Nothing to Gain in America

The last two times I have blogged, I did not write what I meant to write.  I had every intention of criticizing television and its decline from the Golden Age.  Then again there have been times in my life fervently I believed that watching "that box" truly could rot your brain.  It ebbs and flows like most things, like life, like water.  There are ups and down.  America is down and has been since Bush was in the White House.  I watched his movie recently, W., and it seemed almost like a parody.  I always have said he was one of the worst presidents we have had, and our country has not recovered from his misguided corporate lobbied policies.  "Storm is Coming," which keeps showing up in my Facebook newsfeed, says most of it.  America, or rather those that control America, the money, have sought to eradicate God from our existence.  You would not know that from living in Fayetteville.  There are bible compounds all over the place, large complexes with names like Berean and Manna.  I don't know what they are or what they represent religiously.  What I do know is that they are tax shelters taking advantage of their "non profit" status.  We here in the American South are excellent at fraud.  It is in our blood.  Those damn Confederates are just a lot of slave-owning, plantation-running, red necks.  I am surrounded by it.  After living back in Fayetteville since my youth, it has become apparent to me that the folk living here, that have stayed here, the locals, are sheltered.  They have not been to other places.  They have not experienced other more enlightened things.  Big Harry's Tavern is about the extent of it.  There is no jazz, although the elites have founded a good symphony orchestra.  For it to be as good as it is, most of its players live and are from other places.  Only one or two actually live in Fayetteville.  How can you call it the Fayetteville Symphony?  They drive from as far as Charleston, Greensboro, and Ashville.  It is amazing to me that it functions this way.  Many businesses in North Carolina include commuting great distances.  At the health clinic where I used to get ship physicals, the doctor who runs the place is Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at the hospital in Rocky Mount and lives in Raleigh.  ?  My days of slogging up and down I-95 with my musical equipment in the back of my Toyota Tercel wagon are over.  Never do I want to waste my time doing that again.  Rather I enjoy composing music, recording music, cooking, and working in the yard when Fort Bragg permits.  Today and yesterday the temperature in Fayetteville is seven degrees hotter than surrounding North Carolina towns.  It is not because we are in a "hole."  This has been a common assertion since I have lived here.  Fayetteville is hot because it is in some kind of topical depression.  If anything that would be the Cape Fear River Valley.  Okay.  Fayetteville is hotter because of Fort Bragg.  When the 82nd Airborne is deploying they are flying aircraft continuously hauling soldiers afar.  Likewise their gear must meet them at the destination, and the responsibility rests upon the Cape Fear Railways and CSX-T.  Cape Fear Railways assembles the two-mile-long munitions trains underground at Fort Bragg, and CSX-T picks them up at Fort Junction.  Likewise aircraft fuel must make it to Fort Bragg, and I believe it also is via CSX-T and the Cape Fear Railways.  If one takes a look at Fort Bragg with Google Satellite you can see the black tanker cars lined up at the fuel depot which also is the depot for uncoming truck cargo.  It is the closest point to Fayetteville on Bragg Boulevard where Iron Mike used to stand.  The aircraft fuel is unloaded here and is carried by pipeline to Pope Field and Simmons Army Airforce base.  There is a reason they closed Gruber Road at the Boulevard and at 292.  I think the pipeline runs directly underderneath it to Simmons to fuel their helicopters.  Upon another look at Google Satellite it is easy to see where the preexisting tracks at Fort Bragg strategically were placed underground.  That mainline running from the Honeycutt Marshalling Yard would divide the entire post in half.  It would be like downtown Fayetteville when they deploy those two mile long munition trains.  Fayetteville has been trying to solve this problem for decades, and a solution was offered that is simple.  A new section of track must be built so that these munition trains do not have to back up onto the Vander line transecting Russell Street.  Trains must back down this track and cross the CSX-T mainlines through the crossover.  Then they on the other side switch to the local line that goes directly to the CSX-T Milan Yard.  This is what CSX uses for their local freight.  It goes to the yard on Russell Street that is shared by Norfolk Souther, CSX-T, and the Aberdeen and Rockfish.  The munitions train pulls right to the Milan yard until it clears the Vander line on Russell Street.  Then it goes south on the CSX-T mainline to Pembroke where it performs the same maneuver to get to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point south of Wilmington.  I think it is the Koch brothers that supply Fort Bragg with its aircraft fuel.  Why else would Texas oil tycoons have a presence in the Carolinas?  That is big business, and it stands to reason that the Koch's, the Department of Defense, and CSX-T pretty much control everything that is happening.  This is all because still we are engaged in the longest war in American history, the War in Afghanistan.  Those abundant natural resources are just too good to ignore.  Consequently America really is bankrupt at least for the common people.  The majority of our money, that which Bush dipped his hand into the piggy bank of the AMerican people called Troubled Assets Relief Program which spawned America's Tea Party, went to pay off those Wall Street Investors who bet against the American economy during the financial crisis of 2008.  So watch "The Big Short," and you will understand that Hank Paulson told W. that we had to pay off this handful of investors to prove the economy would not collapse.  Henceforth they took our hard-earned-cash and stashed it overseas, like Apple, like General Electric, and the rest.  Our money is sitting in huge foreign bank accounts rather than circulating through the American economy like it should for Capitalism to work.  It is a shite state of affairs.  While America has been successful disguising the presence of God in our culture through media, Rupert Murdoch, et al, it cannot change that evil only can manifest itself through human form.  For evil to live, it needs a human host, a vessel to do its bidding.  America is rife with evil, thus America is rife with evil people mostly running the country in cognito lining their pockets with the money of the American people.  I have come to realize that there are grievous evils in our world, and if one takes a look back always they have been there.  They just are candy-coated through the media.  Again consciously this is not what I meant to write, but it came out.  What I do want to say is why television is experiencing decreasing ratings.  Isn't it obvious?  Maybe if you are a millennial and never have seen television programming from the Golden Age when entertainment still was based on Minstrel Shows.  (That was when white entertainers put show polish on their faces to play comedic black slaves)  Ouch.  Television cannot endure without the same criteria for any art form, although often it is not art.  It should strive to be.  Simple television cannot endure where there is more commercial programming than content during a show.  There are so many commercials shown in a row and for so long, it is easy to forget what program you are watching!  This is frustrating, trying to watch a show, and being thwarted.  Who in their right mind would make it difficult for a viewer to watch?  An idiot.  Likewise the cinema experience is doing the same thing.  When I went to see Alien Covenant a few days ago, I had to sit through a half an hour of product commercials!  Good grief, at the movies?  It was interminable and tortuous.  People are not going to watch television if it is not fun and entertaining.  It can and should be educational.  It cannot be manipulative.  It cannot be patronizing.  Television today is all of these things, and the same idiots who are running the large evil corporations must be the same people producing television.  They are not very smart.  When General Electric sees fit to produce a You Tube video glorying a Tier 4 diesel/electric freight locomotive, one of the most polluting machines in existence, then it tells you something.  It tells you that they know it pollutes, and they are trying to cover it up.  Like society has been doing for over a decade, we are exploiting millennials.  Current television commercials patronize viewers with vignettes depicting the most ignorant human beings in existence.  Either they are stupid, or they are at wits end trying to battle the machine in America.  They are Zombies in denial of America's shite state of affairs.  Maybe we all can sympathize with this perspective.  Just eat it.  Candy.  Fast Food.  What do we have to lose.  Certainly there is nothing to gain in American anymore. 

