Sunday blogs - on national disasters and lemonade stands

When I was a kid, there was an online computer game we'd occasionally play in class that simulated working at a lemonade stand. It was designed for kids to develop and understand basic business skills – i.e. supply and demand of lemons, water, and sugar, depending on a number of factors such as customer frequency and taste preference trends or the weather. If you ran out of money, then you lost the game. The fatal flaw of the game, however, was that no matter how comprehensive your understanding of basic business skills were at that age, you might still lose due to uncontrollable or unforeseen variables. For example, if you prepared for a day that was sunny with extra supply, anticipating a slew of customers on a hot day, and then it suddenly started raining, there's not really much you can do to get the money back from the day you prepared for. You would still be losing. I did not know this at the time I played the game, however, and got extremely upset that logic did not work in my favor, but my friend who didn't understand supply and demand was still beating me at the game.

Sometimes life just throws you shit and there's nothing in your control that you can do to fix it. You can be overly prepared for what you think is going to happen and be completely blindsided. You can know every right “method”, study as many books as possible, and still have things go gravely awry for a reason that had nothing to do with knowledge or preparedness.

So when the hurricane hit NYC on Wednesday night, I don't think anyone was really prepared. We had seen snow and sleet this past winter and we all managed to get through it – although my Prius did get stuck in the snow a couple of times. I had never seen so much flooding in person in my lifetime, and I wasn't even in the area of Brooklyn where flooding was at its worst. My old neighborhood and cross street in Bushwick was flooded up to about two feet. I winced, remembering that I did used to have a first floor apartment with a basement where I kept all my music gear. Had I still been there, my vibraphone, my pedals, my amp, would have all been destroyed. To make matters worse, this was the first time NYC ever implemented an emergency flash flood warning. I also knew this wouldn't be the last time. Given the rate of climate change and our government's neglect of that fact, I have come to terms with the fact that I will see this throughout my adult life. We had already seen bright red smog skies on the west coast. There were firefighters, city officials, scientists, everyone hands on deck – and it's not enough to save us from these disasters. We just have to sit back and watch the shit show.

I was always wondering why there was this notion in the realm of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” logic (which obviously only works for a very niche, privileged demographic) that everything can be fixed or solved. I think it's because older generations had more control over their lives in general – more affordable housing, reasonable pay checks, minimal student debt, the list goes on. This goes back to last week's post on how a lot of millennials and gen z'ers have an increased prevalence of stomach issues such as IBS. We stress when we lose control, no matter how prepared we are – recycling, composting, public transport, bikes – our lives are evidently snowballing slowly to hell over the next 60 years.

So, naturally, what do millennials and gen z do to cope with this fate they have no control over? Make memes and humorous videos about it. These are the only generations where “fuck all” is being lived out, taking kayaks and inner tubes to the flooded city streets while smoking legal weed to the audio of a kazoo blasting the National Anthem. We can seemingly only deal with it with humor, because the world we live in and what it will become is so terrifying it's hard to quantify. We will literally be laughing our way to our graves.

In the meantime, I will be looking forward to soup season. Doesn't matter which kind – red lentil daal, minestrone, lemon kale white bean Italian soup, tomato, pho – they will all successfully distract me from impending world disasters. The best way to best the lemonade stand game, is evidently, to not play it all. The game can get fucked.