So I could write a long time on grandmothers, a lifetime probably. I knew one of mine growing up who doesn’t fit into molds of yesteryear as presented in meme and short video format as recalled on the internet. The other was deceased a couple of decades before I was even a glimmer and I had one picture of her I sat and stared at for hours as a child, just wanting to know her. Okay, there I go again…

But my maternal grandmother was not the idealized domestic goddess like a lot of these cook influencers like to project about grandmas in general. The latest snippet I saw was about ermine icing which led with “your grammy may have made this”. No, she did not. She did very few things “from scratch” which endeared me to her as much as I am culinarily inclined now. It has nothing to do with my grandmother in some “homey” sense outside of the economic strides she took as a wage-earning working woman.

My grandmother was a master at finding the best hot deli sandwiches, large New Yawk style pizzas, and picking up a greasy sack of “crumbly burgers” that I have worked at recreating as an homage to what I knew as cuisine at grandma’s. She worked a tedious job and made six children, taking advantage of the booming economic situation around her to not focus so much on perfectly crafted meals at home. She could boil a potato, make a gravy, and she and my grandfather would work on a Thanksgiving turkey together. The next day my grandad would make some old fashioned grits for breakfast, as salty as he was, with the biggest slab of butter running all over, and I couldn’t have asked for more. I miss them both so much.

Her family still in the Appalachia would send cooking pamphlets from their get togethers occasionally. Squirrel salad anyone? Mind that I was an 80s child, not far from such necessities. Not for me, and she was happy in the city as far as I knew, never having to worry about dicing up roasted squirrel.

Though there was one delicacy we both enjoyed that other family scoffed at, and that was what is often called the ambrosia salad. It was a bit of a weird mishmash of jello, whipped cream, pineapple, shredded coconut, and mini marshmallows, but it can vary, apparently. Sometimes she threw in chopped celery! She and I were the only ones who really liked it, and I savored that she and I would giggle about it together, knowing it was a seasonal indulgence no one else “got” besides us two. So she would come out in her completely utilitarian apron she put on once or twice a year to tell me it’s ready with eyerolls from the others.

Our birthdays were days apart after Thanksgiving and I will never forget that silly little thing we shared. She gave me the most memorable birthday gifts in my childhood in a nonchalant way that belied how generous she really was. Not perfectly picturesque to put into a meme that gets millions of views and her life and journey was not one that fits into these narratives about how feminism has “worked”. We’ve regressed so much without working women who were also matriarchs like her getting the recognition they deserve for reproducing and providing – for making a life for generations after them through poverty and struggle. No, my grandmother did not make ermine frosting.

A tweet that caught my eye –

"And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”"

(note: am atheist but metaphors kinda relevant)

— Holly Jo (@KellyJo1822) September 30, 2024

It’s interesting to me that a self-identified atheist would find this relevant. What’s “the beast”? I really only think you could find that relevant if you think all this shit going on is supernatural or above [organized] human ability. As much as I am fond of calling a deserving someone evil or a monster, I don’t actually believe such bad actors are some other species. And “the beast” isn’t either- it’s a highly organized network of [nominally human] beings exercising the power they’ve amassed for fun and ultimate victory, though I think the overindulgence in the sheer sadism of it all is going to be one of the biggest downfalls in the end.

I consider myself an irreligious person but I believe we are made in the image of God, Allah, the supreme being. I think this approach has served me well in life in that I don’t think there’s any ability within me that isn’t in another. A couple other influences I hold dear- idolatry is wrong in large part because it is impossible, and therefore, a waste of precious human energy; we have free will by virtue of being born human. So “the beast” is realizable in anyone as well as being of the best of humanity in solidarity with those who have done more than many of us could ever imagine. To have the ability to be here at this juncture. No one still standing can blow that.

I don’t understand why an atheist wouldn’t come to the same conclusion because by their metrics there’s nothing we shouldn’t be able to tell about humans, the physical world before us and what we know to be true to touch, sight, and sound. How can a beast come to be? Is what I would like to ask of anyone using this phrase. The “simple beasts” who need taming as many have it, the masses.

The southeastern US disaster is a lesson to all of us hearing reports out of Lebanon and Palestine at the same time. It’s coming for us all. As things stand, we have to prepare to be prepared to pay it in blood when it’s our turn.

There is a meme rattling around some tubes of the internet that claims “boomer” parents are less likely to watch after or babysit their grandchildren unlike their parents – greatest and silent generations I think – with whom millennials and gen x’ers spent a greater amount of time during their childhoods. I have no idea if this true at a population level, if there are statistics or studies to back this up. It was true for me at least, and I suspect that there has been an intense amount of data gathering to help make this a viable meme among people my age and from generally similar social strata.

