them. Just like before the economic collapse of 2008. Remember folks. It was them who got bailed out & it was us who cleaned up the pieces, went to work, & kept this ball rolling. We don’t need them. We clean up after ourselves. We cook for ourselves. We care for ourselves. They need us, not the other way around. Don’t let yourself forget it.

A few greedy bastards have made it seem like the world is Full of greedy bastards when By Far they are a minority. It is hard to feel hopeful right now but I keep the faith for all of us. Art has not died & neither shall we.

It’s very flooded today at the Jersey Shore. The 13 year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy & we flood almost as bad as it was then a couple times a year now. Many houses are raised. The army core of engineers keeps the dunes built to protect the million dollar homes. That doesn’t keep the water from flooding the bay side, the river & creek, & all the little estuaries. But we’re all so busy being distracted by this global cultural billionaire reality TV bullshit that we don’t have our eye on the prize anymore. Which is saving humanity, balancing the earth’s atmosphere, & saving as many species of plants & animals as possible in the process. Not everything is coming with us into the future. The way no one uses a phonograph to listen to music anymore & no one signs onto the internet today with an Apple Macintosh computer. Tales of what “AI” can do for humanity are not new. Siri was released in 2010, over 15 years ago. It’s lost is novelty & it’s promise. We need to stop waiting for something else or someone else that needs to do the work our society & culture needs done & just get to doing it ourselves. We don’t need them. They need us.

Learn about the black friday blackout going on. The general strikes I have been saying were necessary since Zack was a toddler are happening. There is already a grinding slow down for the establishment. I can see & feel it all around me. People are doing less because things cost so much more. But some of us have never & will never give up. We don’t need anyone’s permission to be the example of what we want to see in the world.

Love,

Jackie Lane

PS - Keep up the good work. I’m here for you. Somebody cares. Or in other words. Keep talking until someone listens.

PPS - Happy Hollaween!!! I coincidentally am posting this post on Halloween. Make sure you enjoy your family & friends. Have a safe good time™. 

Dear Friend

 Public Post from a Friend 

“lol yay funny meme

Just wanted you all to know that I'm getting indications that a lot of my posts are getting h.i.d.d.e.n from you. Also! Seems like every time I try to post certain tings that show the certain guys doing the certain bad things, the videos I'm sharing are r.e.m.o.v.e.d from my posts. 

Fun times!”

My Answer: “Yo that is f*cking Crazzzy. Nothing you posted was that crazy. I just scrolled through your wall back about 3 or 4 days & reacted to all the political stuff.

They encourage us to report & silence our own friends. Now they have “eh eye” to blame their bidding on. The oligarchs don’t want us talking about what they’re doing. I was very afraid for a minute there but seeing all the shining faces over the weekend reminded me, we’re not alone. They are just trying to brainwash all our friends with Eh Eye! I’m not having it. I keep it at a healthy boundary. Only using it when I Have to. Like Amazon. Some stuff is no longer in the supply chain any other way. Same with information. It’s harder & harder for us to fact check things. But I remain steadfast. Always researching things I read independently but I see mistakes. Bad sources. Mangled recipes. All the time.

I’m trying to remind myself that if I “Jackie F*cking Lane” felt the need to silence myself politically that it has to be a lot worse than my ultra depressed brain can get it’s head around. The streets are quiet out there on non-protest days. Parents have to go through the motions for their kids. But even that is paired back. Less kids getting to do extracurriculars than ever. They’re more expensive & time consuming on the parents part then ever. Easier to hand over an old phone or tablet.

There’s Less People In The Free Parks Keith & I bird at. Because you need gas money to get there & food is So expensive.

My “line” for people right now is witnessing that they have any sort of affinity for using AI a lot or talking to it often. Or saying anything openly racist now that this ish has happened & the nationalists again feel safe to tell us their bigotry.”

To Me from a Friend: “I h*a*t*e the "art"1f1c1al hmmm int SO MUCH. Literally everything about it. The invasiveness. No ability to opt out or avoid it. The artistic and intellectual theft. The dependence we're putting on it for ESSENTIALS. The UNGODLY resource consumption at the expense of The People. Not to mention the tech companies are being allowed to subsidize this egregious wasteful resource hoarding because the companies are passing the cost to US in OUR energy bills. I have at least 2 other reasons I don't have time to get into right now. 🫠🫠🫠”

Me: “i’ve been watching some good videos & reading up on it. Every “sore Ah” video cost five dollars for them to make. It’s not sustainable.

At first, I thought it was because I was old. So I sat around silently thinking for months now. Since I hit my head, thinking can take a lot longer. And as Douglas Adam said “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” 

I thought I was in “Phase 3” as it were but it turns out that this is in fact in the 5th installment of the HHGTTG. 

“The New Guide” appears as a bird that tells you whatever you want to hear & consumes all the information it wants & needs from you & then moves on because it has an ulterior purpose that is unbeknownst to the “user”. I never trust anything is truly Free. Whatever is going on has got to have a more powerful effect on our behavior than Traditional Advertising on TV & social media with how they are investing so much money into it. I definitely think it’s not to be trusted even more than Any of these experts I am watching can predict. People are living in fear of losing food stamps & medicare in a week. How can regular people safely spend what they have while there is no safety net to fall on? 

