Post #300: Eight Years Of Ramen Noodle Nation (The Reckoner & The Squawker Reflect)

<The Reckoner:
21st Century Self-Portrait

(Picasa-Style, 2012)>

Reckoner's Note: There's a saying I've often heard in my travels, I'm not sure of its provenance, but it runs along these lines: "A year in clubland is a lifetime."  We've probably heard many, many variations on this phrase, but it's easy to forget how temporary and transitory our life experiences often end up. 

Think about it. Bands tour with one, two or (in some cases) no original members, long after the glory days run their course. Beloved stores go belly up, amid whispers and rumors. Favorite clubs close up shop. Friendships founder over threadbare or nonexistent pretexts. Jobs dry up without warning. Newspapers and magazines wind down, after exhausting their reasons for being. Political parties carry on without their founders. We may not care to admit it, but that date stamp on our forehead is often closer than we realize.

Blogs are no different. When we started Ramen Noodle Nation in 2012, we had no great expectations, beyond chronicling our own mounting frustrations with the American system, and its increasingly one-sided division of spoils. Like many blog founders, we figured that, after a year or two, the whole experience would run its course, and we'd move on to other creative pursuits.

That hasn't happened. 

Although sociopolitical commentary remains at the dark, snarky heart of Ramen Noodle Nation, our themes have broadened, as our focus has broadened. At various times, the Squawker and I have tackled classic punk records, as well as the digital sweatshop, food insecurity, pay to play culture, and the realities of bringing home the political revolution, to name a few -- all driven by a purely personal slant, as only we can do it.

Along the way, we've also taken time to celebrate outsider art and writing, whether it's our own efforts in those categories, or somebody else that we want to highlight...which just goes to show, that we aren't always in a dark mood here at Ramen Noodle Nation Towers, where the crows and the ravens don't mind keeping us company.

We're still going strong, which means, in short, that this experience is still doing something for us. We hope you feel the same way. The Squawker and I recently sat down to discuss these, and other developments -- the highlights follow below, along with a few of our greatest hits. Here's to the next 300 posts, then. --The Reckoner & The Squawker

<"We Only Had $5 Between Us">

RECKONER: The reason I wanted to do this with you is because, I just suddenly realized – in looking at the number of posts, this would be number 300. I thought, “Well, usually, people do something or other...”

SQUAWKER: I never did on mine, but...

RECKONER: Well, it seemed appropriate, so...

SQUAWKER: All right. I don't even know what number of posts I'm on. I think I have a thousand (laughs).

RECKONER: In the case of this particular effort, what was it that made you want to do it, to begin with, when we started, back in 2012? Because if I recall, you kind of started it, and then, I sort of chimed in, once you got into a groove?

SQUAWKER: It was kind of my idea, because I was talking about doing a book – I actually wanted to write a book with you, about being poor, and falling down the ladder of American society. Because I had always struggled in adulthood, and I was raised upper middle-class, and I had no idea what was waiting for me.

Though, in my case, disability kind of threw me off the ladder, rather than falling down from my own lack of effort, or so. But I remember saying to you, “Hey, let's write a book on being poor in America,” and then, I thought, “Hey, why don't we do a blog on it?”

But I came up with that name (Ramen Noodle Nation). Because when I was poor, I always had to eat all these damn Ramen noodles (laughs), remember?

RECKONER: That's where you got it from?

SQUAWKER: Yeah. Remember, in Chicago, there was one day, we had $5 to eat the whole day, and we only had $5 between us. And I had to go and buy two of those Ramen noodles to eat. Then I could eat tuna fish – I wasn't allergic to it yet – and I made Ramen noodles and tuna for dinner.

RECKONER: Yeah, and I remember when you were working at that crappy job of yours, you'd give me, I think it was, a fiver every day, or for the days you were working?

SQUAWKER: Yeah (laughs).

RECKONER: I thought, “OK. I've got just got enough to get that one really cheap brand of pizza, and I can get, maybe, a two-liter or two to go with it.”

SQUAWKER: Yeah, and that's all you could get.

RECKONER: That would be my dinner in that era.

SQUAWKER: Remember, they used to let me eat at work, but they got annoyed if I ate too much there.

RECKONER: Yeah.