This divergence is chalked up to individualized narcissism and selfishness, and merges with another generational meme about how gen x’ers were neglected en masse as children. Some very obvious developments are turned around and weaponized on everyone these memes are meant to resonate with: grandparents didn’t have to work until they keeled over dead like they do now; children of people who survived wars and did everything they could to save and make a nest egg found themselves occupying a new social and class position, able to demand, think, and expect more – with assassinated and then coopted political leadership that followed, many turned transcendental and worse; although it was more acceptable to be a neglectful or absent parent, children of boomers didn’t have to perform labor like their grandparents likely had to for entire family survival and had the freedom to roam, explore, question – to have their own lives.

I’ve had plenty on my mind since I last blogged an entry here but have busied myself with other things, physical work and continued artistic pursuits mixed in with smoking some mellow grass in the evenings gifted to me and reminding me of the old days, to avoid writing about any of it. However, a tweet authored by @fugioutliberem regarding the ghastly and newly enacted surgical castration law in Louisiana stirred a certain sort of emotion within me this morning related to an incident from my adolescence I have been thinking about recently-

I'm sorry but this is IN FACT barbaric actually and it wouldn't be resorted to if sex abusers weren't ACTUALLY abetted at every level of society because people are fucking cowards, incredible reality-deniers and isolaters of people who tell the truth. Obviously I don't care abt https://t.co/uJHcaggRbu

— is/ra/hell destruetur. (@fugioutliberem) August 6, 2024

Her phrasing of “cowards and reality deniers who isolate truth tellers” resonated with me so much I finally cried about this memory this morning. It’s been a long time coming and it felt necessary. Isolated as I may be for taking on many challenges in my life in pursuit of justice, I count my blessings, and always think forward to the next I can affect in some way. My little-big cat, the innocent little soul she is, huddled close as I shed some tears, then she relaxed on one of her many loungers as I read some more chapters of 2666 aloud to her. (Though after reading one sentence that spanned four pages, I now recall why I failed to finish it the last two times I cracked it open. I tried to move on to some of Chekhov’s short stories, but she is not interested. I really think she likes epically long stories better. But anyway.)

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I started to type a thread on Twitter from this tweet, then thought better of it and came here (hours after the fact- “micro blogging” comes so much easier I suppose, but admittedly it’s annoying to read longer form thoughts in dribs and drabs):

So many recent diagnoses.. Devastating stage 4 cases out of nowhere, a child died days after a diagnosis 😩 https://t.co/fzsYVIzo2a pic.twitter.com/hduJaVsTYz

— 🇵🇸 KF stands with the DPR and LPR (@flak_kari) May 17, 2024

Some of these cancers had a better prognosis than those afflicting the covid jabbed today, but they were still deadly. And profitable. Breast cancer is an industry unto itself, and “prevention” can be a worse sentence than diagnosis. Autoimmune disorders are so common people don’t think twice when they receive yet another diagnosis for why their body is allegedly attacking itself. And we are always at fault; it is always something the individual is deficient in and never the terrain that has been mercilessly poisoned again and again.

I am at least grateful that mammography is falling out of wider favor. What a humiliating ritual that the ruling class would like to see lead you to your early death. However, we are at a stage where breast cancers are so aggressive and fast acting, it’s become a moot point. I am of the opinion that all “diagnostic testing” is a ruse, at best: the invasiveness opens one up, it is a pathway, to whatever the fuck protocols they have going on in medical facilities that could cause sickness. Or it can be simply a matter of exposing orifices and organs in a way that is detrimental to their optimal functioning. Perhaps there is nothing to see, poke and prod at, that means anything for one’s health. If these tests do benefit the individual, it is merely incidental to their purposes of studying and shaping millions and billions of humans at the population level – and keeping us sick.

One thing the protofash democrats and their many flavors of self-identified “leftists” etc liked to repeat at the initial rollout of the shots was “well the [mRNA] technology has been around a long time. It’s nothing to be afraid of!” The reactionary response was memed with the quickness – “ask them why all the animals died”. They most likely did, but this is meant to suggest that there were rigorous studies in order to promote health, and we’ve just seen a series of “culturally marxist” oopsies! that has led to the holocaust of going on millions, if we’re not already there. And more are getting sicker by the day.

mRNA was the ideal red herring in all this. At the hint of backlash, countless websites full of disinformation popped up to tell skeptics about the dangers of mRNA. I read a lot of it with the appropriate skepticism and a critical eye, and I still can’t make sense of what the fuck it’s supposed to do according to the label, whatever benefit is being sold. Even by their own metrics! The manufacturer literature is a joke. These Nazis have not cracked the codes to the “building blocks” of humans, nor are they capable of programming a singular protein into every cell in your body. What I do think they can do is much worse, and it is happening.