Television Barf-O-Mmercials

So what does he mean by "Barf-o-mmercial?"  For television to be able to air, they need to sell soap.  Once they were called soap operas.  It was understood.  Back in the day art mimicked life.  Life in America was interesting, because people were educated by a quality public school system.  No more.  No mas.  The lines of demarcation of human existence have been skewed, and I will not take this opportunity to describe them.  Instead I will publish a list of television barf-o-mmercials which are patronizing, manipulative, mind numbing, and ignorant.   

1.  Pizza Hut-  Stand up, sit down, like clowns. 

2.  Corona Extra-  Drinking our yellow malt somehow will transport you to a beach with tits and ass.

3.  Reeses-  You eat it.

4.  Toyota-  Action heroes are fictitious 

5.  Bacardi-  Drinking our sugary rum wtill transport you to a dance party in Old San Juan.   

6.  Dairy Queen-  ?

7.  Lending Tree- Green puppets are for babies, not consumers wishing to buy a property.

8.  Kia-  Buying a car does not ensure you will enjoy summer more, really.  There will be no salesman in your backseat massaging your shoulders while you drive. 

9.  The General-  Cartoons are for babies. 

10.  Monster-  Cartoons are for babies.  

11.  Snapple-  Appleheads are for babies. 

12.  Sonic-  ?

13.  Captain Morgan-  Pirates are for Johnny Depp only.

14.  Entyvio-  Drug commercials should be for doctors and taken off the air like cigarette ads in the 70's.   

15.  Candy Crush-  Candy is for babies.  

16.  Dave and Busters-  Video games are for ?

17.  Dos XX-  This man is not very interesting.  

18.  eSurance-  Patronizing assholes.  

Any television barf-o-mmericial that uses a pseudo instructional seminar to teach (brainwash) consumers how great their product is....  should be off television.  FCC, please do your job.  

On the other hand effective and intelligent advertising, like other aesthetics, is welcome both educating and possibly persuading a person to buy.  

Progressive
Craftsmen
XOXO Trojans.  

Mac Death and Resurrection

As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon listening to Aaron Copland through my vintage Luxman stereo receiver (Luxman once was the "home" audio component of Alpine) and typing on a dying Macbook Pro, I wish to thank one particular You Tube contributor.  When the GPU on my motherboard fried and stopped working, I researched quite a bit what to do.  The consensus among computer technicians was to take out the motherboard and heat the chip with a heat gun for five minutes.  Somehow baking the chip after it all ready had overheated and failed breathes new life in the GPU.  Statistic said eight out of ten Macbook Pros could be brought back to life with this method.  I made an appointment at the Apple Store in Raleigh, but after reflecting decided not to go.  The manager with whom I spoke on the phone quoted me an estimate of $200.00 to replace the GPU.  His conversational skills were ackward, and while he entered my information into his computer barely could he answer my questions.  The nature of Apple Stores it seems is manic energy.  They are like nightclubs, not a place to seek or find thoughtful computer repair.  I opted out of the appointment, because after watching a few computer repair You Tube videos, and reflecting on the past death of my iBook, I decided it was not worth it.  I would spend a lot of money for nothing.  Instead I took the hard core route, and followed the simple instructions of one You Tube Contributor.  Obviously he knew what he was talking about.  He gave you a command to start you Mac in "single user mode" and input UNIX codes to disable the external GPU.  I had to transcribe his codes both by listening to his accented voice and watching his computer screen.  I was familiar with the language because I studied computer music at OSU.  It has been a long time ago, more than twenty years ago.  I understood the language.  You create a folder for disable extensions, and move the drivers and supporting files for the external GPU into it.  When the computer re-boots, it will be forced to use the onboard GPU.  ???  What?  The graphic functions of the laptop will be reduced, but it will boot and run.  Wow!  The alternative was a dead ass Macbook Pro.  I inputted his codes and re-booted and voila!  Here I sit typing on what would have been a useless computer.  It could have been quite a soul searching scenario.  Pretty expensive computer quits working.  I only paid $900.00 for the machine, and it gave me three years of solid use with a large external Hewlett Packard monitor.  I couldn't complain.  I got my use out of it, so no sour grapes.  The sour grapes were thwarted by this You Tube contributor, who allowed me to keep my machine running while I purchased another computer and transferred my programs to it.  I knew all along I should have bought a Mac Pro, but them internets kept saying a  Macbook Pro would run Pro Tools or Digital Performer.  It did ironically, until the GPU died.  The 7200 rpm hard drive still is running.  The lesson to be learned is that the Radeon chip was a budget component.  Tim Cooke knew this, and his consent to use this chip in Steve Job's high level creation was inspired by greed.  More dinero for Apple, more headache for the consumer.  As we speak my Macbook from 2005 still is running unabated.  It sits quietly in sleep mode, and without a hitch comes to life when I lift its lid.  There was a class action lawsuit over the late 2011 Macbook Pro, and assuredly the eBay seller who sold me this computer knew it.  No matter.  I have gotten my money out of it, learned a lesson, and was forced to use my dormant computer skills to build a far more worthy music workstation.  I will knock on wood that my words are not in vain, and my "new" machine will continue to tool away streamlined and turbocharged.  So far so good.  If and when the computer puts itself to sleep, there always seems to be a glitch with its awaking.  I have had to re-start once, because of this.  I do look forward to the relay clicking when I hit a key and hearing the drives spin up.  There is no substitute for quality engineering. 

The Rise and Fall of the Diesel/Electric Behemoth.

On the news this evening it was reported traffic accidents have risen exponentially on Interstate 95, particularly in one county in North Carolina.  The CSX-T mainline travels parallel to I-95.  The Southern Corridor has become America's "Corridor of Defense."  For obvious reasons and because of Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, CSX has an incestuous relation with our federal government.  Consequently General Electric, the manufacturer of most heavy haul diesel electric locomotives, benefits.  They haul American national defense all over North America and to the ports where American national defense travels to the Middle East to gather petrol and poppies.  No one understands that railroading is nothing like it used to be.  There is ZERO sentimentality.  Their is ZERO regulation.  There should be nothing except "Rage Against the Machine," because the UT44AC is the enemy of the human race.  Why?  Still no one understands.  When one's tactile sensations are over run.  When one's ability to FEEL is decimated.  When one's instinctual and life-long bodily reactions and gestures are pillaged and raped by machines.  This is why violence ensues.  This is why people driving on Interstate 95 loose control and kill others.  Driving, while taken for granted, is a sport.  It should be treated as nothing less.  It takes coordination, skill, and awareness.  Above all to be an excellent driver it takes physical response based upon tactile receptions.  If you can't feel your car, because a behemoth machine is lurking in your wake pumping out 4,400 horse power of dirty, electrical, diesel produced force, well then.  There are prisoners, and most of them seem to be dying.  For what? 

