American Lunacy

Gun control seems to be a major topic in the news.  Our current President understandably seems preoccupied with unnecessary gun violence during his last year in office.  It is a fitting concern and thus ideal with which to wrangle.  First I must say I received notification from the North Carolina Department of Revenue today. Those two ominous letters marked with "Private and Confidential" were no surprise.  For a great while this North Carolina agency has been querying my income tax status.  Although I have been living around the world in cruise ships, I have kept my vehicles "garaged" at my parent's home here.  They sit for up to six months at a time.  (You can't drive a truck on a cruise ship.)  Only once did I ever use it, when I drove to Port Canaveral to embark the Monarch of the Seas.  Instead of sitting at my parent's home, it sat in the cruise terminal parking lot for four days at a time.  On embarkation day I would escape the ship long enough to drive around in the most redneck town in Florida I ever have seen.  I grew up around rednecks, and I am not a biggot.  There was something about the irony of leaving my leisure industry job and entering the realm of leisure living poverty.  That is water under the bridge.  After rebutting the NCDOR's claims for many years with concrete tax knowledge and a judge's understanding of domicile and residency, today I received official notification from them that they had determined I was not required to file state tax returns for the years 2011 and 2012.  Previously with the same package of materials consisting of federal transcripts and Florida W2's, I had escaped the looming prospect of a lawsuit suing me for nonpayment of North Carolina state income taxes.  I believe I have sent it to them at least four separate times.  Never have I received an official reply exonerating my supposedly intentional avoidance of North Carolina tax debt, until today.  Word.  Gun control seems to be a viable issue for our current outgoing president, and as usual there is little substantial information about it.  It has been reported he has enacted another executive order affecting gun control in some way. As many pundits have responded, "There is not much he can do."  The NRA may be America's largest and most powerful lobby.  It seems we like our guns, and we want to keep them.  I agree with our Constitution that because a "Well-Armed Militia" has been and may again be one of America's biggest assets, we as American citizens have a right to defend ourselves and thus own guns.  It wasn't that long ago that the people were required to take up arms and defend themselves, their families, and their property.  It will happen again.  The issue is a rather new phenomenon, and President Obama is doing his best to confront its cause through personal emotional channels.  It is an interesting approach.  Because juvenile gun violence in particular both is startling and upsetting, it may make it more difficult to discern its cause.  Obviously if mentally challenged people are allowed to possess firearms, bad things can happen.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  I will repeat this.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  (I typed that sentence in record time, because I am practicing my word-processing skills.)  When you blog you are thinking up what you are going to say on the fly, therefore I type more slowly.  When I am able to engage my brain with merely typing copy, it is easier to blaze.  I don't have to think about the content of the sentence.  I just type it like an assembly-line working builds a particular product.  (By the way I personally would like to thank the North Carolina Department of Revenue for reviewing my information and agreeing with my insistence, that I was not responsible for taxes here!)  I have spent a long time on the F.B.I. watch list.  Evidently those few thousand dollars in delinquent state income tax merited continual scrutiny with expensive Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and U.S. Customs and Border protection planes.  That or else they  must believe I am growing weed in the woods behind our house.  I used to spend a great deal of time in those woods clearing fallen pine trees, poison sumac, grape and wisteria vines, and extraneous brush.  Unlike the majority of urban-dwelling middle class America, I enjoy riding trail bikes.  We have been fortunate enough to live adjacent to a large swath of woods behind an elementary school.  Since we moved here in l978 I have created an array of motorcycle trails that have proven to be cathartic, consoling, and enjoyable.  That changed when drunk one night I fired a single round of .32 caliber pistol ammo into the air attempting to discourage future arsonists from burning these particular woods.  It seems the persons living at the bottom of the woods having come home from some event were making a bit of late-night noise.  Henceforth the soldier living at the bottom of my steepest trail took a dislike to me.  While there was no way the summoned law enforcement officers could have found our home in the pitch black darkness at 1:30 a.m., they did.  I met them happily in the middle of our back yard, and giddily told them that juvenile delinquents had been shooting off fireworks.  It was true, and they believed me.  That late night marked a milestone for this probable trained Green Beret.  I don't know if he was a member Fort Bragg's elite Special Forces, but he certainly didn't like me and my single shot of .32 caliber small arms ammo fired into the air.  There have been several drive by shootings in Vanstory Hills, and I witnessed one.  It was about the same time one evening when my mother was away, and I heard six shots in slow succession that only could have been large caliber rounds.  They were within a city block.  Fayetteville is a violent city, and people are murdered daily.  It was a relief when he, his wife, and his annoying dogs moved away.  No longer do I have to worry about having to condone my ax work.  Ironically as much as I enjoy swinging an axe for physical exercise, a used chainsaw has made its way into our garage.  The last batch of trees that fell across my motorcycle trails was too large for me to cut through.  ( I realize I am ending this sentence with a preposition, but I am too fatigued to figure out how to reword.)  You get the point.  I like the physical pleasure of swinging an axe, and clearing the brush and trees in these woods has been a source of pleasure.  At one time it looked like a city park, and only locals could enjoy it like a Pacific Ocean Park surfer.  Today these woods are neglected, because I spent the entirely of the last year fixing our front yard.  That will be another story.  America is run by industrialists.  Mostly it is run by the railroads.  They are an unregulated monopoly, and before long there will be more freight than people.  (or there will be dead people in freight cars, which probably are there now, Mexicans, I mean).  It was not that long ago persecuted and condemned Jews were transported in freight cars to concentration camps, which in actuality were gas chambers.  We can have some comfort for the moment that transporting newly found shale oil in the Midwest is more lucrative than transporting Jews.  (It's a good thing Cheney is out of the White House)  Either people will be extinct, they will live underground, or they will live in mansions in the sky courtesy of Sierra Nevado Corp.  They can take their pick of a number of rocket-based carriers that are sprouting each year.  I do not think humans will live in space.  They only reason we would want to live in space is because the earth has been destroyed.  It will happen one day, but the expedience of that outcome is in our hands.  Why industrialists continue to kill the planet is beyond me.  It is the way the world has become without Christianity.  That campaign, that far-right, extreme Republican Fox News contingency only is evil.  I didn't think so at first, but it is the only explanation for the inexplicable and uncanny illogic of the world today.  The attack on Christianity began in this decade, and it is the reason why billionaire, adolescent, entrepreneurs carelessly are working on projects that are meaningless to our survival as a race.  We will not live in space.  We need to learn to drive better ourselves, before we allow technology to drive for us.  We do not needs aerial drones delivering our parcels.  A lack of Christian responsibility is what has spawned this lunacy.  Certainly we do not educate our populace anymore.  Certainly we do not care about engraining in our youth moral or ethical value.  That would mean Wall Street would have to be honest.  Watching this iconic institution falter with a complete and total lack of moral or ethical value should be a lesson.  Chaos is not that far away, and there is a reason why Americans want their guns. 

