A Sticky Situation with Major Suckage

I wanted to start this blog entry with the phrase, "The only thing funnier than public television trying to fund drive with anachronistic music is the level of musical intelligence of the average American." I didn't have the second part of that sentence, until I typed the first part into the computer.  The only thing funnier than public television trying to fund drive with anachronistic music is a group of guys in a tunnel at Fort Bragg having sex.  President Obama has done some applaudable things during his tenure.  Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was not one of them.  It is a sticky issue, a group of guys in a tunnel at Fort Bragg having sex with each other.  I mean it's a sticky issue, "Gays in the Military."  It seems there is a lot of homosexuality in the military.  Who knew?  I was familiar with sexual impropriety in the military.  There is a history of shenanigans.  When photographs surface of military men and women sodomizing prisoners at Guantanamo Detention Center,  well it's a sticky issue.  It's a sticky issue when Major Suckage is back at work sucking air out of my house and monitoring my speech both at the same time.  Maybe they are reliant upon one another.  Nothing could be funnier than public television trying to fund drive with the music of Frank Sinatra and the folk movement, when millennials know nothing of it.  Nothing could be funnier except Major Suckage sitting in a tunnel at Fort Bragg monitoring my conversation.  Those planes flying around with infrared sensors are not funny or sticky.  They are unconstitutional, but who is asking?  Funny is a train engineer sitting in a cab 24/7 assembling war trains headed to Sunny Point.  Am I a conspirator?  Not really.  do I like it when writing disparaging things about the rail industry invokes their wrath?  "Oh you don't like SD70MAC's?  Well try on a C40-8W for size.  If you didn't already know Norfolk Southern has rebuilt many of them into the 4,400 horse power version.  Now they use AC traction motors.  With these come power inverters what produce the infrasonic pollution I so love.  Train engineers are not very bright, but neither is the rest of America.  I, after working on my doctorate of music composition, lost track of American education.  I lost track after spending twelve years abroad working in the leisure industry.  Coming back to America is like Deliverance.  "Soo wee, boy.  Better take them panties off."  It is frightening, the level of intelligence of America, but I am beginning to understand.  I'm not sure if the meek will inherit the earth.  The earth already is doomed, so I'm ready to move on.  Trouble is Major Suckage will find you anywhere.  Successfully I hid in the Mexican Riviera for a while.  The Rocky Mountains eventually did well at keeping Major Suckage's surveillance to a minimum.  It was amusing when sitting in the belly of a huge cruise ship, I could feel him lurking.  Once I heard my next-door-neighbor ask his wife in bed, "Did you feel that?"  I was at least a thousand miles away, but that is a node point in Fayettenam.  We have CSX-T to thank for that.  They service Fort Junction.  It's a sticky business, sex in a tunnel.  Then again President Obama repealed, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," so soldiers can go clubbing like a seventeen year old and won't pay a price, at least with their jobs.  If it's anything like the cruise industry (close quarters) it would be like spearing salmon in a tank.  I had a roommate once who upon waking was thinking of non other than how he could have anal sex with a pretty boy dancer by the end of the day.  UNC-Chapel Hill committed academic fraud to ensure student athletes would be eligible to play sports.  Now PBS has donned their Barney Fife bow ties and is attempting to raise money for public television.  It is not working, because millennials know nothing of this by gone era.  Bill Friday is dead, and that is a grievous loss.  His integrity drove the university system.  Now we have fake African-American studies courses.  Now Major Suckage is in some sticky fluid at Fort Bragg.    

Fayettenam's Three Stooges

There are many proponents of Fayettenam, and they all live here.  Fayetteville is a landmark of old money.  You can try to believe otherwise, but this contingency in one way or another eventually will make itself known to you.  Most likely it will be by taking your money.  There are three individuals who come to mind.  I am going to attach pseudonyms to protect the innocent. (although they are not really innocent)  These three individuals are members of our local medical establishment, and with their uncanny knowledge failed to help me in any way shape or form.  Contrarily they made money from me.  It was with the experience visiting these men, that I learned what the American medical profession has become.  They prefer to treat symptoms.  There is no money in helping you improve your health.  Symptoms correlate to procedures which produce revenue.  The Useless Eunuch, The Sortopotamus, and the Gonad.  In the near future a short film will be produced which will render them with their tools of choice, the colonscope, the laproscope, and the needle biopsy gun.  None of them was interested in my description of my abdominal pain.  None of them touched my abdomen.  None of them really examined me at all except for Dr. Gonad, who delighted in fondling my penis and shoving his finger up my ass.  It didn't stay there long enough to discover anything about my prostate, because I have had previous rectal exams by more competent doctors.  He also seemed to enjoy throwing a tissue on the examination table and telling me to, "Clean yourself up."  It was humiliating and wasteful his doctor visit.  He seemed to enjoy making little scribbles on his clipboard as a way to convince me to let him perform a prostate biopsy.  I declined.  He also discounted every other things I suggested as causes for my pain.  "Interstitial Cystitis only occurs in women," he said.  I beg to differ seeing as I don't know my own bladder from my asshole.  Also he lowered his PSA guidelines conveniently to suggest a prostate biopsy was necessary.  The Sortopatamus wanted to remove a portion of my bowel.  Prior to doing this I made money for Valley Proteins.  I assumed he gets a kickback for each CT and MRI scan he prescribes.  Neither showed the cause of my abdominal pain and were unnecessary.  My colon was cancer free, but the Useless Eunuch was nervous enough to refer me to the Gonad.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life, his two visits.  These three stooges represent our medical establishment in Fayettenam.  My case is ongoing, and eventually I will end up the E.R., where they will perform enough tests to figure out my pain.  Meanwhile I no longer respect Valley Proteins and their team of radiologists, who sit upstairs in their ivory tower and won't talk to you.  Instead they will overcharge you to read your film.  It is a shite state of affairs.  

It's Too Damn Quiet

It ain't natural.  I have a lot on my mind with our primary elections occurring today.  For the first time I had to show a picture ID to the election official and say my name and address orally as confirmation of my North Carolina state driver's license.  My gut feeling is fraud is occurring on a massive scale.  I can feel it.  It's too damn quiet.  The polling station was empty.  No one cares, and I think the majority of folk living in rural North Carolina don't give a shit.  There ain't no changing it.  America is what she has become, and it is what it is.  Listening to John Kasich accept his win in his home state of Ohio did nothing to change this.  America is not going to get better.  America is a shadow of her former self, and there is no American Dream.  Like the science fiction thrillers America will descend into anarchy raging against the machines.  The machines will make money for the rich.  We all ready have destroyed the planet, and it won't be long before we all will be living indoors paying the man to keep us happy.  We all ready are doing it.  Just walk outside.  There is nothing out there to make us remotely happy.  Instead our environment invokes bitter hostility and thus violent behavior.  We are blowing people away, and our American army trains for it less then five miles from where I am sitting.  In particular this weekend  the homosexual vibration is rampant.  What gives?  Does warm weather inspire sodomy?  I was surrounded by gay men at the movie theater.  The root of the decline of America is education.  While few of the active candidates have told us how they could change America for the better, it has become apparent to me that the root of America's decline has been the lack of quality public education.  It surrounds me daily.  Impoverished North Carolinians have no other route to a successful live.  Impoverished Americans nationwide share the same fate, and no one in government seems to care.  George enacted "No Child Left Behind," and teachers began to teach to the test.  The statistics may have risen temporarily, but all one must do is travel around the country to discover why America has declined. Public education is all that many have, and we wholeheartedly have dismantled it.  Teachers once were respected members of society.  Now they are dung.  Americans are ignorant, because they are too poor to learn any other way.  The public system of education built this country, and now it has failed us.  When I am in dismay surrounded by ignorant red necks who only know what they have lived, it is apparent why they are ignorant.  Education is what provides that window of change.  This is why people migrate.  They go where there is opportunity, not bondage and oppression.  Without public education we all our subject to this bondage.  How is Dillon supposed to know that there are other types of people in the world than the red necks with which he attends school?  Certainly television is not providing an example of literacy.  Certainly American popular music is not providing an example of literacy.  We are teaching to the bottom the way it is intended.  President Obama says the way America is today is not the way America is.  I must digress.  Donald Trump inciting racial violence at his Nazi rallies is the perfect example of the way America is and always has been.  We just have been more successful in other decades disguising it.  Without the shimmer of popular culture (Apple) the smell of our shit is pungent.  There is no covering it up.  We are ignorant and racist, and exposing it is the wisest thing.  We could continue to fill the pie holes of our constituents with poisonous junk food, and keep them addicted to their iPhones.  We are a race of zombies, and no one seems to mind.  When summer begins to last six months with +100 degree heat each day, maybe the zombies will wake up.  We are encroaching upon this figure today.  2015 was the hottest year on record, and it only will get hotter.  It will get hotter.  The polar ice caps will continue to melt at an alarming rate, until flooding will be common.  Massive storms will envelop us, as the earth continues to groan from the strain of excess.  America all ready has been what is possible, and now we will continue to decline into anarchy.  It is best to prepare now.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  