MacDeath

My Macbook Pro is on the fritz.  What an inopportune time.  I used it mainly to surf the internet and to record music via MIDI.  I have weathered the storm well so far, because I will not panic.  I can get by without it.  My Macbook 2005 still is working, and I am typing on it at the moment.  I still have Finale, Digital Performer, and Toast on it running 10.6.8.  It has proven to be a mule.  Evidently it has outlived a late 2011 Macbook Pro.  Does that say something about Tim Cooke?  I have yet to travel to Raleigh or Durham to the Apple Store to have it diagnoised.  When my iBook died, I spent over $500.00 trying to get it fixed.  I had the Apple Store replace the hard drive, and it didn't fix the logic board failure.  Years later some smart man figured out it was one little solder joint.  I thought about getting it fixed, but Apple no longer supports their products.  Instead they engineer in a death date to keep you buying.  It would be cheaper just to buy a new Mac, and probably that is what I will do.  I have to decide, again, what to buy.  "I went to the White House, again, to meet the President."  Because I was using a laptop as a desktop, it really doesn't make sense to buy another Macbook Pro, especially now that I have learned that they quit.  It is possible it may only be a dead internal hard disk, but the diagnosis process of a Mac is a bit sketchy.  First you have to make an appointment for a Genius to see you.  If you miss the appointment by a few minutes, they cancel you.  It was not a pleasant process when the iBook died, and now I remember it again.  "I went to the White House, again, to meet the President."  "Guess I will be going to the Apple Store again to meet the President." 

The Effective Parlay of the C40-9W by GE

When the E.P.A. comes knocking and says all diesel freight locomotives must adhere to their newest "Tier 4" standards for emissions.  First it was "Tier 2."  Now it is "Tier 4."  It seems like this would be good news for the environment, except that current president Donald Trump has suspended the processes of the Environmental Protection Agency.  He froze their website.  Not that long ago The Federal Office of Noise Abatement was unfunded through the E.P.A. as a way to allow noise to cack on in America.  While "Tier 4" seems like a prudent measure on paper, and I am sure it requires locomotive manufacturers to reduce greenhouse carbon emissions from their machines it is not enough.  The Federal Railroad Administration does not even recognize AC Traction as an entity.  When I questioned one of their representatives at a neighborhood meeting in Columbus, Ohio, he admitted that he didn't know what AC Traction was.  I squawked about it then, and I'll squawk about it now.  It is a threat to human health, but we would not know that because it is not recognized as an entity.  "What's the beef, La Beouf?"  We here in Fayettenam are privy to this experience, especially on the weekends and right now. I, because of an iridotomy, am sensitive to low frequency sound.  I have a small hole in my iris that allows aqueous humor to flow from the front of my eye to the back.  When low frequency sound waves press on my cornea, this fluid is pushed through the hole, and I can sense it through my optic nerve.  It's my Spidey Sense, and I wish I did not have it.  Because I am a musician, I can feel sound waves on my skin.  Babies can "hear" sound in the womb otoacoustically.  Sound can be perceived in other ways than the ear "hearing" it.  You can "hear" with your flesh.  I spend the majority of my time in Fayettenam trying to tune out this B.S.  Instead as a musician I should be tuning in to sounds and turning them into art.  Instead in Fayettenam, either because of the Cape Fear Railway, Norfolk Southern, CSX-T, or the Aberdeen and Rockfish, I spend my time in my home trying to ignore a phenomenon that has been studied and described by Vladimir Gavreau in text.  AC Traction leaks.  It does not leak greenhouse gases.  It leaks both low frequency sound we cannot hear and electricity.  The dangers of electromagnetic waves largely are ignored in America, and cancer frequency rates have escalated.  We are a more cancerous nation now than we were twenty years ago.  That is the beauty of America's medical establishment.  I would not trust them with a toothbrush.  This is why illegal drug use is rampant.  We are required to self-medicate because of the ridiculous pretentiousness of medical care.  You would think it was platinum.  What has value in America now?  Automobiles and cell service if you believed television ad's.  Certainly music no longer is a value.  AC Traction leaks both low frequency sound, infrasound as studied by French scientist Vladimir Gavreau, and electricity.  Leaking electricity.  Electricity, like infrasound, is invisible and to some undetectable.  To the human body it is cancer.  Magnetic heat-laden electricity vibrates causing human cells to mutate.  Magnetic heat-laden electricity is an electromagnetic wave.  The study of physics is the study of the electromagnetic spectrum.  In America we deny everything.  We have become a society of denial.  We have elected a denial president.  Before long we will deny ourselves out of a planet.  Why is it that diesel-electric locomotives equipped with AC Traction are unknown to the general populace.  Any time I try to raise awareness of this health threat, I am booed.  I am booed by naive, loyal, ignorant railroad employees who pollute our cities and towns, because they need a job.  How can a Mexican-owned polyester resin plant on the Cape Fear River use the downtown of Fayettenam as their logistical transportation hub?  That is what DAK does in Cedar Creek on the Vander line of CSX-T.  They continually run their supplies and product down Russell Street into the yard on Blount Street or to the Milan Yard on North Street.  This happens nonstop, diesel electric locomotives producing heat, noise, and vibration emitting their byproduct to the unsuspecting citizens of Fayetteville.  The Interstate Commerce Commission is responsible for this freedom, and the freedom of the railroads to operate in anonymity in our backyards.  They are everywhere.  The beauty of the Aberdeen and Rockfish is, their locomotives are so old they are grandfather in.  Is it possible a GP-7 meets the E.P.A.'s Tier 4 standards?  Likewise a turbo-charged TWO STROKE diesel prime mover, which in the supposed view of the E.P.A. is a piriha, continues to motor on over to Fayettenam every day and funk up our downtown.  No one blinks an eye, because old money runs "The Ville."  Old money runs the South.  After moving to Columbus, Ohio in 1991 I met many people who said you cannot make any money in the South, because the pace of life is too slow.  Money does not circulate fast enough.  Hence they move to other places.  Never have I realized that ignorance was so prolific, and railroads are not helping.  I know the vibration of a GP7 because it is in my bed.  It is a turbo-charged two stroke diesel engine revving at a fairly constant rate,and grandfathered into usage by the Interstate Commerce Commission.  It is and should be a piriha, but it operates everyday with impunity making money for the Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad.  Often I have said, "Why is it not called the Aberdeen and Fayetteville Railroad."  They rape and pillage our downtown for their own wealth, and on a good day travel back to Southern Pines to empty their pockets.  As much as I don't like turbocharged TWO STROKE diesel prime movers, I don't like AC Traction.  AC Traction leaks infra electricity.  (Maybe I have coined a new term)  VLF.  ULF.  Very low frequency, and in these definitions of radio waves there is no description of alternating current in this range.  This is what AC Traction creates, and it is unknown, unheard, and ignored.  If you can't see it, it must not exist, but it causes cancer.  The shareholders and board of directors of the railroads certainly do not live in proximity to their operations.  "Down by the tracks."  "The other side of the tracks."  Always that has meant "Dark Town," where the Negros live.  Why?  Because freight rail traffic is undesirable, and yet Menno Pennick and Ralph Huff have built scores of expensive condominiums in downtown Fayetteville.  Little do buyers know that over thirty freight trains travel through downtown Fayetteville every day.  In addition to that activity, local freights travel back and from the Milan Yard to the yard on Blount Street constantly building outgoing trains.  On the weekend, like now, either Fort Bragg or one of these major railroads is using AC Traction in their operations.  How do I know?  I know because the infrasound wave created by a prime mover is constant and invasive.  The infra wave from a diesel-electric locomotive equipped with AC Traction lowers below one cycle-per-second, because the frequency of alternating current is what determines the speed of AC traction drives.  To boot engineers often leave the locomotive idling unattended in Notch whatever, while a low frequency wave undulates with a constantly-changing ultra-low period.  It feels like surveillance, and it feels like surveillance because if "goosed" the low frequency wave (because it tangibly can be felt on the skin) responds to stimulus.  Can that be a locomotive, or is that the U.S. Army's targeting system for their rocket-propelled shells?  It seems the jury is still out on that one.  The military reporter for the Fayetteville Observer failed to respond to my query as to whether it is radar or sound they use to target their weapons.  Her article said sound waves, and yes when they are shooting the big guns on post I feel them.  Since these sound and electricity waves don't really exist, General Electric should have no trouble explaining their product to the American populace.  Likewise Siemens and the other electronic manufacturers (AB whatever) should have no trouble explaining AC drives to the E.P.A, although they at the moment are frozen by our newly elected and in-denial President.  When my back hurts, when my colon aches, and when my legs shake most probably it is from AC Traction.  Although that is an appropriate place to end this article, I can't forget to state my point about the effective parlay of the C40-9W.  If the E.P.A. comes knocking when they are unfrozen by our newly elected in-denial President, and says your locomotives must adhere to our new "Tier 4" standards, what does G.E. do?  They take the already existing most powerful freight locomotive in existence, the Dash 9, slap on some catalytic converters, convert the DC traction motors to AC drives, add an inverter for the electrical processing and voila!  "Our locomotives don't pollute.  Our carbon emissions are up to the current standards of the E.P.A."  The two other more dangerous emissions which are invisible and thus do not exist, promulgate unabated.  Their leaking electricity inundates our power grid sapping power from our homes.  It disrupts wireless communications by our computers cell phones, and creates interference for AM and FM radio stations.  Probably it is the most destructive force on earth, and yet it is unknown and ignored.  Those are some deep lobbying pockets, GE.  

