Elephants or Donkeys?

This is my question.  With our great intelligence community, the CIA and the FBI along with the NSA, if Russia had such a large influence on the presidential election, whey didn't they catch it?  I would say that is a major failure of intelligence, failing to catch cyber-hacking.  Then again it is happening over and over and over. When a society, lead by irresponsible telecommunications companies, posts their sensitive material on a communal cyber "cloud," then why is anyone surprised that hacking is occurring?  If you as a homeowner choose to control the security in your home wirelessly with a smartphone, and hacking is common, why would you be surprised if you home is broken into?  The parties' screaming about Putin's influence in the election is juvenile and inflammatory.  If you were Russia's president, and you were a war criminal, would you not do everything you could to influence international policy?  Putin has been doing this for a long time.  Only now do the cries go out, and it is sickening.  It is indicative of what is to come in Washington.  I staunchly have ignored all of it and choose rather to laugh at the president-elect's jokes.  With the sheer amount of moxy in congress, surely appropriate checks and balances will be taken with Trump's cabinet.  If there are aberrations then litigation is appropriate.  Governor Roy Cooper is doing it in North Carolina.  In his first few weeks in office his legal team all ready was at work challenging McCrory's preemptive legislation.  This is my question.  With the continual string of hacking and leaks in America, why did not any of the intelligence agencies detect any of this activity?  It is because it is political slander, mud-slinging at the most base level, something that has been occurring for the last eight years.  The entirety of America has been enticed into the cyber domain, and therefore it is appropriate was have been hacked.  We are sitting ducks, and I am positive a network of backdoors are built into all of the online networks propagated by the computer companies.  It only makes sense, and it is sickening.  I see no recovery.  Senile senior senators are not young and savvy enough it seems to even understand the issues.  Maybe they are.  Maybe it is just our corrupt media again inciting violence for the sake of news.  I was asked once to use the program Dropbox to exchange scores of music, and I declined.  There was no way I was going to place my original, copyrighted, unpublished music on a cloud ripe for the picking.  It could be some guy sitting on a bed in New Jersey.  Without good investigative reporting there is no news, and because evidently we have incapable researchers, writers, and journalists, this is what we get.  Mr. Trump's example as a proponent of reality television is not helping.  I am not alarmed at his approach, because it was invented to win a particular vote.  Only now after some time has passed do I feel the escalation of bigotry and racism as a result of is incendiary campaign.  It was not a good example for the country, because we as a populace and our government seem incapable to rise above it and set the example for humanity and effective government.  It is interesting to me that the Republicans are on path to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and yet surely no one has taken the time or effort to pen a new health care law.  This is the single reason why Hillary Clinton could not achieve this goal.  Her call for universal health care was a scribble on a post it note.  To actually enact legislation that will provide effective and affordable health care for America at the expense of our private system supporting wealth is daunting.  The author of Obamacare achieved a milestone.  While slowly after Obama leaves office the legislation with unravel with rising premiums, at least it has existed and covered millions of Americans.  Although Hillary Clinton could not get the vote, she could have commissioned someone to devise the immense and far-reaching law that would achieve her goal.  A look at other countries would have sufficed.  Trump and Republicans say they will replace the Affordable Care Act with something more effective, but my question is, "Who is writing it" and "Where is it."  I beg to differ on this point.  If all Congress can do is squabble over computer hacking, how will they ever muster up enough energy to overhaul the medical and insurance professions?  I don't see it.  Mr. Trump does spew a fair amount of hot air, but I feel he has good intentions.  The appointing of the CEO of Exxon Mobile to the position of Secretary of State is mockery.  I feel like America has regressed to the decade of the l970's when we were stuck in a war in Viet Nam and fighting domestic violence at the same time.  Are we in a state of war giving the President a set of unique and powerful executive privileges?  Never do I remember a President since Jimmy Carter who was engaged as the American President until the very end.  With President Carter unfortunately he was humiliated by Iran.  President Obama conversely is massing artillery and troops at German military bases in an attempt to fortify NATO's presence and intimidate Mr. Putin.  Money is being spent in huge quantities as it was for the last eight years, and still we have no solutions for an ailing economy.  I have not felt this particular emotion in a very long time, and I have no reason to feel it.  I am not being spurned by a spouse or lover.  Although I write sometime incendiary rhetoric, I have no power to effect change in any way in America.  Cable television monitors our home, and often what we do or speak about immediately shows up on television.  While I may sound deluded, what better way is there to monitor American homes than with an Amazon Tap or Echo and Alexa's keen ear tuned in?  I don't care if they do listen, but the feeling I have must be a metaphor for the tension in Washington, DC.  Unresolved adolescent angst.  It has been decades since I have experienced being mistreated on purpose, because someone disagreed with my opinion or something I did.  Acrimony, rancor, enmity, animosity, or malevolence are such negative and useless emotions.  They solve nothing.  Attempting to discipline or achieve one's goals with such behavior is juvenile and immature, but we are that now as a nation. Until adults once again inhabit Congress, we are doomed.  

Zombieland and the iPhone

I shouldn't be drinking vodka, because it makes me feel stupid.  Bourbon, although not as healthy as triple distilled rubbing alcohol, is familiar to me.  I have been drinking bourbon all my life, since I heard Jim Fine order, "Bourbon and ginger" at a party we were playing with the Kyle Whitford Band.  Bourbon used to taste really good, but I think in recent years like everything in America is has become fraudulent.  What's that?  Fraudulent bourbon?  How is that possible?  It is possible just like many herbal supplements on the market are fraudulent.  The vendor tells you they are selling you a specific product, and in actuality it is a placebo or it is chalk.  I have had this experience three times buying Guarana both online in in stores.  It began with eBay auctions.  The bottles began showing up unsealed.  Inside of them was something other than guarana.  Once after reading feedback from a particular seller, I discovered they were substituting melatonin for guarana.  Wow!  Melatonin is a sleep aid.  Guarana is an energy enhancer.  Taking melatonin instead of guarana is dangerous, and I did it for a while until discovering that tablets were making me more sleepy.  Recently I purchased guarana at the local Vitamin Shoppe.  When I opened the bottle in the car after buying it, the "guarana" was fake.  It was the same white stuff the eBay vendor sent.  I ordered  Puritan's Pride version of guarana from another seller, and it also was fake.  He returned my money.  The Vitamin Shoppe gave me a store refund, but for obvious reasons I no longer want to spend my money there. How do you know if you are really getting Ginko Biloba?  The FDA does not regulate herbal supplements.  I am not sure there is much oversight in the alcohol business.  It has become big business, and because our federal government taxes it 50% liquor and tobacco are money-earning commodities.  It's too bad that like everything in America, there is no oversight.  Fraud is everywhere. It is being called "Fake News."  It makes life difficult, when everything you buy is accompanied by a neurosis about its authenticity and value.  I am a good internet shopper.  I have learned how to research products online, find reputable sellers, and most times receive a fair product.  A few times I have been screwed, but it is becoming more of a norm.  I question the quality of today's bourbon in America.  It doesn't taste the same.  I have a friend who thinks that the bourbon industry is using high fructose corn syrup rather than cane sugar.  It doesn't taste the same.  Of all of the things I would like to think about, the validity of my herbal supplements and non-prescription medication are not on the list.  I would rather continue as normal, but America is not the same.  America has changed frighteningly in the last decade.  I feel stupid.  I drive around Fayetteville running errands, and judging from what I see our entire lives have become masquerades.  Capitalism, or the selling of goods and services, must have failed on a massive scale for businesses to behave as they do.  Apple is on my mind, and after receiving an iPod Touch for a Christmas gift, I believe that company, after Steve Job's death, has become the major purveyor of Newspeak.   There were smartphones, and then there were iPhones.  iPhones.  The Macintosh operating system was re-tooled over UNIX, modified for mobile use, and voila.  Apps!  I don't need apps, because I remember when application were just programs you used on a personal computer to get your work done.  It was a bit scholarly.  (Obama is deploying the military his last few weeks in office, and Fayettenam is at war)  The C-130's flying over our house are an ominous presence.  Who knew Vladimir Putin had become America's arch enemy number one?  When did this happen?  When did Congress decide to resurrect the Cold War?  I understand that Putin may be a threatening presence, and fully I don't understand what is happening in Syria and Aleppo.  Putin is responsible for most of it like the annexation of Crimea.  I feel stupid, because what I am seeing and listening to on television and the newspaper each day is juvenile, childish, dogma.  The problems America faces are clear, and senile senior senators playing pinochle on our dime is unacceptable.  Truly and without a shadow of a doubt our Federal government no longer represent the best interests of Americans.  In North Carolina they brag in your face as the screw you up the ass.  It is like professional wrestling.  I shouldn't be surprised, but I have been to nine years of college.  I have sought to educate myself, to grow, and to mature into a thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent artist.  There is little room for that now, because we still are at war.  (The engineer gives a little toot on the horn, because at a grade crossing they are required to warn motorists)  Most of the time they don't.  Most of the time CSX-T breaks the rules.  They run most of their trains at night now.  Just read any online account of engineers on call for a major railroad.  They are overworked and underpaid.  We can't expect ethical behavior from anyone scraping to get by.  Nine years of college to understand a fruitful and fulfilling life, and yet America has become a trench.  Although I voted for Hillary I feel Donald Trump is the only qualified person to see through the B.S.  on capital hill.  That is why they are so afraid of him.  The excesses, masquerades, and fleecings of Americans are so rampant, they are upon what America runs.  Capitalism has failed, and to survive fraud has become the new market.  It was easier before.  It was easier when we had the Mafia.  At least we understood it.  If you can't get by within the constrictions of the law, you went around it or made your own.  That is happening now, just on Wall Street.  I read up on George Soros, and I liked most of what he ways.  What I don't like is that he is a hedge fund manager.  Pooling the populaces debt and selling it like fish is not the right way to become wealthy.  Bernie Madoff is in jail for it.  (Has his movie come out yet?)  I have discovered that there are no networks, cable or otherwise.  Television has become one singular entity, and it is controlled by the same interests.  Is it Fox News, the originator of ridiculous soap box shouting?  Is it Rupert Murdoch?  Is the the Defense industry who desperately need the U.S. to be at war so their companies can become profitable?  I don't know, but we are losing.  I don't think president-elect Trump is the problem.  I think he will be a solution. He doesn't need the taxpayers money.  Back to Apple.  Wireless communications by zombies.  Our youth have been brain-washed.  After trying to play simple MP3 files on this new iPod Touch, only was I bombarded with sales pitches.  Apple Music.  I don't want Apple Music.  I want the music I loaded on this iPod.  I don't want the weather.  I don't need notification.  What a cluster fuck.  When I learned the Macintosh at OSU, it was simple, easy, and fun.  I didn't have masses of millennials trying to screw me through suggestive software, products that melt the human mind, and poisoning our souls with insipid propaganda.  (I didn't get that just right, but you get the picture)  Apple has become despicable, and perhaps their network is responsible for Newspeak.  ATT bought Direct TV.  It all is ONE thing controlled by one interest.  There are no networks, only aliens sitting in offices pushing the buttons.  

