Missing the Capitalist Boat

The one thing I fear most is being thought a square.  The definition of square recently has changed.  It means emotionally compromised, a lack of security and self esteem, and possible homosexuality.  The latter is not that important.  A square is someone who is incapable of enjoying themselves, or rather someone who chooses not to do so for various reasons.  Either their family upbringing was wrought with abuse, dysfunction, and frustration, or they have such emotional pain from loss they choose not to indulge in happiness.  I don't see any disadvantage to being square other than you may be lonely.  You will have no fans.  Being thought of as square also means you aren't hip.  You are not in the know.  You don't know how to be cool or how to be relaxed and well adjusted.  The one thing I fear most is being thought a square.  Being square is ignorance and inexperience.   There are educated people who are not hip.  I call these people conservatives.  This is what it is like where I live.  These people would rather you not ride a bicycle on the sidewalk, because you may endanger other pedestrians, namely themselves.  They are afraid and want to feel in control.   This is the reason why people are control freaks.  They have such insecurities and an inability to groove, they need to control their environments to feel safe.  These are the republicans who control America.  America no longer swings.  America lost her swagger, when she forgot how to dance.  This occurred when pop music annihilated Hip Hop on the Billboard music charts.   Overnight a pinnacle of American pop culture, MTV, VH-1, and BET stopped play music videos.  Music video had reached an apex that was insurmountable.  Watch any Slim Shady video produced by Dr. Dre, and you will see an artistic achievement in American pop culture, whether you appreciate it or not.  These music video shorts did for American music what the American popular song did for European classical music.  They condensed an experience via a form into a shorter and more palatable version.  A string quartet may last fifteen minutes like a classical symphony.  An American popular songs lasts three minutes.  The European musical experience was modernized, distilled, and commercialized.  This transition was a huge economic boon to America.  The owners of the music video networks professed, that reality TV had become more profitable than music television.  I disagree.  Reality television pales in comparison to historical American television.  It is not in the same category.  Comparing a Norman Lear produced television show to "Naked and Afraid" is like comparing Picasso to Garfield.  That is a bad analogy.  It is like comparing Barak Obama to Donald Trump.  The Golden Age of American Television is art, and millennials never have experienced it.  It is not their fault. There was a specific, chosen, and planned line of demarcation between America's current youth and America's past youth.  America chose to exploit our millennial generation with tuition increases, with ignorance by lack of support of public education, and by isolation from knowledge and enlightenment.  With a generation at play in America, it would be easy for a regime such as Donald Trump's to control them.  His supporters are too stupid to know the depth of his disruption.  Trump only has one thing in mind, and it is the same thing his faction seeks.  They are communists.  They are the same enemy America has fought for decades in an expensive, extensive, and time consuming Cold War.  These communists sneaked into corporate America through the deregulation of business promoted by George W. Bush.  Once America felt obliged to break up the Bell telephone system, because it grew too large and became a corporate monopoly.  Likewise Washington sought to do the same to Microsoft, because Bill Gates demanded that Internet Explorer be bundled with Windows edging Netscape Navigator out of the browser market.  Evidently someone at Netscape had enough influence to make this happen.  The Justice Department sued and broke up Microsoft.  These are examples of things which millennials do not know or understand.  They have not been taught enough to understand anything involved in American government or politics.  They have been coerced into addiction by Tim Cooke, the Sackler family, and by American railroads.  Our life existence in America has grown so painful and unbalanced, we need something to keep up sane.  What does any of this have to do with being a square?  The example may be a pot calling the kettle black.  Recently I heard a republican doctor called Bernie Sanders a communist.  It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.  Bernie calls himself a democratic socialist, whatever that is.  He is not a communist.  This was an example of the stupidity of which I speak.  Socialism only is a publicly owned means of production, ideally for which everyone is provided.  Unfortunately the human species is not capable of adhering to this socioeconomic system.  Instead a small group of eager, narcissistic, imperial movers and shakers take control.  They then oppress the populace with a military presence.  Donald Trump idolizes this type of government, and he has said it many times.  How his followers agree with this view is unbeknownst to me.  The only answer is they agree with his view also making them communists.  The reality is Donald Trump and his passe are communists, and they are the enemy of the democratic republic of North America.  If people believe I am square because I know this, because I don't own a trophy wife who is my beard, because I don't have children that reap me a heightened housing allowance at Fort Bragg, and because I am straight, then I guess it is true.  The entirety of my iniquities in life are having been selfish in my heterosexual relationships, having been relentless in my pursuit of musical excellence, and having never learned how to brown nose those influential people capable of choosing my own financial success and security.  I missed the boat, really. 

