Storming the Bastille

I need to vent.  Lots of things on my mind, and one of them is sexual healing.  After attending the Cool Spring Street Initiative's Thursday afternoon Farmer's Market at Festival Park, my mother and I were unknowingly subjected to the local LGBT community.  It is unclear if Thursday's recurring summer event was slated specifically as an LGBT outing.  It didn't take long to understand that it was.  While there were many families with small children, the majority of attendees were members of the LGBT community.  How do I know this?  An event slated as "Gay Pride" specifically is meant to call attention to its own importance.  In addition to a tent with signage and a few other campy accoutrements, the main impetus of the gathering was carried by fashion.  Fashion is a unique and rather anachronistic aesthetic in America.  Our country had had its golden years of fashion, and certainly like most other things those golden years are not now.  Instead America sadly has regressed in most things except making the rich richer.  I don't say that light-heartedly.  If one really does reflect upon the lineage of American popular culture for the last two decades, there is no escaping that our nation is on a downward spiral.  Maybe I should rephrase.  What has occurred is a re-tooling of commercial sensibility.  That means things of value in the American economy have been revamped.  I will bold enough to say that most of this began with Bill Clinton, because he auctioned off the previously deemed dangerous frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Of course these are millimeter waves or microwaves.  The FCC (and we must remember that now and today most federal agencies in Washington, DC have become overrun with corruption including the EPA), the FCC deemed these frequencies dangerous to the human organism.  This was for a reason, and it was based on science, something the Trump administration desperately tried counter.  The full fledged Republican campaign has been one of nihilism.  While this is a rather abstract distinction, it does fully rationalize their recent campaign.  The concept of "gaslighting" also is contained in this aesthetic.  Not only do they just tell you what they want you to hear regardless of actual truth, they suggest that anything of substance, say science, art, or medicine really is nothing at all.  It all is just the luck of the draw, and somehow for them a Godless earth will magically repair itself after they have collected all the money.  The bottom line is it has been a strong, forthright, methodical campaign of utter lies.  Purposely the Republicans have attempted to exploit the "Survivalist" contingency in America.  Those are the white male patriots who have prepared for doomsday.  Because they lack collegiate education and admire and practice a sport-like zest in life, easily they signed onto a President who coerced them not unlike Hitler's seduction of most of the  German population.  It is the same, and Donald Trump knew exactly what he was doing.  His speech was so honest and but unbelievable, it painted him as a goofy, run-of-the-mill, white American leader.  The American people as a whole were so deceived and forsaken, it is surprising the country has survived thus far.  If were are to follow the examples of other nations, an authoritarian dictator shored up by his own obedient and compliant military, communism would have all ready overtaken the American dynamic.  In many ways it has.  We are being told how to think, what to think, and are being persuaded not to think.  We have become addicted to paltry entertainment (frivolous apps and enticing eye candy) and have forgotten that no one ever really has your back.  We are on our own.  With all of this Covid has been a major component of the attempted coup.  You could lose your mind trying to figure out who and what, but the truth of the matter is America has been assaulted at the most grievous level in recent history.  With this assault has come a dissemination of American ideals, namely a living wage, fair and civil social behavior, equality of income, and mobile opportunity.  We have become slaves.  In this newly fostered repressive governance, it would seem the LGBT seeks a similar goal that the "Hippy" movement embraced during the era of Viet Nam.  They want to be happy and to be accepted.  War is not this answer, and yet America has been at war for twenty years.  How can any nation actualize enlightenment, when the majority of our GNP goes to its military.  This in and of itself seems communist.  As such Joe Biden has decided to end this debacle.  It is proving to be a thorny affair, but we should try to remember the name of Pol Pot.  Pulling out of the Middle East is America's only salvation.  The Thursday afternoon Farmer's Market was on this occasion an LGBT "love in."  As I wrote earlier fashion was the chosen vehicle.  It struck me that LGBT fashion was based on the "Goth" movement but was a juxtaposition of several things.  Certainly it was diverse, but its overt message to me was one of sexual fulfillment.  With close thought I think these people want love.  The love they desire may be of a more diverse nature than the surrounding community.  That would not be difficult, because even I have realized that Fayettenam has become a community mostly of the military.  In this particular construct families are desired, and also they get you a sizable, monthly, housing allowance.  While I immediately am not in this circle by being active duty, I am astute enough to understand the traditional hierarchy of the American South.  Also it is family, and while in modern times women do have careers, the concept of the "trophy wife" still is in play.  The military paradigm fuels this stereotype.  The in shape soldier goes to work each day in a stable environment and brings his money home to his non-working wife and children.  The LGBT or Hippy crowd is not interested in this way of life.  The concept of "gays in the military" is yet another unchartered course, but it will have to wait.  Diversity is at the root of their movement.  An education in LGBT habits may be shocking for mainstream Americans.  Best they can be represented by drag show or campy cabaret.  While all gays may not approve of such extreme behavior, many do.  Drag has been around for ages, and homosexual men who like to dress in women's clothing is what it is.  Do they really want to be women?  It is not for society to decide, because sexuality traditionally is a private issue.  Its presence has ebbed and flowed in American popular culture, and although millennials may not even be aware, Feminism, the War of the Sexes, and the Sexual Revolution all ready have occurred.  America all ready has done most things, but as I said commercial values have been re-vamped, and with this change in perception has come the devaluation of many watershed American institutions.  It is almost as if a group flipped off one switch, the "Oz" switch, and flipped on the "Swamp" switch.  Everything once of value and extreme meaning in America to Americans was declared worthless or nihilistic.  Nothing matters, and because nothing no longer matters, we can tell or sell you anything.  This includes defective products, dangerous products, and lethal products.  There is no science or governmental agency to protect us from this assault.  Hence Americans have become unprotected in our own country, and a deadly disease has killed half a million people in less than two years.  With this disease has come an exacerbation of previously known pathogens such as bacteria and fungi.  Truly we are at a base level of survival against Mother Nature herself, and all that we have learned and implemented to save ourselves has been rendered moot by this Republican snipe hunt.  These men should be put in jail.  