Weiner News and the Dewey Decimal System

Now that Roy Cooper officially has become the governor of North Carolina, and Pat McCrory will carry his devious political affiliations to Washington, refuse is beginning to float to the surface of the pond.  A recent study showed that the state of North Carolina ranked last in an international study testing the voting process.  We are the least democratic state in the union, meaning we are ruled like a plantation.  I have known this my whole life, and never was it more evident to me than when I graduated with a BME degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.  Beginning teacher pay was roughly $18,000.00 a year.  I spent four years of my life studying at a prestigious institution so the state of North Carolina could spit in my face.  It hasn't stopped.  In fact it has gotten worse.  I was lucky enough to see fit to move away from the American South, and it was a good idea.  Other places are not like plantation states.  South Carolina was, and that is why I moved from there.  Moving back to North Carolina has been the largest challenge of my life, and it is not over with yet.  Each and every day I ask myself how life became so difficult, and the answer is because we are stuck living in a plantation state.  The political sentiments here are over a century old and they are rife with bigotry, racism, and violence.  I have learned enough in my time spent in other places how to ignore this ignorance.  When life continues to beat on you with the help of your state legislature, it becomes tiring.  Must we be idealists to think out state government is there to help us succeed?  Instead their intent is to control, suffocate, and exploit the general population of North Carolina for their own greed.  Never did I want to believe the stereotypes of the American South, until I have been forced to experience them first hand.  It really is unbelievable.  It is not unlike an Orwellian novel, and I guess that is appropriate.  The great literature of our time along with the rest of our cultural heritage that is being suppressed is exactly as 1984 depicts.  With the media at the helm truth, integrity, and Christianity have waned leaving America a whining bunch of second generation Appalachians.  I never knew devoted ignorance could be the cornerstone of a human existence until now.  I guess God knew what would happen to man.  It is up to us to solve this crisis, and we will fail.  Only those devoted to Christ will survive and be transported to His other planet after watching men destroy our own world.  

A Billionaire Cabinet

Once I asked Wynton Marsalis a question.  He was visiting Ohio State University in an educational endeavor concerning jazz music. Dr. Ted McDaniel was the director of jazz studies.  Subsequently he has retired and handed his baton to Shawn "Thunder" Wallace.  We sat in the Hughes Hall auditorium, and I was enrolled in the D.M.A. program in music composition.  I have played jazz music most of my life but was being steered in the direction of Contemporary Classical Music.  (You don't need jazz musicians to play this music)  Jazz music in general has become obscure for reasons relating to the economic crisis of 2008, poor public education, and the loss of the professional music industry.  If it doesn't work with an iPhone app...   Well you get it.  Jazz historically is called America's one true art form.  Today the populace at large does not recognize art.  Since the inception of Karioke live music performance has been neutered in lieu of the championing of personal egos.  America has embraced the man, masturbates him, and takes his money with a sheepish grin.  When a population becomes so shallow they cannot recognize and appreciate anything other than themselves, society has a problem. It is religion.  Religion has become ignored in America.  It is understandable when you are homeless and hungry why your values would change.  A scrap of food, a sip of wine, or a fag could seem more important than a prayer, generosity, or art.  Americans are scrambling for survival, and it is because after the 2008 economic crisis our currency is being held by a select few who betted against the American economy.  We hear little about these men today.  Corporations are required to disclose more than private citizens, and thus they are scrutinized more.  Slowly we are becoming aware of where our money is.  If it is not flowing through our economy freely to exchange hands, it is sitting laundered in a Grand Cayman, Swiss, or Chinese bank.  While it may be accruing interest it is not invested in America.  Those with this money have spurned the American people.  We have been abandoned, and there is no better metaphor than two mile long munition trains headed to Sunny Point Ocean Terminal to be loaded onto commercial cargo vessels en route to the Middle East.  Why are we supplying Afghanistan and Iraq?  We are we investing in America's military rather than her own people and infrastructure?  Each time I see expensive machinery at the cost of the taxpayer traveling to Muslims in the Middle East I question.  Would not this money be better spent on bringing industry back to America, rebuilding our infrastructures, and repairing cataclysmic weather damage which recurs?  Priorities in America have been skewed since the George W. presidency, and while Barack Obama did execute Osama Bin Laden, our economy problem and national debt are worse.  It is clear why our electoral college chose Donald Trump to be our new president.  Instead of bleeding heart liberalism...  Well we all know.  A cabinet of billionaires, those who have profited in the private sector, should be a good choice for righting the economic ills of our bloated federal government.  Only if they embrace their new government jobs and the American people as their shareholders.  

Li'l Black Sambo and His Friend Uncle Tom

The media has been covering racism in America more, since police shootings of black men have escalated in recent years.  I hesitate to use the term media, because traditional forms of media such as newspapers and periodicals have dwindled since the promulgation of cable television and Internet news.  (or rather "Newspeak")  It is interesting that Internet news not that long ago was reliable and thus reputable.  I used to read the Reuters Hourly News Summary, and it was streamlined and accurate.  Suddenly Reuters replaced it with commercial, tabloid type, advertisement laden reporting, which has become the norm in America.  Media has suffered at the expense of tabloid media.  The line of demarcation between news journalism and tabloid fodder has been blurred and possibly on purpose.  Because Fox News has stumbled (the fall of Roger Ailes), and Donald Trump won the American presidency, media has been forced to take a step back and reflect.  While they are breathing and attempting to gain sure footing again, news in the meantime has become propaganda.  Now it is adolescent driven opinion and mostly an opinion decrying the downfall of the Democratic Party.  They are standing scratching their heads, and continuing through the appropriate steps of bereavement.  (Denial, anger, etc.)  It is obvious which media outlets are privy to which side of partisan politics.  (Not the way it should be.)  American media has become  partisan, since the challenge of the success of Fox News.   Racism has existed in America throughout the Obama presidency.  It inexplicably has escalated.  (And not only in the months since The Donald made is socially fashionable) The election of America's first black president didn't help race relations in America.  It exacerbated them.  It exacerbated them, because Barack Obama in all honesty didn't represent the majority of blacks in America.  (Perhaps Shaft would have been a better choice)  He was an elitist, and it was proven elitism in American politics no longer was to be the flavor of the day.  A majority of Americans felt alienated by the Obama presidency.  In a funny turn of events Democrats became the elite populace, and they stand scratching their heads wondering why the electoral college chose The Donald.  It is clear to me. 

 Change of Subject:  

American jazz music once represented integrity, honestly, God, human love, and values.  No longer is it that.  Perhaps jazz now is the appropriate metaphor for American media.  They all have sold out.  After trying to watch Lincoln Center award Herbie Hancock his prize, I only could stifle retching.  I have seen it before.  I have seen it on the Smooth Jazz cruises.  I watched Wynton's band do it.  Last night I saw two seminal jazz artists become the metaphor for racism in America.  I saw two token darkies dressed in black uniforms Uncle Tomming for the Man.  It was difficult to swallow.  Here were two of the best jazz musicians, two musicians I have respected and enjoyed for decades, kowtowing to the establishment.  Perhaps in their eyes, eyes which have aged and faded, they were happy still to be in the public eye playing jazz -oriented music they enjoy.  When the camera panned to the audience, a predominantly white mass who know nothing about the history of jazz music, it was apparent to me what jazz has become.  Like media it has become pop.  (Or poop.)

