The Sonic Weapons of the Cruise Ship Industry

It is a bit amusing that something I have been talking about for years suddenly has become in issue for the United States Embassy in Havana, Cuba.  They are complaining about tinnitus, fatigue, headaches, and blurred vision.  Oh my.  Take a read about the scientific exploits of French researcher Vladimir Gavreau.  They were astute enough to put two and two together.  That of itself is a small miracle.  I have been complaining about the effects of low frequency sound for two decades, but no one cares.  When the folks working in the U.S. Embassy in Havana are effected, suddenly it is a newsworthy story.  This is the way it works.  You can have the greatest product in the world, but until someone promotes it you will despair in relative anonymity.  That is the way it works.  It even says that in the Bible, you are only one person away from success.  You need that one person to say something good about you.  I write a lot of disparaging stuff, but most of it is true.  No one has called me about over any of it.  It is no fun being ignored, patronized, and exploited.  Jesus was persecuted.  I feel that way most of the time.  I must be a bad guy, but I'm not.  Put two and two together.  President Obama restored relations with Cuba for the first time since the failure of the Bay of Pigs.  Fidel died, and President Obama saw an opening.  For the first time travel was available to the isolated Communist island.  Who would capitalize upon such a scenario?  The answer of course is the cruise industry.  Consider the location of the embassy.  Now look at a map of Cuba and find the cruise terminal.  Find the relationship between the building of the embassy and the location of the terminal.  Imagine newly allowed cruise vessels docking in Havana for the first time in years.  Imagine large cruise vessels, very large cruise vessels such as the Oasis or Allure of the Seas.  Imagine four to six large diesel electric prime movers, often Wartsila, hidden deep in the hull of those vessels.  Imagine them running continuously having to provide electricity for that large ship.  Imagine a few of them, ships, docked with continuously-running Wartsila diesel-electric prime movers in close proximity to the U.S. Embassy.  Diesel engines inherently produce infrasound waves, because of their firing rate.  This is why we are disturbed by diesel engines, not because of their raucous knocking, but because the vibration of that torquey motor is carried long distances riding on the top of those low-frequency sound waves.  It is the same in radio transmission.  The actual content is encoded on top of a "carrier" wave, because they travel long distances.  Newly welcomed cruise ships are docking for the first time in Havana, and now employees at the embassy are experiencing symptoms of infrasound.  Go figure.  

Irreverence to Hef

It is due time to read something about Hugh Hefner that is not a vociferant rant from the LGBT community.  Most of the people who have used Mr. Hefner's death as an opportunity to complain about their own sexual insecurities do not even know about what they write.  Millennials don't understand the 1980's or the l990's much less a publishing empire that emerged in America's post war era centered around liberated teens having fun.  Mr. Hefner was an opportunist, a hippie, and an American rebel.  Without him probably the sexual revolution never would have taken place.  We all would be living the Amish life quaking shaking in our barns, shoveling chicken poop, and denying our own reproductive capabilities.  What would the Rat Pack have said about Mr. Hefner?  We cannot know, because they are dead.  Most of the people that know something about Hugh Hefner are dead.  Those writing disparagingly about him today upon his death are selfish, misguided, frustrated souls unable to grasp the true nature of American freedom.  "The rubble of Mr. Hefner's work is all around us?"  What the fuck?  With three clicks of a mouse the most suggestive sexual acts are at our disposal for free.  How could a publisher with his start in the 1950's be responsible?  He isn't, but also it shows how America has changed, culture has changed, and how millennials have no clue how different they are from older Americans.  They are sheltered, clueless, and whine because the artificial dream created by an iPhone is not real.  Welcome to America during the l950's, when porn readily was not available on your wireless telephone.  Sitting in our attic for the majority of my life are bundles of Playboy magazines dating back to the l950's.  Just as many pubescent boys did, we learned about sex from Hugh Hefner's publication Playboy.  What was our alternative?  Sex education learned in health class?  Spying on our parents?  Watching married couples sleep in separate single beds on "I Love Lucy?"  Freedom granted by America's Constitution includes freedom of sexuality and our need to express it however that may be.  Whether you disagree with it or not, Hugh Hefner, as guaranteed by America's Constitution could publish what he did.  If you disagreed, you could choose not to view it.  The same is true today.  Instead of blaming America's social problems on one lone man, which is the tone of most of the articles recently I have seen, we should be trying to understand America.  As I grew up and the Playboy empire progressed, most of us became disinterested in Playboy.  When Hugh gave others the responsibility of overseeing Playboy, it floundered.  It would seem Mr. Hefner alone held the vision championed by the Playboy empire.  Not everyone agreed with it, and thus you choose not to pay attention.  Upon his passing it is startling to me to hear LGBT rants blaming Hugh Hefner for everything conceivable.  I am not going to commit the time and energy necessary to explain it right now.  I am too tired from axing magnolia roots out of the ground.  I will say that stout-heartedly I am a proponent of heterosexuality, only because it is more interesting.  Most couples I have observed marry a mirror image of themselves.  That is because they are most comfortable waking up and viewing themselves in the mirror.  What challenge is that?  If all you need is comfort and security in your life, okay.  Some of us welcome a differing opinion, a foreign spice, or a twist of plot.  Certainly men could say at one point women provided this.  Still they do, but in my experience that stimulation no longer is productive, imaginative, loving, or spiritual.  Instead it is sexist, separatist, and all of the other things the LGBT community seems to be championing.  We all are the same?  I think not, and that is for a reason.  I do not like a lot of what Mr. Hefner stood for, especially in his later years.  It widely was discovered that his three young wives became prisoners in his mansion unable to leave or experience life without his consent.  In addition he did not engage in sexual activity with them, a common complaint.  It was hypocritical as were many of the things represented by the Playboy lifestyle.  What the writers today are missing is that Hugh did not exploit anyone.  The women that posed for him were paid, treated well, and agreed to their contracts.  It was not indentured servitude.  His employees agreed to their roles and actively participated with their own consent.  If you disagree with the Playboy lifestyle, like anything in America you are free to ignore it. 