Hitler's Hair

Hillary is on the tube in North Carolina shouting things.  I believe she can not or will not accomplish any of them.  She is the quintessential Southern gubernatorial candidate.  Like Pappy O'Daniel she could be traveling around on the back of a flatbed truck with a huge horn attached to its cab.  Bluegrass music wafts gently through the Lousiana bayou.  "Buy Pappy O'Daniel flour.  You won't be sorry." Politics like American Popular Music is a small percentage of its former self, and yet the tactics remain the same.  In today's modern context, where the world drastically has changed because of mass media the old soap box stumps seem like antiquated cartoons.  Attempting to rally black votes in the American South by shouting Hitler-like rants into the crowd is an embarrassment to America.  Not only is Hillary embarrassing, because she is not capable of doing a thing she says, but Donald is because now he has allowed himself to morph into David Duke.  I wouldn't have believed it, had it not happened in Fayettenam.  Trump purposely was eliciting response from his political rally with violence.  I would like to take this opportunity to give Mr. Trump a bit of advice.  Fayettenam is no different than Watts or Detroit.  Telling a black man to go home to his mommy is a risk, and not a risk to that black man.  Watching a KKK clansman threaten a black man WITH HIS LIFE IN THE YEAR 2016 in Fayetteville, North Carolina at the Crown Coliseum on national TV....   Well it made the headline of the Huffington Post as it should.  There is a reason why brothers are violent in the American South.  It is because they may get lynched, if they don't defend themselves.  Sincerely I would suggest that in a place where murders occur daily, and black men don't appreciate Grand Dragon's yelling at them to go home to their mothers, Trump should refrain from rekindling anachronistic racial images no matter how politically helpful.  

Apple Records

The modern music debacle is dwindling.  As America realizes how much they have been duped by wireless communications, former values again begin to emerge.  Take for instance American popular music.  It dawned on me last evening, while I was watching the black and white film "Untamed Youth" how heinous American popular music has become for one simple reason.  No longer does it satisfy the one need previous Americans desired.  America was built on the sweat of the worker.  Americans labored for a living, and it was good.  When they desired a release from captivity, they danced.  (I sound like Ren MacCormack.)  Music provided a way for the population to express their romantic biological desires.  It was a vehicle for physical movement in contrast to the toiling of work.  It was freedom or exoneration from labor.  Millennials have no idea what labor is, because they are spoiled by their devices.  They are stunted by their own devices.  I'm not sure it's their fault, but providing them sanctuary from the history of reality in America is not an option.  Grow up.  The movement of courtship and love has been lost in the pornography of the internet.  America no longer understand what popular music was.  They only understand what is has become, and that is a shadow of its former self.  With this shadow has come the prince of darkness.  When American popular music was ripe, America thrived upon it.  It unified and bonded the nation with its universal message.  After watching only a few minutes of "Untamed Youth," it was blatantly obvious why America popular music is lacking today.  It is a complete and utter disservice that Apple has become the record company of the world.  What prior experience has Apple had to merit distributing the world's music?  It's not just about being a retailer, something about which Apple is a novice.  Developing the iTunes store was novel, and like their iPhone at first it is a great convenient entertainment.  When the novelty wears off and one realizes they would like to keep their music forever in the best recorded format ever developed, the MP3 fails.  Contrarily the MP3 has flourished for its merits, which incidentally were based upon German-engineered minidisc compression algorithm.  Still today I have five minidisc recorders, and I use them.  The files are small enough to be up or downloaded via the internet and a personal computer.  That's it.  This little tidbit of knowledge is how Napster singlehandedly destroyed the recording industry.  Now that tried and true veteran music makers have been put our of work, Apple and other internet providers have stepped up to distribute out music.  Is this a good thing?  After watching only a few minutes of "Untamed Youth," I realized the answer is an unequivocal, "No!"  It has created a corporate monopoly lumping in America's music with tabloid journalism and TV.  American Popular Music does not deserve this disservice.  It deserves wholehearted respect.  The notion of internet nerds deciding what music is bought and sold is ludicrous.  Buying music which formerly served a deep humane service via the internet is a mockery.  Simply put it lessens the capability of music by an exponential rate.  Music has only a small percentage of its power, because it has been reduced to a minuscule stream of digits flowing over an optical pipe.  Once music was an analog river flowing through magnets and paper.  The response humans can have is almost nonexistent via the internet, except for propaganda purposes.  Music has been neutered.  

Now America Can Share My Pain

"Next time we might have to kill him."  Trump rally.  Fayetteville, North Carolina.  My home town.  Word. 

Weighing In at Oscar

After viewing "Creed" this evening because "Zoolander ll" had been bumped by "The Forrest," I could not believe that Mark Rylance walked away with Best Supporting Actor.  Both Christian Bale and Sly had egg on their their faces.  What was the academy thinking?  A one-dimensional yet funny straight man doesn't have the same sack to compete with Rocky Balboa.  The film "Creed" was successful, until ultimately it succumbed to Hollywood's current fad.  They just couldn't hack out the big fight.  Everything was so tightly timed like a great old school flick until the end.  Then Renderman computer tricks dropped the ball and the ending.  The film was a real contender, until it just petered out.  (in lieu of more to come I suppose)  Mr. Stallone is such a monumental film presence, like Norma Jean, without trying they completely upstage any wannabe actors in the same screen.  It is an unfortunate turn of events, and it is unfortunate I had to watch a preview of Inarritu's "The Revenant" again.  What may become the worst movie of all time, watching the visual hubris yet again was sickening and a spit in the face of veteran director Ridley Scott.  Absolutely it should become the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" of the millennium.  The imagery is so staid and false like a graven image, it parallels only Charlie Rose's endorsement of the iPhone 6.  

Apple Anarchy

This is not my time of day to write, but I am going to anyway.  I am going to curtail my normal daily activity, and instead sit here at the computer and blog about politics in America.  Charlie Rose is a well-respected journalist, but in my eyes slowly but surely he has moved in position.  The son of North Carolina tobacco farmers Mr. Rose has built his empire not unlike the tech. entrepreneurs of today.  I still watch his interviews from time to time, and most of them are intelligent and telling.  The one I watched last night interviewing an Apple representative was sickening.  I am not an Apple basher.  Far from it I have owned a Macintosh computer since 1991, when I attended The Ohio State University and purchased a Mac LC with the student discount.  I graduated through surplus materials at OSU to a Mac ll and then a PowerMac, which I accelerated with a Newer Technology G3 Nubus card.  That computer worked flawlessly, after I learned its operating system (Mac 8.5) and eliminated the INITS which were unnecessary for my music production software to function reliably.  It was not connected to the internet, and each and every INIT that was unnecessary and bundled in its OS were eliminated via Apples own control panel menus.  The Extensions Manager was its name.  This was an effective piece of software which enabled the user to customize his computer's performance.  Third party programs and processes could be eliminated so the processor could focus on the tasks at hand such as MIDI sequencing or the recording of digital audio.  I used the PowerMac operating at G3 speeds to produce eleven CD projects of music, much of it original.  These CD's sit awaiting the formation of my custom website, where I will sell them via the internet.  (I am not a web designer, so they will be sitting for a while longer)  I am a musician and a composer.  I have spent the bulk of my life performing music on the piano and trumpet, and writing.  Keeping up with the times is not in my agenda at the moment, but it will surface as a priority in the near future.  My point is computing has become exclusive at the behest of the manufacturers.  This practice was pioneered by Bill Gates and Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.  As you may recall the federal government sued Microsoft and broke up the company in a large anti-trust case.  As you may recall the telephone network also was broken up into smaller factions called the Baby Bell's.  It seems at that time the general consensus believed corporate monopolies were bad.  [sic]  Today the opposite is true.  It would seem the general consensus is large blanket providers are better for the consumer.  Where is the competition?  Where is the system of Checks and Balances?  Where is healthy competition?  Largely they have been eliminated.  What surprise is it that consumers have no control over the prices of medical care, drugs, or food?  Certainly America no longer is a democracy, and certainly we no longer are free.  It has been a deliberate and clever campaign perfectly represented by Mr. Rose's interview televised last evening with an Apple representative.  I must have been watching a paid informercial for Apple.  Charlie marveled at how great the iPhone is like it was the Holy Grail.  I thought to myself, "This is the highest form of propaganda."  It effectively brain-washed viewers into believing the rhetoric.  While I can understand the implications of a well-thought-out and manufactured device, a handheld computer is not going to revolutionize life in America.  Conversely in the long run it will prove to be a failure.  Without waxing conspiratorially electromagnetic bursts from the sun's solar winds are common.  Our magnetosphere is weakening from a variety of negative assaults including cell phone usage.  It will not take much to produce a surge of electricity so strong that all computer use will be wiped out.  It is elementary.  I look around me in close proximity to one of the world's largest military installations, and the vulnerabilities are exorbitant.  It would not take much to bring the American machine to a complete standstill.  (and this conclusion arises with no active thought)  I never will trust my money or my estate to a computer.  No one else should either.  You are just asking for the anarchy which will ensue.  It's like getting into a car with a complete stranger.  How many people must be assaulted, raped, or murdered before a class action lawsuit persuades Uber to rethink their ground-breaking ride-sharing business?  Mr. Rose relentlessly suggested that Apple must have another groundbreaking product around the corner?  Why?  I can appreciate this insistence in the field of journalism.  Often Mr. Rose is able to elicit telling answers from reluctant guests about volatile issues.  On this occasion I must digress.  I understand what an iPhone can do, and never will I buy one.  If I want to shoot video, I will buy a video camera.  If I want photographs that move, I will by a video camera.  If I want to market still photographs as truncated video wrapped with a clever bow, I.....   will be Apple pandering to adolescents.  Fuck me.  This childish propaganda must stop.  If the FCC can't monitor and regulate stilted advertising, who will?  Big Brother is alive and well, and has grown into a full fledged King Kong.  He is all around us, and I for one am frightened.  