A State of Confusion

If I didn't know better I would think God is doing His best too assure the utter failure of mankind.  When He looks down at His earth there can be no similarity to Christianity at least in America.  While most of us understand America was founded upon unscrupulous murderous imperialism, the country has done well at saving face.  It has been the big "Razzle Dazzle," and it continues.  The hypocrisy is rife, so rife that promulgating it seems more wearisome than telling the truth.  Since I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in l985, never have I felt much allegiance to America.  Beginning teacher salary then was around $18,000.00 a year, not enough for me to start a family.  Today teacher pay in North Carolina is the second lowest in the nation, and both North and South Carolina are rife with defense dollars.  There is money sprinkling everywhere from national defense.  Our country spends more time preparing for war than educating our youth.  In this preparation of war defense contractors are getting wealthy, just like the Wall Street cronies who continue to pilfer our meager salaries.  It is necessary Hillary Clinton not be elected president, because she is a Wall Street insider.  I am not sure always she has been, but she is now.  A guest on Charlie Rose's program last night summed it up perfectly.  The former Secretary of State has a dismal record of public service, but this blog entry is not about her.  It is about the American debacle, formerly which has been the "American Dream."  The last decade of technological advance has led our country down a path of human lunacy.  If a fraction of a percentage of the money belonging to the elite were spent on America's proper and necessary ideals, the world's problems would be solved.  Instead America gambles.  The rich are gamblers, and they enjoy their game so much that the economic infrastructure of our feeble country has become compromised at the expense of the common man.  I do not agree with this or "the" lottery.  It is the quintessential metaphor of ridiculousness.  It is lunacy handing uneducated Americans millions of dollars, that should be spent repairing our infrastructure.  It is that old "Razzle Dazzle" in the fullest sense.  It is a ruse to keep the schmucks distracted from their meager lives.  Give the common a bit of hope in the face of our constant and continuing rape and pillage by corporate America. The ConditionofAmerica is so satirical, that longer can I believe it.  How can anyone live in a state when your existence is a farce?  Comedy.  It is difficult, because the Christian part of me still yearns to do the right thing.  I drink too much and I lust, but still I wake up compelled to try to do the right thing.  It no longer works, and I spend the majority of my day trying to forget the Protestant Work Ethic.  It is why I drink, because reality is too unfathomable.  There is no logical way to discern a trace of Christianity via our traditional avenues.  That is because the media was the first prisoner, and the Nazi's captured it first.  More to cum. 