P.S.  The new machine is called an ES or ET44AC and it rather than being an improvement for the human race is a monster on steroids.  Instead of using the newly conceived GEVO12, it continues to use GE's 7FDL16, the same behemoth that lies beneath the thin skin of almost all other heavy freight locomotives.  This invasive prime mover spills infrasound into the environment like water, raises the proximal air temperature by 2-3 degrees, and now runs a power inverter that leaks alternating current profusely onto the power grid.  Still no one raises an eybrow, bats an eye, or questions why murder promulgated by unstable lunactics is rampant.  The cab is insulated for the operator.  It is we who suffer. 

America's Judicial System and its Test

Jeff Sessions.  Appoint an Attorney General who is experienced suing the E.P.A.  Close down the E.P.A.  Allow your family-owned business to conspire with Russia.  Cover up treason in the White House.  Appoint Jeff Sessions Attorney General.  Expect the Attorney General not to prosecute treason in the White House.  Ask the F.B.I director not to investigate treason in the White House.  Eric Holder.  One of the most influential and effective Attorneys General prosecuting fraudulent American banks involved in the 2008 financial scandal.  Appoint Jeff Sessions with a history of suing America's Environmental Protection Agency.  The impeachment will be forthcoming.  Two peace signs and a microphone, for Trump.  

Turning off the Tube

It is a toss up the worst ad on television.  Is it Mark Wahlburg lying to make a buck, or is it a major car company quizzing millennials into believing their car is better?  My most revolting response comes from seeing a car company use a tactic once utilized by SouthWest.  You are a freshman in college, and you get a call in the dorm instructing you to a meeting in the student union.  You don't know what it is, and you are a bit flattered that they have called you.  You feel honored that your academic credentials may have given you entree to a coveted society.  It turns out to be SouthWest. They want you to sell magazine subscription or books door to door.  The seminar is bathed in academia.  You think you may be in a legitimate collegiate seminar, until fifteen minutes in it begins to dawn on you.  I got up and left with some obstruction from one of their cronies.  Not long after others began to leave the coercive meeting.  Cult.  Brainwashing.  Pandering.  Next television advertisement that elicits violence from me.  Kids standing around being quizzed in a leisurely way about which car has received the most awards.  Awards from whom?  Academia.  The Academy.  Washington?  Awards in America are contrived and given by corporate America.  Any guise to coerce you to believe anything else is fraud.  Advertising which, like many things in America has sidestepped check and balances by any ethics probe, contends to be enlightened for the sake of selling your product is a fake.  Not fake news.  Fake Advertising.  Fake Advertising should become more alarming, since its intent is to influence you into spending your money.  Fake news, and there is a lot of it, you can turn off.  You can choose not to read.  You can choose not to watch.  Now television, which has become fife with Fake Advertising, you also can turn off.  You can choose not to watch, until once again if ever it becomes honest.  

Being Played (like The Donald)

Perhaps it is a pioneering concept of the millennium in America that the President in actuality is not a figure of intellect, wisdom, and goodness.  Perhaps satan's return to earth all ready has occurred accompanied by the cloaked presence of Jesus Christ.  Did the Bible foretell whether humanity would know when Christ's second return to earth transpired?  Perhaps He is here.  Perhaps both they are here, Jesus and satan.  It is not a new scenario, and it could explain some of the current chaos in world politics.  I have suggested before that satan's return to earth all ready has occurred.  Possibly and without humor it was the election of George W. Bush, the most destructive president in the history of the United States.  At least with societies' mediocre knowledge of American history it could be true.  I am certain there were worse presidents near the turn of the century when Trusts controlled America.  This was when wealth controlled America, and never has it changed despite the continual re-writing of American history.  Before long the history books will be changed, veterans will have died off, and America will be at the hands of the ignorant evil.  Perhaps all ready this is the case.  In all certainty the presidential election was "rigged," just not the way Donald suggested.  It was rigged in a much more legal and upstanding way forged by our founding fathers and manipulated by the wealthy.  The electoral college, of which the populace knows little, was bribed.  This is why it was created, to ensure that the ignorant slave-satruated populace could not choose their own president.  The office of the president must be chosen by the wealthy, or at least influenced by the wealthy, because the wealthy always have controlled America.  Perhaps at some point there was an American Dream.  There was a time when this wealthy populace was content enough to allow the common man to prosper, because it made them look good.  Recently as Senator Warren has written, "Keep a hunk of it, and give the rest back to those who pay your upkeep."  It is the quintessential battle between Capitalism and Socialism, and it is a toss up.  Certainly Capitalism has failed at no greater level than today, and its demise has been fertilized by Fascism.  It is easy to forget  peering into one's iPhone, streaming entertainment on all one's devices, and otherwise burying one's head in the sand that the Nazi Party, the political militaristic faction who slaughtered the Jews in an act of mass genocide, is only seventy years in our past.  It is a skip in history, and rest assured those Nazi's, those white supremacists, those Arion skin heads who since have transformed into ISIS all ready are well ensconced in the infrastructure of America.  We may be fighting extreme muslim terrorists in the Middle East, but it is a smoke screen.  Simply ask the question for the hundredth time.  Why is America in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban?  

