Black Power or Superpower?

Wake up and smell the coffee.  America no longer is a superpower. I can watch Charlie Rose and listen to each and every guest regurgitate, how America is the leader of the world.  I chuckle.  I chuckle, because a nation with no monetary power cannot be a superpower.  No nation with trillions of dollars in debt (although to whom I honestly do not know) can be a superpower.  We are a cheap whore.  Is it flattering to be India and China's whore?  There must be a joke here.  A Jewish American Princess believes "cooking" and "fucking" are cities in China.  Isn't this a bit of whom we are?  America.  A bit of an overstated, narcissist, bully trying to police the world?  No.  There is a reason we are in the Middle East, but do you know what it is?  Does anyone?  Poppies anyone?  Bueller?  Natural resources?  Bueller?  America is a used up whore, and the pimps are parading around in mink coats and feathers in their hats.  Once this was Hip Hop.  Once this was "Blaxploitation."  When it was clear, when it was understandable, it was cool.  Now it is just a facade of invisible factions, ghosts, battling for control, like the shallow gods of Greek mythology.  America is not a superpower.  Why would be considered such a thing?  It is not possible (Republican) [sic] to believe that because once we were so still we are now.  IBM is extinct, just as are the rest of American ideals that once represented a great nation.  Greatness no longer is a tangible quality of America.  If it is, what qualifies us?  What have we done to exhibit greatness, leadership, or virtue?  President Obama was successful plotting the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and it was good.  Possibly it is the best thing America has done in sixteen years.  The list of inexorable ills that define America are more prevalent.  Wall Street.  The Iraq War.  Halliburton.  Exxon.  BP.  The list of America's platitudes is defunct.  We reached the moon, but so did the Soviets.  We solved the Cold War to see the Soviet Union deteriorate into mob corruption.  We created ISIS.  We created ISIS.  Let's get one thing straight.  America no longer is a superpower, so I wish we would stop saying it.  A superpower is defined by economics, economic gain.  ECONOMIC GAIN.  I don't mean economic gain for the pimps parading around in fur coats with feathers in their hats at Bilderberg rallies.  The shallow gods of Greek technology (I mean mythology) will not inherit the earth.  The meek shall inherit the earth.  It is torture the wait, and watching them destroy our planet.  What?  My microwaves of which my fortune are made are dangerous?  Bah humbug.  This is the thought process of the mentally taxed and the demented.  It's called denial.  America is in denial.  Maybe it's good that Donald Springer is stirring the stew.  

Harnessing Your Anger

Anger is a reasonable reaction to disrespect.  Perhaps anger's volatility is a potent antidote capable of dissolving illogic and neurosis.  Perhaps anger's volatility should be used as a vaccination against ensuing dementia.  When one's only contacts in tandem spew forth contradictory statements is it only a plea for their own well being?  Perhaps when you are struggling so are your friends.  So are your relatives.  It never seems that way.  Instead it feels like purgatory.  Consequently boundaries must be created and priorities set.  Anger is a reasonable reaction to disrespect.  I don't know about the rest of America, but I know I am disrespected often.  When humanity is struggling it is overwhelming, because you are your only salvation.  Is this correct?  Is praying to God the answer? Is asking for help from one's environment and friends and family the responsibility of God?  How can God possibly fix both?  I find it highly improbable, that God will solve either of my problems.  The national defense of the United States of America takes precedence. I did not choose to live in Fayettenam.  I did not choose to live on the perimeter of what now has become the world's largest military installation.  Until BRAC decided to conglomerate Ground Forces Command underground at Fort Bragg, my situation was not as desperate.  When I reflect over my depression in the early 1990's, two disparate things were in motion.  One was the beginning of AC traction technology, of which nary a soul in our country will acknowledge, its existence or possible negative impact upon our health and environment.  I am beginning to develop a neurosis myself about the phrase "AC traction technology," yet each day when I view the webpage of Reuters, the BBC, or the Huffington Post some "new technology" has made their front page.  Does strapping a lens to an iPhone like a giant dildo really qualify as "new technology?"  The technology we need as the human race to thrive all ready has been invented, but it is stale.  IBM is stale.  International Business Machines.  Remember them?  There only used to be two technology companies, IBM and Apple.  Now there are a host of "new technologies," who purport to be the holy grails of human existence.  They are not.  Wireless communication is not a new technology.  Only is it as a common tool for the common man. Once one had to become versed in HAM radio technology to communicate wirelessly.  Once one had to learn Morse Code.  Once one had to assemble their own computer consisting of parts such as a "motherboard."  Millennials are spoiled, naive, and ignorant, and it is not their fault.  It is the fault of Capitalism with a capital "C."  When the good of the nation falls a distant second to the wealth of a few, Capitalism has failed.  I am angry, and I don't want to be angry.  I would rather go about my daily business unabated and uninterrupted, but I can't.  The nation's defense takes precedence.  For two weeks, not unlike the two weeks surrounding Christmas, I have experienced a nation coming unraveled at the seems, as our jubilant military deploy to fight ISIS.  Since widely it has not been reported, I will coin my own phrase of operation.  It shall be called, "The Nocturnal Underground Railway of Fayettenam."  Not only do munition trains hide underground at Fort Bragg, the accompanying rail networks which serve Fort Bragg both directly and indirectly choose to hide in the dark.  I know because I hear and feel them minute to minute, day to day, and week to week.  (It is going on two weeks now, and my ears would appreciate a break from the bleating of the lambs)  It is like they now they are being hauled to the slaughter.  The tinnitus created by infrasound, another tidbit that our nation will not recognize, is like a death cry.  It is humorous and entertaining to see how Capitalists twist the inhumanity of untruth into product.  If you can't sleep, it must be your mattress.  We will sell you a better one.  If you can't fuck, it must be your testosterone.  We will sell you supplements.  If you feel unhealthy, it must be because of they way you are mistreating yourself.  This is the irrational and demented thought process of the mentally taxed and the aging.  It is alarming when logic is superseded by untruth, deception, and Capitalism.  This is what evil does.  It is disguised as truth, and yet it is untrue.  It is disguised as good, and yet it is bad.  Evil is the most wily adversary, and with the decline of the United States of America and its accompanying Capitalism it is the majority.  I do not think God can help, so what good is praying to Him about it?  Isn't it futile and childish to pray to our Creator to help with some of the problems?  Do for one's self I always thought, and yet it is not possible today.  The playing field is so mine-laden and tilted, I am having trouble sanctioning life.  Is it only me that is disrespected?  The rest go to the beach for the holidays.  I take abuse.  I clean the yard and cook the meals, and yet I take abuse.  I am the problem.  If I have a health problem, it is my fault.  There is no way this chosen property or town could be the source of disease or death.  Those people who are continuing to be diagnosed with cancer at alarming rates are all at fault.  They are bad people.  This is the thought process of the mentally taxed and demented.  It is difficult, recognizing this thought process and rising above it.  It is difficult when there is no one there, and the thought of praying for assistance to God seems selfish and inane.  How possibly can God fix America?  How can God reign down on the evil inherent in modern Capitalism and stop it?  Possibly the answers are snow and ice and rain.  When it snows and freezes the tyranny stops for a few days or a week.  Is it because airplanes no longer can fly?  When it rains buckets and the earth becomes drenched in the life-giving properties of water, it stops.  Is it because manmade ills cannot penetrate?  Is it the weather that will be the judge and jury?  Not if we control it.  