There’s no such thing as a billionaire. The dollar has just lost most of its value because of money hoarding. 

At least we’re smart enough to see these things. It gives me hope. 7 million people plus all those other people in countries around the world. We’re not going to let this happen to humanity. We still do all the work with our hands. People will get fed. Hairs will get cut. 

I watched every single video I could find of robots “cutting hair” the other day. Mostly eh eye bullsh*t but the ones with real robots were definitely death traps. It won’t clean up the earth & plant all the trees & flowers we need. We need to do that with our hands.

sorry, not sorry. You inspired an entire blogpost.”

Love,

Jackie Lane

PS - I copied & shared this conversation because it’s one of the few like it that I’ve had. Many people I was friends with seem to be lost to talking to themselves all the time. Even as they see how wrong eh eye can be they continue to use it & trust it more than wikipedia, search engines or social media ever was trusted. 

The men selling us all eh eye as a solution to all the world’s problems know that it’s just a trick with Smoke & Mirrors. When this bubble bursts it will be real humans picking up the pieces like Andy Kim cleaning the capital floor after January 6th. 

Rage Bait

 “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” - Desmond Tutu

“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” – Elie Wiesel

Quote source - https://organizingchange.org/here-is-how-moral-leaders-approach-neutrality/

I watched a pile-on on a friend’s page & chose to remain silent but I wish I had had the courage while people were piling on the one person who stood up to the other comments & said simply. “I do.” Cause I do care about peoples politics. Another one of my favorite quotes is, “man is by nature is a political animal.” - Aristotle

Also “all art is propaganda, sometimes unconsciously but often deliberately propaganda.”- Upton Sinclair. Aka telling people to silence themselves via social media is a form of artistic political act. Especially now. 

"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." - George Orwell, the context being that it is impossible to remain neutral as politics affects every aspect of life, even for those who think they can avoid it.

Not only do I want to hear your opinions. I Love hearing your opinions. 

*fb creepily auto input what I wanted to say just now & derailed the natural course I was taking. I don’t like that one bit. Not my iphone. Not autocorrect. It just typed an entirely different word it thought I wanted to use & there it was. I won’t succumb. I’ve been a natural writer since the age of 10. I walked Myself to the Silverton Pharmacy & bought myself a very fancy 5 Star Hunter Green college ruled notebook. I still have it, it’s not that full. It’s bad enough more of my thoughts & experiences are public than private these days & that the paper daily pages I write purely for me & my creator Julie Cameron & all the artists in my artists circle, even the ones who think they’ve cut their tie to me forever, are not the focal point of my life anymore. 

I will not follow rules made by completely unjust unelected leaders.

These are not our laws these are not our rules.- Ani Difranco 

I never should have given up the Jackie Lane Love brand. It was my strongest attempt of so many I think. 

I have silenced myself very much since I left social media & returned. Once by force but the second, more important time, by choice. Things are not as safe as they once were. Thought crimes are real. I mean, as I type this into “google keep” live, in real time, ultra corporations can turn my thoughts into chum for the AI processors to suck down. Before I even post it publicly. Sucking down our thoughts & accomplishments as humans so much faster than we lived those lives in the first place. What will be left of the humanity when everything that is read is written by what computers assume we want to say? I never thought I would be saying I lost some of my closest friends to AI. I never thought people who used to trust me would cast me aside because I disagreed with them. I used to be the person people came to for help. Or disagreement. Constructive criticism we used to call it. I Love constructive criticism. And I love to dish it out & take it. My mom inspires me. Her competitive nature keeps many around us going. It changes the lives of many. In the world of trigger warnings there is no room for tough love. You can be stern with someone. You can teach them discipline. It is utterly strange that I am so against ultra authoritarianism & at the same time I love discipline & made sure it was something I instilled in my son. Who at times may seem very undisciplined & rebellious with his appearance & attitude but is a dedicated musician & student which cannot happen without self discipline. He studied martial arts from age 2-5 & I studied martial arts when I was 30-32. It gave me a sense of calmness I had never had. I actually went through it 5 years After my son. It is not a part of our lives now but the teachings stay with you. It made me a smarter & less fearful person in many ways. But it also taught me the reality of my own strength & I believe that keeps me safer in life but without making me paranoid. I was at one time stupidly fearless. Online. But otherwise too. When we were young. Most of that time is not recorded online. We scanned Some developed photos or uploaded them from our floppy disks from the Walmart 1 hour photo. Photos were so cheap & so fast. I just developed wedding cameras that used real film. It cost 3 times as much money as it would have in 1999 & doubles would be double that. We didn’t even get anywhere near most of the shots because people don’t know the realities even, of Standard 35mm color film. The flash was not great but in most cases not used. Most of the best shots are by me in the bright sunlight, to finish out the rolls, of cool looking stuff I saw outside. It made us laugh though & was the most enjoyable thing I’ve seen in such a long time. Holding them in your hands had such a strange effect. Much different than, as Jorden Jensen pointed out & I can’t stop thinking about now, the endless photo scroll. It’s weird someone I relate to so much can’t smoke weed at all. Make it make sense. But the endless photo scroll. The unorganized life. I am so critical of the art I present on social media now. I’ll look back on the past & see Tons of photos that I took, from the future, that I am like, “this is So beautiful, why didn’t I post this when it happened?” Cause I felt it was so inadequate in the moment but so perfect with hindsight. Hindsight is why I started the JackieLane2020 brand, it is supposed to be my life with the clarity of hindsight. I was just lamenting my Jackie Lane Love brand. I am not just One thing as far as the history of the internet is concerned. I have had many personas & many brands. I have worn many hats. Shared too many bottoms. But I had a good time & now that I am 40 & still alive I can say I am Finally glad about everything I’ve done. Seeing how silenced & stoic even kids are on the internet. Tons of coded double speak just to vent our most difficult feelings & experiences as if the words we create to describe those experiences are what’s bad as opposed to the experiences themselves being bad & also worth human beings creating a specific grunt to express to one another that thing. We have so many words. So many specific thoughts & feelings piled into a relatively small set of letters. But really there are approximately 7160-7164 living languages in the world right now. It’s not just species & corral that is dying. The diversity in how we communicate is also. I see comedians I love traveling all over the world & having their jokes be understood. That is fucking wild man. Do you even know how hard it was for me to type that sentence knowing I intend for this to be my first blog post in a very long time & that I figure nobody will probably even read it, I still considered, “should I say it That way? the way the I would.” But I felt like a voice was needed. I am that voice. For me at least. I’ve been working on my throat chakra for quite a few years now & I still can’t seem to fully unstitch my lips. I used to have a vertical labret piercing in my lower lip that I got at a very strange time in my life to remind myself to “keep my mouth shut” about something I never wanted to share with anyone but eventually shared with the world thanks to the strong 💪 women of the #metoo movement. The me too movement was intentionally squelched. When you typed that hashtag into Twitter, well before the X debacle had even happened, it was auto inputing a little icon of multiple skin-colored raised little fists. But I always felt it was mockingly. No other hashtag has auto generated little cartoon symbols in it. Plenty of hashtags contain chosen emojis but not Forced ones. Eventually hashtags altogether didn’t affect engagement anymore. But women all over the world were at the time & are still now what we call “shadow banned” for misbehaving & speaking out against the patriarchy oligarchy. 