Selling Soap and Selling Out

Not only is it disconcerting, it is downright disturbing to watch Mark Wahlburg lie on screen.  Film acting is one thing.  Because it is entertainment the line of demarkation between fact in fiction often is skewed.  In the recent tradition of the Sony playstation and its purveyors largely who have purchased Hollywood, reality is blurred.  It was their intent, in the words of its programming engineers, consciously to blur the line between fact and fiction.  Newspeak, all ready understood by the novelist George Orwell, was created in America.  It continues unabated today championed by the Murdoch clan, the ailing and now deceased Roger Ailes, and the rest.  America is a cloaked charade nary reflecting Christian ideals or God.  We are enveloped in evil, and our psychological sensibilities are marred if not raped by the rail industry.  The pollution it creates permeates the essence of human existence, and our existence is a distant and dying shadow.  It will not be long before we all are dead.  You cannot spend money when you are dead.  You cannot pull a U-Haul behind a hearse.  Evil cannot exist without human hosts.  It is imperative that the second coming of Jesus Christ be soon.  Earth will not survive the way it is.  If America once were a pinnacle of innovation and leadership, General Electric has created the canvas of our own electrocution.  We are dead, and it is their fault.  There is no reason even to pay attention to the presidency.  The Donald, hopefully in the words of Ulee Jackson, will step aside.  Like Tricky Dicky he should understand that he may not be a bad person.  He is and was not qualified to be present.  Neither was Hillary.  Whitewater, a personal server, blow jobs jobs in the White House, and pandering of political influence for money under the guise of Secretary of State have sealed her after.  If presented with apples and oranges, certainly the American public would choose their scandals.  Bill largely in part is responsible both for the economic collapse of 2008 and global warming, which is humanities most grievous foe.  Earth will be burnt to a crisp in less than twenty years.  The movers and shakers, the evil, the far alternative right cannot spend money when they are dead.  These lessons only can be learned through experiences, and why must humanity sacrifice our planet?  Is it not proper for these people to be eliminated?  America, in our most recent half-century, have lived a life of privilege.  Millennials have not faced war, poverty, or evil.  The human sacrifice which has allowed America to prosper is a distant mist.  Life, which by example of God's sacrifice of His only Son, must be given to ensure the continued existence of the human race.  Decisions must be made, and lives must be sacrificed.  The weapons of mass destruction are not in Iraq.  They are not in Iran.  They are not in North Korea.  They are not in Afghanistan.  They are in America, and the cheerleaders of war, the defense industry, are those championing political chaos, public ignorance through the deprivation of our public schools, and economic inequality.  It is difficult not to tune out, tweak in, or die in depression.  Instead with no control or power we must watch and wait for the affluent to annihilate the human race.  Shouldn't it make good entertainment?  Instead we have Simon.  

Amazon X

It is clear that Amazon's stock worth escalation, while benefitting to the consumer, is not a simile for other internet commerce.  Amazon's continued investment in its own company harkens back to what Reaganomics should have been.  Profits in a company reaped from lower tax brackets are invested back into the company.  That has not happened in the twenty-first century.  Instead wealthy stock brokers and hedge fund managers have shelved their earned American assets overseas.  Certainly they no longer flow, hence it is impossible for them to trickle down to the lower economic classes.  The internet bubble all ready has popped.  It turns out that there is no such thing as easy money.  A company, whether flesh and blood or cyber, must be conceived, organized, and administered in a prudent way.  This is why people attend business school.  No where is this more evident today than in broadcast news.  The internet has ruined not only the music business, but to a large part television and network and print news.  Simply news is a particle of what it once was.  Newspeak.  Fake news.  Lies.  Propaganda.  Simply bad news.  Amateur news.  Millennial news.  
Edward R. Morrow would be turning over in his grave.  We are reaching a crucial turning point where the truth completely will be disguised in America, and Americans will be left solely to their own good judgment.  Maybe this is the way it should be before the telegraph, before a wire connected the country.  My personal news reading and television watching almost has stopped, because there is nothing of value to watch.  What is left of the networks is a corporate monopoly controlled either by the Aussies down under, the Scandinavians, or the ignorant.  Who is more capable of devising and broadcasting American news and entertainment?  Certainly not these factions, as they well have proven.  Our airwaves are polluted with juvenile, manipulative, brain-washing filth.  The veterans are all dead.  

Rails Gone Wild and Diesel Knocking

If and when a society becomes unable to govern itself, its justice becomes unjust, and its civility turns against the masses, what choice does a society have other than to seek to rule itself?  If the written laws penned by the founding fathers are ignored, and tyranny becomes law, what choice does a society have other than to seek to rule itself?  Extremism, like North Korea's leader, is a petulant, irrational, psychotic child seeking emotional pleasure.  Terror is the same, an aberrant, ignorant, ineffective means to seek to rule one's self.  If extreme terrorism were intelligent and effective, unlike its attacks on the twin towers, it would seek out and target those processes which undermine governance and justice in America.  We have yet to see such activity.  Instead we see random acts of juvenile vandalism.  If processes were implemented by intelligent beings seeking to reestablish the fair governance of America, they not would be violent callous acts of cowardice.  They would be precisely measured intents to balance the unbalanced scales of justice.  Injustices of society easily are targeted.  We face them each day, yet Americans continue like docile and apathetic cows.  Other countries have had their revolutions.  Why should America be different?  If we are a country of immigrants, then Russian, French, and Irishmen should know the way.  American history seeks to disguise these truths to protect her immoral flanks.  The rich shall rule.  These tasks are so simple. They are so plain.  The injustices of American society are rife.  If anyone with a conscience, reverence for God, and integrity were to seek to find justice in America, it would be easy.  Instead staged, innocuous, random messages of cowardice are wielded by angered animals.  What is with America? 

