Whale Tales: The Introduction

This new weekly series is brought to you by a special New Jersey correspondent. Behind the veneer of casinos and bustling boardwalks, there's something nefarious going on at the Jersey Shore. Our intrepid reporter, code named Whaleboy, risks life, limb, and professional reputation to bring you the truth of what is happening in the Garden State -- and why.

Terrestrial Beings,

I begin…today. Two days after April Fools’ Day, all out of jokes. I’m chronicling all of this shit so, so late, and so many fucking whales are dead. I think eleven since December, just here in New Jersey. Some weird dolphins, and as of today, twenty four more familiar, normal dolphins. 

The air around here has been pregnant with sickness complete with gray rotmilk skies the sun can only laser point through even at its brightest. I’m taking walks down to the beach aimlessly at random times, but I know I have to wake up early, before anyone. I have to do this daily, to be the man who sees the next one. To be first. It will be my whale. I’ll get to name it, commune with it. Before they come with the forklifts.

I, uh, I had the idea to write dispatches like a Fletch situation, all Converse sneaker journalism and snappy ass comebacks. I just sat around for like 5 weeks, instead, while dead whales piled up  down here at the Jersey Shore. No ambergris. I had pierogies for lunch, in a dream, then I woke up and walked down the street to the boardwalk. The wind became sour sweet and I turned around and walked home. I couldn’t stand to see the beach, to see the ocean. My mind was in shambles.

All these humpback sons of bitches, finding the end of their journey in the dirty winter and fallow spring. 

Ok, here’s why I have to do it- why I have to document this unfolding eco-nightmare: I work for a company that sold 10 electric bikes to an Atlantic City casino to donate to the Atlantic City Police Department, in conjunction with Orsted, the Dutch offshore wind farm project mega corporation. The seismic testing and all the looming offshore megastructures and the fucking dead whales; it is a chaos club sandwich from the diner.

The politicians have been brewing up their vocal bases of loud old people. Wildly disparate camps are unified under an uneasy banner on this one. Anti-Green Energy camouflaged old bearded men, old eco hippies with stupid man ponytails, just all kinds of old people and screaming city and county official motherfuckers. Jeff Van Drew the famous turncoat had a wild Save the Whales rally in Wildwood two weeks ago. The Cape May tourism council president told me I should attend. I had walked up to her after a Wildwood Chamber of Commerce luncheon, stoned out of my mind, asking her insane questions about barbeque.

I didn’t go to the rally because of reasons mysterious to me, but I went home and pondered the plight of New Jersey’s marine life while reading through the past few months of news articles.

I don’t think this is all indicative of End Times. Just in case it is, though, I have to make my best offering of atonement for my peasant role. I’ll try my best to pull out the notebook and push the motherfuckers behind the curtains to answer the shit sandwich questions. They will boot me from the casinos but it won’t be the first time. More soon. 

Circling the Drain,

Whaleboy