There Is a New Sheriff in America

Purposely I have been ignoring the news.  It is difficult to fathom over one hundred and fifty innocent occupants were sacrificed for money.  Slum lords are a dime a dozen, but one who ignores building inspections and rather chooses to murder one hundred and fifty of his upstanding paying customers.  Go figure.  Go figure the North Carolina State Wolfpack throws their championship hopes into the wind, because they were to ignorant and irresponsible to get vaccinated.  Tough love.  Despicable.  (I like the words with three or more different vowels.  They are easier to spell, when the vowels in each syllable are different.)  Protocol is an exception.  Respiratory.  I like this word.  Four different vowels.  All you have to do is remember the order by pronunciation.  The shite is all around us, and it is getting deeper.  There has been some news about the cruise industry trying to crank up again.  Which governor was it that passed legislation that said it the cruise lines couldn't require vaccinations to cruise?  This is utter B.S.  If you own a store, then it's your store.  You set the rules, not the state.  When did LGBT decide it can demand anything?  Until the Constitution is amended separatist behaviors can be excluded from the mainstream.  Because we have lost the mainstream in America (and I mean we really have lost a common dynamic among Americans), our perceptions are being shaped by the media.  Just because the evening news says this or that, it doesn't require any American listen or much less alter their behavior or beliefs.  Subliminally we use television and the media as a point of departure for our lives.  We need something.  Newspapers once were this anchor.  Now they have been absorbed by the borg, and like so many other things they now are a corporate conglomerate.  The three major networks on their evening national news don't check and balance one another.  Occasionally they will report with a slightly different slant, but not often.  That used to be the job of a new desk and news editor.  It was a big job.  What or who on which to report.  Assignments.  The news director, like Ashley Parker, has several college degrees and lots of experience in reporting the news.  The news is what stratifies American life.  Because news reporting has been diluted into tabloid rants, we have lost track of what is important.  We do know the Hamas is generating energy from the departing United States military.  We saw footage of Afghan soldiers surrounding their arms.  They also may be absorbed by the borg of extreme rebels in the Middle East, but it is not for the United States to mitigate.  Bibi, by a razor thin margin, was ousted as Prime Minister of Israel.  This is big news, but we have not heard more.  It could be his replacement is more far right than him.  Until America gets the national debt under control, restores legitimacy to the economy by reinventing jobs and an able workforce paid a living wage, and quells conspiratorial rhetoric by the extremist Republican Party, nothing else will matter.  Nothing has changed.  Joe Biden has been successful curbing the pandemic, but hard core Trumptistas continue to plant seeds of bigotry and ignorance.  "I'm too good to get vaccinated.  I am more important than my neighbors."  It is all the same as it was when I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill.  There are the rich in control, society, and there are the rest of us.  They control who is successful and who is not.  You have to fit into their group.  In the South the tradition is so archaic, crumbling, and not progressive it is surprising we have survived this long.  Those big plantation houses and vaults full of old money are about gone, but the traditions are still there.  Bible Belt morality.  Trophy wives.  Cloistered homosexuality hidden with a family.  Never have I experienced a more stale, stagnant, repressive dynamic of social culture.  LGBT wants recognition for itself in all of their separatist glory.  The only way I can justify what I see is a pubescent costume party of losers seeking acceptance.  As a trained educator I have no malice for such a contingency.  I observe and try to make sense of the masquerade.  Some of them seem open to casual social interaction.  Others staunchly are engulfed in their own malcontent seeking separation and recognition for their gayness.  Is this a legitimate platform for society?  It is no different than rich old money, but it manifests its discrimination and bigotry in a slightly different way.  To me, the middle aged white male, their message overtly says what it always has said.  "You can look, but you can't touch.  You can't respond.  You can't have this.  Look, but don't touch.  Touch but don't taste.  Taste but don't smell."  Some people believe the difference between American and Eastern European women is closed arms versus open arms.  The closed arms say, "You are the enemy, even if they don't even know you."  It is the traditional Southern behavior.  We can hear all about ice tea or lemonade on the front porch, but the real underlying message is, "It is my plantation, and we intend on keeping it that way.  Here is a cold beverage to disguise that reality."  I have arthritis mostly in my right hand.  My hips hurts as do my knees.  I have kidney pain in the terrible humid inferno of Global Warming.  Does anyone even realize that North America is called North America for a reason?  We are north of the equator, a line that divides geography for a reason.  North America, while often hot, is not the tropics.  We are not an Amazon rain forest.  Now it would seem we are, and still the national news just reports the temperatures like it is a joke.  "Record breaking temperatures!"  More money to be spent on keeping citizens cool.  Covid was a ruse for the rich, and the rich got richer.  We aren't honest enough with ourselves to say this is possible, genocide by the rich.  It is not different than the German Holocaust.  Ethnic cleansing intended to ease the burden of entitlements.  This is what Trump said all along.  Kill the old people.  Kill the immigrants.  Kill the inmates.  Kill all of those who are a burden on the system.  Trump didn't want to save Americans, and that is why he didn't.  It lost him the Presidency, but his work all ready was done.  It will be Merrick Garland who salvages democracy,and in the greatest irony as the Attorney General, not a Supreme Court justice.  Turnabout is fair play. 

Democracy Fails When Good Men Do Nothing

 I'd better get out the Macbook Pro and start writing.  The shite is piling up all around me.  Recently I fired up my trusty Yamaha DX-7llFD, and its battery was dead.  All of my programs were lost, again.  I replaced this battery ten years ago, so now it is time again.  The trouble is my patches are nowhere to be found.  My old and trusted PowerMac G3 with a NuBus expansion card and a Newer Technology accelerator card bit the dust.  Its internal battery exploded all over the motherboard.  Before it died, I was able to resurrect two TX-802 synthesizer modules and this DX-7ll FD.  With Mac's upgrade to OS-X, no longer were my Unisyn patches compatible.  There was no way, I didn't think, to archive these coveted sounds.  In retrospect I dropped the ball.  Once I got the sounds into these machines with this old PowerMac, I should have uploaded them to my second laptop running OS-X.  The newer version of Unisyn 2.0 was there sitting, but I didn't do this for these Yamaha DX-7 programs.  I looked through all of my external hard drives (3) and on my Mac Pro.  No luck.  No programs.  Last night it was overdue to harvest these patches from one of the TX-802 modules.  These tone modules use the same single voice patches as the DX-7.  The Performance architecture is very different, but the base single patches are the same.  Theoretically they should load into the DX-7ll FD, but we will see.  At least I have them in the computer, a laptop dating from 2005.  Ouch.  I have kept it turned on in sleep mode for all these years.  I need to do this again but upload the performances as well.  I know how to program these instruments on the front panel, and the DX is intuitive for me.  I have spent many hours programming it and using its onboard sequencer.  I am not worried.  The keyboard still is working, and it is overdue for a tune up.  In the news.  The world is fucked up.  So if I were Frank Zappa or any practicing musician writing songs and commenting on life, I would take sound bytes of the Trump regime and the entire Republican Party saying global warming is a hoax.  Then I would juxtapose these sound bytes with the national news broadcasted tonight.  "Record breaking temperatures on the West Coast."  (including Alaska)  We have no reason, other than they will be the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the history of record taking.  It has begun.  The Book of Revelations prophesies the sequence of events of the second coming of Jesus Christ.  Another planet has been prepared, and those one with God will be resurrected and taken to this new planet.  That includes the dead.  (I think)  Is it worth trying to save the planet?  Two nights ago I was restless and could not sleep.  I tried cracking the window about two inches to see if it would release some of the barometric pressure in the house.  (It did not)  Instead in a record time of less than 30 seconds my nose began to run and my throat began to hurt.  My glans immediately felt swollen.  Recap:  The National Evening News.  Colds and other respiratory maladies are escalating.  Although Covid may be being quelled, its effects still are dangerous.  Enter the Wolfpack of North Carolina State University.  Lesson number one of the Donald Trump loser regime.  If you are a ridiculous butt head and refuse to acknowledge a global pandemic and selfishly don't get the vaccine, then when your chance to win a NCAA baseball championship is on the docket, they eliminate your team and you don't get to play at all.  Eliminated.  Don't even get to play, because four team member test positive for Covid.  School of Hard Knocks.  The North Carolina State University Wolfpack pitched their hopes and dreams into the dump, because they didn't believe in and act responsibly about a global disease pandemic.  Ho hum.  Live and learn.  How long will it take?  Record breaking temperatures on the West Coast.  Hottest ever recorded.  Global warming is a hoax, and a hoax to allow corporate polluters, including Duke Energy, one of the most base and dishonest power providers in the country, free reign to shit on the little guy.  Cumberland Country finally hired a law firm to battle Chemours, because the legal system is the last vestige of justice in America.  It has been marred with malfeasance and corruption, but when Democrats are in control balance is restored.  It will take all four years of the Biden Presidency to sort through the damage, and it is grave and deep.  The Attorney General is well on the way to his vindication for his filibuster to the Supreme Court.  Mitch wouldn't even hear his credentials.  They just shut him down.  This is how the Republicans play.  They control the playing field, and nothing about your performance is fair, reasonable, or equitable.  You are nothing from the beginning, and you will remain nothing while playing on their field.  You're only recourse is to find a better more level playing field.  Believe me they exist.  Simply you go around them.  Rebellion is in the muscles, and what is required now is to stand up for your rights.  I don't mean by protesting in the streets and holding signs.  I mean by locating your enemy and refusing to roll over.  I mean by pointing out the wrong-doing of our enemies, despite our Christian doctrines, and demanding that they stop infringing upon our Constitutional rights.  We are being indoctrinated by the internet and by what is left of television, and we have lost touch with our own American souls.  America is and always has been about freedom, and freedom is dangerous and challenging.  The words, the free speech of America, are intimidating.  They force us to grow up and understand both ourselves and others.  Because we disagree with others does not mean we cannot like and work with them.  Most of my friends over the years married their own likenesses.  They married spouses that look like them, because it makes them feel comfortable when they wake up in the morning seeing a likeness of themselves.  I can think of nothing more boring and insipid.  Variety is the spice of life.  Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear different ideas than those of your own, if you were secure in your own beliefs?  It is because we are not.  We are weak and insecure, and freedom does not come to those who are such.  It is time for America to grow up. 