Television Barf-O-Mmercials

After making it through what must have been the longest Maundy Thursday of my life, I have no other recourse except to point out that current television commercials are the devil.  Back in the day advertising, like other serious vocations in America, had substance.  It was recognized that human consumption was tangible and necessary for survival.  Consumption in ways keeps up alive.  There is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  We require food and shelter, health, and companionship.  The millennium of 2000 has transformed the human race into robots.  Adolescent millennials watch fantasy.  Their lives have been so neglected by America, that facing the great vacuum of our existence is too painful.  I suffer from the same ill.  Each day I wake up and look around, what I have been plated almost is not worth it.  America is responsible for most of it, and that means Raleigh and Washington DC and their great lobbying machinations.  America is a pale, poor, and polluted shadow of itself.  Americans are sick, maladjusted, cows.  Helping with this definition is the television commercial.  Briefly when I reflect on influences of our society including newspapers, magazines, and television, the television commercial emerges as the most innocuously inconspicuous putrid mind filth.  They have no basis in any kind of reality, except to brainwash the viewer into tuning out.  How could one do anything else?  Television commercials are not realistic.  They do not represent mainstream human beings.  They represent mindless android robots who smile and purchase with nary a thought for their own true needs.  I understand the roots of television, and I understand the roots of American entertainment.  Minstrels were a basis for American entertainment, and often they were satirical representations of slavery and European opera.  Black face was a common form of humor, a white man smearing his face with shoe polish to appear Negro.  This is America, and no where in that lineage can be found any concept of current television commercials.  They are shallow, fake, miniature teleplays that should be eradicated from existence.  They have no bearing on human life, and the human life they attempt to represent is so ignorant and insulting that they should become inflammatory.  We should feel both insulted and invaded by their nonsense.  Television, a staple of American culture, is laced with these vile mind polluters.  Not only is their production poor, cheap, and unprofessional, their message can not be challenged for worthlessness.  If a product manufacturer decided to respect their buyers rather than patronize and outsmart them, then  consumers would have a rational choice of whether to buy their product.  The way it stands now, ukelele music seems to be the best way to incite mass suicide.  

The Ongoing War Machine

I find it extremely timely that Facebook saw fit to include an advertisement for the Union Pacific Railroad in my newsfeed.  The major railroads in America would have us believe that the world would stop spinning if it weren't for them.  Also as the Federal Railroad Administration has been a lame duck like the now defunct EPA under Donald Trump, the railroads have created ad campaigns that suggest their industry is a pinnacle of conservation.  Norfolk Southern has come up with a paint scheme to suggest they actually care about traffic fatalities related to grade crossings.  Locomotives are not green, and never will they be.  Locomotives burn fossil fuels which creates global warming.  I suggest this.  President Obama was in favor of a carbon emission tax.  Air burning industries such as the airlines and railroads burn the earths oxygen at an alarming rate for free.  With each and every tree that is felled in the name of progress (urban sprawl), there is less oxygen left for us to breathe.  Why should these industries be allowed to burn the earth's naturally made oxygen for free?  Of course our automobiles do the same, but they do not produce 4,400 horsepower.  If the FRA actually did their job by policing the railroads for wrongdoing, then it would become apparent what a rogue industry they are.  Now freight has become Fortune 500, hence no one cares how their practices effect conservation.  It's all about the bottom line for the shareholder.  America's armed forces no longer are for our national defense.  They are to protect the interests of corporations who seek to imperialize the world.  America is in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria for their natural resources.  Any other reason is absurd.  It will not be long before our military will be turned on the citizens of America.  Heroin use and subsequent overdoses have risen exponentially in the last two years, as America's military tools up to begin a war with North Korea.  In North Carolina alone heroin use has flourished as high school drop outs train to kill.  We do not know who the enemy is.  Is is Putin?  Is it Assad?  Is it ISIS?  American corporations abroad are orchestrating the insurgency to destabilize the world and capitalize on the ensuing chaos.  Cheney comes to mind.  When 50,000 men and women are training with weapons of mass destruction a few miles from our homes, churches, and schools, it is difficult to muster up the Christian faith of the Easter season.  It is difficult to find a positive emotion without the artificial aid of alcohol, drugs, or sexual activity.  If our natural environment is stripped of its God-given ability to create peace and harmony for the human race and instead practices war on a daily basis, then it should be no surprise that anodynes are needed to make it through the day.  When returning troops land at Fort Bragg, the trauma they experience is not dealing with their past deployment.  It is dealing with the war machine rumbling underground at Fort Bragg.  

History Repeats Itself

Not only am I angry, I am depressed.  I can't pull myself out of the hole.  My brain and my emotions cannot be conned this time.  Both they cry out for the truth.  The truth is America has regressed to a time when the railroads ruled the country.  They took your property.  They spewed coal dust on your belongings.  They fill your homes with invasive and unwanted electricity.  I have wondered why the Norfolk Southern Railroad did not invest in AC traction when it became available.  The other large rail companies did, because they were concerned with hauling timber out of the Pacific Northwest and coal out of the Appalachian Mountains.  AC traction is more efficient than DC for these applications.  Norfolk Southern did not purchase AC locomotives at the onset.  Now they have.  They are rebuilding their DC locomotives into AC's.  For the layman that means a C40-9W at 4000 horsepower now becomes 4,400 horsepower replete with a power inverter (insulated gate bipolar transistor, or thrysistor), a device that with the aid of a PC processes electricity.  I have described this phenomenon before.  Instead of utilizing traditional direct current traction motors, with the now available technology of Siemens and GE, locomotives can use alternating current.  To move the train AC current must be processed by the computer to change its frequency.  It does not remain consistent like AC current in our homes.  (60 cycles)  The frequency of the AC current is the speed of the motor and thus the locomotive.  When it travels slowly low frequency AC current is required.  Therefore as a train "switches" or moves car, constantly it is speeding up and slowing down.  AC current constantly is being produced at varying frequencies most of them low.  When the train reaches traveling speed, the AC current increases.  For the life of me I cannot figure out why Norfolk Southern sends two of these behemoth AC locomotives to Fayetteville.  Back in the day, in a time of modesty, conservation, and honesty railroads would use a small switching locomotive to put trains together.  I have seen two DC traction locomotives pull a large military train out of Fort Bragg with no problem, and yet N/S 9408 and 9745 putt into downtown Fayetteville to pick up one car.  Mind you that is 8,800 horses, 4,400 HP apiece.  Other than the AC 6000 these are the most powerful freight locomotives in existence.  Why would Norfolk Southern be using these in Fayetteville?  The answer is irresponsibility, arrogance, and ignorance, the same adjectives which describe Washington, DC.  How is it possible that a pathological liar was elected president?  It is because the electoral college is antiquated and false.  The "popular" vote, the actual vote of Americans should decide who is president.  Two million people thought Hillary Clinton should have become president.  An electoral college, a group of people whom we know nothing about, elected Donald Trump president.  Who are these people?  How are they chosen?  Why was the future of America in their hands?  Why is America in the hands of incompetent lawmakers in Washington, DC?  Both my brain and my emotions want to scream at the injustice in America today.  My house is filled with vibration and electricity from CSX-T, Norfolk Southern, the Aberdeen and Rockfish, the Cape Fear Railway, and the U.S. military.  Trump wants to start a war with North Korea, the way W. started a war in Iraq to save face for his daddy.  These are not smart people, just like the people that own and run the railroads.  We better start understanding that our lives are at stake, as they always have been in America.  We are fighting for our lives, and not against ISIS.  We are fighting the rich.  

