King Kong in Mexico

It is all request Friday on WCPE.  Usually their playlist is more effective, when local patrons call in and ask for specific works.  I would think it would be extremely difficult filling twenty-four hours with music day after day.  It would take a musicologist or cultural historian to provide such a service.  I would like to know who does it.  Probably it can be a group effort dividing up the programming into differing shows.  They do that.  Different disc jockeys (if that is what they should be called) host different time segments with names.  Classical Cafe.  I am getting a bit of a treat as a pianist, trumpet, and composer myself.  I have dedicated five years of my life to studying music composition.  Barely can I remember it, because to what we are exposed on television (the largest purveyor of popular music) is so bad.  This is why I listen to WCPE.  It is a stark contrast to the insipid and selfish music of today's pop.  That is not my theme.  My theme is to comment on recent activity including a chamber music concert by the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra at St. John's Episcopal Church.  I am not feeling any music at the moment and for good reason.  The Guns of Navarone are firing, and my stomach is a mess.  Acid reflux wakes me early each morning burning my throat with stomach acid.  Gorbachov says the world is preparing for war.  It certainly seems that way, because Fort Bragg is in full exercise.  This is why I cannot feel any music.  My sensory system  completely and wholly is overwhelmed by noise.  I cannot function, and I have trouble thinking.  I can muster enough synapse action to comment on Handel's Water Music.  I studied classical composition at Ohio State University.  I made an A in four voice counterpoint at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I don't compose classical music anymore, because the dynamic in Fayettenam does not support my aesthetic.  The aesthetic here is war.  We are at war, and guns are blazing.  Regularly I can hear fifty-five millimeter machines guns tatting away.  The ground shakes for a moment.  In addition Lockheed Martin has provided a new targeting system for their rocket propelled shells.  The Fayetteville Observer says it uses sound waves to target the weapons.  Oh goody!  Like we don't have enough infrasonic pollution all ready?  No one gets it.  There were three suites listed on the program for the FSO chamber music concert.  Either they played them in a different order than what was listed, or they omitted the last set.  When the program got long I tried to figure out which movement they were playing from the program.  Several things came to mind.  One was the introduction by the Music Nerd.  During the Baroque period only were there natural horns.  Valves had not yet been invented.  If horns or trumpets were to be played, tubing had to be altered to accommodate the key of the composition.  Most of it was in D, F, and G.  Interesting.  There were some minors as well.  After the program got long, it began to dawn on me why the concert became a chore like sitting in church.  It was pittance, punishment for your sins.  You had to endure through the music to be cleansed.  We attend most concerts by the FSO, and most of them are exceptional.  Some are sleepy.  There is an inherent concept in classical music, its intimacy, that is sleepy.  It can be difficult to stay awake and focused, because the music's physicality by tempo and style is intimate and relaxing.  I don't like this.  I don't like having to fight to stay awake to enjoy music.  This concert was sleepy, but it was not so sleepy in its tempos and styles.  They were simplistic.  Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.  Square rhythm because some of them were meant as dance forms for court.  Always they are stiff and square, because classical music does not swing.  This is why it does not appeal to me so much.  Because the rhythm of all of the movements was so simplistic, court like, and because they all had to be in one key for the natural horns it got boring fast.  There were changes in meter and tempi, but the constant tonality of D or F was not interesting.  Classical harmony is not interesting.  V-I.  Authentic cadence.  The other issue about Baroque music is that the phrases ramble.  It is a continuous stream of notes with few resolutions.  Romantic music can be this way also.  I like phraseology.  I like to hear phrases of music that are like sentences organized into paragraphs.  Say something, and then wait for he listener to understand it.  Say something more.  It is like conversation, good music.  A string quartet is like a conversation between four adult gentlemen.  (Steve, a telemarketer, just called my mother to try to get her to give money to "The Veterans.")  Of course like the Wounded Warrior Project, the wounded warriors rarely get the money.  It is squandered amongst the upper employees of the organization.  Truly I love some classical music, and I mean concert-oriented orchestral or chamber music born in Europe.  Classical denotes a specific period in music history culminating in the High Classic Period of 1770-1780.  At least that is what Dr. Lois Rosow taught me at OSU.  I don't really agree with those dates, because when looking at the birthdays of Beethoven, Mozart, and Papa Haydn...  Well dates are relative just like music history courses.  My tastes in music are anti-establishment and personal.  Nationalism has its place, and I love the music of the Russian Five and the French Six.  Fully I understand the music of the Russian Five was a reaction against the nationalism of Tchaikovsky, but that fiery Russian parade music is exciting.  They use the crash cymbals a lot.  Donald Trump wants to build a wall, and I have refrained from commenting on his agenda until now.  What an utter and total waste of the taxpayers money.  Obama did not increase the GNP, but at least his money was for the insuring of the uninsured.  Building a wall or fence along the Mexican border utterly will be useless.  It will not stop drug trafficking or illegal immigration.  He should be smart enough to understand this, and I think he does.  His "wall" is a campaign ploy.  It is a device of his divisiveness.  It will accomplish nothing other that satisfying those who voted for him.  He is a rabble-rouser.  He is a soap box shouter.  Damn, I wish he would shut up.  So far his record is abominable.  Rex Tillerson and his State Department resigned!  Keystone pipeline.  A wall.  It's too bad King Kong doesn't live in Mexico.  Then a wall might make sense.  Wetbacks can both dig and climb.  They are good at it.  I guess they may not be good at dying.  We have become even more a fascist nation.  Ugh. 