SQUAWKER: So really, all I could ever get was a sandwich. It's not like I could make myself a complete meal. I could get away with making myself an egg sandwich in the morning, before the kids were awake, or eating a turkey bologna sandwich. And those kids, they were skinny, but they never bought them really good food there. It was all just really processed, and cheap stuff, and it wasn't really good at all.

RECKONER: Yeah, the thing I remember about that era the most was, “Eat everything you can now, because this is going to have to last you for awhile, till the next time.”

SQUAWKER: Well, I found out later that your metabolism actually gets worse if you're on a feast or famine (type of diet), if you're one of those people. Some people, if they have less food the whole day, they'll lose weight, but I have the kind of metabolism, where if I starve all day, and then, finally food comes in, the metabolism's dropped down, I gain weight. That's what happens to people, easily.

RECKONER: Yeah, well, nobody gave a shit, that was the problem. And so, it was what it was.

SQUAWKER: Yeah.

<"I Wanted To Provide A Voice">

RECKONER: All right, so that's where we got the title from – then, what were you were trying to do? Since you started by yourself, and I joined in, at a certain point?

SQUAWKER: I guess I wanted to provide a voice for people who were poor. Everyone's always like, “Shut up.” No one wants to listen. And then, when you're out in society, you always have to pretend like everything's great. You know what I mean? You have to hide how poor you are, as much as possible, and I thought, “Well, what would it be like to actually have a website, where people talk about what it's like to be poor?”

Now, of course, if you're poor in America – well, this may not be true forever now, because America seems to be collapsing – but poverty in America has different levels. When we lived in Chicago, we were very near the lowest level, but we weren't at the homeless level.

RECKONER: Right.

SQUAWKER: The homeless level is the worst. And we were maybe at the step above homelessness. But here, while we've had money problems and struggles, we at least have stable housing, we've been able to keep cars running. That's another level of it, where you're up a little bit. Like in Chicago, we couldn't even afford the bus, we had no medicine, we only had total, base level charity medical care – living in fear.

Back then, you couldn't even sit in a park, without worrying. Here, it's pretty safe in this park, and we live in the town this park is in. We don't have to worry about anybody coming up to mug or rob us.

RECKONER: “Accosted,” I believe, is the police term for it.

SQUAWKER: Yeah (laughs). I mean, we could probably sit here for four or five hours, and be left alone. Maybe the cops would come by, if you sat out here too long. But you know what I mean.

RECKONER: After dark, maybe.

SQUAWKER: Yeah, after dark. No one cares, so... Generation X and below are falling down the ladder. No one even lets us talk about (our experiences). It's like, “Baby Boomer this, Baby Boomer that.” We never even get to hear about anybody else's reality.

<"There's No One To Talk To...">

RECKONER: OK, so, given the fact that now, suddenly, almost a decade of this has gone by, how do you feel about what you've done? Do you feel it has accomplished that goal you set out to achieve?

SQUAWKER: I think we did succeed, as far as content, but I do wish it had been able to get more traffic.

RECKONER: Well, I don't know, it's improved over the last few years. I think that has a lot to do with the way things are, of course.

SQUAWKER: Yeah. Get more readership out there, and things like that.

RECKONER: Because, remember, it's hard to get people to think about these things, when things are deemed to be okay – it's when it all falls apart, that, suddenly, it becomes more noticeable to people.

SQUAWKER: That's one thing about being poor in America. There's no one to talk to about it. It's like, there's no one I can really call up and talk to, about the reality of my life. That's the worst part of it. I can find people online.

I mean, right now, as long as I keep the rent paid, and other bills, I don't care, but it's like, before, when I was in those positions, no one wanted to hear it. There was always so much, just silencing through it all.

RECKONER: Okay. So is there something you'd still like to do, that you haven't done yet? And if so, what?

SQUAWKER: I'd like to get more guest bloggers in here, and tell their stories.

RECKONER: Yeah, I've had that same thought, too.

SQUAWKER: I also think, maybe we should provide some voices, in terms of how coronavirus might affect lives. We're actually in a better position, because I get a disability check, and you work from home, so you know, there's at least little bit coming in every week, though you lost a lot of your newspaper freelance work, but we could survive. But I wonder about all of these people who are gonna become homeless.

<"Everybody Wants The Same Amount Of Money">

RECKONER: Right, because I believe all the temporary mortgage and rent exemptions are about to be lifted in three weeks, or something (like that)? I think I read that somewhere.