No Sonnymoon for You

I am rather startled that Joey Calderazzo is living in Durham, North Carolina neighbors with Branford Marsalis.  They live on a golf course.  This is not exactly the "jazz life."  Then again scuffling for gigs in Manhatten is not one's life long aspiration.  It was difficult to find out exactly where Mr. Calderazzo is teaching.  Upon listening to one of his You Tube interviews, he interestingly does not mention North Carolina Central University.  I'm not sure why.  Central always has had a jazz program and usually a good one.  I think possibly both artists are reveling in their anonymity.  For me having these two jazz artists living within earshot is confusing.  I don't know whether to be elated or pissed off.  Upon reflection I am pissed off and not at either of them.  Why didn't I know these two iconic jazz artists were living in my state?  If I had known I would have made an effort to hear them play.  It seems after a bit of research in order to hear either Branford or Joey play, I will have to travel.  I believe they are beyond playing in local clubs.  You live in a particular community, yet there is no opportunity or rather you choose not to play locally. Either it does not pay enough, or it is not worth it.  How could it be beneficial to you as a jazz artist?  As I understand it both gentlemen are adjunct faculty members at NCCU.  Branford's Quartet has been there since 2005.  Great.  I once was an aspiring jazz educator.  I taught at the University of South Carolina, Columbia for a few years.  I taught at The Ohio State University in the Art Department.  All the while I was playing in the community.  How else can you teach jazz, if you don't set an example by playing locally?  When I attended USC Chris Potter was playing in the Left Bank Band.  He was in high school, but Dr. John Emche was giving Chris lessons.  His father brought him to rehearsal twice a week, and he played jazz tenor.  Again I will ask how is it possible to teach locally at a university and not play in the community?  I understand musicians of Branford and Joey's caliber are artists of  considerable stature.  Also I would believe they are extremely humble about their abilities.  Listening to Joey talk via You Tube exhibits such.  Jazz is a school of hard knocks.  An adjunct gig it not easy to find.  They did.  It doesn't make it easy to swallow, that rarely will I ever hear them play live.  I have to fly to New York City and pay to hear either of them.  This is an aberration of modern America, and it leads me to the topic of the evening.  (I didn't want to write about local jazz icons, but I couldn't help it)  Branford and Joey are living in Durham.  Everyone hates jazz, so it doesn't matter except to other jazz musicians.  I put jazz on the shelf years ago, but it is not forgotten.  It is frustrating not just to me.  If two of the most notable jazz musicians in the world live in Durham, North Carolina and teach at North Carolina Central University, something in jazz education is amiss.  Is it?  Is this now common?  Jazz artists teach and live in a particular place, and play elsewhere.  I am familiar with this practise.  It is common for universities to pad their budgets with celebrity.  Enter the NCAA.  Enter sports.  When I read resumes it is all celebrity.  I did this, then I did this.  These are the people with which I've worked.  I've traveled here, and I've traveled there.  I have these prizes, these commissions, and these opportunities.  This is America.  When we turn on the news we hear about local crime and big money.  Rarely do we hear about the little guy.  If I hear the word billion one more time on the news, I will vomit.  What relationship can the word 'billion' have with the common man?  The common man, and I mean those not attending Bilderberg conferences, are struggling to put food on the table, gas in their vehicles, and their children through college.  The word billion has no relevance to us.  Uber, Apple, and Uma Thurman are prospects beyond our need.  (While millennials may choose to get in a car with a complete stranger and be assaulted, raped, or murdered, the Smartphone is iconic)  I mean naive.  May I please remind you that before the iPhone or iPad was a Macintosh computer.  Mac's were used by students and professionals, people who could afford it.  There were great software programs, not app's, that allowed you to create artistic music, graphics, and photography.  Programs were directed at professionals.  I know because I studied computer music on a limited level at OSU.  Ever heard of Max Matthews?  I heard him speak and perform live on one of his pioneering instruments.  Max Matthews and his peers have been swept out of the picture, so that Apple can sell 'apps' to adolescents.  Like other sectors of the commercial American market, Apple discovered the kids have the expendable income.  Screw adults.  Screw VH-1.  Screw Adult Contemporary.  "Let's take the kids' money," and they have.  I have not been interested in Apple since the Powermac.  While I did buy a used Macbook Pro, I can't change its battery.  I have to drive to Branford and Joey's town and frequent an Apple Store, not an 'app' store, although I think they sell apps.  Then I have to let a 'genius' take my laptop and perform some kind of intricate surgery on it to change its battery.  It is an exclusive policy, like the rest of modern America.  We have excluded the little guy or the common man.  We sell shit to adolescents, and we rip off adults.  No one pays attention.  We just go along with it.  The kids are more gullible when they are uneducated, so don't fund or support education.  If you do support it, don't make it a priority.  Make it a priority to get computers into schools, so kids can demand their computers in school.  It is the biggest cultural upset in American history.  The Big Dupe.  If I hear the word billionaire one more time, or how tech. entrepreneurs have made billions from their little tech. ventures I will shit.  It doesn't relate to me.  CEO's for tech companies are not stars.  They are not celebrities.  The media paints them this way, because they have most of the money in America.  The rest of us are poor.  There are the rich in America, and there are the poor.  The rich are boring.  If you can't share with me your knowledge or interest in technology, why should I buy your product.  Not that long ago we would teach that information to our youth, so they could get good jobs.  Now it's exclusionary.  It's a policy of no transparency, just like the federal government.  We will take your tax money, and do anything we damn well please.  The desires of the American people do not matter one iota.  Most of this change is because of George W. Bush.  His cronies asked him to deregulate business, pass eminent domain, and hand billions of the tax payers dollars to Wall Street CEO's in the name of saving the U.S. economy.  He will go down as the worst and most unconstitutional of all American presidents.  Meanwhile small businesses, the heart and soul of American culture, are dying.  The rich are living off of the poor, and I for one demand the next president change this.  Who has the balls?  

American Diversity

We no longer are a diverse nation.  Once we were.  Once We Were Warriors, as the New Zealand-based novel and film depicted.  Is it possible war and diversity are related?  Past President Bill Clinton harmed the world in many ways.  Not only did his passing of the North American Free Trade Alliance contribute to the collapse of the Mexican peso, auctioning formerly dangerous frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum largely has caused global warming.  No one acknowledges, and the polar ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate.  Is it possible the country is considering another Clinton to inhabit our White House?  I shudder at the thought.  The Clintons are good at auctions.  They auctioned Bill's speaking fees for possible influence with the Obama Administration.  Like the rest of America all of us are gullible enough to believe that something good will come of their rhetoric.  Dinners in the White House?  Blow jobs underneath the Presidential desk?  Monica Lewinsky on the front page of our tabloids for over a year?  The country does not need this in spite of the glory of America's first woman president.  Bill's one success, the penning of the Dayton Accords, sits unnoticed.  With the tribal civil war in the Middle East, Bill's one success, the penning of the Dayton Accords, sits unnoticed.  Do we have that to which to look forward?  Is is possible Bill can repeat his one major achievement of his American Presidency and solve issues in Syria and Afghanistan?  Certainly Mrs. Clinton did nothing during her tenure as Secretary of State to help.  She was busy auctioning her husband's speeches for possible influence with the Obama Administration.  (the sound of chuckling can be heard in the Clinton household.)  When Bill was in the White House multiculturalism was in the forefront of American society, because Hillary had written a book.  It had good ideas, and diversity and racism were expanding and contracting.  This was before George W.'s "Globalization," which has abandoned the America populace in favor of cheap labor.  If we don't invest in ourselves, who will the nation become?  It all ready has become that.  We no longer are a nation of shared ideals.  We are a nation of slaves at the mercy of our own medical establishment.  Diversity is not an issue, at least until another unarmed black teenager is murdered by an overzealous police officer.  America no longer is diverse.  The artistic ideals that have have championed diversity are dead.  Jazz is dead.  Art is dead.  Art is dead, because pop culture does not have the guts, stamina, or heart for good.  Art does not care about monetary gain.  It cares about the sustenance of a people.  Diversity contributes greatly to the depth of art, because many cultures are involved.  Plurality.  We are not a plural nation anymore.  Slowly technology and its purveyors have staked out the same niche as Yuppies in the l980's.  They are wealthy and exclusive, and art or diversity has nothing to do with their success.  Art does not care about money.  Nothing can be more symbolic of this stagnation in America than popular music.  Gone are Sly and the Family Stone, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the rest.  Alarmingly our major contributors to diversity and thus art are dying one at a time.  Pat Conroy, author of groundbreaking treatises on race in the American South, is dead.  There is no one to replace them.  Let us hope the corrupt hand of Big Brother will see fit to include them in our history.  We are not diverse.  We do not embrace other cultures.  We are exclusionary.  We are rich.  We are elite, not unlike America always has been.  During other decades we were more successful at disguising it.  