The Train Whistle Ain't a Coming

After watching a handful of fatal train videos on You Tube, quietly I became enraged.  I have been harping on the rail industry for years for good reason.  I lived in Cowtown on and off for ten years, and this is where I discovered the Taos Hum.  It was not in New Mexico.  It was on the horizon in Columbus, Ohio, where I lived in a townhouse in Upper Arlington.  In the still of a cold stark winter, I walked onto my back stoop and listened through the small snowflakes.  This memory brings a certain peace and nostalgia.  I miss living in Cowtown, although it was not easy.  Upon moving there to engage the Doctor of Musical Arts program at The Ohio State University, I found it difficult to accommodate the "Ohio Thing."  A friend who worked at Edward's Music in Fayettenam knew of what I was talking.  Members of his family had made the trek from the South to the Midwest, and they also discovered an "Ohio Thing."  It took several years for me to discover what is was.  In actuality I didn't figure it out.  I acclimated.  Columbus is the testing ground for products in America, because it is landlocked and sheltered from things other geographic locations offer as amenities.  There are no Great Lakes.  There is no ocean.  There are few mountains, so the life you live in Cowtown is what you create.  As such the population there is more educated in general than the population in the South.  That is my view anyway.  There are no cotton fields in which to hide.  There are no front porches on plantation houses serving ice tea, lemonade, or mint juleps.  There is no Beach Music, no O.D., and no shagging.  They viewed me as  entitled never having paid any dues or earned my keep.  I was forced to prove myself all over again, and I did.  I worked my way up in their music scene.  The most beautiful thing about living in Cowtown, was I was alone.  I was five-hundred miles from Fayettenam, and it was glorious!  I did not have to entertain the notion of war for over a decade.  The so called patriotism of of the host city of Fort Bragg was not necessary.  Columbus had no need to court the affections of the United States military.  Now back living in 'Nam, your entire life is consumed by their preparation for war.  It is not uplifting.  It is not inspiring.  It is a grueling psychological, emotional, and spiritual battle.  I may not win.  My life over the years has developed into something more than survival.  I have ascended the ladder of "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" and learned how to live an enlightened life.  The problem is it is difficult to live an enlightened life, when you are surrounded by a massive military preparing for war.  As much as you may try the brutal reality of war is right around the corner.  G.I.'s are being trained to kill the enemy.  The reason why violence has escalated in Fayetteville, is because this murderous violence creeps into the city's consciousness.  There is gang activity supporting a drug need that supplies illicit narcotics to wanting soldiers.  Unlike the way local promotions paint Fayetteville,  Fayetteville is a violent, predominantly uneducated stomping ground for crime dotted with opportunists preying on once flowing military dollars.  The inexplicable irony is million dollar homes are everywhere.  These are examples of these opportunists living the Trump dream buying their quality of life.  The rest of the city is left in the wake of C-130's strafing our local mall.  Those who are taxed, desperate, and needy unconsciously resort to violence to survive.  There are homeless people pandering for money when you stop at a red light at an intersection.  A few days ago someone was shot twice in the parking lot of a local WalMart in the middle of the afternoon!  Violence steadily has increased in Fayetteville since Donald Trump was elected President.  No one will say that the exaggerated issue of protesting our national anthem really is a protesting of Donald Trump in our White House.  Like most stories the bought and paid for media exacerbates these issues for ratings.  The NFL is protesting Donald Trump in the White House.  It is sickening to an extent that we, the American people, must view such low brow behavior in the mainstream media.  Then again mainstream American media, like television, is a remnant of its former self.  While you may be able to invent a company, raise venture capital, and implement it online via the World Wide Web, traditional American institutions must be built with blood, brick and mortar, and faith.  We have lost this tradition in America, a Capitalist economy based upon core human values deemed important by Americans.  Today the government, insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the medical establishment are brainwashing us with lies.  It is not appropriate to view drug commercials on prime time television, but it readily is apparent that Big Pharma is one of the remaining lucrative remnants of American business who will sponsor television.  It is bought and paid for from the top down, and those at the top only know how to manipulate hedge funds.  They know little about producing television, film, music, or other American products.  They are bankers, attorneys, and investors who only want to move money around on paper to make money.  Building a dream, a business, and a life, our American Dream, is a shadow which now pales in comparison to the riches of quick internet wealth.  In a sense we are being challenged to rebuild Civil Rights.  It won't be long before those in control in America will realize you can't exploit the planet and the population forever.  God will object.  As I stood on my stoop in the dark of night listening, there it was.  "The Taos Hum."  People were writing about it on the internet, an interminable vibrating sound that was omnipresent in their homes, in their pillows, and in their heads.  What possibly could that be?  I was hearing it, and it was transient.  It took me eight months to discover its source.  It took another decade for this molybdenum mine to go bankrupt, and for General Electric to shut down its underground conveyor belt hauling the raw ore to its refinery miles away.  It was relatively new technology, low frequency AC drives controlled by a computer.  The hum sound comes from the electrical processing needed to to run those drives at a slow speed.  It requires power inverters, and these devices have reproduced all over America.  The sound I was hearing was coming from diesel electric locomotives equipped with this new technology.  Not all of the railroads bought into this new technology.  The Norfolk and Southern resisted buying such locomotives.  Almost two decades later General Electric has upped its game and with bells and whistles sold the N&S on the once new technology.  They offered a rebuilding C40-9Ws, their existing frame, into AC powered units.  This meant swapping DC drives for AC traction motors and equipping the loco with an auxiliary electronics cab housing the massive electrical system needed to power the AC motors.  There are many You Tube videos documenting this extensive electrical equipment.  Now the Taos Hum was mobile freely able to travel anywhere freight movement was required.  While this hum sound has decreased in recent years, the other effects of massive, radiating, low-frequency alternating current are rampant, undocumented, and dangerous.  The Federal Railroad Administration, like most federal agencies, are bought and paid for by the railroads.  The railroads in the last two decades have experienced a resurgence related to this change in technology.  They have experienced a resurgence also because of former Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow.  He built CSX-T by merging the Chessie System with Seaboard Coastline and investing heavily in AC Traction.  Now trains could haul more tonnage more quickly than ever before.  The interstate truckers never knew what hit them.  This second ascension of the rail industry largely has gone unnoticed.  Like many other corporate interests, it exists as a Wall Street ticker symbol intended to be traded to make money.  Investors don't care how their money is made.  Take all prisoners, and the railroads have.  Improprieties are rampant in railroad protocols, and as corporate monopolies they operate with impunity.  The rise of the railroads can best be understood by watching fatal train videos on You Tube.  In America's frail colloquial infrastructure, massive fright operations transpire with nary a thought for those on the sidelines.  In a heinous misrepresentation of corporate policy, rail fatalities are blamed on unsuspecting citizens.  The population largely is unaware a behemoth industry is hauling thousands of tons of freight at high speeds through our neighborhoods.  What once was a nostalgic slow-moving industry now is the most aggressive, humanly offensive, and dangerous industry on the planet.  Mines, plants, and bases do not move.  They stay in one place with their dangers contained in strict perimeters meant to be scrutinized by federal agencies who often are paid off to look the other way.  At least they are stationary, protected, and isolated.  The railroads clandestinely have wormed their way into American lives through an antiquated system which miraculously has yet to destroy an entire city.  Natural gas derailments have destroyed many areas, but the railroads are allowed to continue to use sub-standard tank cars for hauling this commodity.  Likewise the railroads are not required to raise consciousness about their activity, because this awareness, like many issues in America, would illicit a recalcitrant American response.  Why would we want freight trains blasting sixty miles an hour through our cities?  The more progressive and enlightened cities discovered the railroads and their increased activity.  Grade crossings have been closed for safety reasons.  No whistle zones have been created.  The pinnacle of proactive action on the invasiveness of freight tail traffic was in Los Angeles, California.  Their result was the Alameda Corridor, an uninterrupted trench dug in the city's landscape allowing trains to travel unfettered to the Port of Long Beach.  As one can imagine the nostalgia of surfing no longer exists there.  If one does watch the train fatality videos on You Tube, what will be seen are unsuspecting Americans living their lives surrounded by a dangerous industry, that has failed to educate the world about its product.  They operate on an infrastructure which has been in place since the industrial revolution.  Steel and wood tracks, the polar opposite of the satellite-equipped locomotives being tracked by GE, are the infrastructure of an industry which has failed to modernize its track.  They are operating on rails decades old, traveling through parks, neighborhoods, and city streets with pedestrians ignorant to the threat a few feet from their paths.  My friend Jeff Ray was killed by an Amtrack train traveling sixty miles an hour.  As a compassionate, educated, and intelligent musician, I don't think he was looking for death.  It beset itself upon him in the worst possible way.  The railroads, now Fortune 500 companies, are responsible for their own safety, and that means being forthcoming about their prevalent activity which plagues our evenings with violent, threatening, and dangerous activity cloaked in the sentimentality of a puffing steam locomotive.  Call a spade a spade and protest Donald Trump, not America's Star Spangled Banner. 