Now the best thing for engagement is called rage bait. Social media platforms seem to be particularly interested lately in trying to force feed us things that are grating. Things that make us wanna push back, I guess & eventually buy something. But I see people being sucked into it all around me. I try not to be gullible but I take after Douglas Adams. I always believe the thing or the possibility that the thing is true before the thing. But no matter how “convincing” it is, I seem to routinely be able to sniff out AI. It instinctively doesn’t feel right to me. In some ways I hope this blog post, for the handful of people who read it, feels like the most human thing they’ve read in a long time. I do not think as well or as fast since my concussion a couple years ago but I do find myself more patient & thoughtful. I may not be able to sling facts like I once could but I have a savantish level math ability left (thanks for the confirmation NYT PIPs & language app math) [I couldn’t right now even fucking remember the name of the app which to me is wild since I can remember all these quotes I’ve read & song lyrics of songs I listened to when I was young] {Duo Lingo, fuck} this post is already much too long. Longer than I ever intended it to be. It started as a FB status. But FB tried to alter what I have to say. Lately I keep what I post shorter & more concise than any of my blogposts ever were. I feel inspired by a few things. I saw a friend make an incredible accomplishment & cried because I was so happy she was alive, it’s a long story. We’ll get there another time. I have kept my side of things private until now to protect her because she is the type of person who deserves all the protection in the world. Anyway. That made me cry about another friend or 2 that I would give anything to have here. Even if they were mad at me sometimes. I still wish they were here. If this post was an album it would be System of a Down’s Toxicity & Incubus’s Morning View, I love a good sunrise, both of which came out within a month of 911. Toxicity was released September 4th, 2001 & Morning View was released on October 23rd, 2001. Which reminds me of Ani Difranco calling 911 “an almost too perfect day” in “Self Evident” a sneaky 20th track out of 24 tracks on an entirely live recorded double album. My favorite sort of album. It makes sense I still blog because when I was young my favorite sort of book was a Diary (some fiction) or an Autobiography aka a glorified diary. It’s not about your daily life but about your daily thoughts about what events made you into who you are as a person. I probably should have written a memoir by now. But if it doesn’t come out in the moment for me it doesn’t come out at all. There’s posts to make for social media for my 2 businesses & myself as an artist. There’s too many football games to go to, to see my son play saxophone. They play All the greatest hits of the 80s 90s & today cause that’s their parent’s music. It’s why we were singing & playing rock & roll & classic rock. For our parents & grandparents. Sometimes these kids are playing heavy metal for marching band like it’s Black Sabbath. & Someday they’ll be playing WAP. Like we played Wake Up Little Susie. Times change. The olds not understanding the youth is eternal but I try. I really struggle with how hard it would be when raised with the possibility from birth to always filter photos of yourself, we used to call it photoshop but that took so much more time & effort. Now you can just slap that shit into any “free” AI app & distort your body & face to your hearts content. We all learned the hard way that google & FB & Youtube were never really free & how valuable our attention always was, probably because of the temporary limitedness of a human life. It’s unfortunately all too quantifiable. I don’t like seeing weird blurred cartoon versions of faces I deeply love but they are cropping up everywhere. As a comedian I was listening to referenced, there is going to be no limit on what is done with AI, whatever is possible will be done, whether we like it or not. The intellectual property rights that have already been violated. And honestly that isn’t even what I care about. Who gives a shit if giant corporate art oligarchies are losing their revenue to AI? But it’s also cutting into the bottom line of every small business & artist you know. It’s fracturing people even more than “politics” already had. If you wanna call what the prez is doing “politics”, I guess you could if you had never heard of the word crimes. Watching my same friends who supported Occupy Wall Street & other protests against the global oligarchs throughout the years succumb to this relentless authoritarian thought control has kept me so depressed I could barely function. Which for me means, going to work, birding with my partner, helping my parents, seeing my son play music, posting on social media to let people know I am still here for them. So I’m active but my artist is whose silenced. The fearless girl who spent all those years typing whatever the hell she wanted into DeadJournal & then Both Live & Deadjournal for over 5 years. I stopped writing at all & especially publicly from the time Zack was born until he was around 5 & I read The Artist’s Way for the first time. I realized instead of being ashamed or afraid of what I’d said when he was a baby, I really felt I’d missed out on recording a significant & important part of my life. I had regrets when I started writing again but I have none now because I spent my son’s early childhood very present. I spent that time before he went to school totally devoted to making sure he had an awesome childhood & that he learned as much as he could & he certainly did & is much smarter than I ever was or will be. Now when I write I think to myself. “What would my son think, what would my mom think, what would my grandma’s Jackie & Jean think?” I still write for rebellion but because I want my nieces & nephews & son’s friend’s to look up to what I say & appreciate that some grown up out there is trying to understand what life is like for them. I made a pact with my best friend when I was 16YO getting bullied on the bus that we would Never forget how hard it was to go through our teenage years & I never will. We had no lock down drills though. No one taught us we May someday be shot in school & that was just a reality we all live with and accept. We didn’t grow up under a constant threat that “AI” would be stealing all the jobs. Except ya know anything of any importance. Teachers, janitors, priests, deacons, rabbis, imams, cosmetologists, masseuse, painter, poet, dancer, singer, chef, gymnast, swimmer, football player, baseball player, basketball player, tennis player, pianist, music teacher, EMTs!, firefighters, doctors, that is just off the top of my head the most important things I can think of & even computer programmers & security professionals can’t be replaced by AI because machines don’t have morals. We do. When you let the algorithm decide who will live or die it will never decide the same way as a human. AI has no remorse. Humans may live with many regrets but our capacity & ability to be compassionate is I believe our greatest strength. Humans together have built many wonders & befriended much of the animal kingdom. I think we can do better than 8 people ruling the world who we certainly didn’t choose & who only came to power because at an opportunistic moment they were willing to sacrifice people poorer than themselves for their own personal gain & the “investors”. As if investors in corporations are not people, just the corporations are. Investors who make/made their money off of the slave labor of Apple or the weapons sales of the “government contractors” that fuel global war. These aren’t passive acts. Investing in the stock market. The market on human capital is not neutral. Neither is trying to silence people when things like snatch & grabs of human beings are happening by an unjust militia established by our unjust leader. 