Southern Bells and Pop Music

I have been wanting to blog for a week or so, but like other tasks I have been avoiding blogging at times heightens awareness a bit too much.  I will call it an invasion of privacy.  Abstractly refusing one's mind it's need to function, to operate, to think and solve problems, to fight for one's survival is a bit Southern.  The South after all is genteel.  It is a land dotted with plantation front porches, glasses of freshly squeezed lemonade, and bells.  I don't mean the kind that are found in church towers.  I am talking about Southern women or matriarchs as Chef Vivian Howard calls them.  Disparaging Southern Bells is and was not the intent of this blog entry, although I have a few things to say about the subject.  They do enjoy a passive man, a man who smiles, shag dances, and otherwise blows sunshine up their asses.  If you are connected, grew up with money and influence, you may not need the skills about which I am going to write.  The skills I have learned throughout my life with an undergraduate degree from Chapel Hill (in 1985, which means far more than it does today), a graduate degree from the Gamecocks at USC, and all DMA coursework at Ohio State has both taught and inspired me to excel in the field of music.  I would have done it anyway had I not attended any of these places.  My father was an exceptional musician, and somewhere along the line I decided being the best musician I could was the right thing to do.  It has gotten me very little.  In fact nothing.  Unless you are part of the in crowd as Ramsey Lewis would say, finding a job in academia is political.  UNC didn't teach me this.  Politics is taught within the family unit as children observe their affluent and influential parents' wheel and deal through their lives.  Many of the people I went to school with were stupid.  They did not do well in high school, but amazingly they all seemed to have grown up to be their parents.  They have yuppie jobs, children, and still enjoying shagging, pink and green, and the company of other Southern socialites.  If that is what floats your boat, playing dress up, smiling, pretending to be something, because you don't have the gumption to actually do something with this time, okay.  We differ.  Socializing in Fayetteville, North Carolina purely is politics.  It is a small town with very little room for new blood or money.  I overlook this fact, and it continues to cause me grief because I don't like to soak cork. I mean be Southern.  Be passive.  Smile.  Act the fool to blend in and not challenge the set way of thinking.  If you have that good job, then it would be easy to do that.  That is what the South has been doing for over a century.  If you are looking for work, looking to enjoy your on life without the influence of power and money, it is a different story.  The way I became good at music, although I have reaped almost nothing from my exertions, was to be excited about it.  I was a mover and shaker and took no prisoners.  This worked well until I met a girl name Geraldine.  It continued to work well for three years, until she grew up.  I don't know whether she became unattracted to me or the the opposite, but we separated on a sour note.  The three years of musical excellence we experienced together at my behest came to an abrupt end, when she decided to end my life.  I never really knew it at the time, that one person's opinion can destroy another person's life.  That is politics, and I have experienced it a few times in my life.  Once I had words with Cruise Director Sammy Baker, and she picked up the phone and blacklisted me with the Carnival Corporation.  She told their musical hiring professional not to hire me again.  I quit her gig two weeks shy of my contract completion date, because she did not see, understand, or acknowledge how I had contributed to the Regal Princess.  When life becomes a time when you are working far above and beyond what is reasonable, and someone begins to criticize you for it, it is time to go.  I had to end a seven year relationship with my first love for the same reason.  I learned that such behavior is an inability to make a decision that is difficult.  They could not sever the bond that needed to be severed, so they mistreat you enough until you do it for them.  Criticism in the midst of great effort and love.  It is a conundrum.  Geraldine was a prickly pear, and decided in her adolescent glory to take my success for herself.  Until that point I was allowed to be a successful musician. The parties at large around us were summoned by the wives, and their influence was great.  It is one reason why my band Quintessence won the semi-finals of the Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search.  She and John Glancy's girlfriend accompanied us to New Orleans to compete at Storyville.  When we played these two blond beauties whooped up the place like groupies we never had had, and it worked.  Doc Severinson and the judges liked their tight white pants, and the band, and our music.  We would not have won without the Southern Bells at work.  Needless to say I was not given two extra plane tickets to Los Angeles, and no one paid us any mind at the finals even though a young Chris Potter was fronting the band.  It was politics.  Music is politics.  I listen to WCPE pretty often, and there are times when thoroughly I enjoy the music.  The rest of the time they play music from the Classic Period, and if anyone is interested the Classical Period was during a time of court.  Papa Haydn worked for the Esterhazys.  When you hear this music by nature of its emerged definition, it is polite, symmetrical, and a bit stiff and square.  It sounds like court.  Certainly it doesn't sound like individual freedom.  When they play classical symphonies I feel the same way as I do when confronted with the American South.  Someone else is controlling the party, and it is their party.  Music for my is MY party.  It is one of the things I can do that allows me the freedom and expression to be an individual, rejects society's  norms and stereotypes, and tell the story that I am thinking and feeling.  It is not unlike writing a blog entry, yet it is more visceral. Music if given the opportunity can be pure feeling. Schoenberg and other great composers disagree including Mr. Stravinsky.  They say music has no inherent emotion, and Mr. Babbit would agree wholeheartedly.  If it is embraced and appreciated for its ability to do this, music can be pure feeling.  For me it is.  It always has been, and that is why I excelled at it.  If you tap into expression, emotion, and if it means something, then you are making an artistic statement.  I listened to myself playing lead trumpet in my Governor's School wind ensemble in 1980, and it was transcendent.  The entire group new what we were accomplishing, and we have Terry Mizesko, the bass trombonist with the North Carolina Symphony, to thank for this. He didn't look like Leonard Bernstein in his white tennis shorts, but he understood what we were trying to accomplish.  It was an exemplar education experience, as it should have been being The Governor's School of North Carolina.  I am grateful to have been allowed to have participated.  I almost didn't make the cut.  The original GSNC in Winston Salem was an orchestra.  When they expanded to St. Andrew's College there weren't enough string players to go around, so they made a wind ensemble.  Because wind ensembles have no strings, they use trumpets and cornets.  This is a lost art, and I am not sure any traditional musical concepts are being taught today in education.  Our musical educational system has sold out just like Apple.  They teach pop to kids and parents who demand the shag.  One interesting thing is the South helped create great music in America. The "Jazz Highway" is an interesting map that shows the history of jazz just in the Carolinas.  It includes Cheraw, SC, Hamlet, NC, and Rocky Mount.  A diagonal line connects the birthplaces of Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk.  (There is one other person on the journey, but I can't remember them.  Oh, it's me!)  At least my birthplace of Mocksville, NC is in proximity.  I quit aspiring to be a great jazz pianist years ago.  Interestingly when you quit trying to be great at something, it gets easier.  Truly if you have an interest, you will continue to pursue your interest out of desperation.  We must do something.  I am not sure if picking what you love so you will never work a day in your life applies, but music feels a bit like that to me, until now.  I am not liking music at the moment, because of what has happened to music in America.  Surely it is because of Simon Cowell and the Norwegian television producer who came to America and destroyed professional music.  As television continues to do they would rather exploit  the common man, pay them nothing, build them up, and then revel in their subsequent failure.  This is the definition of pop.  Pop does not even seek to find the suitable expression.  If it did, it would require talent, musical knowledge, skill, and technique.  Most of all it would require an intellectual and spiritual understanding for which no one has the time.  Pop in a nutshell took the easiest rhythmic concept, the one that is the most simplistic and requires the least amount of feeling or time, and exploited it.  I used to really dislike Motown.  I disliked them, because Barry Gordy exploited soul music.  Soul music has the feeling and spirituality of which I am talking, and it was embodied at STAX records.  Motown instead used the pop groove as the vehicle for their music, because like shag music seemed to communicate with the masses.  It is simplistic.  It is what we have today, silhouettes of guitar players strumming those infernal machines with no understanding that other rhythms are possible.  That visual representation of pop, that up and down strumming of the guitar, is so limiting.  It is limiting, because by definition it cannot create an emotion.  If you strummed a string of eight notes in perfect time and generated an emotion within your body, it would be possible to convey feeling.  That string of notes, that strum on the guitar that has become the metaphor for pop music, does not possess the ability to move listeners.  It is a beginner's roller skate, which functions at an elementary level and allows aspiring pop musicians to create a facade of greatness.  At least when you listen to classical music, reggae, or jazz in the pure forms they use instrumental music to convey feeling.  It is accomplished with the things you learn in a good music education.  Phrasing, dynamics, taste, rhythm, and the rest.  You cannot substitute desire for the elements that create great music.  Hence we have mediocre pop music, and if it continues surely it will disappear.  Unlike Wynton Marsalis I will not buy a ticket on the pop train.  I will not buy a ticket, because after almost two years of study and exploration of the pop idiom, I have no desire to change my learned piano technique.  I now know how Stevie plays, how Elton plays, and how Leon Russell plays.  Even one musician I admire, David Foster, is exploiting the pop rhythm.  America seems to know nothing else these days.  It was extremely fitting that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  At least he was doing the right thing. 

A Short History of GSE's

The Federal National Mortgage Association or Fannie Mae was a Government Sponsored Enterprise or GSE formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in l938 in response to the Great Depression. It attempted to facilitate liquidity in the market by making mortgages available to lower income families. It bought mortgages from Savings and Loans, which encouraged more lending and insured the value of the mortgages by the United States government. In l968 Fannie Mae was converted into a privately owned corporation with shareholders. A newly formed publicly funded partition institution, The Government National Mortgage Association or Ginnie Mae, took over the role of Fannie Mae. In l970 The Emergency Home Finance Act created a new private corporation GSE to further stimulate the secondary housing market. The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation or Freddie Mac buys mortgages on the secondary market, pools them, and sells them as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market.