Donald Springer

It should be no surprise.  Trump is a wannabe TV celebrity.  It is surprising it took this long for his presidential campaign to descend into afternoon tabloid television.  Tabloid television is where it began.  Enter the former mayor turned talk show host.  All of the pretense and propaganda cannot change reality.  America has been doing this since George W., lying about reality.  At least Trump rallies are exposing the true core of America.  They did it during abolition. Why not now?  It should be no surprise when the first murder occurs.  I mean the fourteenth or twentieth.  Just because short-penised ex-security guard cops are acting out their childhood oppression by killing folk doesn't mean they get to steal the show.  There will be a murder soon at a Trump rally, and who will take the fall?  It is great tabloid television.  With Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffet running the country and our media, it should be no surprise their personal profits take precedence over the integrity of America and her governance.  Word.  

Pseudonyms

The recent film "The Revenant," which may become the most pretentious and juvenile of all time, fittingly cries out for a nickname for its director.  "I have it Jim!"  "NOSFERITTU"  
(This is a clever symbiosis of Inarritu and nosferatu.)  My second choice is, and most probably the more fitting seeing as George Lopez would call Inarritu this himself, "Beanerittu!"  (Get it?  A 'Beaner' is slang for a Mexican."  Inarritu is Mexican.  "BEANERITTU" is possibly the best nickname ever devised for a Hollywood personality.  To think that the bulk of his purpose in the film "The Revenant" was to depict the most realistic and vicious bear attack ever filmed....   Well that is a high moral purpose.  I'm sure God is very happy about that.  "Well Him, I guess we have another beanerittu."  (noun for flop.)  Thank you and goodnight.  

Our Puritan Roots

With my ears whistling madly and pollen wafting onto my hard contact lenses, Miles Davis pines away on his and Gil Even's seminal recording of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess."  My Nakamichi CR1-A, unlike the cassette decks for sale on eBay, still is functional.  I purchased it new possibly from Stereo Sound Systems on MacPherson Church Road.  Almost thirty years later I have no issues with its 'belts.'  The repair techs on them internets would have you believe moving the earth is as difficult as repairing a nakamichi CR1-A cassette deck.  The minimum they want to charge is $300.00, approximately five times what you will pay for the deck used today.  $300.00?  That is a steep bench fee with no knowledge of what actually is ailing the deck.  It has two rubber belts and an idler wheel, which evidently stretch and quit working.  I ordered these belts at a cost of $40.00.  It seemed a bit high, but from the hubris they should be OEM replacement belts of the highest quality.  I guess this is why the original Nakamichi decks work so reliably and for so long, until the belts slip.  My original deck is playing right now Miles Davis' "Porgy and Bess," and it sounds amazing.  This deck is of importance to me, because while I was finishing up what was left of my doctoral studies I used it to record CD's from The Ohio State University's music library.  A good friend of mine and Phd Rob Taylor was manning the desk in the "Media Center."  He bent the rules a little, and allowed me to check out up to four CD's each evening which I dutifully recorded unbeknownst to anyone except my damn self.  Today I have three Napa Valley cassette holders bolted together to house my collection of cutting edge contemporary classical music and jazz.  It is important to me, because although WCPE does play high quality classical music on their radio station, they do not play the breadth of the repertoire.  When they do play a string quartet is is of the romantic version.  You won't hear an Elliott Carter quarter or one of Bela Bartok.  It seems the Second Viennese School is beyond the ears of Americans, but that wouldn't take much observing what America calls music these days.  The Beatles have become an anachronism in only a few short decades.  I can't imagine what the crooning of Frank Sinatra would suggest to millennials.  Potent masculine sexuality purveyed through music with sensitivity?  Billy Bigelow is not a character American society can relate to today.  Most Broadway characters have morphed into gay, and that is not just me.  When one is unable to understand God's purpose for man and woman, and if understood implement it in a healthy way, then we turn it into a drag show.  Courting women never has been easy, and expecting virgins when you go to hell is not a realistic expectation.  Only ignorant men would believe such a thing.  Only ignorant men would pay $300.00 sight unseen to have a Nakamichi cassette deck rebuilt.  Instead I know a tech. who is willing to do the minimum to get it operational again.  As a matter of point this represents America today.  We have become "Do or Die."  "All or Nothing."  "Winner or Loser."  "Rich or Poor."  I don't get it, like I don't get most of what America has become.  When people do speak about American Popular Music, why does anyone have to be a star?  What's the harm in doing your thing moderately and casually and letting those who are interested pay attention?  Ah yes, that doesn't make money.  Who needs a hit record?  I suggest a market of moderation and ease, which doesn't require a merchant or an artist to be a "pop star."  Why do we all need to be Michael Jackson?  Why does anyone need to become "The Voice?"  How about we return to a society which values grass roots experiences that do not require monetary return from integral human creation?   Now that's a stretch.  