The Irrefutable, Irrevocable, Irregardless, Decaprio Debacle

I know irregardless is not a word.  "The Revenant" not really is a movie.  It is a self-indulgence, and one not worth seeing.  Like "Star Wars" they have your money.  Instead see "Cold Mountain," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," or "A Man Called Horse."  In each of these films you will observe a seasoned old-school director making art on film.  In "The Revenant" you will see juvenile and inexperienced digital rendering which has no connection with humanity.  What do I mean by humanity?  Some reviews have stated "The Revenant" is alien.  It is, so why confuse humanity with aliens?  This should have been a Western.  There is a tradition in film making for Westerns, and marking your territory with extraneous, meaningless, yet potentially beautiful images did not suffice.  There is a way to tell stories, and this attempt fails.  I was confused most of the time.  Why was Dicaprio calling this aged Eskimo man son?  If you are lucky half way in you will realize this film both is camp and cheese.  If it ever is seen again it will be while you are drunk.  Like "Rocky Horror" maybe you will dress up like characters which were forgetful.  There were no spiffy costumes.  There was no clever dialog.  The sound quality was piss pour, and barely could you understand anything that was said.  A story can be told with sound, but "The Revenan"t proves a story should not be told with beautiful images alone.  Go to an art gallery, or more appropriately play a Sony Playstation video game.  That is what most movies have become today.  Beautiful images with no concept or origin in humanity are meaningless eye candy.  Without trying to philosophize how and why "The Revenant" fails, it would be prudent simply to say it is a massive directorial failure.  While some of the images could be considered beautiful, it was a B list cast (other than Dicaprio).  A slate of heavy weight supporting actors could have helped but would have exceeded their budget.  As usual the director tries to make up for the lacking pieces with digital renderings that look amateur.  With the bear attack the movie became a comedy.  The camera shots are illogical.  Alejandro Inarritu, like so many other pop culture directors who ignore their vocational tradition and lineage, adopts the ever-popular 'Gollum' perspective.   As we gaze at his images there is no rhyme or reason to where we are viewing the his action.  Like the slew of other 'Gollum' perspective films, his camera has no connection with human perspective.  Why not market it to aliens?  Mindlessly like Televisa it meanders like a drunken sailor.  The majority of the film stares up from ants.  My neck got tired as did my psyche from looking up all the time.  Why must we look up?  Why must we look up the nostrils of medicre performances?  Are we looking up at the self-proclaimed greatness of Inarritu?  Why continually must we look up through his trees?  What is there?  Nothing.  His penis trees are more interesting, and yet they mean nothing.  None of Inarritu's images mean anything.  God is insulted, as He is by the entire right wing conspiracy misrepresenting His goodness and beauty turning it into fright.  Why are those assholes on top of mountains during the winter anyway?  It is not very smart.  The entire film is not very smart.  It is dull, and it pained every sense in my body to endure it until I began to laugh.  Then I couldn't wait to get out to make fun of it.  Go watch Cold Mountain, The Outlaw Josey Wales, or A man Called Horse.  Listen to the beauty and understanding of a Jerry Fielding score.  You're time will be better spent.  

The Irreverent

By the way I am so disillusioned.  You know my love for the Dash 8 and the Dash 9.  [sic] Grunge music as a product of the l990's is an artistic asset to humanity and American pop culture.  Ironically it is possible grunge music was a necessary byproduct of both the Dash 8 and the Dash 9.  It seems classical composers suffer from a variety of mental disorders.  Possibly Kurt Cobain, an inhabitant of the Pacific Northwest known for its logging industry, didn't respond well to the infrasonic pollution created by AC traction.  Fully I understand Norfolk Southern opted out of the AC traction movement, while Union Pacific and CSX-T invested in this newly created technology.  Untested.  Unstudied.  Unregulated.  Fully I understand that both the Dash 8 and the Dash 9 do not utilize AC traction motors and thus power inverters, until now.  They are the most powerful DC traction freight locomotives in existence.  With a 16 cylinder turbo-charged diesel four stroke engine, horsepower of between 4000 to 4400 is their mark.  If that isn't insult enough to the population, in an attempt to promulgate their aging assets GE is recommending that their fleet of Dash 8's and Dash 9's be "upgraded" to AC traction.  Not only are they an infrasonic nightmare, now they can be an electromagnetic nightmare as well.  Cheers.  It won't be long before the our meager earth reaches the event horizon of electronic pollution and disappears into a giant black hole with nary a blip.  Maybe then GE will realize after we are all dead and the planet is destroyed.  I guess they have some great plan of how they are going to relocate on God's chosen planet before the apocalypse.  Maybe that is why our federal government is handing Sierra Nevada Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars in non-bidded contracts through the Department of Defense to create a network in space.  Maybe NASA has found God's chosen earth-like planet, and the powers-at-be are trying to figure out how to get there leaving the earth behind to decay in her own human-created filth.  It's kind of like globalization having left America behind to decay in her own human-created filth, until China succumbed to her own unique indigenous infrastructural problems.  (Such as massive pollution worse than America)  We stunk her up, so what's next?  
    