The Last Train to Quacksville

I don't really have too much to write about other than Trump repeatedly proving his incompetence.  There are vague similarities to Adolph Hitler who was addicted to methamphetamines.  Trump's puppeteers, in their demented mania, ruthlessly are trying to keep him in power.  He will seal his own fate.  I was glad to see Oprah on 60 Minutes.  She has the most pleasing commentating voice of all those on television.  Professional sports are in the dumper, but that is no big surprise.  Television coverage never has been so amateur.  A production company must spend dollars for good production, so the rich CEO and Board skimming off the top leaves nothing for the product.  This is endemic all over America.  Why should we pay millennials to sit in cubicles, mediocre office workers to host medical clinics, and poor pharmacists?  What a wrong system of values in America.  More it is rich CEO's and Boards paying a bunch of lackeys to keep face of their mediocre business.  I'm sure if someone looked hard enough, fraud would not be far from the surface of their businesses.  Meanwhile we hear about the opioid epidemic, but we do not hear why.  Why is America on opiates?  The answer is simple.  Because we are in pain.  Why are we in pain with a medical establishment sucking the life blood out of citizens?  Shouldn't we all be in stellar health considering the costs of American healthcare?  No, because no one in the establishment is interested in curing disease.  I'll bet my left nut that all ready we have cures for cancer.  It is not lucrative to use them.  What a skewed set of values possibly because everyone is struggling.  You can't keep paying CEO's a thousand times that of regular workers and stay in business for long.  Perhaps we would like capital to be flowing freely again through the American economy, to those we see as worthy to receive fair wages.  Perhaps the value systems of the American people should decide the job strata?  Pay mediocre lab assistants to take your blood and give you bad news, often erroneous?   Maybe we should pay quality waiters and waitresses, those who genuinely care about our well being and deserve a living wage for services rendered.  Should we pay mediocre office workers to continue to disguise fraud?  On another note I am happy to have assembled a small entertainment center in front of my television.  The cable is gone.  Gone!  Instead I have glorious air TV, free TV!  The programming is hands down more quality than cable.  Who knew these old shows were still around?  Very little progaganda.  Dramatic acting.  Acting.  Wow to see that again.  Wardrobe.  Wow to see that again.  Style.  Glamor.  Now I can watch air TV, listen to my iPod, listen to a CD and record any of it to a minidisc without taking off one pair of headphones.  And I don't own a cell phone or an iPad.  Old School Glory. 

Al Gore, the Gorre and Daphetid, and Global Warming

One thing for sure must happen on the American front.  We as a populace have been shouting about global warming for a long time.  Al Gore, while an adequate spokesperson for such a topic, is not really capable of bringing social change.  He lost to W. through the Florida court system.  That in and of itself limits his credibility.  I appreciate his Powerpoint presentation manufactured for academia.  It is colorful.  We must cut through the B.S. and say what really is happening.  Global Warming is real.  Rest assured those who are creating it know.  They know better than anyone else.  They are good at remaining incognito, just as are the rest of the Bilderbergs.  We can shout and shout and shout.  We can post and post and post.  Nothing will change, until we acknowledge the reason why Global Warming is not being recognized as a dangerous planetary phenomenon is because of lobbying.  It goes further than lobbying.  Washington is being lobbied on a massive scale to quell consciousness about Global Warming.  It is more simple.  The companies largely responsible for emissions creating excessive heat are paying off politicians to look the other way.  There is no real conspiracy on either side.  Huge money is paying to have the issue railroaded.  How the money is being distributed is up to the media to discover, and because they largely are owned by the same interests, good luck with that.  Thank you and goodnight. 

Sperry Topsiders, Cable TV, and American Destructionalism

Largely I have been driven the last few days for several reasons.  I have had a knee-jerk reaction to get rid of cable.  A friend of mine cut the cord and has been using an Ollie's Army aerial antenna for his TV reception.  After experimenting with several different antennas both at the beach and in 'Nam, he is satisfied with the result.  Free TV.  I was intrigued.  I have come to hate cable TV.  Time/Warner was plagued with equipment malfunctions.  Their set-top boxes were erratic at best.  We would lose service often and have to reset the modems, if that is what they are.  When the big transition came from analog to digital, Time/Warner issued digital to analog converter boxes, that were supposed to allow you to be able to continue to use your older analog TV's.  It didn't work.  The little boxes were about as useful as an ashtray.  I have a mid 1990's Sony Trinitron television with a beautiful picture.  I love its RGB tube, convex screen, and natural ambient sound.  It is stereo.  I have kept it.  The decision to dump Time/Warner Cable was necessitated by a system that failed to support older televisions.  The computer industry is most guilty of this business practice, rendering products obsolete so you will have to buy their new ones.  Hardware today never is as good as it once was.  We call it vintage.  With outsourcing, Globalization, and corporate downsizing of the American labor force foreign-made products most likely never will be as good as American-made ones.  Well, that is not entirely true.  Like everything in life it is relative.  There have been great American-made products, and there have been ones that have been usurped by foreign markets such as Japanese cars.  I hesitate to say electronics, but that probably is true as well.  The Japanese, with their lack of land mass, have learned how to pack a lot of performance into small spaces such as apartments.  History must agree that Japanese electronics revolutionized the market.  Today most electronics are made in China at a fraction of the cost, and who knows if they are any good?  I think not, but maybe they are getting better.  I doubt it.  CEO's, shareholders, and board members continue to get rich, and consumers continue to get poor buying cheaply-made products that do not last.  We did not really want to get rid of Time/Warner's cable service, but my Sony Trinitron would not work with their budget converter box.  The decision was a metaphor for a moral.  There is another word for this action, a decision that is based upon experience, wisdom, and probably malfeasance.  "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."  If Time/Warner could not in their corporate mindset choose to support my older vintage television, then we could not support them.  Two years later we are dissatisfied with Direct TV.  Direct TV was purchased by AT&T, who now are producing television programs.  Their service also was an example of malfeasance.  Like many other customers we were horrified to learn after the first year of our two year contract our rates doubled.  It was written into the contract in small print.  This is an unethical business practise, and now I want to dump Direct TV for the same reasons we dumped Time/Warner.  They are unscrupulous, and the product they are selling is not worth its price.  Dramatically their product is not worth its price.  Cable TV across the board no longer is worth its price.  That is the intended subject of this missive.  Cable TV sucks.  Why is this?  I have been chewing on it for quite some time.  Like the Facebook addiction, we in our lonely and meager lives are addicted to creature comforts, habits which give us a sense of security.  Security is not the right word.  Oneness with the world.  Contentment.  A connection with the world.  Both Cable TV and FB provide this.  Rarely is there any good content, but surfing cable channels is like browsing your newsfeed.  We get a bird's eye view of what seems to be happening in America, but we don't.  Neither Cable TV nor FB offer a realistic depiction of current events in America.  They may offer a suggestion of current pop culture, and this is so shallow and unsatisfying that it merits a chucking.  I have just now realized this.  Both Facebook and Cable TV are unneeded entities.  I don't need them, because other than providing that anodyne to make me feel content, they offer nothing constructive, informative, or educational.  Then again neither does our current system of public education thanks to W..  "No Child Left Behind" was a misguided travesty for public education, and that is coming from a certified teacher.  (UNC-Chapel Hill, Class of 1985, BME)  W.'s dad, George Sr., championed the "Three R's" as well as our first "television" war.  I could support an old school approach to public education. (reading, writing, and arithmetic)  I could not even spell that word it has been so long since I have heard it!  With W.'s presidency came the era of exploiting our children, but that is a different blog entry.  What I want to say is both FB and Cable TV, as much as we like them, are not good for us.  Zuckerberg is releasing information about 3000 advertisements purchased on Facebook by Russian interests.  That should suggest whence he is coming.  Mark Zuckerberg sold internet advertising indiscriminately to Russian influences attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election.  That seems a bit like an act of treason to me.  Then again the internet mostly has been unregulated.  That is not a good a thing, but again it must be viewed in relative terms.  The originators of the the World Wide Web would of course like to maintain net neutrality, a freedom of information exchange which is embraced for its possible and probable positive social, political, and cultural influences.  That precept has been soiled like America herself.  We have been penetrated by foreign interests for the sake of Wall Street profits.  Let me say that again.  We have been penetrated by foreign interests for the the sake of Wall Street profits.  Since the media is owned by these interests,  they will not forsake their employers.  The Japanese own much of Hollywood, the Chinese own much of New York City, and the list goes on.  Newscorp, under the leadership of Rupert's two sons, has its fingers so deep in America's pie we never will be the same.  It would not be surprising if "Shrimp on the barbie" replaces hamburgers and hotdogs as our national fast food.  Do we really want to go Downunder?  I have traveled to Australia, and while a former British penal colony today seems unassuming, any interest like our President, who has not experienced the breadth of possible suffering, is not capable of leading.  My desire to eliminate Cable TV is for these reasons.  I have found cable to be a glut of un-American, propagandist, mind-numbing fodder.  Overtly I cannot say it is evil, but I am beginning to sense that.  That, in combination with the Trump presidency, is a formula for world destruction.  It became a necessity to get rid of Cable TV, and I did.  It took much effort like signing off a six month cruise ship contract.  They do not appreciate you when you are there, but when you leave their ensuing prospect, panic, and anxiety of failure deems itself inescapable.  Bail, and bail I did.  It cost me $100.00,  $32.00 for a converter box, $20.00 for coax cable, and $52.00 for a miniature, roof top, yagi antenna.  The funny thing is, and it's not funny, is now I have the appropriate litmus test for my death ray conspiracy theory.  This is sarcasm (satire), but in today's uneducated world of millennials there is little way to convince anyone human activity is  warming the planet.  A roof top television antenna is a step in the right direction.  Why?  It is proving that excessive, aberrant, electrical energy is flowing through our air.  It took me two tries to receive all three local network television stations, and still I am minus one, WNCN.  When all is well, like last evening, I was receiving all stations reliably and satisfactorily.  I was able to enjoy television in my way, channel surfing between networks and catching bits and pieces of differing entertainment and information.  Today mysteriously all bottom stations are absent except for WRAL.  I had to change the direction of my antenna slightly to pick it up.  Today stations that must be in the other directions are absent.  The most prominent stations, which were present from the beginning, UNC, UNC-EX, WTVD, all of them are black today!  There only is one explanation for this.  It is called radio interference, RF for short.  RF has been a common term throughout American history.  In recent years, as RF as been erased from American consciousness and Americans have become addicted to the internet, the main avenue of information flow has moved from the airwaves to wire.   How is this possible?  This change, like everything else in life, must be viewed on a relative scale.  Telecommunications have moved in an opposite direction.  Formerly reliable home landlines now magically have been transformed into wireless wonders.  We are carrying around miniature microwave transmitters in our pockets and purses, and television moved from the air, to cable, and then to the internet.  While television still is broadcasting over the air, and this must be overwhelmingly shocking to most Americans, their business protocol has moved to the internet.  Internet streaming has surpassed Cable TV, and Cable TV has become the propagandist's dream, both because largely the internet is unregulated and it is available to foreign interests with little scrutiny.  It would seem Mark Zuckerberg is a metaphor for human ethics in the making.  Millennials are so sheltered from lack of education, history, and experience, how else can they learn what is right and wrong?  I would have hoped the internet would not have to be the example, but it is.  If given a choice whether to regulate or not regulate the internet, I would suggest that overseeing corporate America always has been a good idea lest they steal all of our money.  The unfortunate thing is Washington no longer is capable of drafting effective legislation much less regulating private businesses.  They have become a Congress of yes men holding their open palms for alms from the bad.  They are bought and paid for.  Cable TV is the prime example that foreign interests are vested in America, and it has crippled the American Dream.  Harking back to one's roots is the only way possible to find one's way in America's dark, violent, self-destructive future. 