The Outsourcing of Oxygen

In my continuing quest for honesty and the environment, I have discovered why Major Suckage is affecting change.  It began with my sheers being sucked out of our house.  After I went to the trouble of making my own sheers for my windows, so I can sit naked inside and not be accused of being a flasher, nary do I get a slight breeze, a whisp of cool air that refreshes my tired body and mind.  A cool breeze is all I ask, and yet there is none.  When there is it is a gust laden with pine pollen.  Is it possible mankind has robbed me of one God-given anodyne, a cool breeze on a warm day?  It is possible, and it is happening today.  No one seems to care about the root causes of any of mankind's ills.  Media acts like they care and even more offensively giant corporations outright lie about their concern with the environment.  The entire "Green" movement is a sham.  It is a media-produced facade that suggests corporations are aware and making attempts to reduce emissions.  Bah hum bug.  Saying the word "green" over and over does nothing.  It certainly does not have the power to change gas mileage, a ludicrous claim CSX-T makes in their propaganda.  Conversely diesel-electric locomotives have no attributes to our environment.  Period.  Diesel-electric locomotives have no attributes to our environment.  There is nothing about them that in any way shape or form contributes to the health of our earth or our human bodies.  Conversely they pollute on a massive scale which is disguised in a "Green" campaign suggesting these mammoth heat and noise sources somehow make our lives better.  Bah hum bug.  The only lives they make better are the shareholders.  The stock market is a sham.  Conversely diesel-electric locomotives like jet planes burn oxygen at an alarming rate.  Because we can't immediately see and measure this consumption as consumers does not mean it does not exist.  Take my sheers for example.  I have been trying to figure out what could be sucking air out of our house.  The inside of a domestic home cannot contain that much oxygen.  Seeing as the intake ducts for most climate control systems are inside a home, getting fresh air into your house is a matter of diligence.  The Germans at one time began their days by opening all of the doors and windows of their homes allowing fresh air to flow in.  It is a good idea, and when the weather allows I do a similar thing.  Now it has become pollen season, and the air is laced with yellow soot.  This changes this picture somewhat.  What could be sucking air out of our house?  There is only one answer, and it is a process that requires and burns oxygen.  We all know automobiles burn oxygen, but we don't know how much.  Similarly jet planes and diesel-electric locomotives burn huge quantities of oxygen, our oxygen.  This oxygen formerly would have been for the human race and our accompanying mother nature.  (or that should be the other way around)  In previous decades before the rail industry decided they wanted to be Fortune 500 companies and make their shareholders money, this was not so much of an issue.  Truckers still were on our interstates hauling freight for a marginal profit.  Then rail decided they would launch a campaign not dissimilar to corporate outsourcing that would make shareholders money at the expense of fairly-paid laborers.  This is modern America, and I don't see it changing.  WalMart is broadcasting a television campaign suggesting their are spending billions bringing manufacturing back to America.  Do you believe it?  I can believe the scenario of "The Walking Dead" before I can believe the resurgence of American manufacturing.  One reason is America's environment has become so polluted that it is unpleasant to live here anymore.  This is proven on a daily basis by ordinary citizens taking up arms and murdering their peers.  This brings me to my point about Major Suckage.  Our bodily senses uniquely are human.  Our bodily senses uniquely are reliant upon several things in our environment.  Our bodily senses are reliant upon air to hear and to taste, electricity to see (because visible light is a frequency of the encompassing electromagnetic spectrum), and our bodily senses are reliant upon both air and electricity to feel.  I will repeat that statement.  Our ability to FEEL is reliant upon both the air around us and electricity.  Feel in my mind can be defined in several ways.  Feeling can be considered tactile or relating to touch, meaning our skin is a huge receptor of pain or pleasure.  Feeling also can be considered emotions, which are waves of electricity triggered by waves of air.  Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I am in the ballpark.  Vivaldi or other schooled composers may have described emotions as temperaments.  Sanguine, bile, etc are fluids in the body that determine consequential emotions.  In any case our human bodily function, the function that was created by and intended by God for our betterment is reliant upon both the air around us and electricity.  If you rob the human body of these two things, chaos will ensue.  What you get is what we have now, which is unexplainable murderous violence.  Humanity is being robbed of our natural system of moral conscience, check-and-balances, and pleasure.  We are being overwrought with aberrant electricity and under wrought with oxygen to allow us to function as healthy human being.  Each time an irresponsible train engineer hammers down on the throttle of his mammoth 4,400 horsepower heat-producing pick up, our oxygen is being spent for their gain.  Suckage is the result.  Suckage is a term I created to humorously describe low pressure being created in our environment that is destroying the earth.   When machines burn the normal level of oxygen surrounding us, it creates a vacuum.  Air that should be and once was there now is gone, and like space becomes a vacuum.  Interesting and alarming things happen in a vacuum that should be filled oxygen.  The one that annoys me the most is that the insulating property of air disappears.  Air pressure that moves sound waves in a traditional pattern is gone, and the nature of audible sound changes.  This harmful process is evident all around us when one takes an opportunity to listen to our environment.  The earth sounds nothing like it did fifteen years ago, because the air that should be there is absent.  The ensuing low pressure is what will continue to create violent weather patterns that will torment the earth.  It all ready has begun.  All of it is being caused by low pressure.  Take a listen to the thunder.  No longer does it have a resonant and pleasing low-frequent rumble.  It is tinny and thin, because the air it once exited is absent.  I can hear my neighbors clearly, because the air that once insulated our voices if gone.  It is reasonable, that if aeronautic and rail companies continue with the expansion of their technology, they should be required to manufacture the resources they consume.  That means stop burning the air meant for humanity and mother nature and burn air they create for their own wealth.  Thank you and good night.  

The Boob

First of all I was elated to see on the front page of the paper today troops are being deployed to Kuwait and Bagdad.  We are paying them to be soldiers, so now I believe we should let them soldier.  Secretary of State John Kerry has classified ISIS's business as genocide, which it is.  That raises the ante.  Let's rock them with more air strikes and boots on the ground.  It's better than doing the limbo.  I forgot one more notable professional man in Fayettenam who ruined two of my teeth.  The Boob attempted to fill two of my teeth, both resulting in chaos.  The first tooth broke off the same night he filled it with the bite of a piece of chicken.  I had to embark a new ship the next day, so he dabbed a little gel into it.  Months later I had a terrible tooth ache in Australia.  Luckily a Russian speaking oral surgeon discovered the dead nerve and gave me the appropriate root therapy.  In Turkey a crack young dentist crowned the tooth and filled an ugly discolorment I have had since puberty.  Not that long ago the Boob did it yet again.  He performed his filling magic and a month later the tooth broke off the same way.  I had to pay $300.00 to have the tooth filled by a professional making the total bill for one filling $465.00.  Fuck the medical profession.  