Coup De Tat

Bill Maher truly is worried about Trump not stepping down from office if he is defeated by the democratic candidate.  It would be difficult to step down by defeat from the republican party, because no one has the balls to run against him.  That should tell you something.  I should say no one has the money, because that is the real truth.  The Ukrainian Mob is real, and there job is to intimidate politicians who see through Trump's charade.  It is frightening, because I now realize that ALL of the politicians are in it together.  Bill Maher is on point when he says Trump's people may re-elect him.  I don't think it is possible, but only twice in American history did presidents not receiving the popular vote win the presidency.  There is something fishy about it, and Trump's camp bribed the electoral college.  We are in no better shape now, because nothing has been done.  It is possible Trump could win again.  The pandemic was a plan devised and implemented by the Democratic National Party securing the presidency for Joe Biden.  James Carville I believe is the mastermind.  I asked a customer in a food store the other day how any Trump supporter could vote for him again seeing as this is the worst national tragedy we have had since 9/11.  Bluntly she said he didn't bring it here.  He is not responsible.  She believed it was biological warfare.  I told here there was credence to her story, but it most likely was Americans who carried the disease across the ocean.  Trump slapping on trade sanctions with China was a real enough reason for them to retaliate.  His presidency all ready is a mockery of America, but his followers are so bull headed and ignorant and don't keep up anyway, he just continues to tread water in his own created flood.  Would you vote for an incumbent president with this on his watch?  Who could?  Who in their right mind would vote for Donald Trump again?  While Joe Biden is not my first choice for the democratic nominee, he is okay.  He has had a plethora of political experience, and he is sane.  Does he have bouts of dementia?  I think the answer is yes, but in the high pressure world of politics he is doing okay.  He won't be running the country anyway.  Never does the president run the country.  Always it is Hank Paulson, Henry Kissinger, or Carl Rove.  There is someone behind the scenes pulling the strings.  What I am convinced of now is that there is no hope for America and American leadership.  They all are crooks, and the Corona Virus is just another feeble but successful attempt to empty the till of the American people.  Two trillion dollars?  Washington couldn't find money for universal healthcare, but they can find two trillion dollars to bribe Americans?  It could go either way like politics does, but I don't see how Trump could benefit in the November election.  He has to lose, or else the fate of America is sealed.  We are screwed as a nation.  Trump's people as Bill Maher is quick to point out are the military, the police, and the rest of the government employees.  It is such ridiculous hypocrisy that socialism will be the demise of America.  America all ready is run by and bought and paid for by communists, and they are Donald Trump and his posse.  These are the people that continue to suck on the teat of the American pocketbook, the retired military, the government contractors, and law enforcement.  These are the people about which Americans should be afraid.  I have said it before.  When asked to follow a corrupt Commander and Chief and go against the American populace, what will the military do?  Are they smart enough to have a conscience?  Do they know the difference, or will they continue to think only about themselves.  I am convinced it is the latter.  All of them.  The more I see it, the more I see this contingency in power, corrupt, and immoral the more I see what is coming.  A well armed militia is the last line of defense against a tyrannous government, and as such we must continue to bear arms.  Only the American people, those who have lost jobs from free enterprise, from small business, and from the voracious appetite of of a man made pandemic, are capable of saving America.  The rest, Trump's camp, are just another communist party looking for an overthrow.  They are in power now, and if Carville's concoction is not effective, they will remain in power.  It will not be long until America will be embroiled in another civil or revolutionary war.  When I shopped at the ABC store a few days ago, and there were lines and arrows on the floor telling me where to walk and stand, I professed that this would be the last time I stand in line at a liquor store.  We are not a communist nation, and standing in line for bread, toilet paper, or cheese is a blow to American freedom.  We are a joke of a country.  We are a mockery of ourselves, and it is our uneducated millennial generation largely driving this trend. 