Zen and the Art of Midnight Motorcycling

Tonight I tarried on both of my blogposts.  I made valid points, but I didn't get to the heart of the matter intended.  At Christmastime (in Caroline, and in other places) society is in full combat dress, or at least that is what it feels like to me.  This evening consisted of eating pinto beans, raw tomato and onion, and cornbread which browned and set with the help of Alton Brown.  Heating your cast iron skillet in a 425 degree oven ensures your batter will crust on the bottom when cooking for twenty minutes.  A little sugar helped.  I was glad to help my mother, although she was in a rotten mood.  After watching a little tube I did a thing that could be a metaphor for my holidays.  I have experienced these holidays before in Cowtown.  It took a while for it to become apparent to me that I was experiencing a true Paul moment.  It was not my mother.  It was not the neighborhood, although they were involved.  What I did completely and one hundred percent was me, and the response I had also was one hundred percent me.  I was riding a Honda CRF50 minibike in the darkened rain at ten o'clock at night in an upstanding middle-class neighborhood.  I had no helmet.  I had no protective gear.  Only I had a hoodie that won't stay up, because of the force of the driving wind.  It was surreal.  The hum of the CRF motor was a calming force for me, but also I get a visceral jolt from being rebellious in what is not a rebellious place.  For a brief moment three curious vehicles stalked me, and after I stopped and sat on the side of the road quietly recalcitrantly they drove past.  Residents of this neighborhood I am finding have rampant imaginations, and a fifty year old man in a hoody riding a minibike in the rain is like the Ringling Brother Circus.  It is surprising to me that adolescents today must live lives of such doldrums.  Do they really not know how to have fun anymore?  We used to have sex.  Such an action in the old days would qualify as such.  I enjoyed my ride, but what was challenging was the disparity between a rebellious motorcycle ride and expensive homes draped in decorative Christmas lights.  I have not taken the opportunity to tour the neighborhood in the evening, so who knew families were so into decorating their homes for the holiday season?  I do not feel festive in the least, so for me it's business as usual.  I, as a single adult, will have to jump start my holiday gift-buying, or I will be delinquent.  The metaphor which emerged under a crisp, clear, Carolina moon was that the majority of these people were in their warm homes adorned by Christmas lights with their families doing what I assume are festive things.  (or maybe because school is not quite out, preparing for the next day)  I didn't want to think about it for too long, because it was creepy.  To the sensibility in this neighborhood I could have been the Creeper smelling and stalking adolescents for the feeding.  As a matter of consequence I do not take a minibike rides in the darkened rain every seventeen years.  (or is it more or less?  I can't remember)  What I was doing in reality was not recreating, but trying to get an automatic three speed clutch to behave.  Like all motorcycles usage is the best maintenance.  If a vehicle sits it dies, or it ages drastically.  I am not sure about the clutch on this CRF50, but riding it certainly helps.  It is a gift for neighborhood children, and I wanted to help by working on the machine.  I was successful with the motor.  Once it finds a gear it pops along merrily and content the engine humming like a finely lathed top.  I know the secret rules for carburetor jetting for a few bikes anyway.  The motor ran well enough that it gave me the same satisfaction as my CB-250 and my XR-200.  The vibration of a Honda four stroke is a prized well earned and earnestly should be appreciated as the best caviar.  I was disappointed that further clutch repairs would be necessary, but a strong-running motor is a great foundation for many years of future riding pleasure.  I did my job.  

Shackademia

In my previous blog post I wandered.  I wandered like an aberrant shepherd looking for the newly born baby Jesus.  I was hoping to find enlightenment in my rambling, and yet I found only a condemnation of digital piracy.  The millennial culture was built with shortcuts.  Modern films employing millennial directors suffer from lack of camera vision.  They are limited by shortcuts, camera angles that never have been studied or developed into a concept to provide a vehicle for the film.  What?  You mean the camera cannot just aimlessly roam around looking up people's noses?  Not in traditional cinema.  Traditional American cinema has a lineage and a history rich with intelligence, artistry, and expression.  It meant to convey something, not just earn money.  To convey something, an idea say, one needs more that what the pop arts are offering today.  There is a bit of stripping down of technique today, and possibly at one time that may have worked.  The entire discipline of the Avant Garde in essence is a dramatization and simplification of its predecessor.  It worked and still today stands as the most recent chapter of art history.  The Avant Garde is effective.  Ask Jackson Pollack.  Ask Ornette Coleman.  I love the Avant Garde, but I always didn't because I didn't understand it.  I didn't understand that if you, the artist, had the message, the intent, the understanding, and the technique it doesn't take a lot to get your point across.  Mark Rothco and other modern artists did it with Abstract Expressionism.  Composers set the same goals during the 1920's.  I love Modernism.  I wish I had lived during the 1920's in America.  One only has to watch the movie Rhapsody in Blue to feel the visceral energy in the air musically during this decade.  There are such things as concepts.  Concepts are effective, because they ensure you will achieve your goal as an artist.  You must know what you are doing.  Millennial film and television directors have taken the shortcut.  They have not lived long enough to have studied film history.  They feel as if the hand held camera is free to roam whimsically, like an epileptic filming hat could be beautiful moments.  Why must the camera shake?  It makes me feel like I have Parkinson's.  Rather I would like to view the scene from the stability of a sane person with no angst.  Let the camera sit.  I have wandered again, and although I am suggesting that a thorough study of the Humanities is necessary for integrity, my premise of this blog entry was to criticize academia.  (and not with sour grapes)  Premise:  Ash Carter is a noted academic and scholar.  Ash Carter was the most recent Secretary of Defense.  Who is the better choice for America's Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, a noted academic and scholar, or a tough-as-nails military officer?  I say the latter.  After reviewing the Obama years it occurred to me that academic has become a problem in America.  Not only is it now a dinosaur, it has it fingers in the pie, America's pie.  Academia has become so powerful through tenure, and so weak because there are no jobs, it is gobbling up huge amounts of America's pie.  Obama went to some Ivy League schools.  This ensured him enough clout to enter the American political system, like most systems in America, is controlled by influence.  Influence cannot and has not run a country.  That is why Donald Trump is president.  

Clinton Folly and Humanism

It would be nice if the Clinton Camp would take a lengthy vacation.  They could go to Acapulco.  If they traveled incognito maybe even George Soros could not find them.  They could drink Margaritas on the beach.  (not Acapulco Bay like the song says.  It is pretty polluted.)  Are their any white sandy beaches left on the Pacific?  If the Clintons took a nice long vacation, then maybe the remains of the Democratic Party could concede defeat in the presidential election.  As it is now we must listen to them whine nightly.  This is what politics has become in America.  Mudslinging.  It was inevitable I guess.  Jerry Springer, a former mayor, sets the example each day on network television.  How can American ideals remain pure, as the country changes so much?  This is the fundamental question that has been posed.  What has changed?  The answer is simple.  Them Internets.  When personal computers existed in labs at universities, they were regarded as a tool of academia.  Them Internets began as a connecting of data bases facilitating the development of the nuclear bomb.  It was academic.  Connecting scholarly data bases is a good idea for research.  Connecting personal home computers for the pirating of music is not.  Napster did it anyway, and shortly thereafter a thriving music industry in America died.  It was not a lengthy death.  As soon as adolescents realized you could pirate MP3's for free, it was over.  When an audio track, now an audio computer file, became available for download for free, America decided buying CD's no longer was a reasonable idea.  Paying a premium price for a studio recorded musical project became the butt of the joke.  Juggling digital music became a jubilant and rebellious practice for the youth of America. I was included to a degree.  I purchased a few recordings from iTunes, but after I realized the price was the same as buying a higher audio quality CD, I stopped.  If you buy the CD, not only do you have the CD to which to listen, you can import it onto your personal computer and then upload it to your iPod.  The consumer wins with multiple copies of his purchased music.  I don't know what the rules are today.  Apple at one point securitized their offerings, so you could not share them.  As a consumer and as an American the idea of owning my purchase seems reasonable.  We are a Capitalist community.  If I buy your album, it is mine.  The music is of course by the band, from the songwriters, and produced by the record company.  They all should get their cut from my purchase.  These terms have been thought out and well implemented for decades when the American music scene flourished.  Radio, both AM and FM, was a part of it.  Many people benefited from this system.  The system we have today only a few people benefit.  The system in America today benefits only a few, and these few are the influential cyber captains who have forged Internet commerce.  Them Internets.  This is what has changed in America, and while buying gifts from Amazon and eBay is enjoyable, undercutting large portions of the business community with piracy is criminal.  ASCAP is at war with Congress over digital copyrights.  Our federal government, incumbent, senile, narcissistic walking anachronisms continue to castrate American culture.  Pulling the strings of course are puppet masters which continue to escape public scrutiny, Rupert Murdoch being one.  Our media has become one large spin machine, literally a Big Brother, and these beings laugh and take our money.  If society as a whole decides to exploit our youth rather than educate it, there will come a time (now) when the mieda hits the fan.  Every major television network exploits the new arena of social media.  Should television news journalism have demeaned their craft for popularity?  Here is another fundamental question in America.  If talent and integrity openly and knowingly are sacrificed for popularity and this money, what remains?  With no one to monitor society, without religion or honest government, who will assure that American Capitalism will not destroy itself or be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah?  God is not happy.  American popular culture, mainly Facebook and iTunes, by sheer force have thrust their eager penises into our lives.  Their presence has unseated traditional norms like broadcast news journalism and the music industry.  Youtube, Google, and Amazon have thrust their eager penises into the art world disguised.  No matter how shiny, no matter how sparkly, and no matter how appealing immediate gratification is created by online media, it cannot replace the traditional arts.  The shortcuts that iMovie, Garage Band, and Photoshop offer us cannot and will not substitute for a thorough study of any discipline including broadcast news journalism.  The Voice, America's Got Talent, and Dancing with the Stars are entertainments.  They are entertainment offerings in the reality TV arena.  They exploit, embrace, and champion amateurism.  Tabloid news then capitalizes on their failures in the public eye.  It is very Greek, and yet the Greeks invented the humanities.  The Greek culture created and recognized areas of study which would ensure the human race an existence of integrity. No matter how hard they try, Internet commerce never will replace the traditional humanities.  Only unless we as a race decide we no longer want to be human.  