You Can't Go Home

As I sit here in the town where I grew up, I had no real choice about coming back.  At first my family questioned why I came back.  It was not crystal clear to me at first, but I was summoned by God.  Overall it was not a pleasant re-entry.  Is it ever, coming home?  Our family had its own baggage, so the immediate task at hand was mitigating that baggage.  Most of it was about our house, and my sister had gotten ill here a long time ago.  She had (and may still have) bad memories about this house.  In any event it was clear what needed to be done.  It was not being a bread winner, because the rest of my family were successful at that.  It never in a million years was a comfort for me.  Each and everyday I wake, until recently, it is very clear to me I am and have been living in my father's house.  (I guess it is fitting to write this on Father's Day weekend)  My mother likes to think it is hers, but really she lives in the great shadow of the house my father created.  There is a fair amount of neurosis, and although he was an exemplary father and provider his philosophy for the house and cars took a back seat to the rest of our more important lives.  (It is not until you really have to LIVE in a house that you begin to understand what it should provide for you)  Covid was such a thing, but I all ready had a head start.  We have made great strides in the health of the house, and consequently in our own personal health.  There are a few untied laces, but they can wait.  In the meantime because of Covid, the familiar adage of "You can't go home" has reared its ugly head.  I never paid much attention to this saying, because I did not have a choice.  My father in his later years aged poorly and had dementia.  My mother was tasked with his complete care, and eventually he had to go into a nursing facility.  This as most people know means you spend even more time looking after your loved one.  When a Norovirus outbreak quaranteened his facility he caught the virus, became severely dehydrated, and was hospitalized for over a week.  It was a rude wake up call to my mother, and every day since that incident she went to see him every single day for almost four hours.  This for the first time gave me time to use at my disposal, and I taught myself how to be a better cook.  This was necessary, and cooking is God's art, because you eat for nourishment what you create.  The rest of the progression of the house fostered the sustaining of my home recording studio.  Always I had something to do to continue to excel in the field of music.  This has kept me busy until how.  I have restored five Rhodes electric pianos.  I have rescued several vintage synthesizers from the trash heap.  I have continued to refine my keyboard and studio sound and create a monitoring experience that makes it pleasing to produce music.  The local industrial noise is a grave deterrent.  It is continuous and invasive both rumbling freight trains and overhead jet noise.  I have chosen different chapters in which to open and close living here for nine years, and most of them in no way were related to the local music scene or our neighbors.  Somehow it has evolved, and probably that is because we have new neighbors on both sides.  We have become ensconced by military families with small children.  As Vivian Howard states emphatically, the American South is run by matriarchs.  The WOMEN run the South, and that seems to be true here.  The men are military men with a hefty monthly housing allowance.  They bring in the bacon, and non-working mom's rear the children.  The scale of my life suddenly has changed, and my once autonomous musically-isolated solitude is no more.  Consequently it seems I am back in junior and high school, where the stark difference between me and them readily is apparent.  Fayettenam is an often violent and crime-ridden city.  Always it has been a scary place to live, because many of the people that live here are of a particular ilk.  Without being judgemental or condescending, there are some tough ass souls frequenting Fayettenam.  I stand out like a sore thumb in my Latino linen shirts (which keep me cool in excessive heat) and short pants.  As a trained jazz musician, skateboarder, and motorcyclist, I have very good balance and control of my body.  Also I have a keen intuition for dance.  This gait in my step or ease with which I approach daily mobility is different than most working class people.  I am not stiff and muscular, although my muscles are strong enough.  I am not desperate, because here and now for me is a speck in the continuum of life.  Consequently I am a challenge for most of these workers who can't help but see me as a spoiled rich kid.  (Which I am not)  My life has been no different than theirs, except I chose to excel the best I could in school mostly through the field of music.  Lately resentment is all I feel from the locals, because like most lesbians they hate everything.  The black contingency has a full force physical reaction to my presence, and it is not insulting but hurtful to me.  Subliminally the law is you must conform to the norm, and although I am adept at being friendly with my training from the cruise industry, I don't also feel the need to fit into the black community.  Sometimes I am too "on task" when I shop, so I am not on the comedic "Latino Time."  Always I am polite, drive exceedingly slowly so not to invoke a violent altercation with meandering pedestrians, and freely speak to those I choose.  Often those to which I chose to speak are reluctant to talk back, and I feel racism.  Either I am too white and square, or more often as when I shop at Aldi's, the black women workers there are arrogant and condescending.  That make it known you are not welcome.  I have taught college, and I am not from the hood.  I grew up in a newly integrated Fayetteville, and I mean when integration began in the public schools.  At first it was a few black specks in our first and second grade classes.  Then after redistricting Greenwood Holmes situated behind Eutaw Shopping Center was chosen not to attend Van Story Elementary or Horace Sisk Junior High School.  Instead I was bussed down Bragg Boulevard and across Murchison Road to attend Ramsey Street Elementary School and then Washington Drive Junior High School.  If I get attitude from blacks in Fayettenam, then I have no patience for it.  I was bullied at Washington Drive, and for two solid years I went to school in fear.  Then as a middle class white student I was not versed in the language of ghetto nor the protocol of gang activity.  When I was dropped off in the courtyard of "Drive" this was the rule.  I had to force my way into a group of white boys, still to this day some of my best friends, and initially they were not open to my company.  I had to prove myself.  As an adult it has become clear to me that any unwanted authority expressing influence or intimidation in my life against my will will be eliminated immediately.  Whoever is trying to exert such influence is a criminal and whether it would be through a skewed North Carolina legal system or a public debacle, they deserve to be quelled.  I believe in the criminal justice system, but often it fails us.  In Fayetteville alone there are over sixty vacancies of "sworn" officers in the police department.  We are on our own.  The trick is not to let someone get in your head.  Often they put themselves in your situation against your will strategically to heighten their chances of achieving success.  While in most situations I do not feel a lethal threat, often I am inconvenienced in my daily routine.  If I were physically threatened in any way, shape, or form I would retaliate immediately.  Most people who have learned to be careful live in this kind of sensibility.  It is an inner city thing, always to be aware of your surroundings.  Drugs do not help, and stoned, drunk, high junkies willing to do anything for a fix are the most dangerous.  Much of the crime in America today is driven from drug abuse.  It would be difficult to rationalize it any other way.  It is extremely ironic to me that North Carolina is an open carry state, but flaunting your firearm on your hip in full view of potential criminals to me is not wise.  They have tried to pass a state wide concealed carry provision, and it almost has passed the state legislature several times.  It probably is wise.  Since Covid began arming one's self when driving and shopping has not been such an issue.  Today the violence is everyday, and it is escalating.  Vladimir Putin had some intelligent words to which we should listen.  First he points out incredulously that American Capitalism has failed, and the effect of its failure is escalating domestic violence.  "So I kill one spy.  You're people are killing each other all the time."  Communist leaders are laughing at the failure of American Capitalism as a reason to applaud and tout their own ideologies.  If you think the Kremlin has forsaken the Russian people at least providing them sustenance and Vodka, look what the billionaires have done to America!  What a rude, selfish, lot of dough boy zealots!  America has a rich tradition of excellence on the world stage, but that tradition has been traded for personal wealth.  If asked what would be such a successful metaphor for American success?  To me it would be the movie "Ford versus Ferrari."  This film represents the hard core, heart felt, legitimate challenges of human creativity and success.  Our enemy today not only wants to erradicate our emotional litmus test, but also disguise the importance of the Humanities in human life.  Intellect, creativity, and discovery through God traditionally are how we have achieved success and thus survival.  Now we are a blind circling herd of cattle with no plan in sight.  The Humanities which were created before the birth of Christ in ancient Greece, never have become extinct.  It only is that we have chosen to ignore them in favor of the con game.  Survival on this earth now depends on a new Age of Enlightenment with the Humanities as its core.  Technology has all ready begun to burn itself out and the Earth with it.  