Mum is the Word

I have been sitting around waiting for the doldrums to pass.  Regularly my personal surveillance aircraft passes overhead.  It was in the news recently although not front page, that thousands of troops amassed at Fort Bragg are ready to deploy.  This is the hum drum.  Quick Response.  North Korea is firing missiles into the Japan Sea.  Shaking the tree.  That is what is happening.  I am sitting around on a Sunday afternoon trying to recuperate from an abdominal illness, and I am listening to trains.  All day.  That's what they do in Fayetteville on Sundays.  I took down some of my recent posts, because I am tired of being punished by the oligarchy.  It is easy, when they know you are bothered by something, to push your buttons or make your life more difficult.  This is not an ethical procedure, but then again just because an American corporation is in the Fortune 500 does not mean they are ethical.  One particular company regularly breaks their own power axle rule, but who cares about that?  They also try to hide their boisterous money-making activity from the public under the cover of nightfall.  People die, and more people are dying.  It gets worse.  (I have to go see a medical professional tomorrow)  I would rather them follow safety procedures and blow the horn at grade crossings.  Then you would know there is a 180 car freight train nearby.  Instead they cruise through with as little fanfare as possible.  People die.  In Alabama a tourist bus full of older people became stuck on the tracks.  These things happen.  People died and were hurt, most of them.  I am tired of being surrounded by bad behavior, ignorance, and greed.  America is regressing at an alarming rate, and I sit here on a Sunday afternoon trying not to hurt, trying not to worry about my health, and feelings trains in my bed.  I almost have them figured out, the ones that cause me physical discomfort and the ones that are tolerable.  I am not sure about the juice train.  I have been saying it since the inception of AC traction.  Spilling low frequency alternating current into the environment (flashover) is not good.  Since Fort Bragg has been at a state of readiness (almost two weeks) my home is filled with electricity of all varieties.  It is unpleasant to work in my music studio.  I have all kinds of physiological symptoms related to magnetism and electricity.  Truly it is an age of electricity but in no way good for our earth.  I have thought about wrapping our attic in foil.  (Seems paranoid)  A metal roof would go a long way in reflecting RF energy from the environment, which is great.  At 4:30 a.m. jets are flying over the tree line of our back yard.  The activity is teeming, and I am ready for it to subside.  Patience is a virtue, if you don't die first.  

Video Integrity

Upon hearing some extremely contentious jazz music instruction, more the necessity of making money as an extinct "jazz artist," as a past college lecturer in the field of jazz studies I must call the bluff. Jazz music instruction while still unique today, because the music is only about a century old, has principles.  Only millennials would say, "Oh jazz is anything."  This merely is a loophole which allows the complex and in depth field of jazz music to disintegrate and cower to the auspices of a recently chosen pop music championed by novices.  Forget intensive music listening.  Forget music history.  Forget intellectual challenging.  Musical talent is for anyone!  It is a grace given by God.  This is why so many winners of both state lotteries and television talent shows become alcoholics, derelicts, or squander their rewards.  Singing a few songs on television in no way, shape, or form can possible prepare a musician to be a professional.  It does not matter, because there are few jobs for professional musicians left.  The majority of them are in orchestras and churches and have nothing to do with jazz or popular music.  Television talent shows like YouTube videos are welcome shortcuts, immediate gratifications, but with dire educational circumstances.  Allowing users to post artistic material, or rather material of the arts, briefly was rewarding.  Often consumers can offer integral content by nature of being cherished.  On the contrary try looking for an instrument review on YouTube.  There are a number of factory representatives doing presentations selling instruments.  Nothing says they are artistic, enlightening, or enigmatic.  Most are torture.  The playing is poor, the sounds demonstrated are mediocre, and the content is shallow.  I have seen a few quality instructional videos.  Mostly they are my own.  Once I was a college instructor.  A more appealing title is adjunct professor, but let's be honest.  Instructor is more appropriate.  You get no benefits, no tenure, and no poo nanny.  I take that back.  Being an adjunct professor does merit some attention from the opposite sex, just like being a rock star once did.  That is before the world became LGBT, and the heterosexual dynamic waned.  The world never has recovered.  I have posted instructional videos, because it is important to me to remember useful musical information (and otherwise), and because I don't want to forget the process of both learning and teaching.  I have been asked why I post music videos.  This is the reason.  When I design and implement a home MIDI/Recording studio, it is complex and difficult to remember.  Talking about the process is helpful, and sharing it with others is considerate.  Why should I want to hoard the information for myself, seeing as popular music today and its so-called talent is bird seed?  It is not tangible enough to sit on the shelf without a corporate-manufactured plastic sleeve.  I strive for musical excellence, and when I achieve it I like to archive.  Video is a stellar choice.  On the downside video, especially YouTube video, is rife with B.S, but then again so is America.  When public education is smitten by the notion that students will be easier to teach because you give them their way allowing personal computing entertainment devices into the classroom, it was over.  It has been over since that decision was made.  While I do use a laptop computer for educational porpoises, and it is indispensable for quick research, never has it ever served as a substitute for music education.  All of the applications on the planet intended for music production cannot create art and as such I do not use them for that.  I use them to record and document my own artistry.  Since the industry as sidestepped the artistic educational process as has public education in general, we have Zombieland.  Staring at the phone will not build you a house, grow you a vegetable, fertilize an embryo, write you a song, or make you a dollar.  You must figure it out yourself first.  

The White Supremacist's Swing that is Not King.

Briefly I watched today a Youtube video of a B list jazz pianist giving a lesson to a student.  I heard this musician live in Raleigh, North Carolina back in the day at the Frog and Nightgown.  He was the pianist for a notable A list saxophonist.  He was impressive, but I remember he didn't swing.  The topic of his instructional video upon which I happened today including the concept of "swing."  I do not want to open pandora's box at this juncture in my evening.  I know what swing is.  Swing is what swing does.  It is tangible, and it is the discernible quality that makes or breaks a jazz artist.  You can feel it.  Most of the music today we hear has no real feeling.  America no longer is set up for that.  Musicians exchange files, download beats, and collaborate.  They do not stuff into a three track studio in Motortown and play live.  They do not engage in the process that created artistic American music.  The likes of Stax Records, Muscle Shoals, and Motown are dead.  Apple, Google, and the rest vie for control of the music industry.  Ho hum.  Stupid is as stupid does.  Hal Galper was _______.  It to me was alarming.  What he was telling his student was incomprehensible.  Time after time he told the student to change from quarter notes to eight notes, and although the student pretended to understand and do what he asked, he continued to play the bebop scale in eighth notes.  None of the things he was attempting to teach became evident in the students playing.  The only thing that happened was a slight change in legato when the internal pulse upon which they relied to play time changed from quarter notes to half notes.  Brazilian music is notated in 2/4 time, and this is important.  Finding the broader beats upon which to rely while counting also is important.  It dawned upon me that his understanding and thus concept of "swing" is what I call "pop."  He even suggested that most traditional jazz pianists tap their foot on one and three!  One and three!  I stopped watching, and I must digress.  Here is a working jazz pianist telling a student to tap his foot on one and three, because they are the weak beats, the beats that don't swing.  All righty then.  Herein lies my grift with America.  There is a force truly that does not understand the feeling of Swing (Wynton Marsalis) and is functioning in a public capacity as a purveyor of America's one true art form.   Truly we have become a failure of a nation or more accurately the social media of Capitalism.     