One's Own Damn Musical Self

I think I may have been selfish in my early years.  Selfishness stems from American society, where capitalism breeds an attitude of self preservation.  Although primarily we are a socialist country (over 70% of American jobs are provided by the government), capitalism instills a sense that we must get for ourselves or be eaten.  When American ideals still were vigorous, this need didn't usurp Christianity.  Because Christianity has been on the chopping block for over a decade, widespread evil as replaced good as the major tenant of American society.  Maybe it is survival instinct.  Maybe it merely is ignorance.  Ignorant people, devoid of real life experiences within the construct of Christianity, may not know good.  Once a mother's altruistic love was instrumental in shaping moral lives.  While I may have been selfish in my early years, only was it a plea to have the same things others did.  (or so it seemed) I learned if you wanted to be successful take no prisoners.  There was no time for gratuitousness.  Your desires were primary in your own life.  I have changed only because, I have been lucky enough to have had some good things.  I have not accumulated wealth, but what I do have is important to me.  They are things, but also they are tools.  I have learned to invest in tools which will serve a greater purpose for the future.  Because I am a musician often these things have been musical tools.  Not many can afford a Yamaha C7 grand piano, but we can afford small music-making tools offered via electricity.  Electricity has been a contentious element in the history of music.  When Bob Dylan "went electric" anarchy to a small degree ensued.  As an aficionado of jazz music I learned to appreciate acoustic music.  Jazz largely was acoustic music, until it too "went electric."  Electricity effectively has bridged the gap between purist acoustic music and utilitarian product.  While two acoustic pianos sit downstairs, neither of them is used.  They are not used, because no longer can their acoustic tones compete with local industrial pollution.  I am not speaking of audible pollution.  I am speaking of the much more powerful and destructive infrasonic frequencies.  These are rampant in our modern industrial society ignored by most.  Still they rain down havoc on our citizens.  When I try to verbalize why swing music is difficult today, few can understand that a large powerful sound wave defeats the good rhythm of swing.  Society has adapted, and now we have the genre of "pop," a style of non-music which requires none of the traditional skills or talents of educated music.  A classical education isn't necessary.  One only has to learn how to strum a guitar to develop a stunted sense of what how time should feel.  Real time or feeling is much more complicated, diverse, and powerful.  Possibly it is this diversity we lack in the world today.  While racial diversity is a desired goal in America, few remember that music is what allowed it to happen.  Music was an example of the good of man and God via Christianity.  Musicians made real music, and real music transcended reality.  I have enough electronic tools to make music, but it increasingly is difficult.  I don't feel the inspiration or the support music diversity once merited.  It does not exist, or it does not seem to exist in modern America.  If it did it would be setting an example for diversity instead of reveling in its own self worth.  

A Black Hole

In all earnest no matter how much I try to ignore the Carolinas are a mockery of the union, I can't.  I've never liked North Carolina.  I have traveled all over the state, and interstates criss-crossing through tobaccos warehouses doesn't represent much except fraud.  Big Tobacco came down.  They were lacing their cigarettes with ammonia science to keep you hooked.  Thanks North Carolina.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the oldest state university in the union fabricated courses so their student athletes could graduate.  This continued for years undiscovered.  UNC Chapel Hill fabricated academic courses for student athletes, so that they could pass and graduate.  Everyone turned a blind eye.  One of the most reputable academic institutions in America sold out.  Was the money that scarce?  Congress has approved the maximum tuition increase each year since it was possible with no thought to stagnant wages, low minimum wage, and rising costs of living.  Each year Congress has approved the MAXIMUM tuition increase with no guilt or remorse.  Students are graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt.  I no longer have respect for UNC.  It is my alma matter, and yet I don't watch the Tarheels play.  How can I?  UNC wholeheartedly engaged in academic fraud for student athletes.  That is the most giant indicator of the world in which we have come to live.  It is the perfect metaphor for America.  We have sold out.  I feel no relation with America at all.  I never have, since I graduated from UNC with a music education degree.  Four years of my life, the most difficult thing I ever have accomplished, and teacher salary in North Carolina is the second lowest in the union.  I can't even entertain the thought of teaching in North Carolina, because it will be engaging in slavery.  I will be the slave.  The way it's always been.  My alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill engaged in academic fraud for student athletes.  (African American studies)  Would white professors and white athletes have done the same thing?  Seems like it is Straight Out of Compton, but this was my alma mater.  This was UNC-Chapel Hill.  Dean Smith coached James Worthy and Michael Jorden.  I was there.  There was no academic fraud.  Christianity has all but been eradicated from our nation, so Wall Street banks can scam us, academia can scam us, and ?  I turn on the news and potential presidential candidates are talking about the size of each other's hands.  I try not to feel like it's not true, like I don't want to check out.  I want to check out.  It's not worth it.  Life is so fucked in America, that what's the point?  I look around and everything for which I have worked is gone.  I wanted to hear some jazz piano tonight.  Where would I turn the dial?  If I did have satellite radio it would tune in smooth jazz.  If I do try to watch bands on television, they sicken me.  They have sold out.  I've never seen such a mockery of music.  Then I remember is all about the LGBT thing.  Students want to be able to pick which bathroom they use.  What has America become?  It is such a disgrace, and I am embarrassed.  I am down.  I have no reason to do anything.  

Major Suckage and Corporal Cu Chi Are At It Again

Dear Major Suckage,

      What an atrocity America has become.  Far from virtuous are we.  Far from honest are we.  Far from Christian are we.  Those Afghanistan poppies are proving problematic.  Film patrons are mistaking still digital photos rendered with Steve Jobs' software for cinematography.  Film making has become such a crock.  A little man in a box with no ears demands hundreds of millions for his video game, and the people are buying it.  They know no better.  Teachers are the only ones who know better, and we are starving them.  Soon we will be a race of Zombies.  If the man is successful killing off humanity, what will be the fun then?  Duping God?  I think not.  I live in an active electromagnetic field.  No wonder we die of cancer, and the man doesn't care.  Major, you are sucking on my windows again.  Again I will ask how is this possible.  How can air be sucked from my house?  Could it be because your air burning dragoons are at it again.  Churning night and day, day and night, in the sky and in our earth.  It is one big glorious electromagnetic field.  The Academy Awards are this Sunday.  Are you really considering an Oscar for digital stills rendered with Steve Jobs' software?  It is beautiful for you that your films are judged by a generation of sheltered video-game-playing millennials.  They could not know that Daisy Domergue may not have been as evil as they cast her.  What evidence did we have other than Kurt Russell's word?  We lie in America.  We always have.  My ears are cold.  My heart is cold.  Cold, Cold Heart.  Rasul Dufy.  Antibiotics.  Mr. Robot.  Fourth Friday.  Sergeant Pepper.  J.W. Pepper.  I hear your plane again Major Suckage, for the umpteenth time today.  Over our house you fly, again, and again, and again.  What are you looking for Major Suckage?  Are you watching over your Arms Room?  Why did the Department of Defense put it behind our neighborhood?  Isn't it time it was moved in closer proximity to your base, Major Suckage?  Maybe that new industrial park on the boulevard?  Possibly on Honeycutt next to FTTC's auto repair center?  Do they like it down the street from the Department of Homeland Security, of which no one knows.  No one knows.  That bland building sitting nestled in a berm.  Blandly bleating nothing.  Hundreds of employees on leave for impropriety.  W's quintessential department of pork.  It's a shite state of affairs Major Suckage.  Could you please stop sucking?  

Quinton's Bukaki Fantasy

While T's "Hateful Eight" has some merits frankly repeatedly ejaculating in a woman's face, no matter how despicable she is, is pushing the boundaries of good taste.  Like Inarritu's "The Revenant" it is difficult to discern whether T's movie is serious, a comedy, a farce, or a satire.  With it's bad sound, unrealistic effects, and droll dialog it would seem "The Hateful Eight" is just a bad B movie from the 70's.  I thought of an imported Kung Fu movie and its unsynchronized dialog.  The sound reproduction in T's film is so unrealistic, one can only think it is a farce.  Again like Inarritu's "The Revenant," with all of those beautiful outside images, what's the point when actors speak and it sounds like they are in a cereal box in your kitchen.  This is a lesson for sound design in the future of film.  A story can be told with sound alone, sound effects and images, and more importantly solely with the human voice.  I am just now understanding this concept, because I recorded one of my original pop song's recently.  With an honest story, thoughtful lyrics, tasteful technique, and an opportunity many a singer/songwriter was born.  I lament this lost art.  As "The 8" progressed finally acting became an element of the film.  The camera stopped twitching, looking up nostrils, and creating unneeded drama simply and stopped filming  actors' craft.  When Samuel L. Jackson finally gets to orate as he did in "Pulp Fiction,"  the film becomes engaging.  Engaging is the human voice at its finest.  Boring it is when an actor is miscast, there is no ensemble chemistry, there is no rhythm, and we must watch.  Kurt Russell is a fine actor, and I watched him last night with his equally as able wife, Goldie Hawn.  This was not his part.  Disney is no match for Daisy Domergue, but he gave it his best shot.  The ensemble all were chuckling quietly under their prostitution.  They were getting paid.  

