A Little ISIL Etiquette

As I was working in the yard this afternoon, the first afternoon in which a pleasantly surprising Caribbean tropical low enveloped us in Fayettenam, I began to ponder the enigma of ISIS. (or ISIL)  Full well I know about this group.  How could one not with their extreme and murderous propaganda in the media.  It is not unlike the SS, the gestapo, and the Nazi party.  I have to remind myself that the mass genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany was not that long ago.  While there seems to have been a break in the pattern, if one looks mass genocide has circulated the globe.  One only has to look under a rock in Africa to find heinous atrocities against humanity.  My lesson learned is although we in America during my lifetime have been spared direct contact with mass genocide on a national level, never has it stopped.  Perhaps 9/11 was meant to be a reminder of how other countries continue to suffer and America tools own as her own self-proclaimed superpower.  I have learned in my lifetime it is best to live in the trenches.  It is wise and prudent to hide what you have and live with humility.  Johnny Depp could attest to this widely disseminated midwestern cultural trait.  One does not grandstand as millennials do today.  (Am I wrong to blame it on the millennials?)  Perhaps I am judging to harshly from my viewpoint as a professional musician.  That is the way it appears to me.  There is very little music, and there is a lot of hype.  There is a lot of narcissism.  There is a lot of misogyny.  I mean fuck me dude.  I always liked Dr. Dre.  It took me many months to find Snoop Dog's single "What's My Name, Part ll."  Still I listen to it, but I don't want to hear about Mr. Dre becoming a billionaire and hating women.  These things do not interest me.  What interests me is savvy music making.  What happens as a result of fame before maturity?  Well.  I am not saying Dr. Dre has not chosen a wise financial planner.  I am saying that a life of excess in many cases can kills its constituents.  That is the history of Rock 'n' Roll. That is the history of jazz.  That is the history of Hip Hop.  Still I miss the influence of an East Coast West Coast battle to produce quality Hip Hop music.  I don't miss the juvenile gangsta drive by shooting.  Then again these rival music production posses could have been acting in the same pattern as the Italian mafia, to which I do not brandish scorn.  While many died in the violence of the mob, in certain ways these men lived a certain lifestyle that was not afforded them in the good old U.S. of A.  Are we being afforded everything we deserve today in America, by government, by our neighbors, and by businesses?  I think not, and that is why I continue to rage against the machine.  Upon reflection and my life of half a century it brutally is apparent to me that Americans are not afforded a percentage of what previous generations had, the Baby Boomers to be specific.  This generation made out.  They had military reserve pensions, they had civic pensions, they had social security, they had retirement plans, they had full medical coverage, and they had influential jobs within a community who controlled themselves.  That is not the case today.  Today we have an oligarchy.  Comparatively speaking the youth of today are living in barren desert enveloped by murderous sand.  It is not unlike predicted lifestyles post apocalypse, but they don't know it.  It is slim pickings.  There is no free love, except the free love on "them internets."  By free love I mean a cultural movement which has rebelled against mainstream society and has decided to mark their own territory.  Metaphorically this movement could be represented by getting high and riding a bus around the country trying to get laid.  I can think of worse things to do for enlightened people, and that is the quicker.  The people who participated in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test were educated people.  They chose to live this way as did Paul Bowles and other expatriate American artists.  They chose a Bohemian lifestyle over what was being offered in America at the time.  Upon returning to America after twelve years abroad working on ships, still I cannot find one ounce of appeal of the lifestyle afforded to the average American.  It sucks.  Education sucks, and I am an educator.  I possess a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Never have I taught public school, because its lifestyle was not good enough for me.  After diligently preparing myself for sixteen years, a life in North Carolina public education was the last thing on my list that appealed to me.  Perhaps it had something to do with my student teaching experience.  Other than the inexplicable and exorbitant amount of hard core pornograpy available free on them internets, I can find nothing appealing about modern day life in America.  