I have more to say now that the dam broke but I’ll just leave it there & let you start to process before I release my reactions to some other weather related & corporatist issues I am finding issue with lately & I think we need to consider. You may not want to participate in the consumption economy but there are still ways to keep the economy moving forward by spending money locally on what my partner & I call consumables, (ie food or stuff you’re gonna use, like art or your friends album, haircuts, etc). Go buy tickets to shows of the musicians & comedians & poets you know. It’s how they make money. 

We can’t be neutral on a moving train…

Until Next Time…

Love, 

Jackie Lane 

PS. Hardly any breaks or paragraphs. You’re lucky I used punctuation & capitalization at this point but I want to be well understood while still being defiant within my writing style. 

The Day the Music Lived

I decided to start calling my friends who are dead very young from drugs or alcohol abuse "Fancy Suicide". 

This is a horrific thing to say, so, so far I have only thought it to myself. I'll probably tell Keith though now that I wrote it down. Or wrote it up. Wrote it online? 

I know I'm a creator & yet I am very unseen by the masses. I prefer it that way. I would like for someone someday to say about me, "this is her pink era, this is her blue era. This is her flower series & this is her gardening phase. This is her music era." 

I constantly create unfiltered art. I share raw unfiltered life. I am beloved for it. I am also hated for it but whose counting. I have cultivated very beautiful things. I mean all of this aside from creating a very tall, smart, well read, talented, son. So I don't have to doubt that I am a creator. 

I don't believe imposter syndrome is real. I think it is a humble brag. A bourgeoisie flex. I can't help myself. I've almost always decidedly known who I am. When I briefly tried to forget by drowning myself in white & rose wine. Or before that Long Island Iced Teas. I guess I'll have that artist vibe like, this is her whiskey era. The way I have gravitated towards places, things, or music. I'll also have been drawn to different drugs during different eras to try & cope with the full reality of what's going on. 

I traveled so much these past couple years. I saw abandoned cities. Dead malls. I also saw revitalization happening. People congregating to clean up the messes capitalism has left behind. 

Certain things are universal. This post is about Steve Fago. 