The Man, He is Again Me, Again.

Either he is logging flight hours, testing surveillance equipment manufactured by Sierra Nevada, or just joy riding.  It can't be the latter, because the weather on January 22 was horrendous.  Pea soup fog with visibility of about ten feet.  I guess these conditions are perfect for a pilot navigating with instruments, or with surveillance operators monitoring infrared or optical sensors.  That plane was up there most of the day today, flying over Vanstory Hills.  What could he be doing?  When I drove to my gig yesterday at the Gates Four Golf and Country Club, it was not long before that plane was above me disguised in the clouds.  I guess I should feel flattered.  Homeland Security is following me around wondering why I did not file a federal tax return last year.  I am not planning on filing one this year either.  I tried last year, but the online system would not accept zero dollars income.  After making a reasonable income in the cruise industry for over a decade, is it that unusual that one choses to become a care-giver in his family?  I am poor, so to speak.  I don't have much walking around money, so I don't spend much.  When there is a home available with a family member in it, it is paid for, and there is adequate income to support the both of you, is it that unusual to stop working for a while?  Certainly I do not want to stay this way, but as other care-givers know working a nine to five job and caring for an older person sometimes are incompatible.  I can't work a nine to five job, although I would like to.  It would provide me with a life of my own.  Right now my life is not my own, and I accept it.  I played my first gig in Fayetteville in over a year.  It was nothing other than hard work.  There was not much musical satisfaction in it for me, but that was okay.  I knew that.  I have written some disparaging things about politicians, doctors, and the government.  Never have I been involved in a terrorist event, nor have I conspired to create one.  I rant about the unfairness of railroads in the United States, and it is merited.  They are the most polluting industry of which I can think, including coal burning power plants.  What they create in the environment is inhuman, undetectable by most people, but suffered by all.  I feel it is the root problem in America and other countries today.  It is unregulated and unmonitored.  Good afternoon President Trump!  How does it feel to have all of those new lawsuits on your desk?  What an unkind welcome to the White House.  His position is unprecedented.  It will be interesting to see how his presidency plays out.  (I must imagine I am on a ship going three knots, loping above the Puerto Rican Trench.)  That is some deep water.  My studio is undulating they way my eyes see, but this is new.  How much worse can it get?  Overcast skies, no wind, and infrasonic pollution at less than one cycle per second.  I drove around today and happened upon a little Cessna sitting at Signature Aviation on the tarmac.  There was a fuel truck in close proximity.  It had the emblem of either the Department of Defense or Homeland Security on its tail.  (At least those Kingair 350's with the complex monitoring array were no where in sight.)  It used to be two of those circled endlessly above our neighborhood for hours at a time day after day.  What could they be looking for?  Marijuana growing in the woods behind VanStory Elementary School?  Child molesters?  Testing Sierra Nevada's equipment?  They manufactured that complicated surveillance system, and no doubt it is causing disturbances to our environment.   How much of the taxpayers money they are wasting on the snipe hunt?  Go home young man.  Go home.  