The (PTA)

There are days when you can't put it all together.  The human brain, our synthesizer, is overwrought with adversity.  In times like this we must weather the storm and wait for the clouds and rain to pass, before our mind and emotions begin to communicate.  It is the combination of systems, cognitive thought and human feeling, which produce our souls, our moral consciences, and thus our ability to survive and be happy.  Recently like some chapters in American history we are not afforded the opportunity for these two systems adequately to communicate.  Either our feelings are not being actualized, or we have yet to make sense of the barrage of disparate news.  This is when the human process of creativity proves its worth.  Sometimes we cannot understand what is happening, and sometimes our emotions are confused and do not how to feel.  When we do sort it out, often with the help of an external stimulus, our feelings are triggered and we begin to make sense of our great tribulations.  It would seem the enemy's greatest tool is denying us this two fold process.  Popular culture at its greatest worth seeks to make sense of the world and stimulate both our minds and our hearts to become more enlightened and thus fulfilled entities.  The worlds has become so complex and confusing with purposeful spin and deception at all levels, this understanding and stimulation are more necessary than ever.  America's artistic community always has risen to this occasion.  Always they knew this great stage was the responsibility of and challenge for artists.  The job of the artist is to try and understand life in all of its complexity and offer wisdom through clarity through the artistic platform.  The beauty and great diversity of American art is it encompasses the gamut of human experience, taste, and perspective.  All poles of existence are addressed with little bias or discrimination, because these things themselves create the haze with which we contend daily.  Necessarily art recognizes, embraces, and utilizes these biases to try and understand the fallibility of human behavior.  As it turns out we all are not virtuous people.  As the last presidency has proven American society has become laden with evil and wrong doing.  Extreme, racist, and communist sentiments have been festering in America politics without our knowledge.  Upon discovering these tenants of human behavior, they seem too extreme, foreign, and inhuman to be American.  America once was the coveted holy grail of justice, honesty, and Christianity.  If people were persecuted in their own lands, they could immigrate to America to find a better existence.  This existence directly was tied to economic opportunity.  When trying to understand America today, this economic opportunity is key.  Our difficulty in understanding America and thus becoming more adjusted to her requirements is our two fold system of enlightenment no longer is functioning at the proper level.  If we are able to dissect the truth from the news media, and with our brains understand what is happening, it won't necessarily make sense.  For it to make sense to us as human creatures, it must stimulate our emotional psyche.  Emotion or human feelings long has been a topic of importance in our lives, but why?  Isn't feeling a self indulgent drug?  Do not movers and shakers discard emotion from their daily routines so they can effectively and often ruthlessly survive?  Perhaps we have come to believe this, but the community of American artists would dissent.  God did not intend us to be androids with no feelings.  He gave us feelings to augment our lives and provide happiness.  If the United States Constitution actually uses the phrase, "Pursuit of happiness," then it acknowledges that human feeling is important and not narcissistic.  Human feeling on both poles, grief and sadness to joy and exultation are necessary for actualization of the human soul.  They are necessary.  Compassion for one's fellow man is a core component of human emotion, because I would suspect human emotion fails to operate in a vacuum.  It is stimulated by human interaction, so human interaction is crucial to human happiness.  With America's overt neglect of public education, eradication of Christianity from public consciousness, and lack of support of the lower and middle classes, human interaction and support are not what they used to be.  More accurately we are fighting amongst ourselves with only a remnant of the fulfillment once we had.  The primary tactic of the enemy would be to disable this human process by eliminating art.  With no reflective aesthetic to understand human behavior we will just circle the corral like mindless cattle.  There is no question that the artistic perspective has dwindled in America, and certainly because of Covid 19.  More importantly we have yet to sort and understand the shift of media from radio and television to the internet.  The ease of file sharing, streaming, and self publication on the internet is a miraculous thing, but when the bar of talent becomes lost and mediocrity becomes normal a problem will arise.  Society needs excellence as a pattern and goal, and the problem today is we don't have it.  "Content" on Youtube is vast, expansive, and artistic, but also there is a deluge of worthless fodder.  The key to human emotional and intellectual actualization is human compassion.  The simple idea of caring about one's fellow man more than one's self is paramount in humanity and Christianity.  The family unit, two parents and their children, is the building block of this ethic.  The LGBTQ movement has confused this reality.  Human emotion, sentiment, and need have existed since the birth of man.  To change its perception in a few short years and replace it with a strange, unfamiliar, and seeming selfish gender definition is to dismantle all of humanity.  That is happening, because a war among the masses is the desired goal of the enemy.  Separatist instead of solidarity is the tool of anarchy and destruction and the rise of an oligarical ruling class content in actualizing their fantasies about Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Adolph Hiter, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin.  American solidarity created through emotional understanding and human compassion taught through the family unit traditionally have been our tools for success.  Public education was the stage for this process.  Until we remember the importance of and shore up American public education, we will not recover. 