Television has been purchased and is marketing erroneous propaganda, music is childlike, and the once adult perceptions we knew about our world have been capped.  We as Americans have been censored.  It is a brutal existence.  it is a brutal existence that has led to mass murder on streets, in theaters, in businesses, and on military bases.  Still the infuriating murmur among politicians and survivors is gun control.  Gun control is not the answer to America's murder problem.  We are too afraid to take the time to look at the lives of those who have committed this murder.  We are too egotistical, we are too busy, and we are too vain.  First let me clarify I do not know who is and should be responsible for researching adolescent murders.  I assume it would fall into the category of mental health.  Psychological health care in America has been reduced sharply even with the continual return of combat troops in the Middle East. Many necessary social programs that are integral to the health of America has been put on old.  Its seems our government can't find the money to fund them, or they believe these programs are unnecessary.  All we have to do is ask ourselves why would an adolescent commit such a violent hate crime and tend to those causes.  No, America will do as the American medical establish has done.  We will treat the symptoms and continue to go to the bank every day.  If we cure cancer, all of those worker bees will lose their jobs.  It is far better a society of chaos.  We have this chaos, and maybe it is interesting to the gods.  Maybe the great wealthy families observe the arena of life from their ivory balconies and revel in it.  They laugh, yet one day it may catch up to them.  That could be the day when Jesus Christ returns to the earth to judge all men living and dead.  When the earth is destroyed, from what balcony will those gods stand?  In the mean time despondent America youths are suicidal.  They may not be suicidal in terms of actually ending their lives.  They may be suicidal in a value assessment that dying may be more interest than living their lives in the same pattern.  Their lives are what we are afforded today in America.  Not much.  A fast talking Easterner shows interest in you.  He entices you with ideas of training and fighting for a cause. This cause is not your parents, your teachers, or the bullies who follow you every day.  They offer you an independence from Uncle Sam, the man, and our menial everyday lives.  They make you feel needed and important, and then they tell you with this heroic act you will be remembered as a martyr.  This sounds pretty enticing to me compared to life in America.  Lost sheep are everywhere, and until we recognize them and tend to their needs, terrorism will continue.  After returning to America after twelve years a broad working on ships, I do not want to be competitive with my neighbor.  This is what we are required to do.  Capitalism is and always has been a fucked up socioeconomic system, and we are living in is sand-enveloped desert.  (P.S.  I don't have much to lose writing this, because either FBI or Department of Homeland Security planes have been circling my house for days)  It's interesting America knows how to pick a fight even with the most docile of figures.  I seek peace, serenity, privacy, and adulthood, and I am offered aerial antagonism.  I don't much like pondering defection mode.  I would just rather make music.  

Thin Lizzy and the Taos Hum

It is interesting when stars collide.  It is interesting when shit goes down which validates your personal opinion.  It is interesting when disparate elements are juxtaposed revealing a greater understanding of an seemingly unknown nuisance or even murderer.  Tonight was such a night.  To the dismay of my mother she and hundreds of other Fayetteville citizens  first hand were exposed to the Taos Hum.  The Taos Hum.  I'll say it again.  The Taos Hum.  The Taos Hum is a combination of annoying low-frequency sound and vibration produced by a General Electric-built slow moving conveyer belt buried beneath the ground in New Mexico.  It transports the mined element Molybdenum.  How did this annoying General Electric-built slow moving conveyer belt buried beneath the ground in New Mexico find its way back stage at Festival Park in Fayetteville, North Carolina?  It was puzzling for about half an hour.  The hum was there louder than anything on the stage (a Journey cover band) and louder than the ambient noise created by traffic flow over the Rowan Street bridge.  The crowd was noisy, but you couldn't hear them for the hum.  The hum appeared instantly first perceived to be in the P.A. system of the Festival Park concert.  It was masked by a large freight train traveling on CSX-T's mainline directly behind the stage.  There was a combination of elements (noise) juxtaposed revealing two trains.  