What is most important to me, at least, in coming to terms with this cancer bomb the ruling class has dropped on us is that it was designed. I’m not saying it’s a byproduct of what they want to achieve with the internet of bio-nano things, a misstep: it is a necessary checkpoint to accomplish human-machine resonance, that is, absolute slavery. The previous cancers and disorders were a warmup for this advancement. So it was a pretty sick joke these foolish libfash cracked that they didn’t understand they were the punchline of – yes, the technology to cause cancer has been around for a long time, and this time it’s at warp speed.

“We are really keen to join forces with Seagen,” Bourla said. “We are going to kill cancer.”

Like the now worn joke about carbon goes, we are the cancer they want to kill.

A topic that I’ve posted about over the years is the deliberate destruction of public schools, especially since the covid onslaught. I know I’ve blogged about it here too. I am just so disgusted with all of it. I feel the anger in my throat and I want to spit it out on every offender, accomplice, and enabler. With regard to the sexual abuse angle being magnified in the media, which is another method of attack that republican lawmakers use to privatize everything to hell, I was shocked to find out how correct I have been about the uptick I’ve seen in the media in these last few years – in 2022 alone, 349 public school educators were arrested for sex crimes against children.

I was thinking about this once again this morning and without going too far down memory lane, I was able to recall five teachers in my school who groomed and preyed on students in my class and maybe one or two grades above and below mine. I had heard rumors of a few more, but I didn’t have direct knowledge of their alleged misdeeds. To help put this into perspective, my graduating class consisted of fewer than forty students.

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So when I saw that Macklemore is reported to have offered some support for Palestinians, I was pleasantly surprised. It is a very dire time and I am not making light of that, it’s just, what does it mean? And more than that, correctly label zionism as white supremacism. It absolutely is to everyone who has done the minimal amount of reading. Thoroughly. It’s not serving anything else.

Everyone should fight for Palestinians, why would Macklemore be any different than anyone else? We’re all Palestinians and that’s not contra jooz as these fucking freaks have it — from all sides. I don’t think anyone was asking for Macklemore to do anything but he has. Pitifully late for someone with what I would think is household brand/name recognition, but he did as so few are willing to do, and in any case it has to stop, and it has not stopped.

Superficially(?) I felt bad for a split second thinking, had I let a racialized prejudice prevent me from appreciating Macklemore’s body of work previously? Yeah I don’t think I did after having a brief refresher but it seems like a valid question, doesn’t it? The “representation” of what this might mean is distorted and ridiculous by design because the creation and now destruction of white nationhood achieved through the New Deal is motherfucking toxic. By all accounts, Macklemore has capitalized on this with his certain sort of white-trash-trailer-park-trash face. I don’t know that anyone really asked for that but for Ivy leaguers, right?

But we are living through it, and we’re not just talking vibes here. Its massive importance to figuring all these present schemes Sachs is out there grinning to has reached its “best by” date. Ideologically, it’s very scary.

Whiteness in the strictly economic sense is gone but the results – a massive shitshow full of useless bullshit that’s just fucking rotting in many cases – are all around us, with many whites living in squalor and poverty never having any direct benefit from such policies that favored whiteness as a racial category. Maybe not even their granpappies did but it helped them navigate in some way. In a privileged sense? I don’t know? In a very granular way, then yes, probably more so. And therein lies danger to oneself and others in need of understanding.

I’m not a person easily intimidated by strangers, but there are some who have that “good ol boys never meaning no harm who surely done have at least six unmarked graves in their backyards and wouldn’t you know none of the local laaawh men thought to ask” presence to them in certain key areas of the yoonited states that is felt on a certain level. One learns to sense that acutely and to not suffer it in any way, to not just get by, but to live with yourself. To go to sleep at night. There is a certain fucking hatred so vile and wrong these motherfuckers can have that does not afford them the benefit of the doubt. The failure, the decay? the defeat of white supremacism as practice is expected to bring spectacular backlash to seize on, for really weird people. All things being equal? It’s over before it began. How do these guys know they wouldn’t be chewed up? They’re afraid of penises under dresses.

I feel like I need that cicada energy, that raw summer wisdom and experience to soak in.

PPS – I’m sorry, what benefit would she think she could have with these freaks? She lived at higher risk to familial violence than most people on earth I would think. Trust the science for real on that one.