Fake News

It is interesting that "fake" news has been in the news.  After America's presidential election all I seem to see is fake news.  Rather it is not fake.  It severely is politically biased.  Sometimes it is erroneous stemming from the partisan desire to slander the political enemy.  While national news coverage of the Trump transition has been unbiased, Internet news and social media have shown their true colors.  I do not take the newly elected president too seriously.  If one did, it could be a descent into severe depression.  Today society, with its state-level legislative shenanigans, makes it difficult enough to find hope in America.  Instead I choose to see Donald Trump as a catalyst for real change in American government.  His triumph over the Democratic party has pointed out to me that the democrats and what they now represent are a large part of the problem.  I find his associations through the Trump businesses and brand to be refreshing.  I know that Vladimir Putin highly is not popular with the outgoing Obama Administration.  Clearly I remember Ronald Reagan's success at ending the Cold War and bringing down the Berlin Wall.  These were major achievements in civility, and having Russia as an ally, not an enemy, allowed the decade of the l980's to flourish with creativity, artistry, and peace.  I prefer to remember this relationship with Russia with Mikhail Gorvachev at the helm.  Although Vladimir Putin was the head of the KGB, I will not incriminate him without evidence more than hearsay spread by malcontent and petulant Internet news agencies.  I do not see the preexisting relationships an oil tycoon has with Russia as counterproductive to State Department policy.  It points out to me that government in the last eight years has failed to function even with Barack Obama at the helm.  While I do believe the execution of Osama Bin Laden and the passing of the Affordable Care Act were notable accomplishments, our federal government did very little to help Americans during his tenure as president.  This is one reason why Donald Trump was elected.  Frankly I find his views to be refreshingly anti-establishment, and our American federal government replete with narcissism, senility, and dysfunction needs to be shaken up.  It is happening, and it is good.  When I hear incumbent lawmakers complain that Donald Trump brings a savvy business perspective to Washington, what is wrong with that?  What is wrong is that Washington has been fleecing the America people for way too long.  It is brilliant that Trump thumbed his nose as Boeing and their padded federal contract.  It is brilliant that Trump thumbed his nose at Lockheed Martin with their inflated prices for the F-15 fighter.  Could five hundred billion dollars even be possible?  The best metaphor for Washington's ability to govern effectively is suggesting we spend tax payer's dollars investigating Russia's influence in the election.  The best metaphor for local government is spending seventy-five thousand dollars to pay for a study to see if an arts center is a good idea.  Government has been operating this way squandering real money for too long.  If a small percentage of tax payer dollars actually were spent for the appropriate things, America could be positive again.  Instead we must rise each day and observe our crumbling infrastructure, incapable Congress, and mongering corporations take money from those less fortunate.  Truly America has become a Third World Country. 

The America America has Become. Entertain Mindlessly. Do Not Educate.

When music no longer communicates an opinion, a feeling, or an idea and resolves itself only to entertain for money, then we have failed our children.  

The Orchestra That No Longer are There

Yesterday I ventured into the woods for the first time in many weeks.  (I don't like being heckled by the neighborhood children.)  There only is one really, but the experience was enough to cut short their enjoyment.  If a child is stupid enough to yell taunts at a stranger in the woods carrying a chainsaw.  Well you get the picture.  That is not a very smart drink of water.  I realized this later, but then working in the woods is my therapy.  I used to enjoy working in the woods, cutting trees, pulling vines, and trimming brush.  It was more visceral than working in your yard.  It is a bit Boy Scout.  It is a bit military.  It is a bit "man."  Working in the woods many men do in the American South.  I'll bet they do it everywhere in America.  I'll also bet many men who do this may be considered "Radical Militants" by their communities.  They are not, and neither am I.  I just am not a pussy.  I like wielding an ax.  I also like swinging it into an aberrant rotten tree blocking my trails. An ax is and always has been a useful tool, but useful tools today in America are smart phones, Bluetooth speakers, and ?  An ax is "Old School."  Geez, we are getting so ignorant, naive, and pubescent in America it will not be long until our entire historical culture may be lost.  I'll call it Generation Pussy.  Kids todays are pussies.  It seems the people in my neighborhood are afraid of "the guy in the woods with the chainsaw."  Is it that uncommon to see a man cutting fallen trees in a patch of woods in a neighborhood?  These kids have overactive imaginations, because they life they live is pathetic.  It is pathetic, because systematically we as a nation have purposely neglected the upbringing of our youth.  Instead we have capitalized upon them.  We have exploited them.  We have indoctrinated them with wuss.  It is the America America has become, and it sucks.  Each day I read the news in the Fayetteville Observer or online the same unconscionable theme appears.  How is the state government in North Carolina taking advantage of her citizens?  First what must be jar-headed Republican politicians re-draw the boundaries of voting districts to favor themselves thinking no one will notice.  A federal court noticed and not only demanded a fair and unbiased redrawing of the boundaries again, but rescheduled the election for this November.  All politicians elected with the new boundaries must be voted for again.  I could go on.  Those property owners whose real estate was taken with imminent domain for the building of I-295 have not been paid.  The DOT under McCrory's watch built an impressive entrance to Fort Bragg, the home of Ground Forces Command, and took the property of incumbent residents without paying them!  It took Yarborough a class action lawsuit to make the state fess up their money.  Meanwhile if you see fit to carry your refuse to the city dump, you will pay $20.00 for the privilege of dropping it off there.  You are not rewarded for cleaning your property.  You are penalized with a fee, while you drive your vehicle up a dirt mound and unload your garbage yourself.  I would say the state of North Carolina is in dire financial straights.  What's new?  These practices have crept into government and corporate government since George W.  We are a scourge of a nation.  While I can laugh off these scenarios like I laugh off the condemnations of our newly-elected Commander and Chief, I can't laugh off the recent performance in Chapel Hill of Wynton's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.  How can I say what I am going to say without getting sued for defamation?  Tell the truth, brother, and only two percent of the American population even know what jazz is.  Swing Wynton called it at their Saturday evening performance at Memorial Hall.  I first heard the band Spyro Gyra at Memorial Hall in l981.  It was the most enjoyable concert I have ever seen next to the Turtle Island String Quartet.  I had an instinct, that I would not enjoy this ensemble, because anything that has risen to the ranks of "Lincoln Center" must be contemptuous.  How could jazz, a music that rose from the brothels of New Orleans, be heralded by Lincoln Center?  There is a chasm between orchestral music and jazz, while there should not be.  It is an accurate metaphor for the chasm between the Left and Right in America today.   I will elaborate.  Jazz never has been mainstream music in America.  It is considered to have been popular during World War ll.  With the doldrums of war upon us, regular American folk liked to escape reality by dancing to the Glenn Miller orchestra.  The Jitterbug and the Lindy Hop were appropriate vehicles for adolescent sexual tension.  Them internets are fucking up.  While teeny-boppers did dance to swing music back in the day, Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor always have prevailed as chosen artists for lackluster conformist Americans.  Jazz after all was considered "devil music" by the Nazi's.  Anything that represented freedom of expression and individualism during the Nazi occupation of Germany was outlawed.  It is called Communism.  Unbelievable we are experiencing a similar oppression in what now has become America.  I bristle at the notion of calling America American anymore, because we are not the same country we have been.  We are not the same country we have been, because how can the eldest statesman of jazz champion an ensemble that consciously does not at least try to swing?   Wynton Marsalis, the most known and respected jazz artist of our century sat at the helm of an orchestra that knowingly played the "pop" rhythmic style rather than traditional swing.  (and he called it swing)  This is a prickly pear, and one about which I have blogged for years.  Ninety-nine percent of American won't be able to tell the different.  To boot those ninety-nine percent are to whom the Marsalis band is kowtowing.  Jazz is dead in America, and Wynton voiced that publicly.  He said if you wanted to continue to work in the field of jazz, you better do what the people want.  Hence "Pop."  What's the difference?  How actually can you play swing in pop style?  It is not that easy by the looks of the players in the Lincoln Center Ensemble.  None of them moved.  None of them grooved.  None of them show an ounce of rhythm in their bodies as they played this so-called jazz music.  I never have seen anything like it.  It felt like I was sitting at the most square, white boy, classical recital in history.  They were afraid, uptight, and not having fun.  In addition when it became apparent that it was obvious the band was not swinging, they attempted to Uncle Tom an impression that they were.  Can anyone believe I am saying the name Wynton Marsalis and Uncle Tom in the same sentence?  Miles wouldn't have it.  He refused to "Uncle Tom."  His turning his back to the audience when leading the band lead to heartfelt outcries that he was insensitive the needs and desires of the audience.  This band abandoned the key concept of swing music, and watered down their music for the ignorant populace that has become America.  I won't explain it again.  Pop is not swing, although cruise ship and Broadway bands including the SNL band continue to mock the religion of music with a practice that is sacrilege.  I may be no Adjunct Faculty at North Carolina Central University, but I can look at a rhythm section and tell how they are playing.  They are not playing.  