One was traveling, and the other was sitting downtown near Festival Park.  When the traveling train passed the hum increased in intensity until we could see its source.  Another train.  This train (or rather locomotive consist) pulling a very long stretch of evidently very heavy cars was giving birth.  Electricity had built up in its electrical processing to a massive level to create a strong enough magnetism to pull these cars.  Traction motors.  AC traction motors.  DC traction motors.  Tesla.  AC induction motors.  Blah blah.  No one in the Federal Railroad Administration or the EPA could give a shit about this hum.  Ho hum.  Taos Hum.  Humbert Humbert.  Hummmm, hmmmm.  Where's my mum? Delores Hayes would not like the Taos Hum, and she would not have liked this incident completely overshadowing the musical performance of the Army Ground Forces Band.  The interesting thing was this hum was omni-directional.  Low frequency sound is omni-directional.  While the train squirted low frequency alternating current to its traction motors to make their rotors turn (axles), that massive amount of built up electrical power created a yet undiscovered phenomenon.  It was the Taos Hum.  It was a black cloud of angry, pulsating, vibrating, electrical energy louder than anything in the entire park or the whole city of Fayetteville.  Then it just stopped.  Poof.  The train is moving, the dangerous electrical "harmonics" are lost, and it speeds on its merry way at frequencies of far less consequence to the human organism.  Cancer is caused by the irradiation of healthy cells by electromagnetic energy.  Electromagnetic energy is an indispensable juxtaposition of electricity and magnetism.  Thus it creates an electromagnet, a rotating electromagnetic force that is strong enough to turn the axles of lengthy, heavy, fully-loaded freight trains.  That is some magnetism, and anyone living within a few clicks of it might take heed.  It ain't for the light of heart.  I have been cursing it for decades, yet tonight for he first time in full glory, the hum about which I have been ranting made itself known in a grandiose way.  It was the mysterious oeger behind the Festival Park stage.  Because it is transportable, CSX-T can send it wherever they please.  That is a fair amount of power for a transportation company.  I am positive it is not included in the mission statement on their corporate website. For sale.  The Taos Hum, but we will send it to you for free as a parting gift for enjoying the energy we produce by hauling coal to Duke Energy power plants.  We are responsible for destroying the Ozone and your body's cells at the same time! 

Living a Reverse Chronology

I have not been honest with myself.  My musical success does matter to me.  It matters, because of the oppressive boredom that ensues while not being musical.  Music is a double-edged sword.  In a nurturing and pristine environment music can provide emotional fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, and fun.  In a not conducive environment laced with dishonesty, vanity, and greed music becomes a step child, something to be degraded, beaten, and discarded.  This is because it is good.  I have experienced both things.  The latter part of my life has become the latter edge of the double-edged sword.  Music is a danger to me.  Like all things good, they become a target for the enemy.  This target is so coveted that each and every opportunity to excel at music must be destroyed.  Far it is easier to become a musical monk, and in ways this is what I have become.  It reduces the anxiety of trying to be musically successful.  My musical success only ever has been detrimental to me in one situation.  It is the situation I am in now.  Thus I am faced with the difficult decisions regulating my musical output.  For the most part, they are few, because they are not rewarded.  They, like my sexual appetite, are used by others.  It seems America has become a society of john's, and we use whores as our bitches.  We do not applaud and appreciate our artists.  This is why popular music has turned into one big selfish wonk.  (I want to use the word (w)ank, but the spell correction on Google Blogger will not allow me.)  View any current music awards show and horror will ensue.  It has become an atrocity.  Shallow music, shallow people, and vanity.  The message of the music and of the bands no longer is important.  We as Nottinghamshire have become deaf to the sound of uplifting sound.  Our brains are too diminished to accommodate something that is Christ-like.  Christianity demands sacrifice, knowledge, and humanity.  America no longer is capable of such things.  Instead we survive at the most primitive level unable to perceive our own meager existences.  I only can wonder if those Oxford-educated Harvard professors enjoy their lives, because it is the hippies that hold the key.  

A Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I rail a lot about the inadequacy of modern day America.  America is adequate for a few things.  We are adequate for imperialism.  We want Afghani poppies, and so we have them.  We are adequate for logistical transport.  We need a way to ship Afghani poppies, so we use our well-prepared fighting force.  We are adequate for bullying.  Instead of leaving the Middle East the way ISIS and ISIL desire, we linger collecting their poppies.  It seems collecting the poppies is far easier than tapping the massive oil reserve in Iraq, a nation we destroyed when creating ISIS and ISIL.  Still the price of oil has plummeted without harvesting that Iraqi oil.  Now ISIS and ISIL must have it.  Usually they sell it to France and Russia.  We are adequate for harboring fugitives, not illegal immigrants, but legal law-breaking corporations who out-source our American jobs abroad, launder money in Grand Cayman banks, and do what exactly in America?  They sell us their backassward, unregulated, crap products at an inflated rate compared to our wages.  Then they lobby Washington, so they can continue to lie about what is in these products.  We are adequate for stealing land from native populaces like poor African-Americans living in the Ninth Ward in post-Katrina New Orleans.  (Those elderly black people have no business with that real estate anyway)  Trumpism.  We as America are adequate for the useless and wasteful driving of automobiles instead of utilizing mass transportation as say Europe does.  It would seem America is a nation of excess, excess for the rich.  At one point in history these rich perceived a need to reinvest in us.  This is what creates an economy.  Pouring money back into goods and services, filling the pockets of Americans, and creating a burgeoning healthy economy is good for America.  Instead now we strangle Americans like the poor immigrants we are.  We are not adequate for medical care.  It is more cost effective, honest, and empathetic almost anywhere else in the world that is not a third world country.  It would seem these other countries never have been "superpowers" and therefore do not have a wasteful and selfish model to base themselves upon after obliterating every conceivable trace of the Christian religion and the presence of God.  We are adequate for producing cheap natural gas and polluting our ground water source at the same time.  While this may not be an issue now, it will be presently.  When God returns to earth and retrieves saved Christians to transplant to His other earth-like planet we may all ready have discovered, and when the oceans boil and fire reigns down from the skies potable water will become an issue.  It should be now, and the solution is not to buy it from Nestle or Pepsico.  We have become adequate at selling our once free and clean drinking water, breathing air, and comforting silence back to us.  Now we must pay for it, and the status quo of the common existence for Americans is poverty, violence, and thus murder.  No longer can we feel good from just our environment.  It has become so polluted, the playing field of the American Dream has been tilted at forty-five degrees allowing Republicans to litigate the minutia of political and economic control.  They are good at splitting legal hairs on a bought and paid for table.  When I think about the current Condition of America in America today, I can devise no model except utter selfishness.  It's a bitch being alone. 

Merry Robin Hood in America

The appointing of an academic to a federal cabinet position in American government is paradoxical.  The appointing of Holden Thorp to the chancellorship at UNC-Chapel Hill also was paradoxical.  Erskine Bowles baited his trap, and Holden took the bait.  Upon reflection it is copacetic.  Academia, under the tutelage of George Bush, has gone the way of corporate America.  No longer is it a grass roots organization to provide enlightenment to students.  It has become big business, and in America big business has become "Fuck you," to the American people.  Big business has become we will make as much money as humanly possible.  Screw humanity.  Screw the planet.  It is of interest the the earth and humanity are expendable.  We are on a course of extinction, and yet no one in big business seems to care.  In fact big business is the cause of this misguided course.  Could it be academics in high ranking cabinet positions in America's federal government cover this up?  Does the Washington lobby line their pockets with power and money?  Is this why 100% of the legislative decisions made by Congress do not consider public opinion?  We no longer are America.  A new name for this country must be coined.  Perhaps Nottinghamshire?  We have since 1776 become the same country against we rebelled with our Revolutionary War.  Perhaps we no longer are British, but certainly we have an aristocracy.  While America is a republic, no longer are we democratic.  Democracy has failed as has capitalism.  The economy in America has failed for a few simple reasons.  Americans do not have enough money to spend.  Therefore the businesses that have made America tick over the last two centuries now are defunct.  Americans cannot afford to buy their products.  Often I wonder why all of the traditional cultural trends of America have died.  