SQUAWKER: While we've paid our rent on time every month, how many of these people have three or four months worth of rent piled up, and then, they got the next month's to pay? I mean, it just seems insane to me, that they expect people to pay all these bills, and they aren't making any money.

And I noticed that everybody wants the same amount of money, and even the cable company raised their prices on us, during a global pandemic. “Oh yeah, your bill was 160, but now it's going to be 220 a month.”

RECKONER: Yeah, I feel fine about what we're doing, and I've tried to develop some other themes, like the stuff about food insecurity, and the creative class, and such.

SQUAWKER: I do think we're gonna be having a Great Depression, especially if they're not able to stop the virus. If you think about it, all the social discourse has basically been destroyed, and everybody that decides to say, “To hell with it,” they're all taking a gamble with their lives, immediately.

RECKONER: That's very true.

SQUAWKER: So that's not the environment where everybody wants to go out to eat, and spend money, and have the economy humming. I mean, even we eat out a little bit, at cheap places we want to (have) stay in business. I don't feel like eating inside restaurants yet.

RECKONER: There was a consultant in a news story who put it beautifully – and his answer was something along the lines of, “You can throw as much money at me as you want. But that doesn't mean I'm going to take a vacation, or go on an airplane.” And I suspect that's the mood that a lot of people may be in, even if they had money.

SQUAWKER: Yeah. Well, I've been hospitalized before, for lung problems, and I suffer a disability where I don't have normal breathing capabilities – and I think a lot of people who've never been sick, they don't take this into consideration.

RECKONER: Well, I think the other fascinating thing, to me, about this, is – people never really thought about how everything was so intertwined. Because your ability to pay rent is directly intertwined, to your ability to earn money, or what little money you get, to pay it. And once that's taken away, there goes that money. There goes all those things that you used to take for granted.

SQUAWKER: Oh, one thing they're not talking about is, with medical care – most people who have decent jobs, they get all their medical care through their employer. But now, all the jobs are gone, all the medical care is gonna end.

And of course, we still have two fools that are against Medicare For All. I know a lot of people are voting for Biden are only doing so, because they think the Orange Demented Sociopath is gonna be the death of us all. They don't like Biden. Biden is kind of being forced on us, and while he has shown concession to a couple of things, he's not Bernie.

RECKONER: Well, who could be, though? We want to build from that, because he's not going to be around forever.

<"People Just Don't Have The Connections...">

SQUAWKER: The American lifestyle is kind of screwed up, too, and many people have figured that out. We all live in our own little boxes, and people just don't have the connections and community that they used to have anymore. Me and you, we've found community in a few places – but it's either been short-lived, based on this club, and this club – we've found it in the UU Fellowship that we have now. But even that's been stripped down, by coronavirus.

Sometimes, I wonder about my life. It's been like, a collapse life. I get sick and disabled in my late twenties. I have the economic bottom fall out. I have no medical care, it takes years to get diagnosed. We live in Chicago, try to make it there, and don't have it work out there, partially because of my health.

Then we move to this little boondock town in the middle of nowhere, and even that place, while it seems stable when we move there, it falls apart in 2004, with the few factories they had.

RECKONER: Because, if I remember correctly, there were three major employers that closed. I think there were a thousand jobs went out, between the three of them – that's what I remember. And all of a sudden, you had abandoned houses, blocks of them, and businesses closing, left and right.

SQUAWKER: Yeah. I remember, we had all these restaurants close, that had all these people leaving town. That place could get depressing, because, remember, we left Chicago to be there – and these people still saw big cities as dream life, and they hated the town. They were always saying, “This town sucks, why the hell did you ever move here?” And I was thinking, “Well, my life in Chicago was even worse, with all the crime.” And I wanted to settle there for life, and it's like, I just didn't get to. There was nothing to depend on anymore.

I don't think the center's even holding in American society – we could be collapsing. I know you don't agree with this, but I do believe that there could be a full societal collapse soon.

RECKONER: Well, there'd be a few more things that would have to happen – because, typically, if you look back at the ones (collapses) that have happened, there were several different knock-on effects that had to take place. They will, I think, at some point throw more money at it. They have already done it once or twice, and I don't think they're going to be avoiding that a third or fourth time, even.

Because, as I've said, the people that are deemed to be in jeopardy will want to take something back home, to show the folks back home: “OK. It wasn't everything you wanted, but you got something.”