Obama or O Bomb-a?

Largely I have been supportive of our current president.  He inherited a mess.  His biggest achievements have been the execution of Osama Bin Laden and the passing of the Affordable Care Act.  When President Obama leaves office in January the shit will hit the fan.  Perhaps that is a good thing.  I didn't vote for Gump, but I am enjoying the highbrow news coverage of our new ruling dynasty.  Dynasty.  I respect Barack Obama, but I am glad his tenure as the American president is over.  When I reflect upon the last eight years, several things have become known to me.  One is the state of the arts and public education have deteriorated more.  Popular music in American never has been at such a low point.  A small-statured Muslim black man is a departure from traditional presidential figures.  The country chose him, and we have what we have.  We have an escalating national debt, we have crumbling infrastructure, we have neglected public education, and the arts all but have vanished from American consciousness.  Hitler didn't like jazz.  Stalin spawned the Russian Five.  Indeed President Obama has spurned a newly surfacing type of American nationalism.  Is this a bad thing?  Is it bad that some type of common sentiment in Americans is being expressed publicly?  Militia groups never have been out of the picture.  They went underground.  I am not being lucid in my opinion.  Perhaps it is because I do not have one yet.  Perhaps a small-statured Muslim black man increased racism in America.  I think, judging from what I have observed since Gump's election, that a lot of Americans didn't really like Obama.  Certainly he was a stretch for the black community.  Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle said it on SNL.  President Obama was not really a down-to-earth brother.  We don't know his tastes in art, if he has them.  The arts were not championed during his tenure as president, but there were other fish to fry.  While our military is out fighting the Bush family's war, America has crumbled into a state of bleeding heart liberalism.  No longer is achievement heralded.  No longer is invention merited.  Instead hyperbole has been embraced by the media for notoriety leaving us with a neutered cast of Greek gods and goddesses flailing in their own discontentment.  This has become America, the entitlement of the mediocre.  We have mediocre actors, mediocre celebrities, mediocre news anchors, and mediocre musicians.  Like how Gump won the presidency, hyperbole has become reality leaving America a desperate and weak nation.  Putin sees it as does Iran.  Maybe it is a great thing that Donald will be wielding America's gavel. 

Lockheed Martin's Q-53 Acoustical Cannon.

Our cleaning lady comes tomorrow.  Consequently I have to stomach a required amount of anxiety the evening before.  We have to clean up for the cleaning lady.  It is ludicrous really.  I appreciate her bi-weekly presence.  My toilet and sink get cleaned.  The tub is passable.  Mildew lurks continuously on the shower curtain and on the base of the pot.  It doesn't bother me, until I begin to think about how bacteria could be lurking and make its way into an open sore, between my toes, or on my genitalia.  Working on a cruise ship is far easier than life in America.  Cleanliness is a matter of survival in the industry.  Bone numbing blows to hour shins, elbows, and fingers are minimal.  Fayetteville is like a reincarnation of Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  In my home things fly around by themselves remarkably possessed by some other world force.  It is the only deterrent I have.  Because I have a brain and a certain amount of learned dexterity, cooking, cleaning, gardening, and repairs are simple.  Inside the house it is a different thing all together.  Simple tasks often seem insurmountable.  Fully well I understand any screw, nail, or nut I drop on the floor standing at a dresser inevitably will hit the floor and bounce directly underneath whatever piece of furniture in front of which I am standing.  I have learned this, and I have begun to watch.  Straight down it goes until it hits the floor, and then an accurate ninety degree angle it makes directly away from how I am facing.  Like magic the nut will cavort forward into this little two inch orifice like a fly going into a frogs mouth.  It is destiny at least in Amityville.  I have learned the drill.  If en electrical cord can wrap itself around something it will.  It will find the only protruding object and generate towards it like a snake.  Truly it is like evil searching for Eve.  When I garden the hose will find exactly the same protuberances.  If there is only one root in the entire yard, the hose will find it and become attached rendering it immovable to me.  Other than constantly stubbing my toe or banging my now fragile bones, I have learned to navigate this labyrinth.  I expect it.  I have not worked in the yard much lately, because it too is possessed.  It is not pleasurable to be outside.  Certainly manual labor other than the sheer physical exercise is not pleasant.  Once it was.  Once I could feel the soft breeze, smell the sweet aroma of herbs, and enjoy God's natural gravity.  Then I read an article in the Fayetteville Observer by Amanda Dolasinki.  Quote:  "The radar system, built by Lockheed Martin, is mounted on a five-ton truck.  It can be automatically leveled and remotely operated with a laptop computer or from a command vehicle.  It has an upgraded software that fine tunes tracking enemy fire.  The antenna array can be moved 360-degrees to give soldiers a full view of the battlefield as it searches for enemy fire.  Once an enemy fires, the system sends out sound waves to bounce off the munition.  The data is returned to the truck where soldiers can calculate the precise impact location and origin of enemy fire.  Whew!  The title of the article is, "Bragg soldiers first to use advanced radar system."  RADAR?  Since I have been living back in Fayetteville, I have experienced this firsthand.  When I perform necessary maintenance on my motorcycle trails in the woods behind our home I used to use an axe.  I have been doing this for years, and I enjoy swinging that heavy club into hampering saplings.  I am conservative in my approach, and never do I cut a tree that is not in the way.  At one point I had these trails looking like a local park.  I have removed vines, brush, poison, and fallen trees to make this an amicable green space for the neighborhood.  The time I spend riding in these woods has decreased, not only from my lack of interest but because new local neighborhood children seem to have a problem with a dirt bike riding in these particular woods.  Whatever.  Pretentious often racist sheltered elementary students yelling at me from the playground.  "Hobo!"  That is a common one when I am working in my own yard.  Oddly in the last few years when I would swing the axe and create that mightly thwack, almost instantaneously a small aircraft would appear.  Silence, no aircraft. Thwack!  Aircraft.  It was odd, but because I am not stupid I discerned that these surveillance aircraft were monitoring sound.  Later when sound waves began to show up in our home, I linked them to the howitzers at Fort Bragg.  When I would feel these infrasound waves guns would be booming.  Again I discerned that the military was using low frequency sound to guide their cannon fire.  It made sense, although I didn't like it.  French scientist Vladimir Gavreau has a treatise on the effects of non-lethal weapons based largely upon infrasound.  It is not pretty.  The effects of low frequency sound on the human body and psyche are well documented, although in America not well known.  It would be a miracle if our ignorant populace knew much of anything today, much less whether or not they were being monitored by sound waves.  There is a discrepancy in Ms. Dolasinki's article.  The title and description of the device say it is radar.  Radar uses radio waves to track objects.  She states that the Q-53 uses sound to bounce off enemy-fired munitions.  Which is it?  

Trump, Gump, or Chump?

 

I write better right out of bed.  I don’t sleep well, because all night long there are trains in my bed.  I have come to realize after this presidential election, there are many things of which our federal government is not aware.  It has been business as usual until now.  Trump.  I can’t help but laugh, and unlike those unhappy with the election results, I have begun to see the electing of Donald Trump as the 45th (?) president of the United States as progressive.  It is progressive, because business as usual seems to be in jeopardy.  Those with influence and its resulting income are nervous.  Will he see?  Will Mr. Trump begin to see through the mockery our federal government has become, since the disappearance of the anti-Christ.  Undeniably the most harmful president in American history miraculously transformed our democracy into oligarchy.  It was inevitable, and it was inevitable consequently America herself has become a third world country.  There have become the rich and the poor, and most means for achieving middle class were moved to India and China via outsourcing.  Can you blame corporate America was wanting to pay a fraction of wages to those who know no better?  Exploitation it has been, but also it has been the unraveling of America as we have known it.  While Barack Obama has been a solid president, the electing of Donald Trump has clarified issues in my mind.  One is that Obama did support socialist ideals.  Ironically I favor socialism over Capitalism, but fully I understand any form of government ultimately will fail to corruption if not policed actively by an active contingency sanctioned to monitor good.  Good must come from religion, and it has become well known that the anti-Christ has made its appearance on earth and effectively has championed evil masquerading as good.  These things have proven to be the demise of American democracy.  Instead now we have fascism.  I have supported President Obama, but now I am glad he will fade from federal leadership.  With him will go bleeding heart liberal sentiments, which have permeated American consciousness for the last eight years.  Never have I been more happy that business-as-usual may not continue.  While the weakening of the EPA is not high on my list of exemplary ideals, having a new Camelot in the White House is refreshing.  With Hillary we would have had an ugly replay of Monica Lewinsky.  A young, viable, and picturesque family could be invigorating.  If not certainly it will be better eye candy than Chelsea.  The American people agreed.  Of course Trump’s three wives and their consequent children were not the reason why Americans elected Donald Trump.  It could be representative of a hierarchy more American and thus more democratic.  I for one am tired of business-as-usual, and those with money wielding the power in America.  There is no guarantee this will change, but what sure is to happen is the scrutiny of gargantuan wastes of  tax payers dollars.  I can’t say for sure if Trump has any money, but you can’t build billion dollar buildings without some economic savvy.  In a negative perspective Trump’s achievements could be similar to the workings of our broken federal government.  He shoots high, gets his way, and then bails out.  This is not dissimilar to Obamacare.  When Mr. Obama leaves office reality will burst to the surface of that pool of eternal medicine.  Premiums will escalate, and insurance providers will do as they please without their dictator prescribing protocol.  The author of the Affordable Care Act himself knew this would happen.  There was no way to pay for the subsidies without deferring their debt until Obama left office.  That is soon, and it perfectly is reasonable for Americans to be afraid of what will happen to their premiums.  Luckily President elect Trump has stepped off of his soap box and conceded to some rational thought.  In doing so it became clear to me that unbeknownst to most of us, he was a savvy politician playing the American people to the fullest to get elected.  He picked his groups and told them what they wanted to hear.  Luckily for him and to the surprise of left wing America they were the majority.  Ironically contrary to what most people are feeling today, democracy actually was restored in America.  It has been cloaked for the last sixteen years.  This clarity of opinion for the majority of Americans is refreshing.  Yes, Trump has undesirable characteristics, but I discovered with his surprise win many of them were devised for his win.  He used our tainted, self-serving, and politically biased media against themselves.  His win was a slashing blow to the credibility of American media.  He manipulated a corrupt corporately controlled entity for his own advancement.  I guess Trump really did learn something from his brief tenure on television. 