Fayettenam

 It could make an engaging series in the Fayetteville Observer.  What is "Fayettenam?"  I have been trying to coin a phrase which could describe the reality of Fayettenam.  Half a year ago it was "Afternoon Aerial Assault."  Look up in the Carolina blue sky and chemtrails crisscross like a latticework holding up aberrant aircraft.  What are these aerial maneuvers?  I remind myself Ground Forces Command is a few miles away, and troops are returning from Afghanistan.  The last time we had such a latticework was when Trump mounted his military campaign to assassinate that Iraqi General.  Later is was written, almost a year to be exact, it was the largest military maneuver in recent history.  While military activity is the most convenient definition, it is not the true source of the phrase "Fayettenam."  With Interstate I-95 and the drug traffic that accompanies it, there is one more significant player in the coining of the phrase "Fayettenam."  President Biden is a staunch supporter of rail.  I think it is Amtrack, but I can't be sure.  In the Northeast Corridor, the most widely used passenger rail service, probably there are many host companies.  Amtrack would be one, and his son was on the board of this organization for a while.  The definitive perception that needs to be clarified is, the Northeast Corridor is light years ahead of the American South.  The freight rail system in America is known as the "Spaghetti Bowl."  It is a mishmash of different lines that have been in place for scores of years.  In recent years, and I mean the last thirty freight rail has reestablished itself as a Fortune 500 entity.  John Snow, a former Secretary of the United States Treasury, largely is responsible for this resurgence.  While railroads mostly were bankrupt in America, hobbled by a lucrative and competitive trucking industry, Snow waged a campaign that injected steroids into freight rail by the advent of AC traction.  This invention single handedly increased the profits of Class A railroads by increasing the amount of freight they could move efficiently and with profit.  AC locomotives, created by General Motors (EMD) and General Electric greatly advanced the concept of railroad traction with the aid of the PC and semi-conductors.  They took clunky DC locomotives and designed and built highly sophisticated, micro-processor controlled systems that allowed the diesel prime mover to function more efficiently.  AC traction motors took the place of DC motors, and inverters began controlling the speed of each through a complex network of high voltage processing with a computer.  If one were to compare the Northeast Corridor to the American south, the analogy would be beautiful swan and ugly duckling.  Joe may ride the Acela Train, but we down here are stuck in "Diesel Knock" territory.  The control of the American South is by CSX who is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.  While they begrudgingly allow Amtrack to travel on their rails, they don't like it.  Similarly there is no improving the passenger rail system in the American South, because CSX, a major Fortune 500 company, won't have it.  They have tried operating high speed passenger trains on these antiquated lines, and they only cause death and destruction.  "Fayettenam" wholly and completed is defined as such because of "Diesel Knock."  Fayettenam is a diverse, widely used, hub of rail logistics for the United States military, for DAK Americas (who manufactures plastic bottles), and for Cargill.  In the next year Cargill has decided to invest twenty five million dollars into its plant on the Cape Fear River.  They not only crush soybeans to extract their oil, but they dry the husks to make animal feed.  The Spring is their busy season, because the South American soybean crop has just been harvested.  Rail, CSX specifically, is crucial to their operation.  It is convenient that the I-295 inner loop gets its concrete from Fayetteville Block.  This once small company has grown into a behemoth with this lucrative contract.  Norfolk Southern has the privilege of providing their raw materials  with its own line coming from Fuquay Varina.  It is easy enough to justify economics in a small southern town, and Class A railroads built America, but the wild card in the stew that makes Fayettenam what it is is a short line railroad from Southern Pines.  The Blue family laid rails in the great pine forests of the sandhills, felled the trees, and provided turpentine to the United States Navy.  When businessmen with eyes wide open came through and saw the great swaths of open rolling tundra, the Pinehurst Golf Resort was invented.  The Aberdeen and Rockfish is touted as one of the few highly profitable short line railroads in America.  Hence it is given glowing reviews.  The reality is this little strip of track transects the cities of Fayetteville and Hope Mills.  They have increased their activity exponentially, and what once was a fairly unassuming one train daily routine has become a 24/7 debacle of the ferrying of freight shunted from both CSX and N/S.  They have upgraded their small yard behind Berean Church and School and now assemble trains there all hours of the day and night.  What once were well-respected middle class neighborhoods and Cross Creek Mall, now have succumbed to the ills of the ghetto.  Our property has become devalued, because the Aberdeen and Rockfish has exploited its business model.  Nary a home or business owner had an opinion or a choice about the activity of the Aberdeen and Rockfish.  They sneaked into downtown Fayetteville in the middle of the night and built their crossover across the mainline railroad tracks to assure their own success.  It is this model to this day they follow.  They trains literally are in out backyards, and we have nothing to say about it.  Because of the deregulation of the Bush regime, "Fayettenam" has proliferated. 

An Untimely Cell Phone Death

Sometimes the only peace I can come by is sitting down and writing on the computer.  I have become an avid user of the laptop.  Contrarily I am not an avid user of an iPhone.  Never have I wanted one.  The screen is too small, and after two cornea transplants I have better things to do than remind myself the screen on an iPhone is way to small for productive use.  It may keep you entertained, but when it comes time to pen a letter, research a topic, or post a boatload of photos on Facebook, the laptop is of much more use.  Of even more use it a MacPro with a large desktop display.  My problem is the room that houses my MacPro also gives me arthritis, despite the plethora of improvements we have made to our house.  It has been sitting mostly unused for the last year, the year of Covid lock down.  I have worked hard on this room, and the Mac Pro is the brain of my home musical studio.  It runs Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer MIDI and audio recording software.  The room now sounds good, and in addition to my Yamaha NS-10 studio monitor speakers I have added two additional monitors for recording electric bass.  When you play bass you need to feel it, but often today when bass is recorded it goes directly into the recording console.  Over the last century of audio recording in America's music industry, many permutations of gear have emerged.  As a keyboardist first my experience always has been not to mic an amp.  Miking an amp is what guitarists do, because the sound of a particular amp is a large part of their musical sound.  The preamp, which can create distortion by over-driving the power amp section uses saturation which is difficult to duplicate in a digital recording console.  I have striven my entire musical life to get the most pleasing keyboard sounds to my ears and soul.  This goal was fueled by the MIDI explosion by instrument manufacturers during the 1980's.  Musical Instrument Digital Interface allowed keyboard instruments to be daisy-chained together producing huge orchestral sonorities.  Suddenly beautiful sound in commercial music was in vogue, and companies such as Kurzweil, Yamaha, Korg, and Roland were inventing watershed synthesizers which stoked the music scene in America.  The M-1, the DX-7, and the D-50 were a few of these instruments which combined analog synthesis with digital samples to create new, wonderful, multi-layered sounds.  These were my roots, and while I never had enough capital to buy high end samplers, my intellect, ears, and soul allowed me to create quality keyboard sounds.  If I were to go into my Mac Pro room and fire up the system, immediately it would sound better than most.  The problem is I am not motivated to create music in this room, because it is filled with harmful, destructive, invasive audio pollution.  How is this possible, and what could cause such circumstances?  The answer is the same answer that makes Fayetteville, North Carolina become "Fayettenam."  On the front page of the Fayetteville Observer today was an article attesting the reality of the phenomenon of "Fayettenam."  It is no surprise to the older generation, because we have lived through Viet Nam.  Millennials ask themselves what possibly can turn a small southern town into such a thing?  I have not even taken the time to read the entirety of the article, because I all ready know.  I have known most of my life, and I have written about it countless times like a broken records.  No one ever has wanted to hear about it, and the Republican faction of America is determined to make "Fayettenam" fiction.  It is not.  The gist of the article was about crime-laden areas with high violence, but that only is a by product of the real cause of Fayettenam.  An overt military presence is part of the scenario of Fayettenam, but that also only is part of it.  The reality of Fayettenam is its strategic location on Interstate I-95 which traverses the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States.  In addition to this Fayettenam also is the rail hub which connects two Class A railroads in of all places, downtown.  Both CSX (formerly CSX-T) and the Norfolk Southern exchange rail freight in downtown Fayetteville.  These railroads and the contracts which make them lucrative, such as DAK Americas, Cargill, Goodyear, Chemours, and Hexion define Fayetteville as an industrial center.  This industry has been disguised along the banks of the Cape Fear River since its advent.  They are there for a reason, and it either is to take water out of the river or in the case of Chemours, to dump C-8 into the river to dispose of it.  I am sure there are tax incentives for these industries, and with their revenue to the county and city from property taxes, they earn a quiet profit whether they pollute or not.  Certainly about they are not talked.  Other industries exist in Fayetteville, and also they are large and mainstream.  With Base Realignment and Closure, Fort Bragg was ascribed a new purpose.  With these newly located military "Commands" came a multi billion dollar inner loop expressly for the purpose of moving goods in and out of Fort Bragg.  The problem is we the community have no idea what these goods are.  With George H.W. Bush came the flexing of the United States military to ensure oil would remain profitable for his family and empire.  We invaded Panama and later in Desert Storm loaded the entire United States military onto cargo ships and sailed them to Kuwait.  This is what has been in fashion in our military since then, global readiness.  Ironically the lower Saudi royals, actual friends of the Bush clan, decided to attack America by flying commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center twin towers in lower Manhatten.  The action falsely was blamed on Saddam Hussein, and this action was used as an excuse to invade and mostly destroy the country of Iraq.  In what is probably the most dispicable act of war next to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vice President Dick Cheney with the support of the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld coered George W. Bush to bomb Iraq.  It was a new "strategic" approach which targeted the country's necessary infrastructure for life.  Public utilities, water systems, and other crucial systems were smart-bombed from the sky beginning the longest war in American history.  The goal was to harvest Iraq's oil, that proved to be too daunting for this regime.  The locals proved to be too tenacious and ferocious an enemy, and like the Viet Namese sucessfully kept their name sake.  This oil was used later to finance the campaign against America for the invasion through the formation of ISIL or ISIS.  Osama Bin Laden went to the Saudis and asked to be of service with his terrorist army, but they declined his services.  If the Bush family were not in business with there foreigners, never would have the attack on the twin towers have occurred.  It was a consequence of the Bush oil cartel and their desire to remain profitable and in power.  How many American lives were sacrificed in this event?  No one seems to understand why America has stayed in Afghanistan.  Perdue pharmaceutical has waged the most damaging campaign of legal addiction in history, and America still is in Afghanistan harvesting poppies.  The drug culture in America is a necessary part of human existence, and it has been used to control us for decades.  I was gratified to hear Merrit Garland speak today announcing new government action on domestic terrorism.  They are pooling federal resources to study those involved in such activities, but still we fail to address the source of such sentiments.  America is being attacked by her own, because she has forsaken her citizens.  These domestic terrorists do not hate America.  What they are expressing is disgust with the current "Conditions of America."  I am not an economist, but what I do know is that since the Bush clan was in power opportunity for economic mobility in America has ground to a halt.  Most governmental regulatory activity has been discarded, and free reign has been given to the rich who through their corportations provide for the majority of the nation.  Most jobs in manufacturing have been out-sourced,  insurance became a racket, and big pharma began killing our people.  There is little resemblance left of what once was America.  There is no Main Street.  There are few small businesses.  Most products we use are made cheaply in China and imported by profitable shipping conglomerates.  The entire population of America has been forsaken by the rich, and it doesn't take a genius to see through millennial preconceptions and see the reailty of the American economy.  The best metaphor for this campaign is a bevy of unhealthy cell phones towers perched on every available structure in our lives.  Regulation has been thrown into the wind, and it won't be long before we are all dead.  