Elect Bernie Sanders President

I don't have anything much to say, but I am tired of looking at the name Major Suckage.  I instead will say the only logical choice for the presidency is Bernie.  Ted Cruz is a hypocrite and a pawn of Texas.  He is a puppet and figurehead like W.  He is being orchestrated by powers we do not want in control in America.  It is obvious when he speaks.  It is scripted not natural.  Hillary is dishonest.  We do not need another Clinton presidency, although at the time I supported Bill.  What has been discovered logically proves Hillary should not be president.  Then there is Trump.  He has his own money but little diplomacy.  Would he bankrupt the U.S. further?  It is risky.  The only logical choice for the presidency is Bernie Sanders.  All one must do is watch and listen.  He knows more about the issues than any other candidate and he is smart.  Hillary is a bullshitter.  Bernie knows what he is talking about.  I cannot imagined a dinner party hostess in the American presidency.  It would be a disaster.  The Clinton's would have fun, just like they did when she was the Secretary of State, a completely inappropriate appointment and one she did not deserve or serve.  As a team they exploited her possible influence to policies in the White House.  Shrewdly they manipulated foreign interests to make money.  We do not need this in the White House again.  Whether anyone acknowledges it Bill Clinton created the housing bust.  He ran with a campaign slogan that everyone in America deserved to own their own home.  The housing markets spinning out of control issues sub prime mortgages to anyone and everyone assuring there would be a market failure when they defaulted on the shady loans.  It proved we cannot trust Wall Street banks once and for all.  They stole most of our American money that needs to be circulating to stimulate the economy.  Send a letter to Santa.  People are poor, and Wall Street got rich.  We do not need a Wall Street liaison in the White House.  Just try to remember the image of Hank Paulson standing on the inaugural podium.  Bernie is Jimmy Carter, so we must decide as a nation if this is the change we need.  Bernie speaks the truth, whether you like it or not.  

Dear Major Suckage,

     I would like to inquire why you are around?  We are experiencing major suckage.  When I open our newly installed and highly energy efficient vinyl windows, there is suckage.   My sheers, which disguise my personal activity, are sucked out.  Even with our furnace off and no discernible air blowing through the ducts, my sheers are being sucked out pinning them against the screens.  What is the source of this low pressure or vacuum, Major Suckage?  If a human is to breath air it must flow into the house.  If the planet is to cool itself the air must be able to flow on its on in its natural state.  A sucking through the huge hole in the ozone over the south Pole is not appropriate.  A sucking from gravitational waves created by two colliding black holes is not appropriate.  Global warming as a byproduct of major suckage must stop.  Meteorologists do not seem to question the bipolar behavior of the earth's weather.  Summer one day and winter the next?  What is causing these huge swings of air movement.  Could it be major suckage?  Major Suckage, are YOU responsible for this sucking?  Do your SD70MACs suck so much air with their turbochargers that the weather patterns on earth are affected?  Jet turbines also suck, but sucking is not the only problem.  If sucking and spewing happen simultaneously...  Isn't this a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels?  We are burning our breathable air and  consequently polluting it with toxins.  It would seem these naturally occurring processes of life are oblivious to the Koch brothers.  There is no air in space, but does NASA know how to manufacture air?  I would believe Dr. Michael Burry highly is investing in both water and air. Commodities trading.  I guess it is time Americans stop hoarding ammunition and begin hoarding air and water.  The good thing is, unlike those pests in the film "War of the Worlds," SD70MAC's use the same air as human beings.  Ouch.  Eliminate humans and there is more air for them.  Is it a conspiracy Major Suckage?  Thank you.  

Major Suckage, The Erudite Army Officer

Dear Major Suckage,

        Hello, and I hope you are enjoying your new assignment in the trenches at Fort Bragg.  I hear your private plane now.  It is unfortunate The United States Army did not assign you a Lear Jet like the other Fort Bragg Generals.  The rank of Major does have its limitations.  In your new position as overseer of the Cape Fear Railways, I would like to inform you that operating in the trenches, while providing coverage from encroaching enemy fire, does not disguise your position.  It would seem your platoon could learn a lesson from Corporal Cu Chi.  Their strategy of hiding in tunnels rather than operating in trenches secured them immunity from defeat by your army during the Viet Nam War.  Fully I understand the War on Terror could be considered a different animal, or is it?  The inclusion of suicide bombing into methodology differentiates this war from tradition guerrilla tactics.  The futility of attempting to hide munition trains from these terrorist by burying them in tunnels is proving to be an environmental disaster.  They are not hidden.  In fact they are more apparent than if they were above the ground.  The Ground Wave Emergency Network highly was contested by everyone, because no American wanted electricity coursing through our earth.  Now we have electricity coursing through our air, and since the presidency of Bill Clinton, in expanding frequencies.  A proposal is active that will auction more of these microwave frequencies in the near future.  Wireless telecommunications companies are vying for these acquisitions with which to expand their services.  Haven't they scorched the earth enough?  Sound travels faster through solids than through air, so placing parts of the Cape Fear Railroad in tunnels at Fort Bragg only exposes their presence more.  For officers with limited sensory capabilities the adage "Out of sight, out of mind" qualifies.  Sight is only one six human senses.  [sic] Is it five?  Is it seven.  I see dead people.  Is it the Higgs Boson?  The conception, proposal, and subsequent study of GWEN and infrasound historically  conclusively have proven both are a threat to the human race and our God's earth.  Officers like you, Major Suckage, continue with the defense contracts of General Electric to breach the threshold of safe living at Fort Bragg.  Four soldiers returned from the War on Terror and killed their wives and themselves at Fort Bragg.  What could be so grave that all hope is lost?  Could it be that polluting our earth, the only platform upon which we have to live our lives, with electricity and infrasound has proven lethal?  The answer is yes.  President Obama cannot find a reason why youth genocide in America has flourished uncontrollably.  Is it because humans are organic beings utilizing electricity for our existence?  An EKG is a simple reminder that we rely upon both electricity and frequencies of waves for our thought and emotional processes.  If these are interrupted or bombarded with extraneous material, how will our minds and bodies respond?  One only has to ask Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris their opinion about the General Electric conveyor belt buried beneath the ground in close proximity to their homes.  

Soulless Cinema

Being a fan of the old school I was reluctant to spend my green on the remake of "Point Break," but I was bored.  It was Superbowl Sunday.  The day after the remnants of poor taste still linger.  After the Lady redeemed the genre of pop music with outstanding performances of both jazz and show tunes, it was perplexing to view her first few seconds of her rendition of our National Anthem.  I couldn't watch.  Her performance was on par with all the problem laden performances that proceeded hers.  There is a standard for the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner," and it is found in the concept of a traditional music education.  The newly created modern American pop genre feels it is not bound by these ideals.  Like so many filmmakers in America selfishly they indulge their immature passions, and they fail.  Lady Gaga failed yesterday, and it was further insult to the American people.  Then again we are being insulted daily with the 2016 presidential campaign.  How can one take anything seriously?  It is depressing to turn on the television and realize the election of the most powerful political leader in the world is a farce.  Truly if you do care about America's future, this election would seem to have nothing to do with it.  It is a puppet show, and I would guess Rupert Murdoch is pulling some strings.  A transplanted Aussie has no place controlling the news in America.  Much of America is owned by foreign interests.  We have become a barren industrialized wasteland bearing no resemblance to our once free world.  This brings me to my point of soulless cinema.  I have seen three films released in 2015 which all transmitted a similar dynamic.  There were beautiful epic images and lots of location shooting at varying destinations.  No wonder the budget is high.  With all of that visual hubris something was lacking.  It is soul.  I have watched three separate films, "Spectre," "Point Break," and "Sicario," which all suffer from the same bleak perspective.  I am beginning to learn this is the affectation of the millennium.  This is the way millennials feel.  They feel very little, and it is because the barren industrialized wasteland of America no longer feeds our souls.  Millennials would be so desperate with lack of feeling to enjoy the Superbowl half time experience.  I couldn't watch it, because all ready I knew.  I gave the Lady and chance, and she regressed her career.  I assume because it was the NFL, not a pinnacle of Christian sentiment, was orchestrating.  Briefly as a music educator I have to critique her performance.  The National Anthem is that.  It is an anthem not a pop song.  An anthem has a connotation, and it is not a pop song.  When singing an anthem the methodology of pop performance is moot.  Correctly to convey an anthem it must be reverent, spiritual, and selfless.  An anthem is paying tribute to a far greater good than Lady Gaga, the NFL, or television.  A rule of jazz performance applies to the singing of an anthem.  Play the melody straight the first time.  Prove you know and can play the melody straight by singing that way.  Harry will tell you.  The embellishments are moot, extraneous, and embarrassing.  To succumb to that low brow practise was a  mistake for Lady Gaga.  I was disappointed, because her authentic interpretations of jazz music spurred by Tony Bennett and show music were nullified.  People will remember the Superbowl.  Of all the opportunities to set an example for taste, this was it.  Like the 2016 presidential campaign it has failed.  Is this the real Lady Gaga?  It was sickening, but I guess I expected it.  I want to comment on this soulless facet of America.  Today most of the supportive structures that have nurtured artistic performances no longer are there.  Our environment is polluted with waves of all kinds.  To cling to your own wave today takes much effort. The Superbowl was not the place to do with our National Anthem as a vehicle.  There is little time for emotional and spiritual rejuvenation, because our environment no longer contributes.  This is not God's way.  The land of the free formerly did contribute.  It was here first.  The majesty of purple mountains found in mother nature provide spiritual fuel for certain lineages of humanity.  Native Americans are one, and systematically America either has extinguished or emasculated their culture for our own gain.  It is no wonder God's spirituality conspicuously is absent from America and film.  "Bridge of Spies," "Sicario," "The Revenant," and "Point Break" all have become metaphors for this vacuum.  They are giant black holes that suck the spirituality from God's earth.  It must be a trend, and the soulless Playstation is running the game.  Made up characters suffice for real humans, because millennials never have been allowed to develop their own spiritual psyches within the pristine and unadulterated American landscape.  We live in a vast, barren, industrialized wasteland much like the setting of "The Walking Dead."  Is this what we want for America?  It offends me to see filmmakers depict the beauty of God's earth in such a vacuous way. Either you see the glass half full or half empty, and it is clear many current film directors prefers the latter.  Watching their films is isolating, oppressive, and depressing.  Why would any director taint God's glory with nothingness?  It is because they themselves apparently have no soul.  Soul comes from Christianity, and from Christianity comes good.  The majority of followers of the Muslim faith are peaceful followers of Allah similar to Christians.  Only has one rogue faction of extreme religious terrorism misrepresented Islam.  Billy Joel did a better job singing the National Anthem.  Watching a cat in heat on Superbowl Sunday was an atrocity.  