As I write this a cloudy AF day cleared to Blast sunlight on my face. I've been cloud hunting all day. A storm came up on me & rained on me at Cattus Island. I have some friends who still won't talk to me even though Steve Fucking Fago died man! I wish I could assure them they shouldn't be afraid of me. I know there's a part of me worth being afraid of. I just know that is a part of all of us. 

So many of my friends blogged our lives back in the day. I wish all that shit was accessible to us now. I long ago forgot how to access my DeadJournal & LiveJournals. I know I wrote with much more regularity as a kid as I had a lot more exciting things happening all the time & more time to write about them. 

I often want to sit down & write ALL the stories from back then but I never know where to begin. I keep thinking about Jess Taylor's excitement at having made out with Steve Fago outside Jason's surprise birthday party that his cousin Vicky Pezza threw. I sometimes drive by that house & that fence. 

Another friend, Nicole Petersen, who I have only seen on Facebook since being friends in elementary school & maybe once or twice in high school died as well. A client whose one of my mom's friends told me. She was perhaps one of the more strikingly beautiful people I've ever seen in real life. She waitressed at the Bandwagon Diner in Toms River which is the last place I saw her before she died only we didn't really talk at all. I have had that happen to me more than once. Where I pass up a chance to talk to someone that later died before I saw them again. It's a weird feeling. 

I grew up middle class. Having more than one friend whose suffered homelessness & having had too many friends die of drugs or alcohol is starting to wear on me. I remember how Jena Ghar would know every single one. I talked to Nadja & she was the first person who knew both Nicole Kelly & Steve Fago & how fucked up I feel about losing either & both of them. 

I have an internal rage that I think conclusively can only be expressed through the urg to Rock & Roll. Like Ani Difranco says, At a certain point it's either Ax Murder or Rock & Roll & I'm at that point "in the artist's career". 

I wanna be a director & direct some sh.t. I wish I could direct an End of an Era video. Maybe I will & we'll dedicate it to Steve. Friend fucking 1 man, or was it 2. Who cares!?!? I need the gods & by the Gods I mean Ian J. Keeney, to hear my desire for a Cold Blue Eternal reunion. I am so far from mad at anyone, I would just love to have us all in the same room again. Magic used to happen when we all were together. 

I had spent so much time with Jeff Wallace & then I didn't see him for 15 years. What a trippy experience. Feels like it was just yesterday. Everyone looks like shit. We look like such a rough & tumble set of scarred up old people, those of us that aren't dead I guess. 

I want my own Rock Star Headquarters. Only I want people to play music not just buy memorabilia. I want a Bose PA system. That is another new life goal. I remember how much good shit got done in Jeff's parent's garage. Makes me think of Weezer. 

I tried to go see Kuff Knots & Christine Elise last week for FREE live on the boardwalk in Asbury Park but I had to leave before they actually played to go get Zack from Alumni Band practice. It was still nice to be up walkin around in AP with Keith. It had been a while. That is where we went on our first & many dates since. I hope to be going up there next weekend for Dogmatic LiveArt's Art Show(I think, now I realized I didn't actually check where it is) !!! I am excited that is happening. Keith & I have visited quite a few museums & art exhibits since we've been together & that was something I had really missed in my life that I did a lot as a kid. 

The only other time the sun has been this bright on my face while I sit in my room was while I was in a group in a live-chat for Julia Cameron's The Listening Path workshop. It was so much more of an intimate, like 40 people in a room Zoom call than I was expecting. I did another The Artist's Way workshop online with 400 people which was more what I was expecting. But the listening path was intimate AF. Julia's dog had just died the day before but she was determined to do her workshop anyway because it was a once in a lifetime experience for all of us. We all knew her dog intimately from reading her work. She wrote a lot about having a dog. She got to read us love poems she wrote about her dog. It was a really intense experience that I felt very strongly about being a part of. It was a really good sky with clouds & colors & whatnot out my window, as it often is & I got to share that with 3 isolated women who also spontaneously signed up to do The Listening Path workshop. That day I wound up talking to another women who was Also named after her 2 grandmothers just like I am. I literally thought she was lying or crazy but she was also in blindingly bright sunlight while she was laughing & crying & saying me too. Then she told me her name. I think it was Helena. But I can't remember the other name. Maybe someday it'll come back to me. 

I have to blog now because I felt like every time I add someone I was severed from, by being cancelled & not having access facebook, I have this long talk with them. Steve was in the last round of a handful of weekly people I added so that I don't get flagged for adding too many people too fast. But I was Expecting to hear from him. I felt like I Just talked to him about Phil Collins & The Weather. 

Sometimes "crazy" people are half right or entirely right but what they know is too crazy for the average person to get their head around. It's hard to carry around a big secret. Usually people won't believe bad things that are really bad because it's their brain's way of protecting itself. People use drugs & alcohol to numb themselves so that they can ignore the secrets they keep. 

My dad & Douglas Adams gave me a hearty respect & obsession with technology & writing. Technology is always changing. So is life, if I don't photograph that sky right now it will be different shortly. If I don't write this now, it will be somewhat forgotten about later. 

The day of Steve's funeral I Almost left & skipped the bar afterwards. I don't drink & Keith & I had an entire house to lay carpets in before Tuesday morning. But as I was leaving Donovan's heading down 571 as I got to the Ocean County Mall there was this brilliant Heaven Sky all around. Once I did the jug handle to go back to my old friends, it was even better. 