Fashion is dead.  Music is dead.  Somewhere a while back the legends of the fashion industry died off and someone made the decision that ugly, skinny, waifs now were to be America's fashion models wearing loin cloths.  The traditional model of fashion, like art, became an anything goes.  Television is like this today.  There is no artistry.  There is no concept.  There is no talent.  Anything goes as Cole Porter would pen.  In his case anything was bisexuality.  So be it.  There have been few greater American songbook composers, just as there have been few greater classical composers than Tchaikovsky.  I listened to his violin concerto last evening on WCPE, and it was remarkable.  Nottinghamshire is not remarkable.  We are mediocre.  The only way America can retain the title of superpower is with our Department of Defense.  Under the leadership of newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Ashton Kutcher, surely the fond memories of Viet Nam will return, and we will laugh at them.  I never pondered the idea that a Cabinet Secretary in our federal government was a CEO, and yet that exactly is how Ashton Carter is painted in an interesting article by a past Washington Post and New York Times writer.  Carter ejected Ted Gup from his class on national security, although he was a fellow of the Harvard's Shorenstein  Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy.  Gup has yet to stop bristling.  Why would Professor Carter make such a spectacle?  It seems he has a reputation for callus and unruly behavior, but we as the American people would not know this.  Seldom upon he is reported.  The answer to that predicament lies in an enlightening video presentation posted on Facebook.  While I have come to understand that Facebook is both a culturally worthless and dangerous social media application, providing an almost public platform upon which to voice opinions is useful.  Most often it is not used for this, and it should be.  I can't remember the author of a particular video posted on Facebook reflecting upon the history of slavery in America.  It was telling.  It was telling because for the first time someone else explained what always I have known about America's media.  They are owned by the same big businesses that run America.  They are pawns of corporate Nottinghamshire who locate their headquarters in any other country except their own.  Often I rant about the growing uselessness of technology and computing.  We can compute faster, but the ideas have died.  No longer do we care about innovation or ideas in America.  We care about money.  When the earth dies, what will you do with that useless paper tender?  No one has stopped to understand that the iPhone is a bad idea, and that it has changed American culture for the worst.  No one has stopped to understand that a majority of Americans are walking around socially dysfunctional staring into their palms.  No one has because Apple has posted record profits with sales of its iPhones.  Whose responsibility is it to point out that corporate profits do not matter to humanity?  Once it was academia, but that great organization has run the course of big business.  When there are no commodities and thus no jobs to sell them, it is pointless.  We live a pointless existence, and I am struggling to ascribe meaning to it.  This meaning for me has turned from the creation of meaningful music to an interest in reestablishing a healthy American economy devoid of technology.  Technology, contrary to popular belief, has killed our economy.  It has converted a once individualistic free-thinking society into submissive and docile Borg.  Big business has won, and America has lost.  

America's Military Industrial Complex

Often I write about the demand of submission.  The town currently in which I live often demands this submission.   Figuratively I have written about this submission without specifically explaining what it is.  Submission?  The action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.  Today only a few minutes ago I was forced into submission by my mother.    I was emasculated, because evidently I failed to complete two tasks only which had been agreed upon less then twenty-four hours ago.  I had not had time to assimilate these tasks into my daily routine.  I did know that the neglect of these two tasks severely would cause my mother acute emotional distress.  I was rushed preparing dinner last evening and mistakenly left a few green onion stems in our slop bucket on the kitchen countertop.  This is a grievous offense, and I knew it at the time.  I was in a rush, because friends were picking me up for a social outing in less than one hour.  Mistakenly I failed to comply to this newly agreed upon protocol.  One must empty the slop bucket directly after filling it.  The slop bucket now unbeknownst to me has become only a temporary vessel for the displacement of food scraps whilst cooking.  It used to be my mother would empty her own bucket, so never before was I taught the lesson that food spoils easily in ninety degree heat and stinks up the kitchen.  I learned it tonight.  Also I took the fall for this spoiled food making its way into our large, green, plastic city-supplied garbage can.  Also it stank to high heaven.  