A Sticky Situation with Major Suckage

I wanted to start this blog entry with the phrase, "The only thing funnier than public television trying to fund drive with anachronistic music is the level of musical intelligence of the average American." I didn't have the second part of that sentence, until I typed the first part into the computer.  The only thing funnier than public television trying to fund drive with anachronistic music is a group of guys in a tunnel at Fort Bragg having sex.  President Obama has done some applaudable things during his tenure.  Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was not one of them.  It is a sticky issue, a group of guys in a tunnel at Fort Bragg having sex with each other.  I mean it's a sticky issue, "Gays in the Military."  It seems there is a lot of homosexuality in the military.  Who knew?  I was familiar with sexual impropriety in the military.  There is a history of shenanigans.  When photographs surface of military men and women sodomizing prisoners at Guantanamo Detention Center,  well it's a sticky issue.  It's a sticky issue when Major Suckage is back at work sucking air out of my house and monitoring my speech both at the same time.  Maybe they are reliant upon one another.  Nothing could be funnier than public television trying to fund drive with the music of Frank Sinatra and the folk movement, when millennials know nothing of it.  Nothing could be funnier except Major Suckage sitting in a tunnel at Fort Bragg monitoring my conversation.  Those planes flying around with infrared sensors are not funny or sticky.  They are unconstitutional, but who is asking?  Funny is a train engineer sitting in a cab 24/7 assembling war trains headed to Sunny Point.  Am I a conspirator?  Not really.  do I like it when writing disparaging things about the rail industry invokes their wrath?  "Oh you don't like SD70MAC's?  Well try on a C40-8W for size.  If you didn't already know Norfolk Southern has rebuilt many of them into the 4,400 horse power version.  Now they use AC traction motors.  With these come power inverters what produce the infrasonic pollution I so love.  Train engineers are not very bright, but neither is the rest of America.  I, after working on my doctorate of music composition, lost track of American education.  I lost track after spending twelve years abroad working in the leisure industry.  Coming back to America is like Deliverance.  "Soo wee, boy.  Better take them panties off."  It is frightening, the level of intelligence of America, but I am beginning to understand.  I'm not sure if the meek will inherit the earth.  The earth already is doomed, so I'm ready to move on.  Trouble is Major Suckage will find you anywhere.  Successfully I hid in the Mexican Riviera for a while.  The Rocky Mountains eventually did well at keeping Major Suckage's surveillance to a minimum.  It was amusing when sitting in the belly of a huge cruise ship, I could feel him lurking.  Once I heard my next-door-neighbor ask his wife in bed, "Did you feel that?"  I was at least a thousand miles away, but that is a node point in Fayettenam.  We have CSX-T to thank for that.  They service Fort Junction.  It's a sticky business, sex in a tunnel.  Then again President Obama repealed, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," so soldiers can go clubbing like a seventeen year old and won't pay a price, at least with their jobs.  If it's anything like the cruise industry (close quarters) it would be like spearing salmon in a tank.  I had a roommate once who upon waking was thinking of non other than how he could have anal sex with a pretty boy dancer by the end of the day.  UNC-Chapel Hill committed academic fraud to ensure student athletes would be eligible to play sports.  Now PBS has donned their Barney Fife bow ties and is attempting to raise money for public television.  It is not working, because millennials know nothing of this by gone era.  Bill Friday is dead, and that is a grievous loss.  His integrity drove the university system.  Now we have fake African-American studies courses.  Now Major Suckage is in some sticky fluid at Fort Bragg.    

Fayettenam's Three Stooges

There are many proponents of Fayettenam, and they all live here.  Fayetteville is a landmark of old money.  You can try to believe otherwise, but this contingency in one way or another eventually will make itself known to you.  Most likely it will be by taking your money.  There are three individuals who come to mind.  I am going to attach pseudonyms to protect the innocent. (although they are not really innocent)  These three individuals are members of our local medical establishment, and with their uncanny knowledge failed to help me in any way shape or form.  Contrarily they made money from me.  It was with the experience visiting these men, that I learned what the American medical profession has become.  They prefer to treat symptoms.  There is no money in helping you improve your health.  Symptoms correlate to procedures which produce revenue.  The Useless Eunuch, The Sortopotamus, and the Gonad.  In the near future a short film will be produced which will render them with their tools of choice, the colonscope, the laproscope, and the needle biopsy gun.  None of them was interested in my description of my abdominal pain.  None of them touched my abdomen.  None of them really examined me at all except for Dr. Gonad, who delighted in fondling my penis and shoving his finger up my ass.  It didn't stay there long enough to discover anything about my prostate, because I have had previous rectal exams by more competent doctors.  He also seemed to enjoy throwing a tissue on the examination table and telling me to, "Clean yourself up."  It was humiliating and wasteful his doctor visit.  He seemed to enjoy making little scribbles on his clipboard as a way to convince me to let him perform a prostate biopsy.  I declined.  He also discounted every other things I suggested as causes for my pain.  "Interstitial Cystitis only occurs in women," he said.  I beg to differ seeing as I don't know my own bladder from my asshole.  Also he lowered his PSA guidelines conveniently to suggest a prostate biopsy was necessary.  The Sortopatamus wanted to remove a portion of my bowel.  Prior to doing this I made money for Valley Proteins.  I assumed he gets a kickback for each CT and MRI scan he prescribes.  Neither showed the cause of my abdominal pain and were unnecessary.  My colon was cancer free, but the Useless Eunuch was nervous enough to refer me to the Gonad.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life, his two visits.  These three stooges represent our medical establishment in Fayettenam.  My case is ongoing, and eventually I will end up the E.R., where they will perform enough tests to figure out my pain.  Meanwhile I no longer respect Valley Proteins and their team of radiologists, who sit upstairs in their ivory tower and won't talk to you.  Instead they will overcharge you to read your film.  It is a shite state of affairs.  