I just kept thinking. Steve would have lived in this moment forever if he could have. All of us together again & the saddest we've ever been as adults so far but also feeling a magic within us that we had definitely forgotten about in the pandemic. 

I know for a fact "The Year Without Music" as I call it, killed multiple friends of mine. Without a place to dance the night away some people can't survive life. People fought for their churches but the unrecognized church of Local Folk Music whenever & wherever you wanted it, was gone. 

Some of us didn't have any fucking clue that was a thing that the totalitarian government could do. So many things that are important like sports & music became more elite. More at home. More perfect & individual. When these things are about human connection. 

The screen is only a poor representation for the connection, the hand holding, the deep eye contact, that humans are actually craving. I've always been a germaphobe who declines hand shakes with new people but I always held everyone I'm friend's with hand. I was thinking about Steve Fago & I holding hands at 17 & 18 & telling each other we loved one another & nothing else. We never kissed. We texted a lot over the years. 

He got up early my 18th birthday to go to Water Works which we didn't do because of a thunderstorm. But I wish we did. I don't know if I made it to The End of Water Works before it closed & became Breakwater Beach. Instead we went out to Ihop for breakfast with Erin Ryan & Addam Reynolds. Sometimes I'm like what the fuck are these people I think about all the time as I'm driving around town even doing. Having been off Facebook & them hating me well before that, I don't really know. I'm fucking tired of finding out my friends are dead. I am glad that being back on Facebook allowed me to go to one of their funerals. 

Missing that people die because you lack social media is a fucked up thing to go through. I think about Jena Ghar & Rhapsody Prisco daily. Like Aunt Tootsie I talk to dead people. Now Steve & Nicole & Nicole are on the list. But also my grandmother's. Grandma Jackie would say I've got a lot of Guardian Angels. I certainly do. I've met so many angels that walked this Earth. The problem right now is that this world is no place for angels. It's a devils world. We need more friendships. With healthy boundaries. We need less family. 

Less, I am here because I have to be, & more, I am here because I want to be. 

I keep thinking about Geraldine & Shilly working at Rock Star Headquarters when they still thought in Spanish & not yet in English, when we used to eat too many french fries & mozzarella sticks at Ocean County College. I keep thinking about how Fucking Mad Vicky was when Ashley & Cole ran up a Giant bar tab on her credit card one night at McIntyre's while celebrating Cold Blue Eternal. 

I remember when I started Girl Fight because Ashley & Cole were doing it. I remember how strong Prairie made us for everything that was to come. No one had Any idea then how bad it was going to get for women. For artists. For musicians. For lovers of all types to survive this apocalyptic vibe. 

We all thought the apocalypse would have sexier clothes in my youth. These are not the Candy Raver Goths you're looking for. 

I just want anyone who reads this to know I forgive you all. I harbor no hatred in my heart. I wish no ill will upon you in my soul. If anything I remember only the good things about people. Mostly I only have had very few people do intentionally bad things to me. 

I have always been part of a deep & expensive web. More so than most people I am realizing as I age. It is good to be named after your grandmothers & for your grandmothers to have been very strong hard working smart women. I just want to try to make people feel the way having them in my life made me feel about myself. 

Mike Newman reached out, the one person I feared would harbor animosity towards Steve & yet his message was the same as everyone else's. "Why didn't he tell us while he was still here? He deserved to be forgiven." I was sitting at a table full of atheists. All of us having left the Catholic tradition of our parents & grandparents over the abuse scandals. But we all still had a will to forgiveness. 

I've been thinking a lot about Nicole, Cole. The one who is alive. I really hope she is doing well & can live with whatever pandemic hell she's been through. I hope someday she wants to kick box with me again in a class with Prairie & kick my ass a little. Girl Fight was the first & only all women environment I have ever been in. 

I can forever kick myself that I didn't go to the all girl's Rutger's Douglas Campus before Mary Daly was sued using Title IX. I Could have been the best feminist the world has ever seen. Can you use a college acceptance that is 20 years old? Douglas here I come. I've been seriously considering going back to school when Zack goes to college. I may have to wait until he is done to afford both though.

I'm really proud of him. He's a really good teenager. I know because I was a really bad teenager. It's so weird to be thinking so much about my teenage years for so many reasons. High School Jackie Lane would never doubt herself for a second. She had an epic set of balls. I have often looked to her when I need to get Through Some Shit & the pandemic years have been no exception that's for sure. I just remember punching loads of grown men in mosh pits. I feel like I wish people were not afraid of me but I spent the better part of 20 years making people fear me. I have mellowed out a lot in my old age. But I am still far from mellow. I have a lot of energy left to get things done. Bitches are in fact the only people in life who get anything done. This world needs a clean up & a hygiene lesson & I intend to give it. Every space is worthwhile. We need to keep this place beautiful. Rest In Power Steve Fago. 

@JackieLane2020 on twitter & instagram @jackielanehair on twitter & instagram 

@hermalegenitals for radfem shitposting

It's really going to be music I perform live someday though. I need to eventually. I just have to bite the bullet & cry in public. The singing that comes out in between will be good too. People think I am joking. I am serious like a heart attack as I always say. 