Because I was high on wine last night, these issues avoided my attention.  Be assured that they were made my primary focus upon my mother's now discovered need to prepare her own dinner.  The combination was volatile.  A lack of the necessary evening meal combined with the stink of rotted food inside and outside made for a surly exchange of priorities.  It was not fun.  I was forced into submission.  I was emasculated by my mother.  While she will not admit it, the message was, "You had your social outing, and you have ignored me."  Message received loud and clear.  This is why I do not partake in evening social outings.  I stay at home.  The only social outings I do engage in are with my mother.  They are hers, and they are for her.  I do not enjoy them.  People do not know how to relate to a grown single man accompanying a matriarch.  When I step away it becomes easy, but I cannot.  Women are women, and like Donald Trump would assert, they at times are irrational.  Former Subway spokespeople enjoy child pornography and having sex with minors.  In the current Condition of America, we simply are defined by a mockingly ignorant, "He said, she said."  Our feeble gray matter can't assemble a conclusion, because we have no opinions upon which to draw.  Everything is okay.  I'm okay, you're okay, but we're not.  It is not okay for everything to be okay.  We are conditioned to say everything is okay, because it lessens the anxiety of contesting to the accumulation of wealth by America's and thus the world's oligarchy.  We are conditioned by eating mislabeled food, drinking poisoned water, being irradiated by microwaves, given cancer, and told to sit down and shut up.  Our submission is demanded.  Think not for one second that we are free in America.  We are not.  Other than my submission being demanded by my emotionally frustrated, malnourished, sarcastic mother, my submission is demanded by the world's largest military machine at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  This is not a delusion.  The upkeep of the world's most capable fighting force is no walk in the park, especially when the 82nd Airborne is involved.  How you may ask is my submission demanded?  My submission is demanded by my urban environment's deluge with refuse from a military industrial complex.  Fayetteville after all is a military industrial complex.  It encompasses the nation's largest military base, and it encompasses industry.  We as citizens of Fayettenam live in the refuse of this complex, and the bulk of this refuse is elusive, invisible, harmless infrasound.  [sic] Reference Vladimir Gavreau.  This is not a delusion, but like the majority of corrupt evil things in America, it is spun.  Ashton Carter.  Did you know this man is the current Secretary of State in the Obama Administration?  I did not.  I had to Google it.  There has been no news about this man and his position, just like there is no news about any issues that deserve review by the American populace.  Newspeak doesn't work that way.  In l984 the real news was reported, and Big Brother changed it to suit his political motives.  This is what we have in America today, and it is frightening.  I was emasculated for not having washed out the slop bucket and garbage can leaving the smell of spoiled food inside and outside our meager middle-classed home.  Daily my submission and subsequent emasculation is required to believe the lies that circulate around me in the media.  Daily my submission and subsequent emasculation is required to ignore the raging war machine less than ten miles from our meager middle-classed home.  The earth shakes, the windows rattle, the aircraft strafe, and the two-mile-long war trains are assembled leaving my emotions confused and upset.  While the pro-military propaganda is rife, if you choose to ignore the fighting military presence subconsciously it begins to rage against you.  In other American cities mysterious daunting aircraft do not fly above the treeline between Fayetteville Regional Airport and Pope Field.  I have yet to discover the nature of each T-tailed, turbo-prop and jet, with an American flag painted on their tail.  I assume it is one of the forty odd Generals employed at Ft. Bragg going out for coffee.  I don't know which is worse, this never ending, paranoid, military machismo, or the corruption of our local medical establishment.  It is common knowledge that Ft. Bragg with its fifty-two thousand soldiers is ripe for the picking of local connoisseur professional people.  We have an ever-expanding Cape Fear Valley conglomerate which overprescribes, bilks, and kills local residents each year.  I know this because my aunt is a nurse in an area that has empathetic and professional health care.  They are not only concerned with the dollar as they seem to be here.  It is a shite state of affairs.  As I roam through the stores of Fayetteville I only can tell myself I am in a horrible dream and that these aging people never could allow a stranger to exist.  This is what capitalism is.  It is every man for himself.  Fuck your neighbor.  Never have I agreed with it, and at no other point in time in American history has our chosen socioeconomic system failed so drastically.  It has.  Capitalism has failed.  We no longer are free, and there only is anarchy to come.  America long is overdue for a revolution.  