The Slothfulness of Technology

Fortunate I have been the last week to resuscitate a formerly dormant part of my brain.  MIDI.  Musical Instrument Digital Interface.  MIDI was groundbreaking in music technology with its inception and implementation during the l980's.  I own the first MIDI instrument, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600.  It was not until I arrived in Columbia, South Carolina and befriended a local jazz scholar that I would find the true potential of MIDI.  Jane Olds may have been the first in this region who understood this musical capability and invested well enough to fund her own start up.  After selling a musical spot to what I believe was public television, she purchased a Kurzweil 250 keyboard, a sampler, and with the software program One Step and its cooperative Jam Box interface began programming music on the computer emulating live ensemble performance.  I became friends with Ms. Olds and was privy to gain entry to her modest home studio.  In the living room was the Kurzweil 250, a mammoth black keyboard with multiple tiers.  On top of it sat what I believe was a Mac Classic running the computer program One Step.  With this primitive sequencer Jane successfully sampled live instruments and sequenced notes on the computer which emulated a musician playing them.  It was uncanny what was possible.  A drum set being played via the keyboard?  A trumpet being played via the keyboard?  Today no one much cares about music.  Jazz and classical music are the most unpopular of musical styles in America.  A trumpet you say?  What's that?  Music is dead in popular culture.  One only has to turn on the tube to see the millennial version of what used to be music.  It's not much, and it's not meant to be.  It is meant to submit, and it does.  This millennial version of music will not maintain the test of time.  It will do nothing.  In the midst of this negative reinforcement ,which incidentally surrounds us daily without our active choice I am trying my best to remember what a viable vocation of commercial music is.  In my circumstance it incorporates MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface.  Wow, that was difficult to hash out that brief history, and I am glad it is done.  One reason why I have been having difficulty remembering is because the music industry drastically has changed in the lat decade.  It is a shadow of what it once was.  The overt realization I had was today's technology is making us lazy.  It is doing all of the things for us once we had to do ourselves and enjoyed.  The process was it.  A man is what he does, not what he says.  Today the trend is to let software developers do it.  What do we do?  Not much, just as millennial music does not do much.  That is because a large part of the work or the creative process is being done by software developers.  It is unusual today to see a band on stage today without a laptop around somewhere.  I for one as a seasoned musical performer never would risk having a computer involved in my live music-making process.  Having studied composition at the doctoral level fully I understand the mediums of music that do use computers.  I embrace them and the founding fathers of both IRCAM and music concrete, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer.  Computers do have their place in music creation but not being a crutch for live musical performance.  When we watch the Super Bowl halftime show this Sunday, try to see who if performing live. Upon reflection I do not feel MIDI and this crutch are related.  By the time millennials got their greedy claws in the music industry, MIDI all ready was dead.  Software plugins were the rage, and the necessity of the PC was sealed.  This is our stunted culture today.  We rely and pay software developers to do our work for us.  They singlehandedly have stunted American pop culture just as corporate monopolies have drained our pockets.  What could be more successful......for them?  We no longer need Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, or Calculus, because we no longer need to think on a creative level.  Self-driving cars?  I will ask the question again.  What are we going to be doing while the car is driving us?  The answer is something selfish.  (having sex, texting, drinking coffee, putting on makeup, or other inane meaningless tasks)  The need for us to DRIVE, to see, to think, to react are being sedated.  Is this what we want, to be drugged? It used to be about the process.  Through this process we achieved self-awareness.  We became human.  Millennials are not human in a traditional sense.  I choose now at the ripe age of fifty-three to say, "That's the younger generation.  That's they way they do it.  Don't judge them."  As an educator no longer can I adopt this philosophy.  The world is headed down the wrong path, and Congress has failed.  The common good no longer is of concern.  It is, "Get what you can, can it, and sit on the can."  This is what Capitalism has bred, slothfulness and ignorance among the common people.  If the pursuit of the dollar makes us ignorant, how can we look in the mirror every day? 

American Lunacy

Gun control seems to be a major topic in the news.  Our current President understandably seems preoccupied with unnecessary gun violence during his last year in office.  It is a fitting concern and thus ideal with which to wrangle.  First I must say I received notification from the North Carolina Department of Revenue today. Those two ominous letters marked with "Private and Confidential" were no surprise.  For a great while this North Carolina agency has been querying my income tax status.  Although I have been living around the world in cruise ships, I have kept my vehicles "garaged" at my parent's home here.  They sit for up to six months at a time.  (You can't drive a truck on a cruise ship.)  Only once did I ever use it, when I drove to Port Canaveral to embark the Monarch of the Seas.  Instead of sitting at my parent's home, it sat in the cruise terminal parking lot for four days at a time.  On embarkation day I would escape the ship long enough to drive around in the most redneck town in Florida I ever have seen.  I grew up around rednecks, and I am not a biggot.  There was something about the irony of leaving my leisure industry job and entering the realm of leisure living poverty.  That is water under the bridge.  After rebutting the NCDOR's claims for many years with concrete tax knowledge and a judge's understanding of domicile and residency, today I received official notification from them that they had determined I was not required to file state tax returns for the years 2011 and 2012.  Previously with the same package of materials consisting of federal transcripts and Florida W2's, I had escaped the looming prospect of a lawsuit suing me for nonpayment of North Carolina state income taxes.  I believe I have sent it to them at least four separate times.  Never have I received an official reply exonerating my supposedly intentional avoidance of North Carolina tax debt, until today.  Word.  Gun control seems to be a viable issue for our current outgoing president, and as usual there is little substantial information about it.  It has been reported he has enacted another executive order affecting gun control in some way. As many pundits have responded, "There is not much he can do."  The NRA may be America's largest and most powerful lobby.  It seems we like our guns, and we want to keep them.  I agree with our Constitution that because a "Well-Armed Militia" has been and may again be one of America's biggest assets, we as American citizens have a right to defend ourselves and thus own guns.  It wasn't that long ago that the people were required to take up arms and defend themselves, their families, and their property.  It will happen again.  The issue is a rather new phenomenon, and President Obama is doing his best to confront its cause through personal emotional channels.  It is an interesting approach.  Because juvenile gun violence in particular both is startling and upsetting, it may make it more difficult to discern its cause.  Obviously if mentally challenged people are allowed to possess firearms, bad things can happen.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  I will repeat this.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  (I typed that sentence in record time, because I am practicing my word-processing skills.)  When you blog you are thinking up what you are going to say on the fly, therefore I type more slowly.  When I am able to engage my brain with merely typing copy, it is easier to blaze.  I don't have to think about the content of the sentence.  I just type it like an assembly-line working builds a particular product.  (By the way I personally would like to thank the North Carolina Department of Revenue for reviewing my information and agreeing with my insistence, that I was not responsible for taxes here!)  I have spent a long time on the F.B.I. watch list.  Evidently those few thousand dollars in delinquent state income tax merited continual scrutiny with expensive Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and U.S. Customs and Border protection planes.  That or else they  must believe I am growing weed in the woods behind our house.  I used to spend a great deal of time in those woods clearing fallen pine trees, poison sumac, grape and wisteria vines, and extraneous brush.  Unlike the majority of urban-dwelling middle class America, I enjoy riding trail bikes.  We have been fortunate enough to live adjacent to a large swath of woods behind an elementary school.  Since we moved here in l978 I have created an array of motorcycle trails that have proven to be cathartic, consoling, and enjoyable.  That changed when drunk one night I fired a single round of .32 caliber pistol ammo into the air attempting to discourage future arsonists from burning these particular woods.  It seems the persons living at the bottom of the woods having come home from some event were making a bit of late-night noise.  Henceforth the soldier living at the bottom of my steepest trail took a dislike to me.  While there was no way the summoned law enforcement officers could have found our home in the pitch black darkness at 1:30 a.m., they did.  I met them happily in the middle of our back yard, and giddily told them that juvenile delinquents had been shooting off fireworks.  It was true, and they believed me.  That late night marked a milestone for this probable trained Green Beret.  I don't know if he was a member Fort Bragg's elite Special Forces, but he certainly didn't like me and my single shot of .32 caliber small arms ammo fired into the air.  There have been several drive by shootings in Vanstory Hills, and I witnessed one.  It was about the same time one evening when my mother was away, and I heard six shots in slow succession that only could have been large caliber rounds.  They were within a city block.  Fayetteville is a violent city, and people are murdered daily.  It was a relief when he, his wife, and his annoying dogs moved away.  No longer do I have to worry about having to condone my ax work.  Ironically as much as I enjoy swinging an axe for physical exercise, a used chainsaw has made its way into our garage.  The last batch of trees that fell across my motorcycle trails was too large for me to cut through.  ( I realize I am ending this sentence with a preposition, but I am too fatigued to figure out how to reword.)  You get the point.  I like the physical pleasure of swinging an axe, and clearing the brush and trees in these woods has been a source of pleasure.  At one time it looked like a city park, and only locals could enjoy it like a Pacific Ocean Park surfer.  Today these woods are neglected, because I spent the entirely of the last year fixing our front yard.  That will be another story.  America is run by industrialists.  Mostly it is run by the railroads.  They are an unregulated monopoly, and before long there will be more freight than people.  (or there will be dead people in freight cars, which probably are there now, Mexicans, I mean).  It was not that long ago persecuted and condemned Jews were transported in freight cars to concentration camps, which in actuality were gas chambers.  We can have some comfort for the moment that transporting newly found shale oil in the Midwest is more lucrative than transporting Jews.  (It's a good thing Cheney is out of the White House)  Either people will be extinct, they will live underground, or they will live in mansions in the sky courtesy of Sierra Nevado Corp.  They can take their pick of a number of rocket-based carriers that are sprouting each year.  I do not think humans will live in space.  They only reason we would want to live in space is because the earth has been destroyed.  It will happen one day, but the expedience of that outcome is in our hands.  Why industrialists continue to kill the planet is beyond me.  It is the way the world has become without Christianity.  That campaign, that far-right, extreme Republican Fox News contingency only is evil.  I didn't think so at first, but it is the only explanation for the inexplicable and uncanny illogic of the world today.  The attack on Christianity began in this decade, and it is the reason why billionaire, adolescent, entrepreneurs carelessly are working on projects that are meaningless to our survival as a race.  We will not live in space.  We need to learn to drive better ourselves, before we allow technology to drive for us.  We do not needs aerial drones delivering our parcels.  A lack of Christian responsibility is what has spawned this lunacy.  Certainly we do not educate our populace anymore.  Certainly we do not care about engraining in our youth moral or ethical value.  That would mean Wall Street would have to be honest.  Watching this iconic institution falter with a complete and total lack of moral or ethical value should be a lesson.  Chaos is not that far away, and there is a reason why Americans want their guns. 

