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?