An Altered Reality

Perhaps I grew up in an era, the 70's and 80's when America was determined to excel.  We had just  pulled out of a nasty baby killing war in Viet Nam, a country on the other side of the world.  Why were we there?  Another Afghanistan.  Why are we there?  War, continual and brutal expensive war.  A war economy.  We don't know how to do anything else.  Those things which were paramount to Americans seeking peace, popular music, communion, and free love are deemed silly.  An industry which fueled the economy in America for decades, the music industry, which usurped the film industry in revenue was castrated by the internet.  It was a communal result championed by Steve Jobs and his iTunes program, Napster, and the laptop computer in general.  Being able to stream music and share it undercut America's ability to be able to sell music for an equitable price.  Consequently America's music today has no value.  A commodity with no value certainly does not make the quality improve.  Instead like all things including television, the value continues to decline.  Music, a once potent force in America capable of shaping our culture, now is a meager byproduct of internet content.  If you can't make a living performing and creating music, it can't sustain.  There were many great artists who died paupers.  Jazz musicians lived and died in lives of despair.  Mozart died penniless, but that music which was created still aspired to the highest artistic ideals.  We don't even know what that is anymore, musical excellence.  Certainly the film industry archives musical excellence, but we are seeing fewer and fewer quality productions.  Music also has suffered in this industry for monetary reasons.  The money once that was reserved and spent on great art, film, music, and television now sits in overseas banks.  America is being starved on purpose, just like a viral pandemic is a constructed vehicle for human oppression.  Wake up and smell the coffee. 