The Extinction of Procreation

As I was lying in bed this morning between salvo passes of military jet aircraft practicing their warcraft, I constructed a handful of statements which address our current "Conditions of America."  We as a nation are befuddled by recurring mass shootings, but we should not be.  There are simple answers to these problems.  It is just our attention has been diverted to more pressing issues, such as the longevity of our democracy.  Nihilism has become a useful tool for the Republican far right, but it is a smoke screen.  Two specific things in our nation's recent past have propagated mass shootings.  The first is violent video games.  Like ADD this topic no longer is in vogue with the media.  Neither have decreased in importance or severity, but purposely they are being overlooked.  The effects of each are a crucial part of the nihilistic construct.  Crazy, over-stimulated, under-rested people, and violent coercive video games which emerged in mainstream America many years ago.  We just don't talk about them anymore.  Given an unbalanced teen with little parental support or supervision and continual, diligent, addictive video gaming based upon murderous warlike behaviors, make guns available to them and surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) you have mass shootings.  There should be no enigma.  With the far right insistence upon the availability of assault weapons to all, it should be of no surprise what is happening.  In the nihilist scheme of things, it is desired.  When kids are killing kids there is room for conspiracy at all levels.  With the disdain and rejection of knowledge, logic, and Christianity aliens could be blamed for such occurrences.  If Camelot were reexamined and the hierarchy of intelligence were deemed legitimate, most of America's current problems could be explained.  There are no conspiracies.  Conspiracies only are smoke screens meant to divert attention away from reality.  The reality is man is burning the planet, and the drought and heat wave in the western half of the nation is a byproduct of corporate America and the United States military.  That would be the "Military Industrial Complex."  The reason why the youth of America are picking up guns and killing is because they are mentally challenged and because this behavior has been programed from hours of propagandist Operant Conditioning.  Not that long ago these violent video games were of grave concern to parents.  Now no longer of are they spoken.  Children are being conditioned to kill in a convenient and entertaining ruse.  When this behavior is transferred into reality, and they are not lucid enough to know the difference, the result is a mass shooting.  Confronting any of these issues, social issues, undermines the far right Nihilist ruse and their sole impetus of collecting as much money as possible.  Social issues are no concern.  The more chaotic life in America becomes, the easier it is to suggest aliens are warming the planet.  Social media is a vital part of the Operant Conditioning, and in a few short years we have been reduced to seeking "likes" and "shares" on an internet platform that is not much different in origin than "America Online."  It has been created before, and Zuckerberg simply used the sentimentality of seeing your high school friends as a method to manipulate your heart and purse strings.  We continue to patron such a platform, and we shouldn't.  Does Mark Zuckerberg deserve to rise to one of the richest men in the world from such a mundane and tepid interface?  Corporate America at large including the Postmaster General are vying for control of the parcels, how to get a box from one place to another the quickest.  If aliens were watching us, they would laugh in disgust.  They would ask themselves were Americans are not drinking and fucking.  It is because this human behavior, the core behavior of the animal kingdom, procreating, has been devalued in favor of aberration.  The strategy to set Americans at war with each other in spite of what God has given us to survive, has been the plan.  It is working, and we are too stupid and pig-headed to understand.  

Deadbeat Billies

The effects of Donald Trump slowly are emerging as ruthless, specific, profitable policy and legislative changes covertly implemented by a complicit coalition of wealthy law makers wishing to continue to augment their wealth.  They exploited preexisting American militia members.  Islamic-influenced extremism was used as a catalyst for anarchy.  Conspiracy was the desired result, and it has undermined most established institutions governing policy and behavior.  A pop-nihilist sentiment comically as questioned most established doctrines allowing cunning politicians secretly to begin to dismantled the foundations of American democracy.  All of this is revealing itself slowly, as America awakes from her Covid-induced comas.  Mr. Trump was relieved from power by his inaction on Covid 19, but his assault on America, including the appointing of 234 judgeships with conservative Republican henchmen, will come to fruition in the near future.  A combination of control of the courts and unconstitutional legislation is enough.  Mr. Trump accomplished his goals while in office, and it is of no consequence he no longer is the President.  Louis Dejoy, like the rest of the Republican henchmen, is attempting to undermine one of America's most sovereign institutions.  If they are successful the federal government will be dismantled, and free reign businessmen will control America.  We mostly are there. 