Professor Emeriti

I'm not sure why I am getting angry.  I don't get angry very often.  I got angry yesterday, and I know why.  I have become a laid back person.  It is easier by far.  The American South, with its newly discovered Confederacy Predicament, still in the year 2015 demands your submission.  The neighborhood in which I live demands my submission frequently.  This week was one requiring my submission.  Emotionally and psychologically what I am doing is not supported.  I feel antagonized.  I have discovered that my musical interests wholly are not supported.  This notion is reinforced each and every time I post a music video of my own creation.  I am using the term "music video" loosely.  What I really mean is a poorly shot video of me playing musical instruments.  It varies from  Hammond organ, to jazz trumpet, to contemporarily classical piano.  When I write about my other interests including cooking and landscaping, people are interested and intrigued.  I guess they can connect.  When I post music videos the ensuing animosity is palpable.  I will admit I do not make preparations.  Having been a professional musician a majority of my life, always I am prepared to perform music.  It is why you prepare.  Years of music study and practice can yield such a thing.  I know and can perform music well enough to be employable when there is opportunity.  Those opportunities are scarce where I am living.  Sour grapes. My interests are not supported, because there are few that are doing what I am doing.  People can't relate.  I have a flurry of Cowtown friends who do relate.  Most of them are professional musicians.  I follow their activities, because I have worked with most of them when I lived in Columbus.  I feel a tangible connection with each and every "Friend" I have on Facebook who are musicians.  Conversely I have one musician friend in Fayetteville.  Instead what I feel is cold and blatant animosity.  I feel this because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  I have not made any attempt to make my musical presence known.  There is no point, because I have not made my personal presence known.  If I did, it would be of no consequence, because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  When I moved back home to help my mother with our house, repeatedly she would tell me, "You can't start at the top."  Start at the top?  I have been playing piano professionally on ships since 2002.  By far it is the most challenging music job ever I have had.  My collegiate years of study in composition are what allowed me to excel at this job.  The piano music is so poorly arranged and copied, that one needs compositional skills to figure out what to play.  I excel at this.  Previously I completed all course work necessary for the completion of a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Composition at The Ohio State University.  While this never was "the top," I was not reliant upon society to dictate my musical success.  I was creative, prosperous, successful, and scholarly, all because this is what I desired.  I created my own musical reality, and one can do this in an academic environment.  It is its purpose.  Academia is a nurturing hypothetical place in which to prepare for real life.  Many are privileged enough to stay there the entirety of their careers.  It is a prized and coveted job being a college teacher.  Many are not good teachers at all.  Then there is this thing called the "Professor Emeritus."  Recently when I out of curiosity looked at the music faculty roster at The University of South Carolina, the professors with whom I interacted while working on a Masters Degree in Jazz and Commercial music now were labeled "Professor Emeritus."  They are pretty old, old enough to have retired from an active teaching load, but they still retained their professorly-like status.  Each name clearly still was on the faculty roster, although no longer were they employed to teach a full course load.  It must be like heaven.  Teaching college really is like heaven, but Professor Emeritus?  Holy @#$% Batman!  Thus begins my nonexistent loathing of the inequality of academia, and the inequality of the American South.  With the emerging presidential race and and the colorful hopeful Republican candidates, and the newly emerging Confederate Predicament as a result of racial unrest in America, clearly it has revealed itself to me that a small clique of old money socialites control the South.  I do not fit in, because I am an artist.  No one seems to get what I do, and if they did it would not be politically correct to support it.  I have not made my presence known.  In other words I have not "come out."  I have not put on my ball gown and paraded in front of other cliquish old money socialites in attempt to sell myself.  I couldn't give a shit.  I pursue music, because it is the vocation I chose.  I trained.  I studied.  I produce, and why in Donald Trump's hair would my status in any way be governed by a small-minded clique of old school money?  It is.  Fully I believe that these people may be capable of understanding art, but that ability by the nature of the American South is subordinate to society.  Art exists only because of society.  Excuse me?  In the height of the Classical Era the nobility was prudent enough to recognize, understand, and appreciate art.  Hence Nikolaus l, Prince Esterhazy employed Papa Haydn.  Fayetteville has Dr. Menno Pennink.  I have on a very small scale pondered the idea of making my musical presence known to the retired Dr. Pennink.  I am a worthy jazz pianist, and I remember they mentioned an interest in jazz music at a Capitol Room concert.  What's the point?  I have no interest in society.  Always since college I have fancied gaining a professorship in a New England music school donning a Harris Tweed jacket and smoking a pipe.  Still the image is appealing to me, but you must make yourself known.  America is a very small place.  It is evidenced by the flounders who have risen from the bottom supporting a Confederate flag.  It is a predicament, one's national heritage versus civil equality.  