The FBI, the Paparazzi, and Tidal Currents

I wonder if Lester Holt noticed that Fayetteville really was Miramar?   I wonder if his news team noticed the ubiquitous, angry, malevolent infrasound that was swirling around downtown?  It has been insidious.  Since Monday after Christmas the military industrial complex has been laying the hammer down on Fayetteville.  Trains run all day, everyday, and all night.  There has been no respite.  You may get one hour without a train.  Right now is the humdinger of them all, and I know it must be a rebuilt DC locomotive under the suggestion of General Electric.  Norfolk Southern resisted the trend in the railroad industry to invest in AC traction unlike CSX-T and BNSF.  They remained an all DC fleet until rebuilding was necessary.  Surprisingly N&S agreed to the equipping of their previous DC locomotives with inverters and AC traction motors.  Slowly but surely those silent black monsters have developed into the worst human antagonist imaginable.  I am sitting in my home, and I feel like I am at sea.  Of course it could be because cargo ships sitting at Sunny Point are woofing out their own frequency of infrasonic pollution and too boot are sitting on water undulating with the fluctuating tide.  I though that for a while.  Then I realized this tide was coming and going, meaning it is a diesel-electric locomotive, most probably a newly equipped AC traction motor CSX-T or N&S one.  Then there is the GEVO, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of trains.  I posted a video of it sitting in the Milan Yard, and it sounds like a World War ll U Boat.  That diesel is not balanced.  Because I worked on ships for over a decade, I told myself oh, "Just imagine you are on the boat going 3 knots."  This is what it feels like.  It is not that glorious sensation of steaming 21 knots through the Gulf of Mexico heading back to Olde San Juan from Aruba.  The bow of the Destiny used to jump that waves and crash into the troughs for a solid afternoon.  Then the economic crisis hit.  RCCL lost a billion dollars.  Suddenly speeds became much slower.  The ships would creep from island to island.  Luckily I learned what that sensation feels like.  How is that possible?  Do I have vertigo?  No.  This is real, and it probably helps that I have had an iridotomy in my right eye, that I can perceive this low frequency sound.  Then again there are the howitzers.  There are the 55mm machine guns.  There are the menacing Cessnas (like right now) flying up above.  I am trying to imagine that instead of belonging to FBI shell companies, they belong to Google or the paparazzi.  Then it would be understandable.  Inquiring minds want to know, but it is annoying.  Certainly there is no perk from being famous if they are not nice to you. 