A State of Confusion

If I didn't know better I would think God is doing His best too assure the utter failure of mankind.  When He looks down at His earth there can be no similarity to Christianity at least in America.  While most of us understand America was founded upon unscrupulous murderous imperialism, the country has done well at saving face.  It has been the big "Razzle Dazzle," and it continues.  The hypocrisy is rife, so rife that promulgating it seems more wearisome than telling the truth.  Since I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in l985, never have I felt much allegiance to America.  Beginning teacher salary then was around $18,000.00 a year, not enough for me to start a family.  Today teacher pay in North Carolina is the second lowest in the nation, and both North and South Carolina are rife with defense dollars.  There is money sprinkling everywhere from national defense.  Our country spends more time preparing for war than educating our youth.  In this preparation of war defense contractors are getting wealthy, just like the Wall Street cronies who continue to pilfer our meager salaries.  It is necessary Hillary Clinton not be elected president, because she is a Wall Street insider.  I am not sure always she has been, but she is now.  A guest on Charlie Rose's program last night summed it up perfectly.  The former Secretary of State has a dismal record of public service, but this blog entry is not about her.  It is about the American debacle, formerly which has been the "American Dream."  The last decade of technological advance has led our country down a path of human lunacy.  If a fraction of a percentage of the money belonging to the elite were spent on America's proper and necessary ideals, the world's problems would be solved.  Instead America gambles.  The rich are gamblers, and they enjoy their game so much that the economic infrastructure of our feeble country has become compromised at the expense of the common man.  I do not agree with this or "the" lottery.  It is the quintessential metaphor of ridiculousness.  It is lunacy handing uneducated Americans millions of dollars, that should be spent repairing our infrastructure.  It is that old "Razzle Dazzle" in the fullest sense.  It is a ruse to keep the schmucks distracted from their meager lives.  Give the common a bit of hope in the face of our constant and continuing rape and pillage by corporate America. The ConditionofAmerica is so satirical, that longer can I believe it.  How can anyone live in a state when your existence is a farce?  Comedy.  It is difficult, because the Christian part of me still yearns to do the right thing.  I drink too much and I lust, but still I wake up compelled to try to do the right thing.  It no longer works, and I spend the majority of my day trying to forget the Protestant Work Ethic.  It is why I drink, because reality is too unfathomable.  There is no logical way to discern a trace of Christianity via our traditional avenues.  That is because the media was the first prisoner, and the Nazi's captured it first.  More to cum. 

The Irrefutable, Irrevocable, Irregardless, Decaprio Debacle

I know irregardless is not a word.  "The Revenant" not really is a movie.  It is a self-indulgence, and one not worth seeing.  Like "Star Wars" they have your money.  Instead see "Cold Mountain," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," or "A Man Called Horse."  In each of these films you will observe a seasoned old-school director making art on film.  In "The Revenant" you will see juvenile and inexperienced digital rendering which has no connection with humanity.  What do I mean by humanity?  Some reviews have stated "The Revenant" is alien.  It is, so why confuse humanity with aliens?  This should have been a Western.  There is a tradition in film making for Westerns, and marking your territory with extraneous, meaningless, yet potentially beautiful images did not suffice.  There is a way to tell stories, and this attempt fails.  I was confused most of the time.  Why was Dicaprio calling this aged Eskimo man son?  If you are lucky half way in you will realize this film both is camp and cheese.  If it ever is seen again it will be while you are drunk.  Like "Rocky Horror" maybe you will dress up like characters which were forgetful.  There were no spiffy costumes.  There was no clever dialog.  The sound quality was piss pour, and barely could you understand anything that was said.  A story can be told with sound, but "The Revenan"t proves a story should not be told with beautiful images alone.  Go to an art gallery, or more appropriately play a Sony Playstation video game.  That is what most movies have become today.  Beautiful images with no concept or origin in humanity are meaningless eye candy.  Without trying to philosophize how and why "The Revenant" fails, it would be prudent simply to say it is a massive directorial failure.  While some of the images could be considered beautiful, it was a B list cast (other than Dicaprio).  A slate of heavy weight supporting actors could have helped but would have exceeded their budget.  As usual the director tries to make up for the lacking pieces with digital renderings that look amateur.  With the bear attack the movie became a comedy.  The camera shots are illogical.  Alejandro Inarritu, like so many other pop culture directors who ignore their vocational tradition and lineage, adopts the ever-popular 'Gollum' perspective.   As we gaze at his images there is no rhyme or reason to where we are viewing the his action.  Like the slew of other 'Gollum' perspective films, his camera has no connection with human perspective.  Why not market it to aliens?  Mindlessly like Televisa it meanders like a drunken sailor.  The majority of the film stares up from ants.  My neck got tired as did my psyche from looking up all the time.  Why must we look up?  Why must we look up the nostrils of medicre performances?  Are we looking up at the self-proclaimed greatness of Inarritu?  Why continually must we look up through his trees?  What is there?  Nothing.  His penis trees are more interesting, and yet they mean nothing.  None of Inarritu's images mean anything.  God is insulted, as He is by the entire right wing conspiracy misrepresenting His goodness and beauty turning it into fright.  Why are those assholes on top of mountains during the winter anyway?  It is not very smart.  The entire film is not very smart.  It is dull, and it pained every sense in my body to endure it until I began to laugh.  Then I couldn't wait to get out to make fun of it.  Go watch Cold Mountain, The Outlaw Josey Wales, or A man Called Horse.  Listen to the beauty and understanding of a Jerry Fielding score.  You're time will be better spent.  