Gold Ducats in Mitch's Pockets

I just heard a transformer blow, and there was no lightning.  The  guns have been blazing at night in Navarone.  The Marines no longer are here, but the fifty caliber machine guns are tooling away.  Above Navarone a continuous stream of aircraft heat the planet.  The good news is, and there has been little of it, the FBI has accomplished something.  Their disparaged image by former President Trump has been redeemed, and in all likelihood against his will.  The confidential IRS papers, of which we don't know the origin, conclusively have proven that most billionaires are dead beats.  You family can inherit all of your wealth tax free under the ruse of a private foundation.  All of this doing is Donald Trump.  We slowly are unraveling the Trump agenda, and it should be of no real surprise.  Bezos.  Musk.  Buffet.  Gates.  Zuckerberg.  Somehow they all think they owe America nothing.  Somehow they believe they have to pay nothing in return for their great fortunes, like America is a huge entitlement to them.  It is uncanny this ruthlessness.  When Ronald Reagan came into the Presidency, the tax rate for the wealthy was seventy percent.  Trickle Down Economics in my opinion did work for a while.  If the businesses invest back into their businesses empowering a viable middle class and allowing the money to flow, then this is a good thing.  Then there is Bezos, Musk, Buffet, Gates, and Zuckerberg.  Okay, they do have "Foundations."  They give some money away, but if that money were flowing freely in a functioning capitalist socio-economic system, with lots of jobs that pay fairly, America would not be in dire straights.  I have said it before.  A nation must understand what the means of production are.  What will be the jobs?  The good jobs, the not flipping burgers at Mickie D's or stocking shelves at Walmart jobs, were manufacturing jobs.  They were skilled labor jobs, and labor unions demanded that they pay a fair wage and provide tangible benefits.  The tide has turned with Trump at the helm, and suddenly we are back on the plantation again.  It is not a new thing.  America is a new thing.  Our democratic republic is a new thing, and it is a miracle we have been able to survive thus far.  It takes honesty.  You have to know how to provide the jobs for Americans, and that means understanding the economy.  The economy since Bill Clinton has been telecommunications, and it has moved in the opposite direction from the previously approved protocol.  We broke up the Bells, because it became an oppressive, controlling, one-sided corporate monopoly.  Does this sound familiar?  How many choices for cable TV or internet do you have?  Is there a contract?  Is it fair.  The cell phone industry was a bad thing for America, because it usurped all logical and educational traditions.  Suddenly laptops were introduced into schools, and every student needed their own cell phone.  We have not recovered from the ignorance.  What products would we like to manufacture?  Textiles?  Furniture?  Appliances?  Farm equipment?  High Fidelity audio gear?  Automobiles?  Motorcycles?  Can we even still make these things?  Making things no longer is in our sights.  Instead we consume, and we consume trite near meaningless dribble.  Our lives are a shell of former American lives, and addiction is the anodyne.  We can't live without alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.  If you can, like Donald Trump, you need a gilded palace and lots of servants kissing your ass.  We are getting closer to understanding reality, and how our survival depends on our own independence.  The FBI had a success, and yet Mitch McConnell continues to be a selfish Trump asshole.  The stalemate of Extreme Republican Wealth unabashedly gaslights the entire country, while they fill their pockets with America's ducats.  

The Forgotten People of America

 Renovations or rather a complete rebuilding of Pope Army Air Field are on the books.  Senator Thom Tillis was a major proponent of this construction contract.  Why has it been postponed until now?  Keeping Pope operational is crucial to national defense, and with the longest war in American history still tooling on...  President Biden has put a stop to that.  If American troops don't leave their equipment behind, which is likely, after it returns to Fort Bragg a two year period of runway reconstruction could begin.  When Donald Trump spoke Saturday evening in Greenville, North Carolina, his introduction consisted of accolades for "rebuilding" the military and the two largest pay increases for military personnel.  That makes sense since we are surrounded by military families with many children and wives who do not work.  The homes in which they live are in the $300,000.00 range.  Those must have been some substantial pay increases.  Trump himself often touts the eight hundred billion dollar figure for "rebuilding" the military.  Since Operation Desert Storm, which in our lifetimes was the founding military maneuver which moved an entire fighting force and their equipment across the Atlantic, this logistical mode of transport has flourished.  Military trains packed with expensive equipment load at Fort Bragg and travel to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, the east coast's largest deep water shipping port.  Domestically except for the bi-annual Marine exercise at Fort Bragg and various other miscellaneous training exercises in Louisiana and other places, hauling American gear into the Middle East has been the protocol.  We have spent billions, eight hundred billion dollars to be exact "re-building" the United States military.  We put the equipment on munition trains, then on massive commercially contracted cargo ships, and sail them to an American base in Germany.  Readiness in light of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seems prudent, but the last major attack on America was in downtown Manhattan.  Tactical methodology necessarily has changed, and moving fighting equipment around the world seems passe.  With the massive amount of technology infused into the G.I.'s sphere of existence, this seems antiquated.  The worst insult resulting from abandoned American military gear  became ISIS.  We didn't feel it was necessary to bring back the equipment from the Iraq invasion under George W. Bush, so we left it.  Militant Islamic Extremists were more than happy to assume the responsibility for its care and maintenance.  Then they turned it against us.  In the near future the American people need to be able to view a manifest of tax payer purchased military equipment and where it is.  Ironically the "Arms Room" which is tasked with this responsibility, cataloging every munition at Fort Bragg, once resided less than a mile from our house.  It was a high profile Department of Defense gated facility, and only a stones throw away was L3 (now L3/Harris) with their array of satellite transponders.  Where are they when you need them?  With a global disease pandemic still active that has killed over half a million Americans, hauling expensive fighting gear to the Middle East seems selfish.  Yes, we need to train our fighting forces, but we shouldn't try to imperialize oil rich countries on different continents.  We have sold the American people so short.  Capitalism cannot work, unless there is a clear plan for the types of processes that will provide adequate jobs for citizens.  We are urged to work, but the opportunities to do so have become base.  We work for slave wages at Walmart and apply for food stamps to bridge the income gap for the increased cost of living.  Most good paying manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to India and China, because environmental regulations there were weak.  Now that we have exploited both of these economies and their relatively inexpensive work forces, the pollution has grown to an almost inconceivable level.  Greenhouse gas emissions drastically were reduced during the pandemic, but we have more CO2 in the environment than any other time in recorded history.  No one cares about America.  No one cares about the little guy.  No one cares about our children or our schools.  No one cares about a mainstream or "Main Street."  It is domination of the wealthy who live in lofty towers with servants and  manufactured air and water.  America, the land of America, today only is a desert upon which to lay steel rail and using dirty diesel brute force haul shit around the country.  This is what America has become.  Travel to Jacksonville, Florida.  You think it is a tourist destination?  It has four major rail yards which control all of the goods flowing into south Florida.  It is about the money, not the people. 

The Source of the Pandemic

I feel nagged today, and I'm not sure why.  I think it is because of the unknown cause of Covid 19.  Early in the pandemic, "Plandemic" circulated on the internet.  It was a short documentary or expose chronicling Dr. Judy Mikovits's claims that her own personal research was sequestered, and her doctoral thesis was delayed until other senior research officials could obtain patents for specific drugs that would be used to treat AIDS.  This claim is not unusual or outrageous.  Theft of intellectual property occurs often in academia.  It is not out of the realm of possibility that these patents were of great importance, since the number of patents for an certain academic institution can be a great source of revenue.  They, in the face of a deadly pandemic, could prove highly lucrative.  America is a Capitalist nation, and consequently money is of utmost importance.  To be able to live comfortably in America, much money is needed.  Because the environment has been allowed to become polluted, now we must buy our health and happiness.  No longer will nature provide you with the sustenance you need to survive.  Business in America has devolved into a process for making as much money as possible.  The products and services rendered are secondary.  The consumers lives are of no concern, because corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Chemours only are interested in their own well being.  The lives of the masses must be sacrificed for the lives of the few who control the purse strings.  All of this being said, Dr. Mikovits's assertions systematically have been countered online.  It is a, "He said, she said" affair.  The Wikipedia article on Dr. Mikovits is a boatload of propaganda purposely meant to discredit her claims.  The most important piece of information in "Plandemic" would apply today.  Is it possible a virus naturally would evolve into Covid 19?  The answer is it would take thousands of years.  Covid 19 was engineered and either by intention or accident was released into our atmosphere.  Those involved are counting on the public not to believe it is possible such an attack of genocide could occur in the 21st century, and yet the Holocaust was less than a century ago.  It is recent.  Because we no longer choose to pay attention to history, it seems distant.  To find the source of Covid 19 look at the beneficiaries.  Who has profited from this disease?  Who has been sacrificed from this disease?  When Dr. Fauci recently was asked if he thought more should have been done by the government to find the source of the pandemic, he floundered.  He became verklempt, as if the source of the virus was of no importance.  The source of the virus is paramount, and why would Dr. Mikovits's information be deemed conspiratorial?  The answer is because she was ratting on the system.  She was not a team player, and they put her in her place.  She stated that we, the United States, paid the Chinese millions of dollars to research SARS in its Wuhan lab over the last decade.  Our own Biological Defense facility of the military, Fort Detrick, located in Frederick, Maryland was cooperating with the Chinese and "labs in North Carolina" when the virus escaped.  Incidentally they showed a picture of the South building on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.  Why would a respected researcher credited with discovering effective medications for HIV lie?  It is sketchy.  What nags me is we know not the source.  Who is responsible for such an attack on the world population?  It would not take much to find out, and until we do life will not proceed as normal.  You must keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.  