Cyber Bullying

While most millennials won't remember it cyber bullying is not knew.  It began in a land far far away and a distant time, a few years ago.  It was the battle between IBM and Apple, the IBM component being Microsoft after having sold them an operating system that would function much like Apple's but on their all ready existing platform.  Point and Click it is called.  Windows always has been clunky, and if briefly we reflect America's continued war with Windows should by now by a watershed cultural icon.  Forever it seems the consumer has been fighting with Windows, Microsoft's attempt to copy the Apple interface for the IBM.  Because my memories are gray the first point of contention and what broke up the company was Bill Gates bundling Microsoft's Internet Explorer within Windows forcing consumers to use their web browser.  Netscape Navigator objected, the federal government intervened and found Navigator right, and broke up Bill Gate's famed company into separate parts.  I am not sure they have been the same since.  Their X Box was a big seller, but if one really scrutinizes the brief history of computer software, most of the older versions of the programs are better.  When Steve Jobs was alive, it must of been his competitive edge that forced programmers to excel in computer language.  Programs were small, and I mean small fitting on a floppy disc.  That is when three megabytes was something useful.  Like the U.S. economy computer language has become bloated and ineffective.  While the modern version of these original programs function, they are a shadow of their former selves.  Simply it is because computer app's (formerly applications) have become pop fodder.  It has become about selling a product to an unwise consumer.  Sprinkle on sugar and tell everyone it is the greatest thing next to indoor plumbing.  Sales skyrocket and Apple make a mint.  Each time I am prompted to download the newest version of iTunes I am annoyed.  Because continually the computer companies are "upgrading" their operating systems (which really means trying to integrate wireless technology into PC systems) we must continually buy the newer versions of the applications  Although Apple allows me to download most of this for free, what you are going to get is speculative.  When Apple was feeling the competitive edge of Windows, suddenly their clear and concise borders and boundaries disappeared.  Instead of having graphs and numbers and columns, suddenly Apple saw fit to give us words on a plain screen floating in cyberspace.  I like my original Word program better than anything I have gotten since.  I liked my original iTunes and iPhoto program better than what I have now, because the improvements they provided in essence were not improvements to usability.  They were superficial and visual.  Text got smaller, menus simply changed places, icons were scrambled, and non of it was intuitive.  Possibly this is because a newer millennial generation does not interact with software the same way the old school did.  There was no connection of programs via the internet.  There were no online stores.  American Online was the program of choice that started social media.  Today because of an ailing economy computer language strives to deceive consumers with interfaces that coerce human consciousness.  For example I do not want to see advertisements in my news.  In a newspaper they are places accordingly so the reader knows they are ads.  The fashion is today as Big Brother increasingly tightens his grip is to intersperse ads within the news content.  You will see a small icon that says, "Sponsored Content."  With this small change of internet advertising and thus revenue, the world has changed.  Suddenly the reader has to filter what normally is factual and true.  This is not a bad idea, since we should have been taught critical thinking in public school.  Why else are we required to take algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus?  Surely only a select few who choose jobs in technical fields will use these skills.  The rest of us may learn how to think about a problem before we reach a solution.  It bothers me that computing has become this.  Always I have vowed to keep the programs that work for me, yet each time I open my internet browser something is being sold to me.  The internet has become television, but the interactive nature of personal computers have baited a trap large enough to capture the world.  I don't get phished that often, but when I do it is a shock.  I don't own a cell phone, and I don't use a credit card.  My life is exponentially easier because of it.  After I convinced the state of North Carolina I did not owe them state taxes, and after I had a mere six months of Obamacare my financial worries were over.  By financial worries I mean what most Americans call financial worries.  Debt.  I am debt free.  As soon as I announce that to the world the heavens will fall. Being financially debt free is not one half of one percent of immunity from potential strife, but when I stop and think about it is a good starting place.  Unlike graduating college students I all ready have paid off my financial dues.  In my case it was for musical studio equipment and a few motorcycles, the things I need to keep my somewhat happy and productive.  It makes me extremely angry that consumer oriented businesses are not looking out for me.  They are looking to take advantage of me.  I spend the majority of my time not become smarter, creating art, or being happy.  I spend most of my time feeling like a slave and trying not to die.  Is this what life in America has become or always was?  

Elephants or Donkeys?