Rage of the Machines

Well, CSX-T is at it again.  Two solid months of funk.  I drove by their Milan Yard tonight, after my ears began ringing at 5:00 a.m.  It has been that way lately.  Instead of the A&R tooling over at 10:45 a.m. blowing its horn, now it begins at 5:00 in the morning.  Sometimes it's two.  Usually it has been 3:15 a.m., and it lumbers through at 3:30.  If I twitch my toes the engineer used to keep going leaving me the rest of the night to sleep in peace.  No longer.  No mas.  Now it unmitigated chaos.  Train funk all the time.  My hips began to hurt in bed, like they often do.  My ears have been ringing all day, and all because their is an idling locomotive sitting hidden in the CSX-T Milan Yard.  They pull it down just enough so you can't see it from their building, but if you pull down the road on the other side of the poison-laden wooded swamp at night you can see its headlight.  If you stop and roll down the window the noise of a grumbling locomotive is unmistakable.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Swiiiiiiiiiish as the pneumatic system vents pressure for its brakes.  Then it engine hunts.  The engine revs really high for a few seconds and then settles back to a low rumble.  Grumble, rumble, non-stop, 24/7.  It's glorious.  Why all the hub bub?  You can't literally hear it once you drive away, the rumble that is.  If you get a few wave lengths away, say a multiple of its fundamental, the strength of the infrasound wave is summed.  Each successive repetition of the firing rate of that mammoth prime mover produces yet another infrasonic wave we cannot hear.  They build up, and like other recognized standing waves (radar, sonar, etc.) sits in one place at a distance.  That place would be our house, my bedroom.  It is in my bed.  When the Amtrack engineer toddles through Fayettenam and stops at the station downtown, often he forgets to drop the lever to Notch 4.  In Notch 4 that GE 16 cylinder engine can produce electricity for the passenger train.  When it needs to pull out, Notch 8 is required.  Notch 8, the evil Notch 8, is vibration, diesel knock that is out of this world.  It would be like you are sitting on the hood of an eighteen wheeler.  Awful.  Again if I make rude gestures to modulate the infrasound wave letting the engineer know he is bothering not just me, a street, an entire neighborhood, but an entire city, he drops the lever to Notch 4.  I am not sure the educational requirements of an Amtrack train engineer merit this kind of influence.  It's like giving a mouse the key to the button, and we all ready have that.  I guess America has gone to giving unmitigated influence to the incapable. 