Dashing Through the Snow, Snow

Dear Dash 8 and Dash 9,

       These ephemeral words certainly did not apply to the holiday season of 2015.  In fact in retrospect it has been reported that the year 2015 was the hottest in history.  (the hottest in history)  I mean the history of recorded temperatures.  Each of our subsequent years has usurped the previous year in temperature.  It will continue.  Maybe that ensuing heat could be quelled if the dashing stopped.  I don't mean, "Dashing through the snow."  That would have been well appreciated.  Our weather has developed schizophrenia.  I should correct myself.  Our weather has developed bipolar disorder.  There is no logic to its 180 degree swings in seeming season.  One day or week it is summer and the next it is winter.  It seems our planet and thus our weather is suffering the same ills as human beings.  It is struggling, and its antagonists don't much care.  I don't think they have much of an opinion at all about global warming except that conspiratorially it does not exist.  Global warming?  It sounds, well, like the earth is smitten with something.  She has been seduced with nary a realization that most of the man-made industrial activity in the world is not good for her.  Global warming is not the right term.  Planetary meltdown.  The word meltdown is much more accurate, because it refers to other both manmade and natural disasters.  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl both come to mind, and like everything else in world history has been swept out of human consciousness.  Big Brother (I mean the creators of that man-made industrial activity) would rather you forget about the potential consequences of their negligence and greed.  A meteor also could hit the earth, but the chances of that occurring before we melt the planet ourselves is rare.  Dashing through the snow.  It is such a simple lyric.  I could be happy if the dashing stopped.  We could continue to sled, snowboard, and ski.  We would be fine, but the dashing has to stop.  Dash, dash, dash.  Oh, Dasher!  Why must you sit idly, like right now, doing nothing except heating the earth? I observed it again.  It occurred the entire two weeks of the Christmas break.  Dashing.  What is the point of burning fuel in seventy degree heat?  Is it because of the necessity of a cooling system?  I think I recall dashers do not use antifreeze.  There is some other method for keeping them from getting hot.  Snow would be good, but then they would need to be kept warm.  It is a predicament.  I, like Big Brother (I mean the creators of that man-made industrial activity), do not have an illuminated opinion about why the dashers must dash all the freaking time.  That is because their dashing is not based upon any theoretical premise.  Purely it is negligence or laziness.  "I don't feel like going through that dashing routine, cappy, so let's leave her running."  Consequence?  The entire two week Christmas holiday was overwrought with dashing. Screw the dashing.    The Dash 8 and the Dash 9 are the earth's enemies.  1990's technology does not adhere to the current standards of the E.P.A., but who cares?  Coal-fired power plants are under scrutiny.  Why not GE?  Because Big Brother runs the melting planet.  Can Hillary Clinton effectively yield the power of  Aunty Entity in America?   "Who runs Bartertown?"  MASTERBLASTER!  Embargo on. 