This is my question.  With our great intelligence community, the CIA and the FBI along with the NSA, if Russia had such a large influence on the presidential election, whey didn't they catch it?  I would say that is a major failure of intelligence, failing to catch cyber-hacking.  Then again it is happening over and over and over. When a society, lead by irresponsible telecommunications companies, posts their sensitive material on a communal cyber "cloud," then why is anyone surprised that hacking is occurring?  If you as a homeowner choose to control the security in your home wirelessly with a smartphone, and hacking is common, why would you be surprised if you home is broken into?  The parties' screaming about Putin's influence in the election is juvenile and inflammatory.  If you were Russia's president, and you were a war criminal, would you not do everything you could to influence international policy?  Putin has been doing this for a long time.  Only now do the cries go out, and it is sickening.  It is indicative of what is to come in Washington.  I staunchly have ignored all of it and choose rather to laugh at the president-elect's jokes.  With the sheer amount of moxy in congress, surely appropriate checks and balances will be taken with Trump's cabinet.  If there are aberrations then litigation is appropriate.  Governor Roy Cooper is doing it in North Carolina.  In his first few weeks in office his legal team all ready was at work challenging McCrory's preemptive legislation.  This is my question.  With the continual string of hacking and leaks in America, why did not any of the intelligence agencies detect any of this activity?  It is because it is political slander, mud-slinging at the most base level, something that has been occurring for the last eight years.  The entirety of America has been enticed into the cyber domain, and therefore it is appropriate was have been hacked.  We are sitting ducks, and I am positive a network of backdoors are built into all of the online networks propagated by the computer companies.  It only makes sense, and it is sickening.  I see no recovery.  Senile senior senators are not young and savvy enough it seems to even understand the issues.  Maybe they are.  Maybe it is just our corrupt media again inciting violence for the sake of news.  I was asked once to use the program Dropbox to exchange scores of music, and I declined.  There was no way I was going to place my original, copyrighted, unpublished music on a cloud ripe for the picking.  It could be some guy sitting on a bed in New Jersey.  Without good investigative reporting there is no news, and because evidently we have incapable researchers, writers, and journalists, this is what we get.  Mr. Trump's example as a proponent of reality television is not helping.  I am not alarmed at his approach, because it was invented to win a particular vote.  Only now after some time has passed do I feel the escalation of bigotry and racism as a result of is incendiary campaign.  It was not a good example for the country, because we as a populace and our government seem incapable to rise above it and set the example for humanity and effective government.  It is interesting to me that the Republicans are on path to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and yet surely no one has taken the time or effort to pen a new health care law.  This is the single reason why Hillary Clinton could not achieve this goal.  Her call for universal health care was a scribble on a post it note.  To actually enact legislation that will provide effective and affordable health care for America at the expense of our private system supporting wealth is daunting.  The author of Obamacare achieved a milestone.  While slowly after Obama leaves office the legislation with unravel with rising premiums, at least it has existed and covered millions of Americans.  Although Hillary Clinton could not get the vote, she could have commissioned someone to devise the immense and far-reaching law that would achieve her goal.  A look at other countries would have sufficed.  Trump and Republicans say they will replace the Affordable Care Act with something more effective, but my question is, "Who is writing it" and "Where is it."  I beg to differ on this point.  If all Congress can do is squabble over computer hacking, how will they ever muster up enough energy to overhaul the medical and insurance professions?  I don't see it.  Mr. Trump does spew a fair amount of hot air, but I feel he has good intentions.  The appointing of the CEO of Exxon Mobile to the position of Secretary of State is mockery.  I feel like America has regressed to the decade of the l970's when we were stuck in a war in Viet Nam and fighting domestic violence at the same time.  Are we in a state of war giving the President a set of unique and powerful executive privileges?  Never do I remember a President since Jimmy Carter who was engaged as the American President until the very end.  With President Carter unfortunately he was humiliated by Iran.  President Obama conversely is massing artillery and troops at German military bases in an attempt to fortify NATO's presence and intimidate Mr. Putin.  Money is being spent in huge quantities as it was for the last eight years, and still we have no solutions for an ailing economy.  I have not felt this particular emotion in a very long time, and I have no reason to feel it.  I am not being spurned by a spouse or lover.  Although I write sometime incendiary rhetoric, I have no power to effect change in any way in America.  Cable television monitors our home, and often what we do or speak about immediately shows up on television.  While I may sound deluded, what better way is there to monitor American homes than with an Amazon Tap or Echo and Alexa's keen ear tuned in?  I don't care if they do listen, but the feeling I have must be a metaphor for the tension in Washington, DC.  Unresolved adolescent angst.  It has been decades since I have experienced being mistreated on purpose, because someone disagreed with my opinion or something I did.  Acrimony, rancor, enmity, animosity, or malevolence are such negative and useless emotions.  They solve nothing.  Attempting to discipline or achieve one's goals with such behavior is juvenile and immature, but we are that now as a nation. Until adults once again inhabit Congress, we are doomed.  

