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.