It's Too Damn Quiet

It ain't natural.  I have a lot on my mind with our primary elections occurring today.  For the first time I had to show a picture ID to the election official and say my name and address orally as confirmation of my North Carolina state driver's license.  My gut feeling is fraud is occurring on a massive scale.  I can feel it.  It's too damn quiet.  The polling station was empty.  No one cares, and I think the majority of folk living in rural North Carolina don't give a shit.  There ain't no changing it.  America is what she has become, and it is what it is.  Listening to John Kasich accept his win in his home state of Ohio did nothing to change this.  America is not going to get better.  America is a shadow of her former self, and there is no American Dream.  Like the science fiction thrillers America will descend into anarchy raging against the machines.  The machines will make money for the rich.  We all ready have destroyed the planet, and it won't be long before we all will be living indoors paying the man to keep us happy.  We all ready are doing it.  Just walk outside.  There is nothing out there to make us remotely happy.  Instead our environment invokes bitter hostility and thus violent behavior.  We are blowing people away, and our American army trains for it less then five miles from where I am sitting.  In particular this weekend  the homosexual vibration is rampant.  What gives?  Does warm weather inspire sodomy?  I was surrounded by gay men at the movie theater.  The root of the decline of America is education.  While few of the active candidates have told us how they could change America for the better, it has become apparent to me that the root of America's decline has been the lack of quality public education.  It surrounds me daily.  Impoverished North Carolinians have no other route to a successful live.  Impoverished Americans nationwide share the same fate, and no one in government seems to care.  George enacted "No Child Left Behind," and teachers began to teach to the test.  The statistics may have risen temporarily, but all one must do is travel around the country to discover why America has declined. Public education is all that many have, and we wholeheartedly have dismantled it.  Teachers once were respected members of society.  Now they are dung.  Americans are ignorant, because they are too poor to learn any other way.  The public system of education built this country, and now it has failed us.  When I am in dismay surrounded by ignorant red necks who only know what they have lived, it is apparent why they are ignorant.  Education is what provides that window of change.  This is why people migrate.  They go where there is opportunity, not bondage and oppression.  Without public education we all our subject to this bondage.  How is Dillon supposed to know that there are other types of people in the world than the red necks with which he attends school?  Certainly television is not providing an example of literacy.  Certainly American popular music is not providing an example of literacy.  We are teaching to the bottom the way it is intended.  President Obama says the way America is today is not the way America is.  I must digress.  Donald Trump inciting racial violence at his Nazi rallies is the perfect example of the way America is and always has been.  We just have been more successful in other decades disguising it.  Without the shimmer of popular culture (Apple) the smell of our shit is pungent.  There is no covering it up.  We are ignorant and racist, and exposing it is the wisest thing.  We could continue to fill the pie holes of our constituents with poisonous junk food, and keep them addicted to their iPhones.  We are a race of zombies, and no one seems to mind.  When summer begins to last six months with +100 degree heat each day, maybe the zombies will wake up.  We are encroaching upon this figure today.  2015 was the hottest year on record, and it only will get hotter.  It will get hotter.  The polar ice caps will continue to melt at an alarming rate, until flooding will be common.  Massive storms will envelop us, as the earth continues to groan from the strain of excess.  America all ready has been what is possible, and now we will continue to decline into anarchy.  It is best to prepare now.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  

Hitler's Hair

Hillary is on the tube in North Carolina shouting things.  I believe she can not or will not accomplish any of them.  She is the quintessential Southern gubernatorial candidate.  Like Pappy O'Daniel she could be traveling around on the back of a flatbed truck with a huge horn attached to its cab.  Bluegrass music wafts gently through the Lousiana bayou.  "Buy Pappy O'Daniel flour.  You won't be sorry." Politics like American Popular Music is a small percentage of its former self, and yet the tactics remain the same.  In today's modern context, where the world drastically has changed because of mass media the old soap box stumps seem like antiquated cartoons.  Attempting to rally black votes in the American South by shouting Hitler-like rants into the crowd is an embarrassment to America.  Not only is Hillary embarrassing, because she is not capable of doing a thing she says, but Donald is because now he has allowed himself to morph into David Duke.  I wouldn't have believed it, had it not happened in Fayettenam.  Trump purposely was eliciting response from his political rally with violence.  I would like to take this opportunity to give Mr. Trump a bit of advice.  Fayettenam is no different than Watts or Detroit.  Telling a black man to go home to his mommy is a risk, and not a risk to that black man.  Watching a KKK clansman threaten a black man WITH HIS LIFE IN THE YEAR 2016 in Fayetteville, North Carolina at the Crown Coliseum on national TV....   Well it made the headline of the Huffington Post as it should.  There is a reason why brothers are violent in the American South.  It is because they may get lynched, if they don't defend themselves.  Sincerely I would suggest that in a place where murders occur daily, and black men don't appreciate Grand Dragon's yelling at them to go home to their mothers, Trump should refrain from rekindling anachronistic racial images no matter how politically helpful.  

Apple Records

The modern music debacle is dwindling.  As America realizes how much they have been duped by wireless communications, former values again begin to emerge.  Take for instance American popular music.  It dawned on me last evening, while I was watching the black and white film "Untamed Youth" how heinous American popular music has become for one simple reason.  No longer does it satisfy the one need previous Americans desired.  America was built on the sweat of the worker.  Americans labored for a living, and it was good.  When they desired a release from captivity, they danced.  (I sound like Ren MacCormack.)  Music provided a way for the population to express their romantic biological desires.  It was a vehicle for physical movement in contrast to the toiling of work.  It was freedom or exoneration from labor.  Millennials have no idea what labor is, because they are spoiled by their devices.  They are stunted by their own devices.  I'm not sure it's their fault, but providing them sanctuary from the history of reality in America is not an option.  Grow up.  The movement of courtship and love has been lost in the pornography of the internet.  America no longer understand what popular music was.  They only understand what is has become, and that is a shadow of its former self.  With this shadow has come the prince of darkness.  When American popular music was ripe, America thrived upon it.  It unified and bonded the nation with its universal message.  After watching only a few minutes of "Untamed Youth," it was blatantly obvious why America popular music is lacking today.  It is a complete and utter disservice that Apple has become the record company of the world.  What prior experience has Apple had to merit distributing the world's music?  It's not just about being a retailer, something about which Apple is a novice.  Developing the iTunes store was novel, and like their iPhone at first it is a great convenient entertainment.  When the novelty wears off and one realizes they would like to keep their music forever in the best recorded format ever developed, the MP3 fails.  Contrarily the MP3 has flourished for its merits, which incidentally were based upon German-engineered minidisc compression algorithm.  Still today I have five minidisc recorders, and I use them.  The files are small enough to be up or downloaded via the internet and a personal computer.  That's it.  This little tidbit of knowledge is how Napster singlehandedly destroyed the recording industry.  Now that tried and true veteran music makers have been put our of work, Apple and other internet providers have stepped up to distribute out music.  Is this a good thing?  After watching only a few minutes of "Untamed Youth," I realized the answer is an unequivocal, "No!"  It has created a corporate monopoly lumping in America's music with tabloid journalism and TV.  American Popular Music does not deserve this disservice.  It deserves wholehearted respect.  The notion of internet nerds deciding what music is bought and sold is ludicrous.  Buying music which formerly served a deep humane service via the internet is a mockery.  Simply put it lessens the capability of music by an exponential rate.  Music has only a small percentage of its power, because it has been reduced to a minuscule stream of digits flowing over an optical pipe.  Once music was an analog river flowing through magnets and paper.  The response humans can have is almost nonexistent via the internet, except for propaganda purposes.  Music has been neutered.  

Now America Can Share My Pain

"Next time we might have to kill him."  Trump rally.  Fayetteville, North Carolina.  My home town.  Word. 