Exiting the Middle East

When society speaks of civil rights we are speaking of a range of values inevitably instilled by religion.  There has been a campaign in America over the last decade which has attempted to plant the seeds of doubt concerning the authenticity of spirituality, and its value to the human race.  Consequently America has been living in the throes of debauchery fueled by a disingenuous leadership.  We have become an increasingly two-faced nation.  A simple metaphor exists for this malfeasance.  When I step outside  to work in my yard, when did it become acceptable to have Big Brother monitoring my activity?  This is not freedom.  Freedom in America has been challenged and manipulated, and no better example can exist than the badgering of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.  A perfect example for the true nature of America, a rock star who acquires power and wealth through entertainment become enemy number one for the Nixon administration.  Through the FBI Lennon was harassed into governmental submission and then ultimately murdered.  A mentally unstable patient in the eyes of the ignorant may satisfy the requirements for a perpetrator, but it is clear in my mind that Mark David Chapman was coached by Nixon's cronies.  While Richard Nixon because of Watergate was underestimated as an American president, this covert campaign to nurture one's ego is particularly egregious.  The American federal government murdered a rock star.  I have lived in a bubble most of my life making my existence as pleasant as possible.  It has been a full time job.  When one passes the half-a-century mark in age it no longer seems logical to serve one's self, but one must.  The world has not changed.  America is as brutal and corrupt as always, and only a proper public education as shielded us from this reality.  Because public education decidedly has been disassembled by the elite wealthy, the populace has regressed into an ignorant, racially biased, and violent entity that seems unprecedented.  Of course through America's violent history always has this been evident.  It is left up to the artists to improve the quality of life in a nation.  This is what I have done with my life, and consequently when I put down my pen this reality rears its ugly head like a demonic spirit deserving of no other title than satan.  Satan is all around us, and for me his tangible metaphor is infrasonic pollution.  When I step out into my yard to cut the hedge or rake the leaves, I am enveloped by a low frequency sound wave that surrounds me like water.  Each and every task I attempt is met with resistance, more resistance than God intended.  Formerly when I worked in the yard, the reciprocation of nature's tasks created a cathartic ballet that soothed my weary soul.  Now my gestures, my movements, and my simple tasks are surrounded by fascism.  An angry, malevolent, mob invisibly goads me into submission, until no longer do I want to work in my yard.  It is satan.  Once I balanced high on a ladder wielding electric hedge trimmers utilizing balance I learned in the sport of skateboarding.  Now it has become impossible to surf, because God's natural and beautiful rhythm is rife with violent military exercises.  If ISIS simply has asked us to get out of their land and leave them in peace, why do we not do it?  Maybe they would leave us alone.  

Millennial Entitlement

This is a new thing, and it started with the onset of the public school year.  Somehow children being contained in public buildings being managed by slave-like labor signaled it was okay to start them machines a rolling again.  Helicopters it seems rotates at a frequency causing a low frequency sound wave in the range of what is enveloping me right now.  I am not or never have been a terrorist.  I, like many civil rights leaders, champion honesty, integrity, and most of all opportunity.  I don't like feeling like a slave.  I don't think it is fair that a low frequency sound wave deserves to inhabit my home.  Fully I am aware of the plethora of new toys at Fort Bragg, including my own personal Learjet that picks me up and drops me off on a daily basis in Vanstory.  What other reason could there be that my T-tailed, American-flagged, cab appears magically a few moments after I go out in the yard?  It is very attentive.  I am not a terrorist and never have been.  While I do not view America as what Charlie Rose continually calls, "The Superpower of the World," I would see no reason to write manifestos about a coup de tat, unless it became overwhelmingly necessary.  We are reaching that point in America.  Never would I have surmised that the decade of my fifties would prove to be the most challenging of my life.  I thought life began at fifty.  I will be lucky to make it.  My health is in such dire challenge, often I do not see a resolution.  Not always is it physical health.  When a community revolves around an entity that trains men and women for war, what are the consequences?  Isn't it probable that the idea of peace may become lost?  Lost in the refuse of war.  Ho hum.  We in Fayetteville live in the refuse of war and see very little positive effects.  There are the flag wavers.  There are those who do not know why they are fighting for America, what our cause is, who the enemy is, or what our government is trying to accomplish.  Simply they choose to fight for the pride of fighting.  I acknowledge that, although I do not agree with it.  I do not agree that rapidly I see the United States Military being positioned as an entity that no longer will support the domestic national defense of America.  I know we don't want that, a ground war on our soil.  It will come to that, and I can't see the U.S. military performing that task.  It is the way it is right now.  There is no force available and ready to serve Americans at home.  We use the National Guard, and they kill college protestors.  Our police force has become racially biased.  There are few jobs.  On top of all of this Americans no longer feel good.  What few industries remain have gobbled up our environment with nary a blink.  "The Rise of the Machines."  It is real, and it is alarming.  I am not a terrorist, but if I chose to engage myself in IRA-like activity the easiest possible targets are spread like mindless chickens across our land.  It would not take much of a plan to bring America to her knees in a few days.  I just wonder who is thinking about it?  It won't be from jarheaded, towel-headed, sandniggers.  (of course I am taking artistic license using the word "sandnigger.")  It is not a part of my vocabulary.  After being verbally harassed this afternoon by a school boy at VanStory Elementary School, it made me think.  As I walked peacefully through the woods with my chainsaw to cut fallen trees from Hurricane Matthew, to ensure the safety of local neighborhood children, a playing boy saw fit verbally to shout taunts at me from the edge of the woods.  "Hey boy! Hey chainsaw boy with the white shirt.  Come here!"  This continued, and while I tried to study this dangerous mass of fallen trees blocking our tail, I began to feel uncomfortable.  I was being goaded, because I looked like an Appalachian hillbilly doing the only thing my meager mind could muster, run a chainsaw.  Several things went through my mind all of them almost impossible to fathom.  First there was a middle-classed school child shouting taunts at an chainsaw wielding stranger.  If he was suffering from a little too much TV, then wouldn't tomorrow being Halloween suggest that taunting a chainsaw wielding stranger be a bit of a risk?  There was Texas.  then I realized he had no clue what was happening.  Like others in American history to bring attention to himself he decided to bully someone.  Finally I shouted back, "I'm fifty-four years old and old enough to be your father.  You can stop shouting at me anytime."  Then I realized it must be common that in today's world respect and manners are a thing of the past.  I realized that in the scope of AMerican culture, it was my bounden duty to discipline this child.  A father would not allow such behavior, and only because these children were unsupervised was he enticed to show his ass.  When I work in these woods it is a kind of therapy.  The vines and the trees and the thorns do not taunt me.  They challenge me, but I do not feel goaded like a black slave child.  He called me, "Boy!"  I am fifty-four years old, and because I was wearing cut off sweat pants, and tank top, and bandana around my forehead his image of me was something from Deliverance.  I get it.  I remembered that often before I have been verbally harassed by children attending this school.  Each time it is as unfathomable as the previous.  Because I wear a bandana and wield an axe, a useful tool of the forest, against I am discriminated.  So much for living in a middle-class neighborhood.  There is a reason why I miss my childhood home and its surroundings.  The pretense and fabricated entitlement that has become our current generation only will fail, and America will follow if we all ready have not.  

