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™.