Prostate Health and Cancer Wealth

It would seem urology has come to prize results of a simple PSA blood test.  With only one visit and a small sample of my blood, all ready a prostate biopsy was on the table.  Huh?  The primary impetus for my visit, either lower abdominal or pelvic discomfort was of no interest.  It would seem the radiologist's findings of both a CT and MRI scan were of more interest.  He liked to play with numbers opting to write out the "normal" PSA results for specific age groups of men.  The list of other non-cancerous things which can cause a rise in PSA levels also was not of interest.  Only this number, a simple number, was instigating a biopsy of my deeply embedded prostate gland.  Three doctors later, a surgical hernia repair, a round of Ciprofloxacin, and a colonoscopy in addition to the aforementioned CT and MRI scans, the only thing of interest to the urologist was an elevated PSA level from blood drawn at his own clinic.  He did scrutinize my film, and not to my surprise were the results "unremarkable."  There were no tumors.  His own hand felt my prostate gland.  A streetwalking male prostitute economically is comparable.  Asymptomatic.  There were no tumors.  My prostate was not hardened.  It mildly was enlarged, as I have known for several years.  I have been dealing with the consequences urologically.  Saw Palmetto seems to help a bit.  Stress does not.  I have no symptoms.  My sex drive is normal as is my performance.  I have no problems urinating.  My stream is strong.  My erections are palpable.  Other than being overworked, I believe my prostate is fine.  Give it a rest.  Urology has come to prize results of a simple PSA blood test.  Ten thousand men a year die of prostate cancer, and most of them are elderly.  It can be difficult to discern the normal process of aging and related disease from cancer.  Cancer is more lucrative.  Fifty percent of the people diagnosed with cancer didn't have it.  I am all for early detection, usually because cancer in the prostate gland is slow growing.  Get it early, so early in fact that you will begin worrying about it for the rest of your life.  Your life could begin to revolve around your prostate.  Let's worship the royal order of the prostate.  Let me lie prostrate, while you insert a sonographic probe into my anus followed by a spring loaded needle.  Good times.  It is likely to get infected, the rectal insertion point.  Take some more Ciprofloxacin. Three different doctors later, a finger in my anus that lasted a second or two, not long enough to deduce anything, and almost no physical examination.  Doctors don't practice medicine they way they used to.  Common sense.  A good exam.  Three doctors later and not one of them physically examined my area of discomfort.  When I was diagnosed with my first umbilical hernia in midtown New York city, the African-American doctors examined me.  He pushed his fingers into the tear in my muscle and told me to cough. It was painful, and he apologized.  This is how you diagnose a hernia without an CT scan.  When you self pay without Obamacare, you receive a sixty percent discount.  That means you pay forty percent of the price charged to an insurance provider.  The insurance provider receives sixty percent of your payment for medical attention.  Sixty percent.  Do we really need this system?  Of course not.  This is why my visit to a urologist resulted in a $105.00 blood test that cost $65.00 at Health Works.  This is why a biopsy preemptively is necessary, to pay for his home in Vass, North Carolina.  No longer does it seem to be about medicine, solving a problem, and enjoying the success of your arrived upon wisdom.  It's all about the money, Jerry.  Cancer in America has become all about the money.