Fleur de lis and Poppy

There are a few things in this world that give me a sense of comfort.  Have you seen the TV doctor who explains the difference between pleasure and happiness?  Dopamine is responsible for pleasure, he says, and serotonin for happiness.  Happiness is a sense of oneness with the world.  Dopamine provides a thrill like drugs or alcohol.  I wonder what chemical is responsible for orgasm?  I would think both.  (Man Kevin Costner has aged!)  I am familiar with both chemicals.  I have been drinking bourbon since college.  I discovered bourbon and ginger ale while attending UNC-Chapel Hill.  What a yummy drink.  When I moved to Columbus, Ohio and began playing in a Hip/Hop R/B band, I learned how to drink shots.  When you went to the gig at four o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, you had to be jiggy.  I wasn't.  I was in my white guy task oriented mode related to scholarly musical study.  It met with vehement resistance at the club.  So, shot, shot.  Two shots of bourbon and the jiggy was on.  It made you feel groovy.  No inhibitions.  No anxiety.  No stress.  You were getting ready to play a hip R/B set, and people were waiting for your good vibe.  Vibe in a shot glass.  It is interesting how alcohol plays a part in human existence.  I think humanity would not have endured if it were not for alcohol.  On the flip side, alcohol can kill you.  What most people don't know is that alcohol is a depressant.  It augments whatever mood you create.  If your soul is incapable of creating its own mood, than alcohol is not helpful.  If you are depressed, alcohol and kill you.  I have learned this, and it is a difficult pill to swallow.  I have been drinking most of my life with no adverse consequences other than a bad hangover and a wasted day.  I am a conscientious drinker, and I don't mix, use sugary mixers, or try not to imbibe cheap liquor.  What an awkward sentence.  I am off my grammar trip.  Usually when I blog I try to use proper King's English.  Since Trump has been in the White House, I don't care.  It doesn't matter.  It is a freak show, so good grammar is in the backfield.  Truly I think American liquor manufacturers are using cheap ingredients in their brew, just like Tim Cooke is using cheap chips in formerly upstanding  Apple products.  I am typing on a Macbook Pro (late 2011) with a blown GPU chip.  My hard drive is slowing down, but that is okay.  At some point I will make it to the Apple Store in Raleigh, and get them to replace the GPU with that expensive heating machine and install a new hard drive.  That is later.  Liquor ain't what it used to be, so buy import.  The trouble is I can't afford it.  I am family poor.  I am in limbo, not working a full-time job, looking after my family house.  It is not fun.  Not much money, but I've never had a lot of money.  I have a few things that mean something to me.  My musical equipment is important to me, although it is not cutting edge, expensive, or desirable to a thief.  In Barbados they would say "tief."  Ha!  That is what is great about older things.  Young millennials have no idea what they are, or what they can do.  My live keyboard rig is a Yamaha DX-7llFD and a Korg DS-8.  How undesirable are they?  A lot.  My musical equipment including my Bach Stradivarius trumpet is important to me, because it allows me to create.  In the face of adversity, I can crawl into my studio and create art.  That is important.  Tool that allow you to be productive are crucial in life.  Those who are wise invest the money they earn in tools which allow them to create and be productive.  I need a website, but that is later.  I have to pick and choose what I do.  It is a bit of this, and a bit of that.  I cook, and it take energy and intellect.  I enjoy it, when I get into it.  Often it is difficult to get the ball rolling.  We had salmon tonight with sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and a nice romaine lettuce salad.  I made a fruit bowl for dessert.  It was nutritious, the reason why I began to cook.  Fast food is shit.  Sometimes it is the only thing, but remember you will pay the consequences either by  becoming sick or losing cells.  Most fast food has few nutrients.  Instead it provides anodynes which disguise pain.  In addition to my musical equipment, I enjoy listening to WCPE.  I think few people today use radio.  Our modern day radio is a cell phone.  Nothing can replace AM or FM radio.  The sound quality is exceptional, and it is analog.  Know what that word means?  It means it sounds better.  Sound on what has become digital TV sucks.  Sound on cell phones sucks.  Sound on the internet has improved, and as a compromise for the death of AM and FM radio it will suffice.  Yes the internet is the new radio, but I am an old schooler.  I like my FM, just like I liked my MTV.  (I didn't really watch it, but as an artist and a composer fully I recognize its merits and influence on American culture and history)  It never will be the same.  It has, like science fiction has predicted, become the Rise of the Machines.  All ready we are battling the machines, and we don't even know it.  When I am lucid and thinking, I use my own machines to thwart the effects of the evil machines.  When I get tired of the snooping, spying, information-gathering Cessna registered to a shell company owned by the FBI, I strap on my 450cc Stihl backback leaf blower, don my ear and eye protection, and blow the yard.  Pretty much she likes it.  Sometimes I have to blow it twice.  (That's what she said!)  It is amazing therapy.  In that lonely world of silence, the closest we can get to it on Earth, I am free to think.  There is no infrasound or low frequency electromagnetic energy coercing my brain waves to flounder in a low funk.  The energy of that blazing two-stroke engine, the sheer acoustical power of the exhaust blasts away the military and the trains downtown.  When I kill the engine and remove the head gear, I am back in it again.  Confusion, anxiety, and ?.  The word must be?  It is what Big Brother is pitching, a frenetic, unthinking, reacting, visceral mob of racists.  I don't think we all are racists, just like I don't necessarily think that Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions are racists.  They are bigots, or rather they are entitled, affulent, county-clubbers from plantation America.  Our country was founded partly by these types.  That does not make it right, and Abraham Lincoln realized this.  It took a lengthy civil war and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives to say, "Blacks in America have the same rights as whites."  We have been shielded from this history, and now it has surfaced again to find it second solution.  It's funny how that works.  I am in a second depression.  I am re-living my first depression circa 1990.  It is not any easier the second time around.  It is just as difficult.  It is just the same.  Even after having experienced and eventually solved my depression, it is here again.  Probably it is for the same reasons.  It's a short hand when we are dealt shit the second time around.  The alcohol makes it a lot easier, the second time around.  You can just ignore the circumstances and their uncanny resemblance to the past.  Get on the wagon, and it is just the same.  Sam Ting.  Same thing.  (That's the oriental version...)  It's a joke.  It's frightening when it happens again.  No job.  No woman.  No prospects.  Even with gold sitting in the bank, it's just as hard.  I have worked hard all my life with a lot of set backs.  Each time I pick myself, dust myself off, and start all over again.  Enough with the song lyrics.  I was watching the biography of George Gershwin the other night.  It should be required viewing in the public schools.  His music along with Irving Berlin truly was the voice of turn-of-the century America.  That is not entirely correct.  It was the voice of the Roaring Twenties.  The interesting thing about George Gershwin was his music evolved over time.  He worked hard to learn about music, expand his musical scope, and diversify the perspective of white America.  He was the first noted composer to include the African-American experience in his mostly societal music.  Porgy and Bess.  The feeling of the blues, heart ache, and sorrow are a part of life, black life.  Folks like Trump are a prime example of shallow Americans.  "You either have it or you don't," said Miles Davis.  That thing.  It don't mean a thing if you don't got that swing.  Swing is an ability to be compassionate about life's experiences and elicit companionship as comfort.  It seeks fellowship.  Pop music seeks immediate selfish gratification.  Dopamine.  Swing seems serotonin.  I had to stop "Rhapsody in Blue" half way through, because the brand new Marantz DVD player I bought from Amazon went dark.  (It didn't really)  It works great and is exactly what I sought.  The only thing was its display was dark.  The pretty little blue numbers that are supposed to show you how much time have elapsed were nought.  The display was dead.  I pontificated keeping the unit, because it worked otherwise.  The sound and video quality were acceptable, and its transport was fast.  Fast!  That's what I wanted.  A fast tray expulsion allowing me to load DVD's quickly.  Although the remote is a bit clunky and unresponsive, if you really mash its buttons the machine hums efficiently.  I sent it back.  If the display arrive DOA, then it might not be long for some other component to fail.  Amazon is sending a new one as we sit here, and it will arrive on Monday.  One must work for the things one desires.  Fleur de lis.  Whatever you desire, or so says Jack.  Jack's back.  I'm afraid whatever I desire is not available in this town, and it is a conundrum.  I, like before, have had to make a decision about my future.  Move away again, or stay the course.  The things which are important to you make it easier.  Hillary doesn't like me very much, but Bill is responsible for many set backs in American history including the financial crisis of 2008.  Why must I endure his shortcomings?  I supported him while I was at OSU.  We even went to see him speak on the quad.  America was more humane during his presidency.  We only pay after.  Cell phone towers are warming the earth.  In addition to my musical equipment, when I have the inclination thoroughly enjoy my motorbikes.  I have three.  Like my musical gear they are old and undesirable.  I bought them myself, and like all the things I buy myself they are in impeccable condition.  They may sit idle for long periods of time, but rest assured when I do decide to ride, they fly.  The effect is the same as my strap on jet pack, the smooth and soothing bump of a four stroke engine between your legs.  Almost its better than a woman, but no really.  On the CB on the street it is like flying.  I appreciate our cars, but I am not a car guy.  If I had my druthers, I would have a muscle car, a hemi.  Gas is too expensive.  The bikes get god gas mileage.  Anyway, how can the author of a cheap AOL rip off program be one of the richest men in the world? 