Weighing In at Oscar

After viewing "Creed" this evening because "Zoolander ll" had been bumped by "The Forrest," I could not believe that Mark Rylance walked away with Best Supporting Actor.  Both Christian Bale and Sly had egg on their their faces.  What was the academy thinking?  A one-dimensional yet funny straight man doesn't have the same sack to compete with Rocky Balboa.  The film "Creed" was successful, until ultimately it succumbed to Hollywood's current fad.  They just couldn't hack out the big fight.  Everything was so tightly timed like a great old school flick until the end.  Then Renderman computer tricks dropped the ball and the ending.  The film was a real contender, until it just petered out.  (in lieu of more to come I suppose)  Mr. Stallone is such a monumental film presence, like Norma Jean, without trying they completely upstage any wannabe actors in the same screen.  It is an unfortunate turn of events, and it is unfortunate I had to watch a preview of Inarritu's "The Revenant" again.  What may become the worst movie of all time, watching the visual hubris yet again was sickening and a spit in the face of veteran director Ridley Scott.  Absolutely it should become the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" of the millennium.  The imagery is so staid and false like a graven image, it parallels only Charlie Rose's endorsement of the iPhone 6.  

Apple Anarchy

This is not my time of day to write, but I am going to anyway.  I am going to curtail my normal daily activity, and instead sit here at the computer and blog about politics in America.  Charlie Rose is a well-respected journalist, but in my eyes slowly but surely he has moved in position.  The son of North Carolina tobacco farmers Mr. Rose has built his empire not unlike the tech. entrepreneurs of today.  I still watch his interviews from time to time, and most of them are intelligent and telling.  The one I watched last night interviewing an Apple representative was sickening.  I am not an Apple basher.  Far from it I have owned a Macintosh computer since 1991, when I attended The Ohio State University and purchased a Mac LC with the student discount.  I graduated through surplus materials at OSU to a Mac ll and then a PowerMac, which I accelerated with a Newer Technology G3 Nubus card.  That computer worked flawlessly, after I learned its operating system (Mac 8.5) and eliminated the INITS which were unnecessary for my music production software to function reliably.  It was not connected to the internet, and each and every INIT that was unnecessary and bundled in its OS were eliminated via Apples own control panel menus.  The Extensions Manager was its name.  This was an effective piece of software which enabled the user to customize his computer's performance.  Third party programs and processes could be eliminated so the processor could focus on the tasks at hand such as MIDI sequencing or the recording of digital audio.  I used the PowerMac operating at G3 speeds to produce eleven CD projects of music, much of it original.  These CD's sit awaiting the formation of my custom website, where I will sell them via the internet.  (I am not a web designer, so they will be sitting for a while longer)  I am a musician and a composer.  I have spent the bulk of my life performing music on the piano and trumpet, and writing.  Keeping up with the times is not in my agenda at the moment, but it will surface as a priority in the near future.  My point is computing has become exclusive at the behest of the manufacturers.  This practice was pioneered by Bill Gates and Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.  As you may recall the federal government sued Microsoft and broke up the company in a large anti-trust case.  As you may recall the telephone network also was broken up into smaller factions called the Baby Bell's.  It seems at that time the general consensus believed corporate monopolies were bad.  [sic]  Today the opposite is true.  It would seem the general consensus is large blanket providers are better for the consumer.  Where is the competition?  Where is the system of Checks and Balances?  Where is healthy competition?  Largely they have been eliminated.  What surprise is it that consumers have no control over the prices of medical care, drugs, or food?  Certainly America no longer is a democracy, and certainly we no longer are free.  It has been a deliberate and clever campaign perfectly represented by Mr. Rose's interview televised last evening with an Apple representative.  I must have been watching a paid informercial for Apple.  Charlie marveled at how great the iPhone is like it was the Holy Grail.  I thought to myself, "This is the highest form of propaganda."  It effectively brain-washed viewers into believing the rhetoric.  While I can understand the implications of a well-thought-out and manufactured device, a handheld computer is not going to revolutionize life in America.  Conversely in the long run it will prove to be a failure.  Without waxing conspiratorially electromagnetic bursts from the sun's solar winds are common.  Our magnetosphere is weakening from a variety of negative assaults including cell phone usage.  It will not take much to produce a surge of electricity so strong that all computer use will be wiped out.  It is elementary.  I look around me in close proximity to one of the world's largest military installations, and the vulnerabilities are exorbitant.  It would not take much to bring the American machine to a complete standstill.  (and this conclusion arises with no active thought)  I never will trust my money or my estate to a computer.  No one else should either.  You are just asking for the anarchy which will ensue.  It's like getting into a car with a complete stranger.  How many people must be assaulted, raped, or murdered before a class action lawsuit persuades Uber to rethink their ground-breaking ride-sharing business?  Mr. Rose relentlessly suggested that Apple must have another groundbreaking product around the corner?  Why?  I can appreciate this insistence in the field of journalism.  Often Mr. Rose is able to elicit telling answers from reluctant guests about volatile issues.  On this occasion I must digress.  I understand what an iPhone can do, and never will I buy one.  If I want to shoot video, I will buy a video camera.  If I want photographs that move, I will by a video camera.  If I want to market still photographs as truncated video wrapped with a clever bow, I.....   will be Apple pandering to adolescents.  Fuck me.  This childish propaganda must stop.  If the FCC can't monitor and regulate stilted advertising, who will?  Big Brother is alive and well, and has grown into a full fledged King Kong.  He is all around us, and I for one am frightened.  