This entire blog entry is just everything I thought we'd be talking about dude. I finally meet your mom after all these years & she's delightful! Maybe she'll come see Jill Ramme play with me. She said she almost kept your ma when she dumped you. It takes a good mom to raise a good son. Anyone's good son can fall victim to the opiate epidemic or even the alcohol epidemic or the pornography epidemic. 

We need to have compassion for those we love. Even when we don't really want to. Nothing else will stop the endless warring. We need world peace & we need it now. My dad made me listen to the entirety of American Pie when I was little, he also has a love of Frank Zappa & the one thing I inherited of my parents loving years is their record collection "From the Music Library of Bob & Linda Lane". I don't know if my dad got the second half of the collection out of his house fast enough after Hurricane Sandy to save it. Who knows. He didn't let me help him clean it out. I was only in it once. Looked similar to how I had left it.  I could have helped more. I have the half I stole in college & have moved 10 times since. Keith & I watched a documentary called The Day The Music Died about how that song was written & toiled over. 

Music is a web if connections. Feeling severed from that web has had a disastrous effect on the class divide. So many former working class musicians are now pimping "woke" protofascist dogma that can not be questioned. 

I keep thinking about Jason climbing the walls of Rock Star Headquarters on a ladder to get me the Only one of a very old Rage Against The Machine sticker from high off the wall. I think about how brutal it is to be dehumanized as birthing people by your radical idols. Too afraid to question this current social requirement. Now that Rock Star Headquarters burned down the year after Hurricane Sandy I can be happy I felt it was so important to rescue in that moment. 

 My mom & Zack & I went to Atlantic City for her 67th birthday. So many homeless people. So many people gambling. I can't stand the thought of either being so normal in this world. Public prostitution is coming next as far as the normal things no one ever wanted but are surely coming to pass with everything happening. 

On a much happier excursion Keith & my mom & I went to Stony Hill Farms Sunflower Field & got lost there one entire Sunday morning in the blistering heat. We all wore sun shirts & silly hats though & we did just fine. It was the exact sort of weather that 🌻 Sunflowers like. We each got to cut a bouquet of sunflowers & Zinnias ourselves in milk bottles & a rustic bucket. 

I didn't think Zack would like the 3 hours in the car but it wasn't bad at all the time of day we went & I am bummed he didn't get to see it. Hopefully he gets to go up & see it somehow this year or next. It's really incredible. 

Everyone needs to see it. I am telling everyone about it. It was life changing. 

I am determined not to miss out on life changing things. I think of my friends & what they deserve to be doing instead of sitting in an early grave. I greatly remember thinking it would be me someday because I would die with my secrets. Also my nickname was Death. Now I have none left to hide. Only things I've not yet lived or remembered. 

I'm sure my Middle & High School Journals would seem much more far away than they did when I read them at 25. Another 12 years has passed. This time I've maintained the same blog. It is in vogue to use Substack. Or some other Only Fans, Patreon Knock-Off. I am still, after all these years, into radically creating/sharing all this art with you for free. It's my version of freedom. To be an Ad-Free Artist forever. I still only ever promote my friend's businesses & regular people's art projects on social media or IRL. It feels good to know who I am. It makes it a lot harder for anyone to take it from you. The previous times I lost it, I didn't know what I had. Now no one could convince me otherwise so easily. 

When Keith & I finished laying carpet, no Allison, not a euphemism. We hung all 4 paintings that we got at the Soup Can Magazine's Anniversary at The Strand Theater in Lakewood where my family has so much herstory in my house that I am about to own entirely on my own for the first time. They look so beautiful it is hard to describe. I've never been so proud of something. I can't wait until Casey comes to visit & test it out for me. Keith & I are going to get some good Wi-Fi going soon since there's bad cell reception. HMU if you want to stay in my tiny house at The Jersey Shore for a week. Friends/artists only, looking for a beach retreat. See you soon. 

Until Next Time...

Jackie Fucking Lane 

Serendipity Rain

I've had a weird sunroof related car problem I've been dealing with where water was silently leaking into my car via cracked tubs leading to my front passenger carpet. It was under rubber car mats so it took A Lot of rain before I noticed even the rubber mat was full of water. I took it out of the evil car dealers service center & brought it to my old place I used to go where the wife used to drive me home when my parents were busy working at the salon & the deli & my car would always be busted. I have taken 3 other cars to them! 😂 

Turns out the son runs it now & he was Super nice & has a Really similar car & they Even work on Diesels which my car is a weird thing most mechanics don't even wanna touch. So a shitty thing made me solve this where to get my car maintenance thing cause I Hated the dealership but I 💕 love my car. I don't even car if it costs the same amount of $ I just would rather give 1000 to someone in town. 

VW is evil. I felt guilty leaving the dealership cause Calvin my mechanic is a brilliant dope guy who the day I met him, rolling in there with a car I Just Bought that was already busted without me even getting it home. He gave me a ride home, I Trusted A Strange Man, My Cell Phone Was Dead. The service center was long closed for the day & he was working overtime to get something done. But the entire rest of the establishment should probably burn. They were all out drinking together the day I met Calvin. 🤣 

I started this blog post as a text message to a friend that I suddenly realized they probably didn't want & was no longer for just them. I feel pulled away from writing all the time lately. I feel this constant need to answer everyone because I remember a time where I was not good at all at answering people. People reached out & I did not reach back. Now I'm always like, where did everybody go? Many think I am an evil Terf whose abuse by men that started in childhood & lasted until I was 33 years old when I finally started telling the truth about it, was my fault because that's just who I am & the way I wanted it to be. 