Random Thoughts

Usually I thought UTI's might infect other parts of the body.  That is pretty flawed thinking.  I have been on meds on and off for a while.  Whether it's fungal or bacterial my yard work makes it difficult to discern.  I got bit by something cutting a dead limb off of one of our ash trees.  The bites don't hurt at all, but they cause an allergic reaction on my skin that looks pretty severe.  I got bit by a spider on the should that got infected and stayed around for over three weeks.  I popped it regularly, and white puss would ejaculate onto my bathroom mirror.  It was gross, but after that tedium of squeezing it day after day, finally it went away.  Puss is your body's way of dealing with an infection.  My UTI just came out of nowhere while I was taking other meds.  No usual.  Then I realized that it was the other way around.  The UTI came from a bacterial rash on my hands.  Whence it came I don't know, but it was angry and spreading.  Antibiotic cream quelled it in a few weeks, but evidently I gave it to my groin in the daily routine of practicing hygiene.  Cipro it is, and it seems to be working.  It was pretty serious with flank pain, or rather kidney pain.  It hurt all over.  I haven't been drinking.  That's a double whammy.  The train activity has been off the chart, because now the Aberdeen and Rockfish are assembling trains behind Berean Church.  Their shortline tracks run parallel to Robeson Street, cross Village Drive, cross Raeford Road, and head out Cliffdale.  I never knew they were using this area to assemble DAK trains.  They make polyester resin products like plastic bottles.  Certainly we need more of those in a worldwide pandemic.  If I complain about the railroad activity, it gets worse.  They punish me.  Perhaps they think using this area mostly hidden from the public somehow condones diesel freight activity in your back yards.  It sucks.  So now they are shunting cars from the Russell Street yard shared by CSX and N/S to this little yard near Cross Creek Mall.  Glory.  What a timely and wonderful activity.  Those two stroke turbo charged soap box derby engines are dinosaurs and they are really invasive.  What are the odds that shortline railroad tracks traverse your neighborhood?  I mean there is no where to hide.  Back and forth and back and forth.  So the pellets from DAK now are going to Southern Pines.  The Aberdeen and Rockfish have the contract for the moving of their finished product.  Interesting.  I know CSX shuttles in the raw materials right down Russell Street.  All of this side of town thanks the Aberdeen and Rockfish for their two stroke turbo charged diesel electric engines that just sit and sit and sit in our neighborhoods.  Thanks so much.  So on another note Team Pain builds a lot of skateparks.  They got the job done here in 'Nam, but I discovered one thing in this building process.  The new school of skateboarding is different than its predecessors.  I would think that the Z Boys and the Bones Brigade still would be involved in modern skate aesthetic, but that is not the case.  All of the parks Team Pain are building are of a different school of thought.  What is it?  What could be so different?  All of todays' tricks are variations of flip tricks.  Alan Gelfand created the Ollie, and now the ollie is everything.  They are flip tricks.  The big deal is the difference in transitions and their purpose.  Today transitions are meant as propulsion.  They are not to be carved.  Rarely do you see a Bert today on a transition.  The transitions or slopes or grades are there solely do launch you into a run to do flip tricks.  That's why dropping is is the new thing.  This thing about hanging over the lip and then dropping your nose to get going.  That is what it is.  Instant momentum.  It is not from Animal Chin where you had to use your own momentum to get to the top.  I think it is a bit of a shortcut.  It used to be called an elevator drop, but I don't think I've ever seen vintage footage that shows one of the Bones Brigade dropping in on a pool.  They didn't do it.  When I look at the Team Pain parks this is how they are designed, with flip tricks in mind.  They are not really the same train of thought as the parks from the 70's.  It is a whole complete different school of skating.  Instant momentum.  It doesn't appeal to me, because I am looking to draw lines through the parks like you are riding the perfectly tapered asphault waves of Bellagio Elementary School.  You have to pump your board.  You don't drop in to get speed, like "Whoosh."  So those kinds of lines are not really there, and I can't ride the bowls.  This generation of skaters are using gorilla form kind of hunched over and lanky, while the Z Boys and Bones Bridage had a very defined and athletic from based upon surfing.  I can't do it.  And now the park is closed because of disease.  It's a shite state of affairs. 