Let's Take a Look Back in America

The United States of America has dropped the ball.  Whoever cared that America as a nation be exemplary to the world has left the building.  In a nutshell any sense of nationalism has been replaced with self serving, chastising, separatist sentiment led by a radicalized former Republican National Party.  They are the Trumptista Party, and I will repeat this phrase ad nauseam, until people understand it is a reference to Fulgencio Batista.  The problem is Trumptistas merely are Communists.  It is not a new idea.  The blame for a decline in American sensibilities  could point left or right, but when compared historically to our cultural past, far right extremism is not representative of traditional American values.  I am not sure whence these people come.  The answer would be Communism from other foreign countries.  Make America weak and stupid by not educating her youth, not being fiscally responsible, and not being fair to her people and in the making is the next perfect coup.  We are ripe for the picking.  What is there exemplary about America except Amazon and eBay?  Change of direction.  Black Lives Matter necessarily has brought attention to police brutality, and this issue will be confronted.  Other advances in civil rights cannot occur until a more balanced, temperate, and moderate population can be gleaned.  Our current population has become the epitome of "low brow," and ghetto slang and gangsta imagery will not help.  Pop culture once had a purpose in America, and other it was labeled "pop," it was substantial in content and represented the values of mainstream lives.  We have lost pop culture all together.  Instead we have low brow ghetto slang that is being passed off as hip and in-the-know.  What does it know?  What insight or wisdom can it share?  How to get killed by the police?  I cannot find anything in pop culture, especially African-American pop culture that stands for anything.  Perhaps we have become too stupid to understand the reality of white-controlled America.  Certainly Stacy Abrams and other democratic activists did an exemplary job in ousting Donald Trump from the American Presidency.  It was crucial to the survival of our democratic republic.  Now where are we to go?  We are being controlled and oppressed by the man.  How are we to change that?  Is it with tepid, weak, gender confused adolescents mouthing lyrics to prerecorded tracks produced on a computer?  Revolution is in the muscles it is said, and the only muscle we have left is in our thumb pushing on the touch screen of a smart phone.  If we are not smart enough to realize that operating a five thousand pound moving metal projectile merits our entire concentration, then throw a civil revolution into the wind.  We have to become smarter, and smarter is not being controlled by the meager anodynes offered up by big tech and big pharma.  Once this revolution was in music making, and it was an apt vehicle for change.  One only has to look back a few decades to see countless viable musical artists expressing the innermost feelings of a tattered America.  What did we get during Covid 19?  Anything?  Bueller?  Most of my life I have concentrated on art.  It was ingrained in my being to better my existence by seeking out and finding new musical expression.  Because of Covid I put this process on hold, necessarily concentrating on survival.  You cannot create anything if you are dead or ill.  America is at a cultural low point, and we have to learn to see past our immediate future.  Taking a look back in American history can help unfog the glasses.  

The World's Shortest Orgasm

I feel extremely unworthy at the moment.  My standards for me are high.  Always in my musical life I have striven (I had to look up "past participle") for the best achievement.  You gauge your best achievement based upon the achievement of others.  It is difficult to create in a vacuum.  Not only for content, one needs motivation, inspiration, and competitiveness to feel viable.  At the moment I have none of these.  Instead because of Covid 19 and its subsequent lock down, I am surrounded by little.  There is television, which since the advent of commercial internet streaming services, has withered like an old man's penis.  Pundits predict cable will become extinct.  Cable is floundering, and also because of Covid 19 its content and inspiration have become barren.  How can anything get accomplished when the human process of fellowship necessarily has been sequestered.  Not to sound like a broken record, a broken record, a broken record, and not to blame the entirety of the world's problems' on the Far Right, but a gradual diminishing of human quality is the tactic.  Think back for a moment on the original "Star Trek" episodes.  There were a scant three seasons, and I own them all on DVD.  Never have I watched a single one, because like other older Americans we grew up with television.  Television, over-the-air network television and then cablevision, provided its content for you  Picking and creating content was a core component of television.  Television at first took its lead from live radio and even vaudeville.  These types of media were at a high point, because they were the sole choices for entertainment through media in America.  A brief glance back at the history of America would be helpful.  Television in its inception all ready was functioning on an exemplary level, because it was an extension of preexisting forms.  Film and TV fueled one another for a time, and television before streaming toed the line.  It hung in there.  Then the internet came into vogue for streaming with its increase in data transmission rates.  Microsoft solved this issue developing high capacity modems which allowed music and video to travel quickly enough for human consumption.  Television has not recovered.  With television a bevy of intelligent, media savvy, progressive programmers vied for your attention.  With only three major broadcast networks, it was easy enough to gauge your achievement.  Flip on the tube and right before your eyes was the product.  I flip on Jazz24, an internet radio station out of the Pacific Northwest, and immediately I can gauge my musical impetus.  Often it is inspiring, and I hear modern renditions of historical stylings that resonant in my soul.  Today it was Boogie Woogie, and Boogie Woogie played by a woman pianist.  It reminded me of Lynn Albritton, an African-American musical artist who sang and played the piano.  The effect was a combination of vocal style, a not very jazzy Louis Jordan approach, coupled with the rocking left hand and bluesy solo figures played on the piano.  It was unique, and never before have I heard this played on Jazz24.  I make a brief mental note of who the artist is from my Amazon Echo Show, and continue with my day.  At some point I will Google the artist, Cleo Brown, find the particular recording, and buy the CD from eBay or Amazon.  This jazz music, although its percentile as a stimulus in my life is about two percent, is extremely important to my soul.  The unfortunate reality is the dynamic of jazz music right now, more than other times in United States history, is low.  I had to curtail my study of jazz history, because my immediate environment will not allow it.  How is that possible?  It is possible, because the feelings involved in this music are not being reinforced in America at the moment.  In a very base and disturbing way, it makes the music feel ignorant and selfish instead of loving and human.  This is an assault, and it is an assault on humanity.  The more the Right pushes in its direction, the more human qualities diminish like they are not important anymore.  Instead it is like we are being instructed to comply to a "greater" source of authority, which tells us what is right and wrong, good and bad, and appropriate for our own consciousness.  Could this be the military?  I am surrounded by the military.  In less than half a block of neighborhood and on a pie graph divided into five slices, four of these slices consist of military families.  Only one small section pointing toward the elementary school offers respite from this overt authoritarian existence.  What is the source of my content crisis?  The major defining characteristic of a terminal degree (a Phd or a DMA) is being able to function as an independent scholar.  That means no matter how vacuous life becomes, an academic with a terminal degree will makes things better.  Their life long directive is to seek wisdom through accomplishment and convey this to the masses through artistic achievement.  (I am going to leave that alone, but you get the point)  When finally I do find a litmus test of reality, usually it is swallowed with not much trouble.  Often it gives me a boost, because clearly it aligns "the bar."  This is the bar of success.  You must go above this level to be successful.  Most of my life I have lived in a vacuum, because unless you are privy to attend Eastman, North Texas State, or U of Miami you will not have a high level of influence.  Television has been bitten by the deadly venom of Big Brother.  That once competitive, honest, wholesome mechanism of expression predicated by human interest, now has become a feeding ground for far right, extreme, foreign propaganda.  It is extremism, and it is extreme, because the canvas upon which humanity once created with verve, enthusiasm, and goodness has been sacrificed to the money gods.  Money is the ultimate goal, only money, and the preservation of the earth and its people is secondary.  How short-sighted this contingency who risks the very planet and its only chosen keepers for an immediate, superficial, short-lived orgasm?