No Sonnymoon for You

I am rather startled that Joey Calderazzo is living in Durham, North Carolina neighbors with Branford Marsalis.  They live on a golf course.  This is not exactly the "jazz life."  Then again scuffling for gigs in Manhatten is not one's life long aspiration.  It was difficult to find out exactly where Mr. Calderazzo is teaching.  Upon listening to one of his You Tube interviews, he interestingly does not mention North Carolina Central University.  I'm not sure why.  Central always has had a jazz program and usually a good one.  I think possibly both artists are reveling in their anonymity.  For me having these two jazz artists living within earshot is confusing.  I don't know whether to be elated or pissed off.  Upon reflection I am pissed off and not at either of them.  Why didn't I know these two iconic jazz artists were living in my state?  If I had known I would have made an effort to hear them play.  It seems after a bit of research in order to hear either Branford or Joey play, I will have to travel.  I believe they are beyond playing in local clubs.  You live in a particular community, yet there is no opportunity or rather you choose not to play locally. Either it does not pay enough, or it is not worth it.  How could it be beneficial to you as a jazz artist?  As I understand it both gentlemen are adjunct faculty members at NCCU.  Branford's Quartet has been there since 2005.  Great.  I once was an aspiring jazz educator.  I taught at the University of South Carolina, Columbia for a few years.  I taught at The Ohio State University in the Art Department.  All the while I was playing in the community.  How else can you teach jazz, if you don't set an example by playing locally?  When I attended USC Chris Potter was playing in the Left Bank Band.  He was in high school, but Dr. John Emche was giving Chris lessons.  His father brought him to rehearsal twice a week, and he played jazz tenor.  Again I will ask how is it possible to teach locally at a university and not play in the community?  I understand musicians of Branford and Joey's caliber are artists of  considerable stature.  Also I would believe they are extremely humble about their abilities.  Listening to Joey talk via You Tube exhibits such.  Jazz is a school of hard knocks.  An adjunct gig it not easy to find.  They did.  It doesn't make it easy to swallow, that rarely will I ever hear them play live.  I have to fly to New York City and pay to hear either of them.  This is an aberration of modern America, and it leads me to the topic of the evening.  (I didn't want to write about local jazz icons, but I couldn't help it)  Branford and Joey are living in Durham.  Everyone hates jazz, so it doesn't matter except to other jazz musicians.  I put jazz on the shelf years ago, but it is not forgotten.  It is frustrating not just to me.  If two of the most notable jazz musicians in the world live in Durham, North Carolina and teach at North Carolina Central University, something in jazz education is amiss.  Is it?  Is this now common?  Jazz artists teach and live in a particular place, and play elsewhere.  I am familiar with this practise.  It is common for universities to pad their budgets with celebrity.  Enter the NCAA.  Enter sports.  When I read resumes it is all celebrity.  I did this, then I did this.  These are the people with which I've worked.  I've traveled here, and I've traveled there.  I have these prizes, these commissions, and these opportunities.  This is America.  When we turn on the news we hear about local crime and big money.  Rarely do we hear about the little guy.  If I hear the word billion one more time on the news, I will vomit.  What relationship can the word 'billion' have with the common man?  The common man, and I mean those not attending Bilderberg conferences, are struggling to put food on the table, gas in their vehicles, and their children through college.  The word billion has no relevance to us.  Uber, Apple, and Uma Thurman are prospects beyond our need.  (While millennials may choose to get in a car with a complete stranger and be assaulted, raped, or murdered, the Smartphone is iconic)  I mean naive.  May I please remind you that before the iPhone or iPad was a Macintosh computer.  Mac's were used by students and professionals, people who could afford it.  There were great software programs, not app's, that allowed you to create artistic music, graphics, and photography.  Programs were directed at professionals.  I know because I studied computer music on a limited level at OSU.  Ever heard of Max Matthews?  I heard him speak and perform live on one of his pioneering instruments.  Max Matthews and his peers have been swept out of the picture, so that Apple can sell 'apps' to adolescents.  Like other sectors of the commercial American market, Apple discovered the kids have the expendable income.  Screw adults.  Screw VH-1.  Screw Adult Contemporary.  "Let's take the kids' money," and they have.  I have not been interested in Apple since the Powermac.  While I did buy a used Macbook Pro, I can't change its battery.  I have to drive to Branford and Joey's town and frequent an Apple Store, not an 'app' store, although I think they sell apps.  Then I have to let a 'genius' take my laptop and perform some kind of intricate surgery on it to change its battery.  It is an exclusive policy, like the rest of modern America.  We have excluded the little guy or the common man.  We sell shit to adolescents, and we rip off adults.  No one pays attention.  We just go along with it.  The kids are more gullible when they are uneducated, so don't fund or support education.  If you do support it, don't make it a priority.  Make it a priority to get computers into schools, so kids can demand their computers in school.  It is the biggest cultural upset in American history.  The Big Dupe.  If I hear the word billionaire one more time, or how tech. entrepreneurs have made billions from their little tech. ventures I will shit.  It doesn't relate to me.  CEO's for tech companies are not stars.  They are not celebrities.  The media paints them this way, because they have most of the money in America.  The rest of us are poor.  There are the rich in America, and there are the poor.  The rich are boring.  If you can't share with me your knowledge or interest in technology, why should I buy your product.  Not that long ago we would teach that information to our youth, so they could get good jobs.  Now it's exclusionary.  It's a policy of no transparency, just like the federal government.  We will take your tax money, and do anything we damn well please.  The desires of the American people do not matter one iota.  Most of this change is because of George W. Bush.  His cronies asked him to deregulate business, pass eminent domain, and hand billions of the tax payers dollars to Wall Street CEO's in the name of saving the U.S. economy.  He will go down as the worst and most unconstitutional of all American presidents.  Meanwhile small businesses, the heart and soul of American culture, are dying.  The rich are living off of the poor, and I for one demand the next president change this.  Who has the balls?  

American Diversity

We no longer are a diverse nation.  Once we were.  Once We Were Warriors, as the New Zealand-based novel and film depicted.  Is it possible war and diversity are related?  Past President Bill Clinton harmed the world in many ways.  Not only did his passing of the North American Free Trade Alliance contribute to the collapse of the Mexican peso, auctioning formerly dangerous frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum largely has caused global warming.  No one acknowledges, and the polar ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate.  Is it possible the country is considering another Clinton to inhabit our White House?  I shudder at the thought.  The Clintons are good at auctions.  They auctioned Bill's speaking fees for possible influence with the Obama Administration.  Like the rest of America all of us are gullible enough to believe that something good will come of their rhetoric.  Dinners in the White House?  Blow jobs underneath the Presidential desk?  Monica Lewinsky on the front page of our tabloids for over a year?  The country does not need this in spite of the glory of America's first woman president.  Bill's one success, the penning of the Dayton Accords, sits unnoticed.  With the tribal civil war in the Middle East, Bill's one success, the penning of the Dayton Accords, sits unnoticed.  Do we have that to which to look forward?  Is is possible Bill can repeat his one major achievement of his American Presidency and solve issues in Syria and Afghanistan?  Certainly Mrs. Clinton did nothing during her tenure as Secretary of State to help.  She was busy auctioning her husband's speeches for possible influence with the Obama Administration.  (the sound of chuckling can be heard in the Clinton household.)  When Bill was in the White House multiculturalism was in the forefront of American society, because Hillary had written a book.  It had good ideas, and diversity and racism were expanding and contracting.  This was before George W.'s "Globalization," which has abandoned the America populace in favor of cheap labor.  If we don't invest in ourselves, who will the nation become?  It all ready has become that.  We no longer are a nation of shared ideals.  We are a nation of slaves at the mercy of our own medical establishment.  Diversity is not an issue, at least until another unarmed black teenager is murdered by an overzealous police officer.  America no longer is diverse.  The artistic ideals that have have championed diversity are dead.  Jazz is dead.  Art is dead.  Art is dead, because pop culture does not have the guts, stamina, or heart for good.  Art does not care about monetary gain.  It cares about the sustenance of a people.  Diversity contributes greatly to the depth of art, because many cultures are involved.  Plurality.  We are not a plural nation anymore.  Slowly technology and its purveyors have staked out the same niche as Yuppies in the l980's.  They are wealthy and exclusive, and art or diversity has nothing to do with their success.  Art does not care about money.  Nothing can be more symbolic of this stagnation in America than popular music.  Gone are Sly and the Family Stone, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the rest.  Alarmingly our major contributors to diversity and thus art are dying one at a time.  Pat Conroy, author of groundbreaking treatises on race in the American South, is dead.  There is no one to replace them.  Let us hope the corrupt hand of Big Brother will see fit to include them in our history.  We are not diverse.  We do not embrace other cultures.  We are exclusionary.  We are rich.  We are elite, not unlike America always has been.  During other decades we were more successful at disguising it.  