The Art of the Popeil and American Ethnic Cleansing

Donald Trump could sell you a pocket fisherman.  That's about all.  He is not looking out for anyone but himself.  All one must do is look at his company history of how he treats his employees.  Why would anyone think he was appropriate to be the American president?  It doesn't make sense.  If one realizes the only reason The Donald was elected was because Hillary Clinton was the only other choice.  It is a shite state of affairs.  Talk about being on your own.  We are on our own, and we better watch out.  Ethnic cleansing all ready has begun in America.  It is simple.  The elites want to get rid of the entitled.  Entitlements.  Those drawing money from the federal government for whatever reason.  The elderly.  Blacks.  Mexicans.  Anyone drawing a check or receiving health coverage from the government, the elites want them gone.  It is simple.  Donald Trump is not looking out for America.  He is looking out for himself.  It all ready has begun, and before he became president.  This is how it works.  Overpopulation has sentenced the world.  Selfish, irresponsible, multiplying people have put a burden on the planet.  Overpopulation.  Overpopulation was a hot point a few decades ago.  It was discussed in the public schools, and like many other things that have been discarded, was tossed under the table.  The news agencies do not report on anything much, because they are not very smart and they are controlled by the elite.  In America the elites have had it with the entitled.  That is why they want to dismantle The Affordable Care Act.  I would say a paltry eight billion dollars for subsidies pales in comparison to the other pork barrel spending that goes on in Washington.  It is a drop in the bucket.  This sentiment only can be justified as elites' desire to eliminate the entitled thinning out the population.  This is a bit conspiratorial, but then again cyber security firms have found that a large faction of the population believe the Navy Seals were responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.  ?  What I can say from experience, recent experiences living in America in the last five years, is that we had better watch out for ourselves.  No one else is.  Monsanto is a corporate monopoly that has conspired to dominate the seed market.  Purposely they have engineered seeds that will not reproduce.  You must buy seeds from them, if you want to plant crops and grow food. ?  Warning signals should go up, just as Chemours has been polluting the Cape Fear River for decades.  Now for the rest of them.  The quality of our food no longer is assured.  Instead it is laced with carcinogens, poisons that will kill us.  Liquor no longer is quality.  It also is a poison meant to kill us.  I suspect distilleries are using high fructose corn syrup instead of pure cane sugar to make their liquor.  The same dangers apply, whether it is in a beverage or a food.  Fast food is toxic.  Make the population sick by selling them tainted foods, and force them to use the bloated medical establishment.  Food suppliers, distilleries, medical providers, and pharmacies are annihilating the population.  The medical establishment profits.  Thin out the population, the non- working entitled.  This has been happening for some time.  With all  the advances in technology why has not medicine progressed?  It has not.  Every doctor I go see says the same thing.  They don't know shit about disease, because they are not interested.  They are interested in getting rich.  Health care has become the biggest ruse in America and possibly the largest percentage of our GDP.  Certainly we have nothing else to offer.  Textiles, agriculture, and appliances are cheaper to manufacture in Asia, because they work for a fraction of the wage needed to get by in America.  The Second Great American Depression has happened, and the history books will show it.  It is more covert, but it has happened.  Government and business are trying to keep it covered up.  We are living in an age of great depression.  Wages are stagnant, education is non-existent, and art has been stymied.  Big Brother is here. 

TV Big Brother-O-MMericials

I am upping the status of television barf-o-mmercials.  No longer do I feel they are patronizing, mind-numbing, and inane.  Now I realize they purposely are manipulative.  These television ads are not being made by the people to which they are supposed to appeal.  Once I thought this.  They are just stupid.  Now I realize purposely they are manipulative.  There is a style of late night advertising which capitalizes on marijuana use.  They have used style as a template, and because America's educational system has become unfunded, it must be working on the mainstream.  These ads are misleading, often not factual, and are a bad influence on the population.  There are so many of them, if one believed television like America did once, when it was a generator of pop culture, all of America is stoned all the time.  "Let's do this."  I can not understand how this phrase fits into any advertisement.  Let's do what?  The scenario is a bunch of millennials listening to a car salesman.  Car salesmen once were loathed.  Now the salesman is giving a motivational speech to a bunch of kids trying to sell them a car.  It is like a bad Southwest seminar.  You are meant to think the seminar is genuine.  Instead it is meant to get your money.  "Let's do this."  The guy tells them a bunch of trumped up facts about the car, and the kids rally like a corporate board meeting.  "Let's do this."  Let's coerce kids into buying over-priced cars with a bunch of mindless rah rah.  It's a pep rally for a new car.  Wrong. 