The Sacrifical Lambs of National Defense

Necessarily I am roused from bed and driven to the computer to escape the ill effects of yet another diesel-electric locomotive.  I am guessing it is singing the GEVO DEVO song, an asynchronous, cacophonous assemblage of disturbing electricity and sounds that emanate from an ES44ACH.  ES44ACH is a new acronym for me.  Certainly I have shouted, "Dash 9" loudly enough for the last few years.  I am not a fan of the Dash 9, mainly because it had a propensity to sit idly in the Milan Yard in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Dash 9 is a pseudonym for C40-9W.  Seeing as we ignorant heathen Americans no longer can pronounce complete words or complete a variety of other tasks of which Gen. X was capable, we must find a pleasing nickname for otherwise deadly paraphenalia.  Tom Schuman, the keyboardist for Spyro Gyra, could write and perform an effective blues, but for it to be accepted by the crowd of belligerant drunkards attending a concert, it must be renamed "Shoe's Bloes."  (or would it be "Shue's Blues?")  I am not keen on nicknames, because nicknames sidestep reality.  A Dash 9 diesel-electric locomotive, while the most powerful freight locomotive ever designed and built, is a menacing and harmful machine to those in its ambient environment.  When I lived in Cowtown, there were homeowner associations which demanded meetings with local railroad executives, because their irresponsible actions harmed neighborhoods.  These same diesel-electric locomotives would side idling on their tracks for hours at a time spewing diesel microdust, heat, and vibration into what formerly were upstanding and equitable properties.  How is it that an upstanding and equitable property say such as VanStory Hills in Fayetteville, North Carolina becomes a graveyard?  It's the same reason that when I attended the Cumberland Country Oratorio concert last night in Holy Trinity Church a loud, disruptive, and undulating hum sound was ensconced in their sanctuary.  I knew what it was, because I have been dealing with this demon since I left Cowtown.  (Cowtown is Columbus, Ohio, and because I am not keen on nicknames I should not use this term.)  Nicknames are an effective license in expository writing, so I am taking this small liberty.  I do not disparage Columbus.  Conversely I have come to believe that this controversial urban mecca is a paradise compared to Fayetteville.  It is where I discovered the source of this demon "hum" sound.  I have a large cardboard box of 35mm photographs of the train activities in Cowtown.  I figured if I could not beat this hum (and I mean tune it out of my ears and body and compose worthy artistic music)  I should study it and further receive some enjoyment.  I did have fun trainspotting all around Columbus.  I found the Norfolk Southern Yard, the CSX-T Yard, and the former ConRail Yard all tucked neatly in between Columbus's interstate highways.  (There are many, and this is why there is slate of suspect drug crimes.)  The intersection of major interstates traveling both north and south and east and west draw such drug traffickers.  After discovering the hum, its source, and then moving away I was disillusioned to find it was everywhere.  In fact as I traveled back to Fayetteville from Columbus, it got stronger.  I pulled up into our driveway in VanStory Hills, stepped out of my Toyota Tercel wagon, and into a standing wave.  It is here most of the time, and it could come from a variety of sources.  To this day I am not sure which, other than to suggest the underground corridors at Fort Bragg house its effects.  General Electric saw privy to construct possibly the first underground hum machine.  Would genius-level engineers know that low frequency alternating current, low frequency drives, and an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor could cause such a stir?  The folks of Taos, New Mexico thought so, and over the course of a decade complained about this undulating hum sound until it merited its own website and a governmental inquiry.  They correctly did attribute the source of the sound to an underground conveyor belt at a Moly mine nearby.  (Moly isn't a nickname for Molybdenum, is is a shortened version of the word)  As a writing license I am using it to bring attention to this precious mineral most people don't know about.  Certainly millennials won't know about moly, because they have their heads up their iPhones.  (and other places that don't matter in the scope of American life) The internet has spawned a generation of socially maladmusted, precocious, entitled assholes.  Effectively the millennial generation almost has destroyed America.  We are not out of it yet, and personally I do not think we will emerge.  There is too much personal wealth being held offshore in Grand Cayman or Swiss bank accounts.  This money never will be reinvested in America, because the new nickname for the United States should morph into "The Rise of the Machines."  George Orwell was on the mark, and although it has taken thirty more years to achieve fascism in America, it is here.  When a value judgement must be made over human beings beset with flood catastrophe or diesel hauled rail freight, evidently the machines will win.  They are winning now.  They are winning, because the health of Americans is in jeopardy.  Always it has been, and class-action lawsuits became common as did labor unions standing up for the rights of workers.  With the millennial generation most things that have assured the longevity of man in America have become extinct.  Instead increasingly we live in a fantasy world where the term twenty trillion dollars of national debt doesn't raise an ear.  Neither does cancer caused by electromagnetic radiation, something that has been proven time and time again in government studies.  The first man, in his diligence to balance America's national debt, chose to ignore the caution of the the Federal Communication Commission, and instead chose to auction off dangerous microwave frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum creating our now cumbersome, overwhelming, and dangerous wireless communication industry.  Never have I agreed with it, and I do not possess a cell phone.  I do not agree with placing microwave ovens atop tall towers and placing them all over the country, because any ignorant heathen could understand that global warming is not a fantasy.  Summer temperatures in North America were the hottest on record, and at this very moment in Fayetteville, where Fort Bragg-manned heavy hauling machines creep beneath the surface of the earth, we are enveloped in another record-breaking heat wave caused by diesel-electric locomotives such as the ES44ACH.  The primary difference I can deduce between a Dash 9 and this new-to-my-knowledge machine, is that the C40-9W used direct current traction motors.  Initially railroads like Norfolk/Southern chose not to buy locomotives equipped with AC traction motors.  Was it because Erskine Bowles and his fellow board members may have known that rotating electromagnetic fields traveling around our landscape was not a good idea?  Certainly the infrasound produced by a Dash 9 is not, but they were immune from the effects of processing large amounts of electrical power, cramming it into a  conductors box, and seeping it into traction motors for low speed locomotive operation.  (this is what AC traction accomplishes)  While a throbbing diesel prime mover necessarily will produce an invasive infrasonic wave that will produce all of the same effects Vladimir Gavreau studied when experimenting with forms of "non-lethal" weapons, a DC equipped diesel-electric locomotive would NOT produce low frequency alternating current.  Secondly it would not produce low frequency alternating current that escapes into our environment causing a host of problems that effect every day life.  I have studied this technology enough to understand that low frequency electricity and a rotating electromagnetic field of themselves do not produce a low frequency electromagnetic wave.  A transmitted or oscillator is needed for that.  To transmit that through the air will take an antenna of massive length, say a hundred and fifty miles possibly located in the midwest states of Illinois and Indiana.  We must ask the Ash Carter, the CEO of the pentagon or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Commander of the Navy's submarines for details.  Currently we use this technology to communicate with sub's far far away and near Vladimir Putin.  With the Base Realignment Commissions work moving America's Ground Forces Command to Fayetteville, with it came a multitude of federal spending building interstate highways, underground compounds, and a more effective and powerful logistical machines that supplies the Middle East with taxpayer purchased munitions.  With all of the comings and goings of train traffic in Fayetteville, one is staying constant.  I used to perceive it floating in a cruise vessel in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.  I was and still am in intimate contact with the butt-munching engineers responsible for moving that lever. 

A Toxic Waste Dump

I am taking a risk.  When I complain about pollution I am punished with more pollution. 
My ears are ringing from infrasound.  With the effects of Hurricane Mathew, a powerful storm that wreaked havoc on many southeastern North Carolina cities, the source of a disturbance remained untouched.  CSX-T tracks were washed out in many places, and R.J. Corman was brought in to service the erosion and restore functionality.  The Vander
Line was affected serving DAK Americas as was the CSX-T mainline in downtown Fayetteville.  Amtrack suspended all activity through Fayetteville, and yet this disturbance continued unabated.  Certainly there was flooding north of Pope Field on the Lower Little River which feeds the Cape Fear.  This disturbance continued.  Whence does it come?  Is it the railyard at DAK Americas?  Is there an Aberdeen and Rockfish or Norfolk Southern locomotive there that never sleeps?  Is it Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point south of Wilmington?  Is it CSX-T’s mammoth transfer yard in Hamlet?  This low frequency sound wave commenced approximately three weeks ago, and it never has stopped.  The entire country is suffering.  Usually when I complain via this blog some attention is paid to my concerns.  Then this ensued.  After a sedentary summer freight rail traffic roared to life.  Do the owners of the Astros know that their proposed baseball stadium is adjacent to the CSX-T mainlines?  It is a double track.  Do the owners of the Astros know that their proposed baseball stadium is adjacent to the STRACNET line servicing Fort Drag?  Or is it Fort Hag?  It is an interesting business proposal pitting what has become a corporate monopoly industry against a recreational sport industry.  It could be considered a power move.  The city of Fayetteville or the White House cannot regulate the now out-of-control rail industry, because they are intertwined with the Department of Defense.  The Department of Defense is out of control spinning yarns, creating unrest, and funding lucrative defense contractors.  That is the Carolinas.  National Defense.  Our coastline has transformed itself from a prime tourist destination to a sprawling military industrial complex.  We are rail lines connecting military installations, and that is not inspiring the economy for American citizens.  It is lining the pockets of the elite wealthy.  We are a third world country.  Fayetteville was privy to receive millions of dollars for the I-295 inner loop.  This loop, while it maintains a sense of progress for the community, simply is an access road for Fort Bag.  Or is it Fag?  Trucks carrying munitions can exit I-95 and drive directly to their access point on post with no interruption.  Bragg Boulevard has been closed so compounds on either side of highway 24 can be integrated.  It’s logistics on post, and it is smart logistics.  Citizens of Fayetteville need to understand what Fort Bragg has become.  It is the largest military compound in the United States.  Munitions are brought in on trucks and loaded underground onto trains which haul them to a sorting yard in Leland and then down to Ocean Military Terminal Sunny Point.  My question is, “Is the disturbance that is bombarding Fayetteville and the country coming from underground at Fort Hag?”  On the surface the United States Army owns some GenSet locomotives.  They also own heavy haul locomotives worth millions of dollars.  Where best is it to hide the country’s munitions and the expensive locomotives  that haul them?  Is it underground at Fort Bag?   Do we really need “The View” running the country?