One's Own Damn Musical Self

I think I may have been selfish in my early years.  Selfishness stems from American society, where capitalism breeds an attitude of self preservation.  Although primarily we are a socialist country (over 70% of American jobs are provided by the government), capitalism instills a sense that we must get for ourselves or be eaten.  When American ideals still were vigorous, this need didn't usurp Christianity.  Because Christianity has been on the chopping block for over a decade, widespread evil as replaced good as the major tenant of American society.  Maybe it is survival instinct.  Maybe it merely is ignorance.  Ignorant people, devoid of real life experiences within the construct of Christianity, may not know good.  Once a mother's altruistic love was instrumental in shaping moral lives.  While I may have been selfish in my early years, only was it a plea to have the same things others did.  (or so it seemed) I learned if you wanted to be successful take no prisoners.  There was no time for gratuitousness.  Your desires were primary in your own life.  I have changed only because, I have been lucky enough to have had some good things.  I have not accumulated wealth, but what I do have is important to me.  They are things, but also they are tools.  I have learned to invest in tools which will serve a greater purpose for the future.  Because I am a musician often these things have been musical tools.  Not many can afford a Yamaha C7 grand piano, but we can afford small music-making tools offered via electricity.  Electricity has been a contentious element in the history of music.  When Bob Dylan "went electric" anarchy to a small degree ensued.  As an aficionado of jazz music I learned to appreciate acoustic music.  Jazz largely was acoustic music, until it too "went electric."  Electricity effectively has bridged the gap between purist acoustic music and utilitarian product.  While two acoustic pianos sit downstairs, neither of them is used.  They are not used, because no longer can their acoustic tones compete with local industrial pollution.  I am not speaking of audible pollution.  I am speaking of the much more powerful and destructive infrasonic frequencies.  These are rampant in our modern industrial society ignored by most.  Still they rain down havoc on our citizens.  When I try to verbalize why swing music is difficult today, few can understand that a large powerful sound wave defeats the good rhythm of swing.  Society has adapted, and now we have the genre of "pop," a style of non-music which requires none of the traditional skills or talents of educated music.  A classical education isn't necessary.  One only has to learn how to strum a guitar to develop a stunted sense of what how time should feel.  Real time or feeling is much more complicated, diverse, and powerful.  Possibly it is this diversity we lack in the world today.  While racial diversity is a desired goal in America, few remember that music is what allowed it to happen.  Music was an example of the good of man and God via Christianity.  Musicians made real music, and real music transcended reality.  I have enough electronic tools to make music, but it increasingly is difficult.  I don't feel the inspiration or the support music diversity once merited.  It does not exist, or it does not seem to exist in modern America.  If it did it would be setting an example for diversity instead of reveling in its own self worth.  

A Black Hole

In all earnest no matter how much I try to ignore the Carolinas are a mockery of the union, I can't.  I've never liked North Carolina.  I have traveled all over the state, and interstates criss-crossing through tobaccos warehouses doesn't represent much except fraud.  Big Tobacco came down.  They were lacing their cigarettes with ammonia science to keep you hooked.  Thanks North Carolina.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the oldest state university in the union fabricated courses so their student athletes could graduate.  This continued for years undiscovered.  UNC Chapel Hill fabricated academic courses for student athletes, so that they could pass and graduate.  Everyone turned a blind eye.  One of the most reputable academic institutions in America sold out.  Was the money that scarce?  Congress has approved the maximum tuition increase each year since it was possible with no thought to stagnant wages, low minimum wage, and rising costs of living.  Each year Congress has approved the MAXIMUM tuition increase with no guilt or remorse.  Students are graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt.  I no longer have respect for UNC.  It is my alma matter, and yet I don't watch the Tarheels play.  How can I?  UNC wholeheartedly engaged in academic fraud for student athletes.  That is the most giant indicator of the world in which we have come to live.  It is the perfect metaphor for America.  We have sold out.  I feel no relation with America at all.  I never have, since I graduated from UNC with a music education degree.  Four years of my life, the most difficult thing I ever have accomplished, and teacher salary in North Carolina is the second lowest in the union.  I can't even entertain the thought of teaching in North Carolina, because it will be engaging in slavery.  I will be the slave.  The way it's always been.  My alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill engaged in academic fraud for student athletes.  (African American studies)  Would white professors and white athletes have done the same thing?  Seems like it is Straight Out of Compton, but this was my alma mater.  This was UNC-Chapel Hill.  Dean Smith coached James Worthy and Michael Jorden.  I was there.  There was no academic fraud.  Christianity has all but been eradicated from our nation, so Wall Street banks can scam us, academia can scam us, and ?  I turn on the news and potential presidential candidates are talking about the size of each other's hands.  I try not to feel like it's not true, like I don't want to check out.  I want to check out.  It's not worth it.  Life is so fucked in America, that what's the point?  I look around and everything for which I have worked is gone.  I wanted to hear some jazz piano tonight.  Where would I turn the dial?  If I did have satellite radio it would tune in smooth jazz.  If I do try to watch bands on television, they sicken me.  They have sold out.  I've never seen such a mockery of music.  Then I remember is all about the LGBT thing.  Students want to be able to pick which bathroom they use.  What has America become?  It is such a disgrace, and I am embarrassed.  I am down.  I have no reason to do anything.