Two Revelations: Paul the Apostle

There are two things I am going to say tonight.  One is, without fear of endangering the equity of our house, Fayetteville has been three degrees hotter than any other city in North Carolina because of Cargill and DAK Americas.  Let's try to put this in perspective.  I respect Cargill as America's second largest private company next to the Kochs.  Given a comparison of the ethical values of each, I will side with Cargill.  I do not know a lot about them, but among many other commodities they manufacture vegetable oil is one.  They have a plant in close proximity to the Cape Fear River just like Chemours, Hexion, Goodyear, and Valley Proteins.  It is just over the Milan Yard railroad bridge on the mainline of CSX-T in Fayetteville.  When they are assembling trains in the Milan Yard, they are extremely close to the Cargill plant.  That is convenient, because largely the business they are providing CSX-T is exclusive.  I would not say the Milan Yard was built for Cargill, but it is convenient.  It is convenient for Fort Bragg.  It is convenient for DAK Americas.  Okay.  For railroads to operate they must have clients.  They have a client list, and I prefer the one on television.  Their client list is salvage metals, agriculture, animal feed, wood and wood pulp, chemicals, and many other things.  They supply aviation fuel to the aircraft at Fort Bragg.  That makes CSX-T a major player in the defense industry.  Ouch.  It has been three degrees hotter in Fayetteville the last few weeks, the hottest days of the year, because CSX-T has been assembling freight trains almost non-stop during a "peak" season.  I would guess polyester resin likes warm weather.  Grains grow best in warm weather, when there is rain or irrigation.  Both Cargill and DAK and the United States military are having a "peak" season right now.  President Trump is threatening nuclear war with North Korea, so the military is scrambling to deploy.  Peak activity.  Planes and trains.  Cargill is burping up vegetable oil in its Fayetteville plant, and DAK is churning up polyester resin for plastic bottles.  Freight train activity supporting these businesses has raised the temperature in Fayetteville three degrees above all other cities in North Carolina during the last few weeks.  How do I know?  I know because after living here for five years and being a sensitive intelligent human being, I have come to be able to discern these environmental effects.  It is not that difficult, if you pay attention to your senses.  While lying in bed this evening taking an after dinner nap, I as usual am awakened by pain.  For some uncanny reason all of a sudden I am in physical pain.  Only can I relate it to the Active Denial System manufactured by Raytheon for the United States military.  What is this?  It is a microwave driven non-lethal weapon intended to disperse unruly protests.  It functions by using a specific microwave frequency which penetrates human skin by about .4 mm.  A gyrotron is necessary to produce this energy.  When I am awakened in bed many times during the night, this is what I experience.  The weapon is transported on trucks pulling a trailer equipped with a prime mover to power the weapon.  Raytheon is quite proud of their accomplishment, although it seems it has seen limited use.  Why would I wake in bed feeling a similar sensation?  Enter the railroads.  While my ramblings against the railroads fall on deaf ears, because no one seems to understand what I describe, I can deduce the only other machine capable of producing this kind of sensation on an ambulant chassis is a diesel electric locomotive.  General Electric also is quite proud of their 30,000 ES44AC locomotives on the rails transmitting analytical data to their satellites.  If I am correct each ES44AC has a microwave transmitter capable of sending engine diagnostics to receiving satellites in the sky, our sky.  (but it isn't our sky anymore, is it?) (just like it's not our air or our water)  We have been purchasing clean water for years in polyester resin plastic bottles.  Once it came through our taps for free.  My question is why do Cargill and DAK get freight rail service at the expense of the quality of life of Fayetteville residents?  I assume like much of America manufacturing plants provide jobs for citizens.  Therefore we are forced to dwell in their refuse.  How many Fayetteville citizens are employed by Cargill at the Fayetteville plant?  How many Fayetteville citizens are employed by a Mexican monopoly at the DAK Americas plant?  Falling on deaf ears again?  Fayetteville has been three degrees hotter than other cities in North Carolina the last few weeks, because CSX-T has been assembling freight trains non-stop.  It begins at six a.m.  This is when I first wake in the morning.  The pulsating pressure wave jolts me from my sleep, assaulting my tactile sensations, and making me feel basically bad.  I ask myself, "Why while lying in bed sleeping, trying to energize my body's functions with rest, do I feel bad?  Where is that peaceful, relaxing, energizing sensation of rest?"  America has not had this sensation for a long time.  "Sleep is a rose the Persians say," says Clare Quilty.  As a population we have been battling lack of sleep for a long time.  This is the major cause of it.  Heat, atmospheric pressure, electricity, magnetism, and resulting pain are the causes.  My body often is racked with pain to the point that I must get up and shake it off.  More deaf ears?  The effects are cumulative.  It is not just one diesel electric locomotive.  It is dozens of them from different railroads operating at the same time in the same corridor, the Hog and Chicken Highway, the Strategic Rail Network, and the CSX-T mainline.  It is the Aberdeen and Rockfish trotting over to Fayetteville each day with their antiquated GP locomotives to harvest their bounty, then leaving taking it back to Southern Pines, an affluent golfing community.  It is Norfolk Southern, bringing limestone to the Fayetteville Block plant on Ramsey Street.  Mainly it is CSX-T operating with immunity, amassing their great fortune to qualify as a Fortune 500 company.  If asked they, like Norfolk Southern, would tell you they are clean and green.  A green locomotive?  I beg to differ.  That is one point.  Now for my non sequitur transition.  The "pop" groove is nothing more than a candid example of onomatopoeia.  Not the word "pop," although pop has its own analogies.  If one verbally were to mimic the "pop" groove, either with words or aural sounds, it would sound like sexual intercourse.  Thwucka thwucka thwucka.  I discovered the roots of this groove a few years back, and I have related it to porno music, but it didn't dawn on me that the actual rhythm of pop mimics a penis penetrating a vagina in a sloppy repetitive motion.  It reciprocates, in and out, with a sucking sensation on exit.  Thwucka thwucka thwucka.  This is nothing new, except that in America we have grown more ignorant and naive.  Try arguing with a stupid person.  It is pointless.  It will end up in a racist rally with Antifa yelling at disabled veterans!  Old school pornography, another lost pop art in America, used to recognize such a sound and rhythm.  I was driving in my mother's Honda CR-V back from Shelby listening to a rock station, when I realized this.  The songs were not complicated.  They were hung.  Rock production simply makes traditional band instruments big, loud, and powerful.  The drums become exaggerations of themselves by miking them, turning up the EQ, and running them through a huge PA system capable of filling a stadium.  If one were to strip the pop groove down to its core, a simply sloppy, untrained, finger flick with a pick, it would accomplish nothing.  It physically is not capable.  It is like diddling a clitoris.  Okay.  Nothing wrong with that, but this simple, unsophisticated, movement which has been transformed into musical glory really is nothing.  It is what it is, and that is mindless, uncontrolled, lust.  Thwucka thwucka thwucka.  It is how drunk, stoned, losers have sex after picking each other up at a bar.  Nothing wrong with that either, if that is what you want.  For the rest of us understanding, control, skill, and performances are important.  As a trained and educated musician I will not settle for such a remedial rendering.  Falling on deaf ears?  I write music which is rife with understanding.  It controls its own destiny.  It presents it own case.  It bows to no one.  Never will it ever submit to a remedial rendering of mindless glory.  The point is to own it.  Again we should own America by demanding something more of our pop music.  It is a festering example of squalor, selfishness, and ignorance.  Novice lovers, novice musicians.  Try something professional for a change.  You won't be disappointed, if you aren't stupid.  

Jass

I was talking about jazz, which formerly was jass.  For obvious reasons when commercially trying to market jass, they realized that jazz could be a more appropriate term.  Some music historians feel the etymology of jazz is from the French chez, which means throne.  If we could travel back in time and talk with Fats Waller, I think he would tell us that his rhythmic feeling for jazz was looking through a peep hole and mimicking the humping motion of sexual intercourse.  That is one analogy.  When one looks closely at the field of music, all musics, there are so many crucial rhythms.  Most of them are unknown to the populace.  The beautiful thing is the best music, the best rhythms, and the most fulfilling music experiences come from the dance.  Once it was that way in America.  "Once Upon a Time in America."  We are so far from our roots, America is unrecognizable.  If one does discover the Time/Warner catalog sitting on shelves, protected from airplay, the soul of America would be right there.  Protected, preventing prosperity for those who created it.  I have a few of Time/Warner's collections sitting on my shelf.  Classic Country.  Disco.  R&B.  Gospel.  Soft Rock.  AM Classics.  This is important music defining America, and it is lost.  The average cost of a multiple CD collection is $150.00.  It was worth it, although I do not listen to them.  Also archived on my computers I have the Billboard Top 100 going back to the 1940's.  Any given year you can see and listen to what were the top 100 hits of that year.  This is indispensable information, and yet today it does not matter.  Possibly at the juncture Y2K, America morphed into a bastard creature.  We were afraid of 2012, and it came and went.  Strangely enough it is not over.  The premonitions for 2012 are happening now over time the way the earth was created.  The earth's demise won't happen in the blink of an eye.  It will begin with the electing of a troublesome president who threatens nuclear war.  It's happening.  The Age of Jass has cum and gone.  

The Meaning of Moral Mondays?