The Irreverent

By the way I am so disillusioned.  You know my love for the Dash 8 and the Dash 9.  [sic] Grunge music as a product of the l990's is an artistic asset to humanity and American pop culture.  Ironically it is possible grunge music was a necessary byproduct of both the Dash 8 and the Dash 9.  It seems classical composers suffer from a variety of mental disorders.  Possibly Kurt Cobain, an inhabitant of the Pacific Northwest known for its logging industry, didn't respond well to the infrasonic pollution created by AC traction.  Fully I understand Norfolk Southern opted out of the AC traction movement, while Union Pacific and CSX-T invested in this newly created technology.  Untested.  Unstudied.  Unregulated.  Fully I understand that both the Dash 8 and the Dash 9 do not utilize AC traction motors and thus power inverters, until now.  They are the most powerful DC traction freight locomotives in existence.  With a 16 cylinder turbo-charged diesel four stroke engine, horsepower of between 4000 to 4400 is their mark.  If that isn't insult enough to the population, in an attempt to promulgate their aging assets GE is recommending that their fleet of Dash 8's and Dash 9's be "upgraded" to AC traction.  Not only are they an infrasonic nightmare, now they can be an electromagnetic nightmare as well.  Cheers.  It won't be long before the our meager earth reaches the event horizon of electronic pollution and disappears into a giant black hole with nary a blip.  Maybe then GE will realize after we are all dead and the planet is destroyed.  I guess they have some great plan of how they are going to relocate on God's chosen planet before the apocalypse.  Maybe that is why our federal government is handing Sierra Nevada Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars in non-bidded contracts through the Department of Defense to create a network in space.  Maybe NASA has found God's chosen earth-like planet, and the powers-at-be are trying to figure out how to get there leaving the earth behind to decay in her own human-created filth.  It's kind of like globalization having left America behind to decay in her own human-created filth, until China succumbed to her own unique indigenous infrastructural problems.  (Such as massive pollution worse than America)  We stunk her up, so what's next?  
    

Dashing Through the Snow, Snow

Dear Dash 8 and Dash 9,

       These ephemeral words certainly did not apply to the holiday season of 2015.  In fact in retrospect it has been reported that the year 2015 was the hottest in history.  (the hottest in history)  I mean the history of recorded temperatures.  Each of our subsequent years has usurped the previous year in temperature.  It will continue.  Maybe that ensuing heat could be quelled if the dashing stopped.  I don't mean, "Dashing through the snow."  That would have been well appreciated.  Our weather has developed schizophrenia.  I should correct myself.  Our weather has developed bipolar disorder.  There is no logic to its 180 degree swings in seeming season.  One day or week it is summer and the next it is winter.  It seems our planet and thus our weather is suffering the same ills as human beings.  It is struggling, and its antagonists don't much care.  I don't think they have much of an opinion at all about global warming except that conspiratorially it does not exist.  Global warming?  It sounds, well, like the earth is smitten with something.  She has been seduced with nary a realization that most of the man-made industrial activity in the world is not good for her.  Global warming is not the right term.  Planetary meltdown.  The word meltdown is much more accurate, because it refers to other both manmade and natural disasters.  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl both come to mind, and like everything else in world history has been swept out of human consciousness.  Big Brother (I mean the creators of that man-made industrial activity) would rather you forget about the potential consequences of their negligence and greed.  A meteor also could hit the earth, but the chances of that occurring before we melt the planet ourselves is rare.  Dashing through the snow.  It is such a simple lyric.  I could be happy if the dashing stopped.  We could continue to sled, snowboard, and ski.  We would be fine, but the dashing has to stop.  Dash, dash, dash.  Oh, Dasher!  Why must you sit idly, like right now, doing nothing except heating the earth? I observed it again.  It occurred the entire two weeks of the Christmas break.  Dashing.  What is the point of burning fuel in seventy degree heat?  Is it because of the necessity of a cooling system?  I think I recall dashers do not use antifreeze.  There is some other method for keeping them from getting hot.  Snow would be good, but then they would need to be kept warm.  It is a predicament.  I, like Big Brother (I mean the creators of that man-made industrial activity), do not have an illuminated opinion about why the dashers must dash all the freaking time.  That is because their dashing is not based upon any theoretical premise.  Purely it is negligence or laziness.  "I don't feel like going through that dashing routine, cappy, so let's leave her running."  Consequence?  The entire two week Christmas holiday was overwrought with dashing. Screw the dashing.    The Dash 8 and the Dash 9 are the earth's enemies.  1990's technology does not adhere to the current standards of the E.P.A., but who cares?  Coal-fired power plants are under scrutiny.  Why not GE?  Because Big Brother runs the melting planet.  Can Hillary Clinton effectively yield the power of  Aunty Entity in America?   "Who runs Bartertown?"  MASTERBLASTER!  Embargo on. 

Let's Be Cool, Boy

I'm pretty exhausted.  I don't sleep well on the weekends, because a particular railroad switches trains on Sunday afternoon.  All day, and night.  Two Dash 8's toil.  I am talking about traction dating from the early l990's.  Certainly their emission standards are not in compliance with those established by the Environmental Protection Agency in the year 2016.  Some rail providers have begun to use GenSet locomotives in accordance with new EPA standards.  They have several diesel prime movers than engage only when their power is needed.  It very much is like a Honda motorcycle carburetor which only uses as much fuel/air mixture as it needs.  I can't remember its name.  There are other modern diesel locomotives which make attempts to pollute less.  The Dash 8 is not on the list.  Formerly this particular railroad made use of SD-60's when switching trains.  Why the change, other than the Dash 8's are like the devil himself?  They pollute not only the air but the air.  Did I say polluted the air with hydrofluorocarbons?  They do this.  We all know like what smells diesel exhaust.  Did I say also they pollute the air, something we cannot see but is crucial to human existence?  Our air gets overlooked.  There are world summits on how to stop the warming of the earth, but no one pinpoints the causes.  No one will come out and say that the airline industry, the rail industry, and the wireless telecommunication industry largely are responsible for global warming.  Why?  Think about it.  Yes coal-burning power plants account for a large percentage of emissions, but they are not the only culprits.  Coal is cheap, but it relies upon the rail industry to move its product.  Double whammy.  Let's pollute our air, twice.  If you believe the television advertisements you would think the railroads are as green as Kermit the Frog.  Bah.  They move so much more freight on a gallon of fuel.  They have put the truckers out of business, just as Apple and internet streaming services have put the record industry out of business.  Things dramatically have changed in America.  Not only did five trillion dollars disappear during the financial crisis of 2015, the balance of power has shifted.  Truly it is a new millennium, and no one much is paying attention.  Our air is polluted with gaseous toxins, but that is not all.  Also it is polluted with invisible sound.  Yes, sound is invisible, but also it is inaudible.  Sound below 20Hz is inaudible to the human ear.  If you can't see it, and you can't hear it, it doesn't exist, right?  Ask the Dash 8.  Ask any of the artists from the Grunge Era who complained of so many things.  Take Kurt Cobain for example.  No one expressly ever consented that the Union Pacific railroad may have contributed to his demons.  Musicians are sensitive to sound, but sound you cannot hear?  Come on.  Lobbyists have been using this argument since the inception of infrasonic pollution.  When I become president of the United States, I will sanction Diesel Down Day.  On this day every diesel engine in the country will be powered down.  Every diesel electric locomotive operating in America will stop bleating for one whole day.  They difference will be startling.  Then I will sanction Jet Turbine Spin Down Day.  Every jet engine operating in America will stop.  Then I will sanction a national day of humanity.  All wireless communications will cease for one day.  The earth will cool.  We all will be cool boy.  

Michael Omartian or "The Martian?"

Selling vintage skateboards during summer is not a wise business decision.  Selling vintage skateboards during the dead of winter is.  Chatting up films during the summer didn't seem like a wise business decision, or at least I have not seen much publicity for new films this year, until now.  The Academy Awards are forthcoming on February 28th.  It would have been nice to have seen some promotion for new films of 2015, but television is a dying medium.  I don't watch during prime time.  I watch late night.  That being said I have resumed my movie-watching practices recently after an aberrant wisdom tooth was removed from my jaw. Accompanying it on the way out was a badly decayed molar destroyed by a resorption cavity created by the offending wisdom tooth.  It almost was perpendicular to the molar, and the cavity completely was disguised inside the otherwise apparently healthy molar.  Dentists failed to diagnose this with X-Rays.  (Note to self.  Have full X-Rays taken every year.)  My abdominal issues completely have not subsided, but they are getting better.  I think it may be an ulcer.  A colonoscopy doesn't look into the small intestine, where mine may be hiding.  At least my bowel tells me this from time to time.  I should stop drinking.  Although my music studio is taking shape, diesel trains carrying jet fuel to Fort Bragg disrupt my concentration from time to time.  Last night was such a time, so I opted to see The Martian.  I did not know Ridley Scott was its director, and he is one of my favorites.  The movie artfully was shot, but something was lacking making the movie an Oscar contender at least for best film.  What was it?  As I watched it became clear the dialog was simplistic at best.  There was not much dialog, and when the actors spoke starkly it was colloquial.  These were not theater-trained actors, and any remnants of the theater were absent.  Instead a new crop of seeming millennial actors was employed unfamiliar and bland as your neighbor next door.  Casting Harry Dunne as the head of NASA was a mistake.  From the onset of the movie the tone, like Spectre, was dark, stagnant, vacuous, and bleak.  With all of the beautiful images gracing the big screen, this was disappointing.  It was like real life.  Aren't the movies supposed to provide more?  The movie was neo-epic in scope, and once the tasks became apparent the plot progressed quickly.  I left the theater not understanding how the hexadecimal system helped Matt Damon communicate via a still frame camera from the 90's.  There were bits and pieces of other space movies, but I never felt Ridley Scott.  It was because of the script.  It was not much.  The words spoken were inane, not clever, and boring.  The faces of the actors were forgettable.  The Martian still is sticking in my mind, and that is a good thing.  They had an opportunity, and they seized it.  It will not make history.