SQUAWKER: Yeah.

RECKONER: People will tend to cling to that idea of, “Well, something...”

<"They Gave Us A Penny (Oh, Gee, Thanks...)">

SQUAWKER: I question capitalism. I don't believe in the capitalist system anymore. Which, I know, anyone who's a Boomer – a lot of conservative Boomers, they're all ready to get out the smelling salts when you talk that way. But they have to realize, this system isn't working for most people anymore.

I know I'm disabled, I'm kind of out of it, but the jobs, for the people I know, who are working – and I remember my years, where I had to piece together four and five part-time, crummy temporary jobs. Even the full-time ones I got here and there, they never lasted forever. It wasn't because I was fired, it was often because the money ran out, or they cut back business.

What do you think, though, of all these efforts to consider a whole new system? We're old, so I doubt we're gonna enjoy the benefits, but if people were able to turn things around, at least, maybe the young here, today's Millennials and down, would be able to at least enjoy a different type of life.

RECKONER: I'm old enough to remember the days when banks competed on the interest rates they would give you.

SQUAWKER: Yeah, I remember that. I remember having little savings accounts, when I was young – like Kid, and Teenager – and I had 3% (interest), and you actually could watch your money grow, if you left it alone. And we know that doesn't happen anymore. Even used to get a few dollars a month added to our bank accounts.

RECKONER: Actually, you know what we got, not too long ago?

SQUAWKER: What?

RECKONER: A penny.

SQUAWKER: That's sad (laughs).

RECKONER: When I went to look at the account the other day –

SQUAWKER: They gave us a penny. Oh, gee, thanks (laughs).

RECKONER: It's always been one cent, or two cents, yeah. I always laugh about that, because I thought, “Well, we've certainly come a long way from what you just described.”

SQUAWKER: Oh, wow.

<Feast Or Famine, Boom Or Bust>

RECKONER: That's one of the things we've sort of gotten into. It's all or nothing, basically. Feast or famine, boom or bust.

SQUAWKER: Well, that's how this society is, either for the very rich, or, “Forget the poor.”

RECKONER: The biggest thing, I think, that needs to happen, is – if they're going to pass anything, they need to pass ways that people could actually create wealth for themselves. Because, as I've said, Annie's Adjunct Army isn't going to be able to do that. Not on a part-time wage.

Well, let's wrap this up in a neat little bow.

SQUAWKER: Okay.

RECKONER: What do you hope to see for the next 300?

SQUAWKER: Well, I think we should explore, maybe, more coronavirus (themes), and surviving – where things could go – one thing I've thought about writing about is talk about the intersection of, intersectionality, of economic justice, and other forms of it, such as racial justice, disability rights, different issues like that, that I wanna explore.

RECKONER: All right. Well, here's to the next 300, or whatever it ends up being.

SQUAWKER: All right.

Links To Go
How We Started
The Reckoner's Introduction To Ramen Noodle Nation:
https://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/02/reckoners-introduction-to-ramen-noodle.html

The Squawker's Introduction To Ramen Noodle Nation:
https://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/02/squawkers-introduction-to-ramen-noodle.html

Our Top 10 (Most Read) Posts:
Baby Boomer Dad:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/08/baby-boomer-dad.html

Flat Wage USA: The More Things Change, 
They More (Fill In The Blank):
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2014/04/flat-wage-nation-more-things-change.html

Get Rich Or Pound Sand:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/02/get-rich-or-pound-sand.html

How Things Have Changed Since The 1980's:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-things-have-changed.html

Peter Tosh: A Lifetime Of Trick Language:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/09/peter-tosh-lifetime-of-trick-language.html

Poverty Level Republicans (You Gotta Love 'Em):
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2014/07/poverty-level-republicans-you-gotta.html

Punk Rock Art Photos: "Dead Malls Don't Talk Back":
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2019/09/punk-rock-art-photos-dead-malls-dont.html

Taylor Swift Sleeps In Satan's Pocket
(So Satisfy Your Artistic Soul Anyway, OK?):
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2017/04/anti-discmakers-post.html

The College Degree Glut: Did Our Ancestors
Know Something We Didn't?:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-college-degree-glut-did-our.html

Those Who Believe Those On Welfare Are LAZY:
http://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2012/07/those-who-believe-those-on-welfare-are.html