Zombieland and the iPhone

I shouldn't be drinking vodka, because it makes me feel stupid.  Bourbon, although not as healthy as triple distilled rubbing alcohol, is familiar to me.  I have been drinking bourbon all my life, since I heard Jim Fine order, "Bourbon and ginger" at a party we were playing with the Kyle Whitford Band.  Bourbon used to taste really good, but I think in recent years like everything in America is has become fraudulent.  What's that?  Fraudulent bourbon?  How is that possible?  It is possible just like many herbal supplements on the market are fraudulent.  The vendor tells you they are selling you a specific product, and in actuality it is a placebo or it is chalk.  I have had this experience three times buying Guarana both online in in stores.  It began with eBay auctions.  The bottles began showing up unsealed.  Inside of them was something other than guarana.  Once after reading feedback from a particular seller, I discovered they were substituting melatonin for guarana.  Wow!  Melatonin is a sleep aid.  Guarana is an energy enhancer.  Taking melatonin instead of guarana is dangerous, and I did it for a while until discovering that tablets were making me more sleepy.  Recently I purchased guarana at the local Vitamin Shoppe.  When I opened the bottle in the car after buying it, the "guarana" was fake.  It was the same white stuff the eBay vendor sent.  I ordered  Puritan's Pride version of guarana from another seller, and it also was fake.  He returned my money.  The Vitamin Shoppe gave me a store refund, but for obvious reasons I no longer want to spend my money there. How do you know if you are really getting Ginko Biloba?  The FDA does not regulate herbal supplements.  I am not sure there is much oversight in the alcohol business.  It has become big business, and because our federal government taxes it 50% liquor and tobacco are money-earning commodities.  It's too bad that like everything in America, there is no oversight.  Fraud is everywhere. It is being called "Fake News."  It makes life difficult, when everything you buy is accompanied by a neurosis about its authenticity and value.  I am a good internet shopper.  I have learned how to research products online, find reputable sellers, and most times receive a fair product.  A few times I have been screwed, but it is becoming more of a norm.  I question the quality of today's bourbon in America.  It doesn't taste the same.  I have a friend who thinks that the bourbon industry is using high fructose corn syrup rather than cane sugar.  It doesn't taste the same.  Of all of the things I would like to think about, the validity of my herbal supplements and non-prescription medication are not on the list.  I would rather continue as normal, but America is not the same.  America has changed frighteningly in the last decade.  I feel stupid.  I drive around Fayetteville running errands, and judging from what I see our entire lives have become masquerades.  Capitalism, or the selling of goods and services, must have failed on a massive scale for businesses to behave as they do.  Apple is on my mind, and after receiving an iPod Touch for a Christmas gift, I believe that company, after Steve Job's death, has become the major purveyor of Newspeak.   There were smartphones, and then there were iPhones.  iPhones.  The Macintosh operating system was re-tooled over UNIX, modified for mobile use, and voila.  Apps!  I don't need apps, because I remember when application were just programs you used on a personal computer to get your work done.  It was a bit scholarly.  (Obama is deploying the military his last few weeks in office, and Fayettenam is at war)  The C-130's flying over our house are an ominous presence.  Who knew Vladimir Putin had become America's arch enemy number one?  When did this happen?  When did Congress decide to resurrect the Cold War?  I understand that Putin may be a threatening presence, and fully I don't understand what is happening in Syria and Aleppo.  Putin is responsible for most of it like the annexation of Crimea.  I feel stupid, because what I am seeing and listening to on television and the newspaper each day is juvenile, childish, dogma.  The problems America faces are clear, and senile senior senators playing pinochle on our dime is unacceptable.  Truly and without a shadow of a doubt our Federal government no longer represent the best interests of Americans.  In North Carolina they brag in your face as the screw you up the ass.  It is like professional wrestling.  I shouldn't be surprised, but I have been to nine years of college.  I have sought to educate myself, to grow, and to mature into a thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent artist.  There is little room for that now, because we still are at war.  (The engineer gives a little toot on the horn, because at a grade crossing they are required to warn motorists)  Most of the time they don't.  Most of the time CSX-T breaks the rules.  They run most of their trains at night now.  Just read any online account of engineers on call for a major railroad.  They are overworked and underpaid.  We can't expect ethical behavior from anyone scraping to get by.  Nine years of college to understand a fruitful and fulfilling life, and yet America has become a trench.  Although I voted for Hillary I feel Donald Trump is the only qualified person to see through the B.S.  on capital hill.  That is why they are so afraid of him.  The excesses, masquerades, and fleecings of Americans are so rampant, they are upon what America runs.  Capitalism has failed, and to survive fraud has become the new market.  It was easier before.  It was easier when we had the Mafia.  At least we understood it.  If you can't get by within the constrictions of the law, you went around it or made your own.  That is happening now, just on Wall Street.  I read up on George Soros, and I liked most of what he ways.  What I don't like is that he is a hedge fund manager.  Pooling the populaces debt and selling it like fish is not the right way to become wealthy.  Bernie Madoff is in jail for it.  (Has his movie come out yet?)  I have discovered that there are no networks, cable or otherwise.  Television has become one singular entity, and it is controlled by the same interests.  Is it Fox News, the originator of ridiculous soap box shouting?  Is it Rupert Murdoch?  Is the the Defense industry who desperately need the U.S. to be at war so their companies can become profitable?  I don't know, but we are losing.  I don't think president-elect Trump is the problem.  I think he will be a solution. He doesn't need the taxpayers money.  Back to Apple.  Wireless communications by zombies.  Our youth have been brain-washed.  After trying to play simple MP3 files on this new iPod Touch, only was I bombarded with sales pitches.  Apple Music.  I don't want Apple Music.  I want the music I loaded on this iPod.  I don't want the weather.  I don't need notification.  What a cluster fuck.  When I learned the Macintosh at OSU, it was simple, easy, and fun.  I didn't have masses of millennials trying to screw me through suggestive software, products that melt the human mind, and poisoning our souls with insipid propaganda.  (I didn't get that just right, but you get the picture)  Apple has become despicable, and perhaps their network is responsible for Newspeak.  ATT bought Direct TV.  It all is ONE thing controlled by one interest.  There are no networks, only aliens sitting in offices pushing the buttons.  