Trumpean Dynasty

I must take a moment to write, because I cannot continue work on my current project.  Although my eyes are dry and burning, and my contacts are foggy I muster the energy to force my eyes into focus.  Usually it is only at two o'clock in the wee small hours of the morning that my contacts inexplicably dry out and fog up.  Like a light switch that flips my left ear rings and my eyes dry up.  These are familiar occurrences. I am used to them, but I am not used not being able to work on a musical project.  I stand corrected.  I have all but stopped recording music in my upstairs studio.  It has been too frustrating to mix.  If you can't monitor accurately then you cannot produce music.  Recording studios go to great lengths to normalize their mixing rooms.  They have a noise generator and a spectrum analyzer.  They play white noise (or is it pink?) through their studio monitor speakers and then analyze the  peaks and valleys of frequency response.  They then use a graphic EQ to level out the response of the room so that when they mix recorded music what they hear is an accurate portrayal of the content.  Content.  What is this millennial word.  Content.  Content is crap found in a web page.  Graphics.  Images.  Sound bytes.  Music.  Content.  (So my left ear begins to ring, the air in my bedroom begins to undulate, and my FM radio reception falters.  Par for the course.  This is what we have.  It is either diesel electric locomotives from many sources, helicopters from many sources, aircraft, or activity from a Fort Bragg range.  The frustrating thing now is I am trying to restore a vintage keyboard instrument using my garage as a workshop.  Good luck.  I can't complete the work, because this particular phenomenon is invasive to this kind of work.  Perhaps it is not to ordinary life.  Perhaps it does not effect or bother others, but it interrupts my work.  I discovered yesterday that the Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad has a "yard" behind Berean Baptist Church.  What?  How could this be possible?  Berean Baptist Church is on Glensford at the corner of Cliffdale Road.  Always Fayetteville has know that the A&R tracks connect downtown Fayetteville with Southern Pines.  It is a historic business this short line railroad who sneaked over to Fayetteville in the middle of the night and built a crossover across the mainline railroad tracks so they could access the downtown yard.  No one stopped them.  Normally they assemble their trains in the Norfolk Southern yard off Russell Street which is shared with CSX.  They are there most days assembling trains which go back to Aberdeen.  Yesterday I spotted A&R engines 300 and 400 assembling a long train behind Berean Baptist Church off Glensford.  What the f?  Who knew there was a siding here that allows them to shunt cars from downtown and assemble trains?  Evidently it has been happening for a while, because it used to be one train a day.  10:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m.  I would hear the train horn and that would be it.  A few hours a day.  Now their trains are manic beginning at six a.m. and not leaving until five in the afternoon.  What is all of this hub bub?  My left ear is still ringing and my eyes are burning with pumped pollen.  I wanted to know what they were carrying.  What was this long line of cars in the Aberdeen and Rockfish train.  It didn't take much to pinpoint the source.  It is DAK Americas.  CSX shuttles out the raw materials for this plant on Cedar Creek Road every day after four, and evidently now the final product is tendered by the A&R.  Pellets I think.  PET resin is their product.  Perhaps the pellets which are processed and make plastic bottles are being transported by the Aberdeen and Rockfish.  I reckon it was a good idea that they laid those tracks so many decades ago creeping out of the Raeford pine forests and making their way to Fayettenam.  It was good for them, wasn't it?  Commerce.  Business.  Money, for them.  My question always has been whence does this arrangement come, this right of way to shunt freight all hours of the day and night on tracks which inundate our neighborhoods?  Especially how does a business which is headquartered in another city have access to contracts elsewhere?  They make their money in another city, and yet exist in Aberdeen?   Fayetteville evidently is their whore, except she doesn't get paid.  She is exploited on a massive scale.  My FM radio reception, WCPE specifically whose transmitter is on Bragg Blvd, is shit.  May I reiterate?  WCPE has a transmitter a few miles from our house, and yet the reception constantly and continually is interupted.  There is static, noise, or a complete drop out of their FM signal which is plenty strong.  Likewise the same source which causes this interuption is what is halting my work on this vintage electric piano.  I have been struggling with it for weeks.  It is both aural and electrical, meaning it is both acoustical and radio frequency.  That is a double whammy.  Not only do you have low frequency air pressure assaulting your tactile sensory responses and affecting your things, you have electromagnetic energy that is causing electrical interference.  The static electricity in my bedroom is tangible.  Static electricity is something that seems from a different era, and yet it still is just as relavent today as it was then.  I cannot "voice" this Rhodes piano, because its mechanism for producing sound is a vibrating tine and tone bar.  This vibration is captured by an electromagnetic pick up consisting of a copper wire wrapped magnet, a makeshift magneto.  The efficienty of this apparatus is great, and the "harp" of the Rhodes piano, a series of 73 or 88 pick ups, produces up to a volt of electricity.  Not millivolts, but an entire volt.  This mechanism is prone to bouth acoustical and electrical interference.  Never have I had problems until now.  While the instrument upon which I am working is fifty years old, it should not matter.  The vibration of the metal tines and tone bars is being quashed, and when a hammer strikes them instead of vibrating freely they are muted.  You can hear the interference in the production of the tone.  The lower frequency harmonic fades in after the upper tone, and there often is a disturbing modulation that sound like it could be caused by a magnetic field.  It is angry and undulating.  I am suspending my work, because it is too frustrating.  It makes me feel incompetant.  It is like trusting a president who cares not about your well being.