People will talk about "child abuse victims" to me as if they are someone other than me. Their Trauma. Their This, Their That, Their The Other Thing. But I find we're all very similar in a lot of ways. I don't like the distancing language. Where are the people not growing up in this pornified land? I don't know who would be able to escape it. 

Women without modern plumbing fixtures or in countries without stable electricity or water, those women aren't safe from rape culture & sexual abuse. Male violence permeates all corners of reality at the moment. Women become free only with modern conveniences like the sex segregated spaces. Women need places to talk away from men & to organize.We need plumbing & education to make it so that women can escape the realities of "womanhood". Having to pee all the time, & knowing that it is normal & the way our bodies actually are different than men's. Even bigger women have smaller bladders than men the same size. Men the same size do not have an entire uterus or ovaries holding court in their guts. It may not be the fact that our reproductive rights organs takes up that much space so much as our bodies are different. Categorically speaking. 

What does this have to do with Volkswagen. Calvin treated me, not like an idiot who just bought a sh*t car but like a smart woman who needed ammunition to fight this battle against the Cadillac dealer whom I had just bought it from, but the building was empty except for us. I had to ask my dad for More help, an insufferable man who had Just helped me buy the car in the first place for advice. It was good advice. My letter to the consumer reporting agency in that county got my initial car fixes paid for by the dealership who sold it to me. The car has been So So Dependable & never left me stranded on a highway but I've done Every recommended maintenance so has also been a money pit in minor repairs. It's a diesel engine though & I hope to put 2x as many miles on it as are on it right now. I wanna drive this car until I am my mother's age so I Needed a good mechanic. In walked Calvin the man who was helpful & friendly enough that I got in his car & let him drive me home without a MFing Cell phone! I felt guilty leaving this man but he works for the devil & the top down management at the dealership is evil. 

I'm glad I found someone my age with a small local business who knows my type of car so well as to have one himself as the owner of the repair shop. He has the Golf Wagon GTI with the panoramic sunroof though & I have the baby version TDI with the regular sunroof & a crazy powerful turbo diesel engine for this itty bitty hatchback. I'm not just a radical feminist because I've faced sexual abuse. 

I've also faced many other forms of subtle discrimination from macho "alpha" identified type men in the car world, in the music world, in the video game world, in the comic world, even in the Hair World. But in the car world it's super common for me to find men who immediately dismiss me. It's usually men who know less than me & assume I must also know nothing like them. Despite being raised by not 1 but 2 male mechanics who loved talk radio & a mom who worked 70 hours a week at times. I picked up a couple things. 

I have a much better mental understanding than physical ability. Male tools are often not the right strength standard for most women. What I mean is no matter what I've done with cars I've always needed someone with naturally stronger muscles to help aka do all the work while we collectively figured out what to do. But I've read more than one Chilton taken out of the Ocean County Library in my day & I enjoy when a man will treat me like a human being enough to get to know me & find that out about me. Some intellectual type men just don't give a fuck about cars & always go to a trusted mechanic. Some "car" identified types will dismiss you before they even find out how much you understand. I appreciate finding a man who obviously had a mother who understands cars. I wish more women would be encouraged by having tools easily available that are designed for our hand size/strength. Until then we need more great mechanics in the world like Calvin at VW & the Pro-Cat family.  

But if the rain hadn't filled my car with rainwater I wouldn't be going through any of this. When I met this car I felt like it was going to take me on a journey & it really fucking has in so many ways. It's amazing on the highway & I've been so many places in it I probably wouldn't have been otherwise.

There's been a lot of controversy & infighting among those critical of gender in the past month. The radical right wing is doing their dirty work of using neoliberal propaganda & misogyny to split the modern day feminist movement into a thousand little tiny factions. Dividing the solidarity amongst transsexuals & feminists was always only the first blow. Long decided upon alliances have been broken. Friendships built have been dashed to the wayside. Make love not war friends. 

I don't know how to make it clear enough that I will Never Choose sides of anyone's friendship wars & stonewalling demands. I will never Not Ever decide a woman is crazy. Not even for being angry. I may not want to be around them anymore for personal reasons. I think we all have a choice who we associate with. No one really associates with me openly on social media if they can avoid it. 

Some people patron me & I them. Some people see me oot & aboot but since I got removed from Facebook I was removed from being invited places often. It's weird feeling like a cancelled social pariah among a certain art community or the internet in certain spheres when normal working class people I meet IRL have No Idea about any of it. Or they have more of an observational view than a participatory relationship to the web. 

This writing should probably be published after the one I have saved & Unfinished but as this one is finished first in it's sentiment, for once I am publishing out of order & considering a thing for a while before I finish it & publish it. Look at me evolving over time. 

I have been noticing a lot more serendipity lately which is how I always know I am on the right track. Thanks Naomi Buechner for leaving me with that. You seemed so wise & so eternally young as the same time? We've all suffered losing someone important to us too soon because of this for profit instead of For People system. I just want us to have compassion for our fellow man but especially our fellow woman. 

Love,

Jackie Lane