After listening to WCPE for a large part of the afternoon, I realized again that Beethoven, the way it is performed by symphony orchestras, does not swing.  It widely is understood that Bach swings.  His intricate counterpoint in its Baroque style with figured bass implies the structures of jazz.  Chord symbols and improvised lines.  I am positive if we could travel back in time Herr Mozart and Mr. Beethoven could and would understand the concept of swing.  The scale degree of the major seventh is sprinkled in much classical musical literature.  Beethoven was pushing the boundaries of classical music forging the way for Romanticism.  WCPE plays a lot of classical music, mainly because it calls itself the "Classical Station."  Like the term "pop," "classical" is a misnomer.  We use it to describe European-based concert music written mostly for and in court.  It is highly intelligent, sophisticated, elegant, and expressive.  These adjectives could be metaphors for court.  On the fringes of court was the common man a metaphor for which could be the Theater of the Absurd.  Court although intelligent could be a bit stuffy.  There is pageantry, protocol, and subservience.  It is a highly structured power entity that ruled the land with a firm hand.  Classical music existed in this realm leaving peasants to seek musical fulfillment in their own "folk" styles, folk also be a metaphor for poor.  Court had no want for riches and thus money.  Concert halls, instruments, and skilled players abounded taking advantage of the patronage of wealthy aristocrats.  The music reflects this aesthetic, and while I enjoy its refuge its inherent stiffness will not allow it to complete my own musical, emotional, and philosophical desires.  While I have heard symphony orchestras swing, there are those who simply do not understand the looseness that is required for a musical performance to swing.  Swing kinesthesia runs the gamut, and viewing actual performances of jazz musicians presents a wide pallet of physical movement.  I have learned while playing and studying the trumpet over the years that less movement actually is better.  While you may internalize time, rhythm, and feel through and with your body, trumpet technique requires a tight and disciplined embouchure centering around the mouth.  Many discreet muscle groups are involved including the neck and diaphragm.  Like the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" suggests, if one understand the goal, the outcome, one's brain and instincts can produce the result almost unconsciously.  This is the goal in art, that years of study, talent, and a need to communicate will at some point merge and allow the artists to create seamlessly and without hindrance.  With that said the swing style demands more than classical style.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that a classical style infused with expression and feeling is capable of the same thing as swing.  In either case feeling, human emotion and connection is necessary.  When I hear performances of Beethoven on WCPE that do not swing, they remind me of "Industrial Music," music that is meant to be used as a commodity.  Industrial music is music that is played in stores, terminals, and manufacturing plants.  Like many styles of American music it has disappeared.  The most common style of industrial music, although a style meant to achieve something completely different, is MUSAK or elevator music.  The difference is industrial music is aggressive and invigorating, and MUSAK is calming and relaxing.  American society today does not champion calm and relaxation.  First if the populace embraced calm and relaxation as a lifestyle, we could not survive the brutality of reality.  We would be slaughtered by wolves.  I am remembering this, because twelve years of working on cruise ships contradicts this precept.  We are brainwashed to spoil the guests.  Life in America drastically is different than life on a cruise ship, and it has taken me almost five years to remember how to live in America.  That aside, it almost is humorous to me to listen to an entire afternoon of classical music that does not swing.  It is like modern American pop music, a stiff and repetitive rhythmic style that discards the need to feel a phrase of music.  It is old school porno music without the sensuality.  Knowing this helps me understand how swing developed, although personally I never have related jazz music to sex.  To me they are polar opposites but not necessarily exclusionary.  If one has experienced Miles Davis and what his music represents, then one can understand my point.  Miles' music was not about sexuality.  It was about civil rights.  There is a seriousness in the music of Miles Davis that is unparalleled in the jazz world.  It can be related to "Third Stream," a music aesthetic championed by Gunther Schueller which combined the seriousness of concert music with the expressivity of jazz.  When talking about swing music or jazz, and easy line of demarcation can be drawn between "Early" jazz or New Orleans styled jazz and later forms of big band oriented swing which relied upon "Straight Four" rhythm.  Early jazz often was played in two or as a two beat rhythm, while later swing relied upon straight four.  Early jazz also could be considered to be music for entertainment most commonly heard in houses of ill repute serving liquor and drugs and offering easy casual sexual encounters.  That works for me, but as fascist regimes realized that kind of freedom is not recognized by communist lifestyles.  Adolph Hitler called jazz devil music and understood allowing the populace to be empowered by pleasure would undermine his ruling power.  We are at a similar point today.  Jazz has all but disappeared, and certainly romantic sensuality is absent from American society.  Instead we have violence, racism, and the LGBT movement.  For a moment I must digress and disagree with this "movement."  Why would a group feel they are entitled to special treatment from government and society for choosing to have sex with members of their own gender?  Heterosexuals do not demand such a thing.  Sexuality is a private issue and demanding special treatment because of what commonly is recognized as aberrant behavior is neurotic.  It, like most things present in America today, is chaotic.  It is exclusionary, divisive, and selfish.  No one cares of you are LGBT, just keep it to yourself.  The LGBT community deserves no more recognition than the heterosexual community.  If it's acceptance they want, join the club.  The United States military, because of President Obama's reversal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" no longer represents  the same things in American history.  It is a cloaked debauchery of paranoid, insecure, homosexual tendencies championed by gay generals.  At least some of that exists within the military's structure.  It is an internal war thrust upon unknowing straight soldiers much like life on cruise ships.  It is a closed environment exploited by predatory homosexuals, a virtual salad bar of available cock.  I would rather not think about that possibility, but having experienced this first hand numerous times it is plausible.  In my few years living back in America, I am coming to distrust everyone, as we all should.  That is Capitalism. 

Sessions, MLK, and Slavery

I don't trip too much about race in America.  Occasionally I have to trip because of racism in America.  Occasionally I have to trip because of sexism, mostly man-hating bull dykes that give me the evil eye, because I am a man.  They seem to stare at my genitals with X ray vision and hate me for having a penis.  What did I do?  God gave me a penis, and as a God-loving spirit I feel compelled to make use of it in some way.  Why do I have to be loathed because of a body part I did not choose?  It happens quite often.  Then there are the racists, mostly rich white assholes that feel they are privileged not to have to accommodate your presence.  I don't usually get a "vibe" from black people, and often I think how much more normal it is to interact with them.  I played in a Hip/Hop R/B band for several years in Columbus, Ohio, and it was one of the best times of my life.  I was the only white person in the band and often the only white person in the club.  I fit right in.  Whites in North Carolina I do not seem to have much in common with.  (my writing is a little ungrammatical tonight.  A dangling preposition.)  it dawned on me today what the grudge is in America.  It still is the whites against the blacks.  Always it has been.  It is Jeff Sessions against Rosa Parks.  Those conservative, affluent, Arian  men who hate entitled blacks often taking advantage of the system.  They are scared shitless of black men, gangs made up of black men, and criminal black men simply because they are aggressive, defensive, and not submissive.  Look at any traffic stop on Cops, and you will see what I describe.  Unless schooled to do so black men resist police officers.  Often they talk to them asking why they are tripping and why they have to get out of their trucks.  Trump falls into this catagory, and I ignored it until now.  We are a nation of white supremicist men who want nothing other than the eradication of the black race.  Wow.  That is a strong assertion, but I am beginning to think it is true.  The chasm between black and white has gotten deeper in the last decade.  The evidence is all around us.  Once the black race was championed for their musical skill.  Labels like Motown thrust black performers into the spotlight.  Jazz, America's true art form, was created mostly by blacks.  Today, because of race, these accomplishments are being cloaked.  The white reign purposely is oppressing the black race.  Wow.  Only while lying in bed today did I realize that race is the disparity in America.  White pop music has infiltrated the music industry, leaving the soul of the country in Pergatory.  I never paid much attention to race.  I went to a predominantly black junior high school and lived in fear of my life every day for two years.  I was not equipped as a middle-classed white boy how to interact with tough, street, gang blacks.  Often they threatened to kick my ass after school.  My friends would tell me.  "They coming to kick your ass after band class."  It never happened.  I grew up with jazz music and black people.  I never thought much about race, other than the blacks were a lot more interesting musically.  The funny thing to me is, America's founding fathers brought Africans among others to America to work as slaves.  Native Americans were here before all of us.  Those were Eskimos who migrated down from Alaska I think.  Americans brought blacks to America from Africa to work as slaves.  If white supremicists dislike blacks they should fault the founding fathers for capturing them, shackling them in chains, and shipping them to America.  In most probability they would have not made it here themselves?