The Untreated Disease of Capitalism

Russia hacking the election just fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic.  Real news reporting during the days of Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, and Harry Reasoner are gone.  Edward R. Murrow has left America en route for Canada with the other Hollywood "stars."  Current news reporting suffers from the same ills as the rest of the American population.  ADD.  ADD fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic, although it wasn't. The things in this world that are and have been real are ignored.  Reality is reality TV, fiction, graphic, violent, and unChristian.  The feeling of Christianity no longer is possible it seems from the exertion placed upon it by life.  Modern life.  Modern life in America is a shallow puddle, a humiliated anxious cesspool of anger, disappointment, and resentment.  The man he is again me.  (that in the black slave colloquialism of Mark Twain means, "Against me."  The man he is again me, and I don't think I'll make it through.  Trump is trying.  I feel it is a good SCOTIS pick.  His Secretary of Education, and this is speaking from someone with a Bachelor's degree in Music Education, is a misstep.  Hopefully her vetting process will cut through the muck.  Muckraker.  Moonraker.  Faker.  Midnight shaker.  Education has been a joke for two decades.  Although I see the manifestations of poor public education daily and metaphorically as American life, I have no interest in battling "the man."  The man he is again me, not going to give me what I'm due.  Johnny Depp has fourteen homes, and he is a mediocre actor.  Don't get me wrong.  I like some of his characters.  No actor deserves fourteen homes, and if they have them they are imprudent and influenced by drug and alcohol abuse. The mortgage payments on fourteen homes could amount to two million dollars a day.  Who in their right mind ever could conceive they could support such a habit?  A few hookers (Charlie Sheen).  A few bails of spleef (Willie Nelson).  Cuban cigars (?)  Moderate needs.  Who possibly could want what most American CEO's and celebrities have?  The answer is those suffering from the disease of Capitalism, a fatal socioeconomic system which has ruined America.  Stop.  Backtrack.  Capitalism has not ruined America.  Poor public education has.  

King Kong in Mexico

It is all request Friday on WCPE.  Usually their playlist is more effective, when local patrons call in and ask for specific works.  I would think it would be extremely difficult filling twenty-four hours with music day after day.  It would take a musicologist or cultural historian to provide such a service.  I would like to know who does it.  Probably it can be a group effort dividing up the programming into differing shows.  They do that.  Different disc jockeys (if that is what they should be called) host different time segments with names.  Classical Cafe.  I am getting a bit of a treat as a pianist, trumpet, and composer myself.  I have dedicated five years of my life to studying music composition.  Barely can I remember it, because to what we are exposed on television (the largest purveyor of popular music) is so bad.  This is why I listen to WCPE.  It is a stark contrast to the insipid and selfish music of today's pop.  That is not my theme.  My theme is to comment on recent activity including a chamber music concert by the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra at St. John's Episcopal Church.  I am not feeling any music at the moment and for good reason.  The Guns of Navarone are firing, and my stomach is a mess.  Acid reflux wakes me early each morning burning my throat with stomach acid.  Gorbachov says the world is preparing for war.  It certainly seems that way, because Fort Bragg is in full exercise.  This is why I cannot feel any music.  My sensory system  completely and wholly is overwhelmed by noise.  I cannot function, and I have trouble thinking.  I can muster enough synapse action to comment on Handel's Water Music.  I studied classical composition at Ohio State University.  I made an A in four voice counterpoint at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I don't compose classical music anymore, because the dynamic in Fayettenam does not support my aesthetic.  The aesthetic here is war.  We are at war, and guns are blazing.  Regularly I can hear fifty-five millimeter machines guns tatting away.  The ground shakes for a moment.  In addition Lockheed Martin has provided a new targeting system for their rocket propelled shells.  The Fayetteville Observer says it uses sound waves to target the weapons.  Oh goody!  Like we don't have enough infrasonic pollution all ready?  No one gets it.  There were three suites listed on the program for the FSO chamber music concert.  Either they played them in a different order than what was listed, or they omitted the last set.  When the program got long I tried to figure out which movement they were playing from the program.  Several things came to mind.  One was the introduction by the Music Nerd.  During the Baroque period only were there natural horns.  Valves had not yet been invented.  If horns or trumpets were to be played, tubing had to be altered to accommodate the key of the composition.  Most of it was in D, F, and G.  Interesting.  There were some minors as well.  After the program got long, it began to dawn on me why the concert became a chore like sitting in church.  It was pittance, punishment for your sins.  You had to endure through the music to be cleansed.  We attend most concerts by the FSO, and most of them are exceptional.  Some are sleepy.  There is an inherent concept in classical music, its intimacy, that is sleepy.  It can be difficult to stay awake and focused, because the music's physicality by tempo and style is intimate and relaxing.  I don't like this.  I don't like having to fight to stay awake to enjoy music.  This concert was sleepy, but it was not so sleepy in its tempos and styles.  They were simplistic.  Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.  Square rhythm because some of them were meant as dance forms for court.  Always they are stiff and square, because classical music does not swing.  This is why it does not appeal to me so much.  Because the rhythm of all of the movements was so simplistic, court like, and because they all had to be in one key for the natural horns it got boring fast.  There were changes in meter and tempi, but the constant tonality of D or F was not interesting.  Classical harmony is not interesting.  V-I.  Authentic cadence.  The other issue about Baroque music is that the phrases ramble.  It is a continuous stream of notes with few resolutions.  Romantic music can be this way also.  I like phraseology.  I like to hear phrases of music that are like sentences organized into paragraphs.  Say something, and then wait for he listener to understand it.  Say something more.  It is like conversation, good music.  A string quartet is like a conversation between four adult gentlemen.  (Steve, a telemarketer, just called my mother to try to get her to give money to "The Veterans.")  Of course like the Wounded Warrior Project, the wounded warriors rarely get the money.  It is squandered amongst the upper employees of the organization.  Truly I love some classical music, and I mean concert-oriented orchestral or chamber music born in Europe.  Classical denotes a specific period in music history culminating in the High Classic Period of 1770-1780.  At least that is what Dr. Lois Rosow taught me at OSU.  I don't really agree with those dates, because when looking at the birthdays of Beethoven, Mozart, and Papa Haydn...  Well dates are relative just like music history courses.  My tastes in music are anti-establishment and personal.  Nationalism has its place, and I love the music of the Russian Five and the French Six.  Fully I understand the music of the Russian Five was a reaction against the nationalism of Tchaikovsky, but that fiery Russian parade music is exciting.  They use the crash cymbals a lot.  Donald Trump wants to build a wall, and I have refrained from commenting on his agenda until now.  What an utter and total waste of the taxpayers money.  Obama did not increase the GNP, but at least his money was for the insuring of the uninsured.  Building a wall or fence along the Mexican border utterly will be useless.  It will not stop drug trafficking or illegal immigration.  He should be smart enough to understand this, and I think he does.  His "wall" is a campaign ploy.  It is a device of his divisiveness.  It will accomplish nothing other that satisfying those who voted for him.  He is a rabble-rouser.  He is a soap box shouter.  Damn, I wish he would shut up.  So far his record is abominable.  Rex Tillerson and his State Department resigned!  Keystone pipeline.  A wall.  It's too bad King Kong doesn't live in Mexico.  Then a wall might make sense.  Wetbacks can both dig and climb.  They are good at it.  I guess they may not be good at dying.  We have become even more a fascist nation.  Ugh.