Weiner News and the Dewey Decimal System

Now that Roy Cooper officially has become the governor of North Carolina, and Pat McCrory will carry his devious political affiliations to Washington, refuse is beginning to float to the surface of the pond.  A recent study showed that the state of North Carolina ranked last in an international study testing the voting process.  We are the least democratic state in the union, meaning we are ruled like a plantation.  I have known this my whole life, and never was it more evident to me than when I graduated with a BME degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.  Beginning teacher pay was roughly $18,000.00 a year.  I spent four years of my life studying at a prestigious institution so the state of North Carolina could spit in my face.  It hasn't stopped.  In fact it has gotten worse.  I was lucky enough to see fit to move away from the American South, and it was a good idea.  Other places are not like plantation states.  South Carolina was, and that is why I moved from there.  Moving back to North Carolina has been the largest challenge of my life, and it is not over with yet.  Each and every day I ask myself how life became so difficult, and the answer is because we are stuck living in a plantation state.  The political sentiments here are over a century old and they are rife with bigotry, racism, and violence.  I have learned enough in my time spent in other places how to ignore this ignorance.  When life continues to beat on you with the help of your state legislature, it becomes tiring.  Must we be idealists to think out state government is there to help us succeed?  Instead their intent is to control, suffocate, and exploit the general population of North Carolina for their own greed.  Never did I want to believe the stereotypes of the American South, until I have been forced to experience them first hand.  It really is unbelievable.  It is not unlike an Orwellian novel, and I guess that is appropriate.  The great literature of our time along with the rest of our cultural heritage that is being suppressed is exactly as 1984 depicts.  With the media at the helm truth, integrity, and Christianity have waned leaving America a whining bunch of second generation Appalachians.  I never knew devoted ignorance could be the cornerstone of a human existence until now.  I guess God knew what would happen to man.  It is up to us to solve this crisis, and we will fail.  Only those devoted to Christ will survive and be transported to His other planet after watching men destroy our own world.  