But really everyone is entitled to know, so what the fuck

From a draft I started prior to the student protests –

A confusing thing that the false “health freedom” opposition has repeated from about 2021 when the ruling class was really trying to make covid stick is this hand wringing worry expressed in a number of ways about legitimacy. How they worried about us little people lacking confidence in “our institutions”. And it can be dangerous place to be when they are no longer legitimate, but it is more than a matter of faith. RFK Jr and pals really want to make a boatload in the coming years and that actually depends on a facade of institutional legitimacy to do so. Of course it’s always been a facade when discussed in terms of what “the public” seeks. Most people you talk to on any given day have no faith in american institutions, and covid wrecked that even further. They may rely on them to an extent, but most adults willing to go the mile to have their grievances really heard and acted upon know the battle and limitations. It goes without saying that it’s crazy making by design to boot. So this crisis of confidence or legitimacy rhetoric from that quarter doesn’t give us anything insightful or actionable, it just leads to more of the same. And maybe worse!

A “crisis of legitimacy” isn’t strictly academic though. This was evident from the very beginning of lockdowns in the US, as comprehensive and all-encompassing as the fascist vanguard wanted it to appear. For all the authoritarian apparatuses that cover this continent, not one was willing to take up the mantle to enforce it as a single entity even though those were the orders from the top. [And I would argue that’s also not happening now; there are protests on campuses throughout the US and there is still not a single entity coordinating everything, at least to the public eye. There is a patchwork response from various offices, but they are either not responding as a continuous bloc or they have not been given orders to. What is up with that?] They were perfectly legitimized [back then], right? No one wanted the deadly coof. Some of these entities filled skate parks with sand and some nailed boards over basketball hoops, real tough shit. State policing institutions like highway patrols were in no way going to stick their necks out and stop and arrest people “not abiding” lockdown and several smaller county offices refused to enforce governor-issued diktats as they viewed them as unconstitutional.

As much damage that was done and that we’re still reeling from, legitimacy was a huge problem for them. They know this and all the domestic military installments are running drills for whatever is next. Nothing new but nothing to scoff at because of idiotic movies made by utterly clueless pampered “edgelords” (see: that “civil war” dreck. or not!).

As usual, I’m in the middle of three other posts of which maybe one will be published on this here blog. But I wanted to take a moment to write a few words on Beyoncé Knowles’ ass, believe it or not. I noticed that with her latest, she has promotional shots with it hanging out there under her ridiculous stars and stripes getup. Of course, it is against the law to speak harshly of Knowles in a majority of the contiguous US as it is both Sexist and Racist, and You Probably Don’t Get What She’s Doing anyway. I think I may be exempt in this jurisdiction, so let me go on. And as we all should know by now, her ass is bigger than its position on her backside; it wouldn’t be in our faces without the work of a lot of people – financiers, skilled professionals, and manual laborers alike – all part of humiliation and demoralization campaigns collectively known as the “entertainment industry”.

It is often said to be internalized misogyny to speak negatively about what other women wear, but it is the most internalized misogynist when such speech happens to be directed at women whose net worth is between seven and around twelve figures. Last month, I made some comments on a vexingly popular influencer’s outfit and was accused of internalized misogyny for noting that she was likely wearing it to receive a certain kind of attention on a certain trip she was verifiably husband-free on despite their newlywed status. In fed-ridden internet spaces (what isn’t any more, unfortunately), such sentiments are tantamount to saying any woman being flashy or daring is deserving of sexual assault, and all other behavior is to be factored out of such observations as well. She, whoever she may be, has the mystical, sacred ability to appear from nowhere for no one and “express herself”.

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I first watched the television series The Prisoner in my mid-20s, so about 20 years ago now. I’ve watched it several times since and in my opinion anglo television should have ended then, and not just because of its technical and artistic achievements. It should have in spite of them – the biggest achievement of all is that it perfectly demonstrated why television (and consequently all the surveillance tech that stemmed from it that the show gives a frighteningly prescient rendition of) should have been dismantled as an industry with its airing. I’m not really a television enthusiast, but like anyone else under this order, I’ve seen my share whether I like it or not (by hook or by crook). I can’t think of any other shows I’ve taken the time to watch that have left me seriously thinking about how awful the whole endeavor really is.

Maybe that’s naive and provincial of me, maybe I should watch more to get a better impression of why I shouldn’t! As much as such a contradictory statement could possibly be true, I cannot with these majorly media-covered and “acclaimed” series, don’t really want to, and in not so small part thanks to this show and the things I’ve taken away from it. I was not really raised on television and that mostly followed through into my early adulthood – I didn’t have the time for it and didn’t care. Then “prestige television” came along at a time I was insisting that television was dying and we should welcome its demise. That one didn’t turn out so well, did it. But then again I didn’t have anything to show my work, just a general feeling of unease and realizations of what it means to stay alive as the tides turned internationally into something even more grotesque.

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