Let's Be Cool, Boy

I'm pretty exhausted.  I don't sleep well on the weekends, because a particular railroad switches trains on Sunday afternoon.  All day, and night.  Two Dash 8's toil.  I am talking about traction dating from the early l990's.  Certainly their emission standards are not in compliance with those established by the Environmental Protection Agency in the year 2016.  Some rail providers have begun to use GenSet locomotives in accordance with new EPA standards.  They have several diesel prime movers than engage only when their power is needed.  It very much is like a Honda motorcycle carburetor which only uses as much fuel/air mixture as it needs.  I can't remember its name.  There are other modern diesel locomotives which make attempts to pollute less.  The Dash 8 is not on the list.  Formerly this particular railroad made use of SD-60's when switching trains.  Why the change, other than the Dash 8's are like the devil himself?  They pollute not only the air but the air.  Did I say polluted the air with hydrofluorocarbons?  They do this.  We all know like what smells diesel exhaust.  Did I say also they pollute the air, something we cannot see but is crucial to human existence?  Our air gets overlooked.  There are world summits on how to stop the warming of the earth, but no one pinpoints the causes.  No one will come out and say that the airline industry, the rail industry, and the wireless telecommunication industry largely are responsible for global warming.  Why?  Think about it.  Yes coal-burning power plants account for a large percentage of emissions, but they are not the only culprits.  Coal is cheap, but it relies upon the rail industry to move its product.  Double whammy.  Let's pollute our air, twice.  If you believe the television advertisements you would think the railroads are as green as Kermit the Frog.  Bah.  They move so much more freight on a gallon of fuel.  They have put the truckers out of business, just as Apple and internet streaming services have put the record industry out of business.  Things dramatically have changed in America.  Not only did five trillion dollars disappear during the financial crisis of 2015, the balance of power has shifted.  Truly it is a new millennium, and no one much is paying attention.  Our air is polluted with gaseous toxins, but that is not all.  Also it is polluted with invisible sound.  Yes, sound is invisible, but also it is inaudible.  Sound below 20Hz is inaudible to the human ear.  If you can't see it, and you can't hear it, it doesn't exist, right?  Ask the Dash 8.  Ask any of the artists from the Grunge Era who complained of so many things.  Take Kurt Cobain for example.  No one expressly ever consented that the Union Pacific railroad may have contributed to his demons.  Musicians are sensitive to sound, but sound you cannot hear?  Come on.  Lobbyists have been using this argument since the inception of infrasonic pollution.  When I become president of the United States, I will sanction Diesel Down Day.  On this day every diesel engine in the country will be powered down.  Every diesel electric locomotive operating in America will stop bleating for one whole day.  They difference will be startling.  Then I will sanction Jet Turbine Spin Down Day.  Every jet engine operating in America will stop.  Then I will sanction a national day of humanity.  All wireless communications will cease for one day.  The earth will cool.  We all will be cool boy.  

Michael Omartian or "The Martian?"

Selling vintage skateboards during summer is not a wise business decision.  Selling vintage skateboards during the dead of winter is.  Chatting up films during the summer didn't seem like a wise business decision, or at least I have not seen much publicity for new films this year, until now.  The Academy Awards are forthcoming on February 28th.  It would have been nice to have seen some promotion for new films of 2015, but television is a dying medium.  I don't watch during prime time.  I watch late night.  That being said I have resumed my movie-watching practices recently after an aberrant wisdom tooth was removed from my jaw. Accompanying it on the way out was a badly decayed molar destroyed by a resorption cavity created by the offending wisdom tooth.  It almost was perpendicular to the molar, and the cavity completely was disguised inside the otherwise apparently healthy molar.  Dentists failed to diagnose this with X-Rays.  (Note to self.  Have full X-Rays taken every year.)  My abdominal issues completely have not subsided, but they are getting better.  I think it may be an ulcer.  A colonoscopy doesn't look into the small intestine, where mine may be hiding.  At least my bowel tells me this from time to time.  I should stop drinking.  Although my music studio is taking shape, diesel trains carrying jet fuel to Fort Bragg disrupt my concentration from time to time.  Last night was such a time, so I opted to see The Martian.  I did not know Ridley Scott was its director, and he is one of my favorites.  The movie artfully was shot, but something was lacking making the movie an Oscar contender at least for best film.  What was it?  As I watched it became clear the dialog was simplistic at best.  There was not much dialog, and when the actors spoke starkly it was colloquial.  These were not theater-trained actors, and any remnants of the theater were absent.  Instead a new crop of seeming millennial actors was employed unfamiliar and bland as your neighbor next door.  Casting Harry Dunne as the head of NASA was a mistake.  From the onset of the movie the tone, like Spectre, was dark, stagnant, vacuous, and bleak.  With all of the beautiful images gracing the big screen, this was disappointing.  It was like real life.  Aren't the movies supposed to provide more?  The movie was neo-epic in scope, and once the tasks became apparent the plot progressed quickly.  I left the theater not understanding how the hexadecimal system helped Matt Damon communicate via a still frame camera from the 90's.  There were bits and pieces of other space movies, but I never felt Ridley Scott.  It was because of the script.  It was not much.  The words spoken were inane, not clever, and boring.  The faces of the actors were forgettable.  The Martian still is sticking in my mind, and that is a good thing.  They had an opportunity, and they seized it.  It will not make history.