A Billionaire Cabinet

Once I asked Wynton Marsalis a question.  He was visiting Ohio State University in an educational endeavor concerning jazz music. Dr. Ted McDaniel was the director of jazz studies.  Subsequently he has retired and handed his baton to Shawn "Thunder" Wallace.  We sat in the Hughes Hall auditorium, and I was enrolled in the D.M.A. program in music composition.  I have played jazz music most of my life but was being steered in the direction of Contemporary Classical Music.  (You don't need jazz musicians to play this music)  Jazz music in general has become obscure for reasons relating to the economic crisis of 2008, poor public education, and the loss of the professional music industry.  If it doesn't work with an iPhone app...   Well you get it.  Jazz historically is called America's one true art form.  Today the populace at large does not recognize art.  Since the inception of Karioke live music performance has been neutered in lieu of the championing of personal egos.  America has embraced the man, masturbates him, and takes his money with a sheepish grin.  When a population becomes so shallow they cannot recognize and appreciate anything other than themselves, society has a problem. It is religion.  Religion has become ignored in America.  It is understandable when you are homeless and hungry why your values would change.  A scrap of food, a sip of wine, or a fag could seem more important than a prayer, generosity, or art.  Americans are scrambling for survival, and it is because after the 2008 economic crisis our currency is being held by a select few who betted against the American economy.  We hear little about these men today.  Corporations are required to disclose more than private citizens, and thus they are scrutinized more.  Slowly we are becoming aware of where our money is.  If it is not flowing through our economy freely to exchange hands, it is sitting laundered in a Grand Cayman, Swiss, or Chinese bank.  While it may be accruing interest it is not invested in America.  Those with this money have spurned the American people.  We have been abandoned, and there is no better metaphor than two mile long munition trains headed to Sunny Point Ocean Terminal to be loaded onto commercial cargo vessels en route to the Middle East.  Why are we supplying Afghanistan and Iraq?  We are we investing in America's military rather than her own people and infrastructure?  Each time I see expensive machinery at the cost of the taxpayer traveling to Muslims in the Middle East I question.  Would not this money be better spent on bringing industry back to America, rebuilding our infrastructures, and repairing cataclysmic weather damage which recurs?  Priorities in America have been skewed since the George W. presidency, and while Barack Obama did execute Osama Bin Laden, our economy problem and national debt are worse.  It is clear why our electoral college chose Donald Trump to be our new president.  Instead of bleeding heart liberalism...  Well we all know.  A cabinet of billionaires, those who have profited in the private sector, should be a good choice for righting the economic ills of our bloated federal government.  Only if they embrace their new government jobs and the American people as their shareholders.  

Li'l Black Sambo and His Friend Uncle Tom

The media has been covering racism in America more, since police shootings of black men have escalated in recent years.  I hesitate to use the term media, because traditional forms of media such as newspapers and periodicals have dwindled since the promulgation of cable television and Internet news.  (or rather "Newspeak")  It is interesting that Internet news not that long ago was reliable and thus reputable.  I used to read the Reuters Hourly News Summary, and it was streamlined and accurate.  Suddenly Reuters replaced it with commercial, tabloid type, advertisement laden reporting, which has become the norm in America.  Media has suffered at the expense of tabloid media.  The line of demarcation between news journalism and tabloid fodder has been blurred and possibly on purpose.  Because Fox News has stumbled (the fall of Roger Ailes), and Donald Trump won the American presidency, media has been forced to take a step back and reflect.  While they are breathing and attempting to gain sure footing again, news in the meantime has become propaganda.  Now it is adolescent driven opinion and mostly an opinion decrying the downfall of the Democratic Party.  They are standing scratching their heads, and continuing through the appropriate steps of bereavement.  (Denial, anger, etc.)  It is obvious which media outlets are privy to which side of partisan politics.  (Not the way it should be.)  American media has become  partisan, since the challenge of the success of Fox News.   Racism has existed in America throughout the Obama presidency.  It inexplicably has escalated.  (And not only in the months since The Donald made is socially fashionable) The election of America's first black president didn't help race relations in America.  It exacerbated them.  It exacerbated them, because Barack Obama in all honesty didn't represent the majority of blacks in America.  (Perhaps Shaft would have been a better choice)  He was an elitist, and it was proven elitism in American politics no longer was to be the flavor of the day.  A majority of Americans felt alienated by the Obama presidency.  In a funny turn of events Democrats became the elite populace, and they stand scratching their heads wondering why the electoral college chose The Donald.  It is clear to me. 

 Change of Subject:  

American jazz music once represented integrity, honestly, God, human love, and values.  No longer is it that.  Perhaps jazz now is the appropriate metaphor for American media.  They all have sold out.  After trying to watch Lincoln Center award Herbie Hancock his prize, I only could stifle retching.  I have seen it before.  I have seen it on the Smooth Jazz cruises.  I watched Wynton's band do it.  Last night I saw two seminal jazz artists become the metaphor for racism in America.  I saw two token darkies dressed in black uniforms Uncle Tomming for the Man.  It was difficult to swallow.  Here were two of the best jazz musicians, two musicians I have respected and enjoyed for decades, kowtowing to the establishment.  Perhaps in their eyes, eyes which have aged and faded, they were happy still to be in the public eye playing jazz -oriented music they enjoy.  When the camera panned to the audience, a predominantly white mass who know nothing about the history of jazz music, it was apparent to me what jazz has become.  Like media it has become pop.  (Or poop.)