A Joke

"Doc, I wake up in a cold sweat having dreamt about tee pees and wigwams."  The doctor said, "You are too tense."

For Lack of a Better Idea

I had to get the name of GE's CEO off my blog.  It was polluting space.  To add insult to injury it seems my favorite transportation company is thinking about bringing its intermodal hub to Fayettenam.  There was a lengthy editorial in the Fayetteville Observer about how great of an idea this is.  Jobs it seems.  Construction jobs to build the place.  The writer loathes the term "Fayettenam."  Not sure why, because it is accurate.  He says that the entire  town (because Fayetteville is not really a city) relies upon the military's dollars.  The military have nothing to do with Momentum Foods, DAK Americas, DuPont, Cargill, and Goodyear.  Those plants are not reliant upon the military in any way, and often I think how they contribute to the local economy.  Someone works at these places, but rarely do we read about their services.  It is like they are invisible.  CSX-T may be the most visible of all industry in Fayettenam, because they service the U.S. military.  That is not well publicized either, their relationship with Fort Bragg.  I have surmised they haul aviation fuel out to the post pretty regularly.  They do this at night under the cover of darkness.  They are very stealth about the process, but I know the sound of the locomotive horn that pulls these tanker cars.  It is offensive, but then again a train horn should and is meant to be offensive.  It says, "Get the hell out of the way.  A train is coming."  Rail accidents have been in the news recently, because an Amtrack train slammed into a backhoe killing two workers.  It seems the "system" that is supposed to be installed on trains to keep them from colliding is not fully implemented or failsafe.  Why do they really need this anyway?  Isn't that the job of the railroad to handle traffic like the aviation industry?  I would think that huge control room in Jacksonville would be lit up like a Christmas tree.  Oh, Amtrack we are talking about, a government owned entity.  Pass the buck.  I still am waiting to hear why the Amtrack engineer had his train going over a 100 m.p.h. when it derailed killing quite a few people.  Bueller?  The world is not a nice place, and living in the Carolinas is becoming more embarrassing.  If the Boss cancels a concert here for political reasons, well.....  It's a shite state of affairs.  My sentiments about CSX-T building an intermodal hub here?  It was not that long ago the irresponsible government of Fayetteville sanctioned and paid for a rail traffic study.  I have read it.  They suggested Fort Bragg or rather CSX-T build a connector, so that two mile long 450 car military trains would not block downtown traffic.  Nada.  The spur those trains back into is a hideous nightmare.  Rotten ties, spikes hanging akimbo, and rails like the Swamp Fox roller coaster.  Who could a massively loaded military train meant to defend the sanctity of the United States possible rely upon that trackage?  Bueller?  The community is ignorant of the intrusion of rail traffic, except for Kim Hasty.  When she and her judge purchased their new home, little did they know 25 freight trains pass through downtown each day.  I know, because my left ear rings when a train is nearby.  Tinnitus is caused by low frequency sound if you have some hearing loss.  The frequencies that ring are the ones you are missing for some reason.  My left ear tinnitus is like a spidey sense.  It never fails me.  I am listening to it cycle at the moment on and off as a huge freight train is assembled.  This happens nonstop for the most part.  Occasionally we get a break, and it is like bliss.  Bliss on tap.  My ears don't ring, there is no low frequency pressure, and Fayetteville feels like it did before the onset of AC traction.  It feels good.  Because Fayettenam all ready has been sacrificed to the railroad gods, what is the harm in building yet another heavily trafficked rail yard nearby?  People murder each other daily, and no one knows why.  Why do you feel shitty?  Bring it, but soon enough eminent domain will be overturned by an honest and diligent congress and the Supreme Court will rule that the government cannot take your property for private gain.  Trump was a part of this legislation, and as the months unfold no one is qualified to be president.  I am glad the media is doing a better job about exposing the hyperbole and rhetoric and letting Americans fight it out in true American form.  Duke students protested for eight days demanding the firing of some high ranking administrators for racial bias.  Party on, Garth. 

What is Multitonality?

In a nutshell the squirrels ate some of my Hostas.  Some of them survived and are poking out of the ground.  (I really wish Mac would drive his pimped up ride somewhere else for the evening)  Instead my head continues to spin as my open window directly faces the Milan Yard.  Our house is the only two-story dwelling on this side of the street whose upstairs windows face Milanity.  (Of course I mean the Milan Yard)  I don't know why CSX-T calls it the Milan Yard.  Rest assuredly there is no vague similarity to Milan.  I have been to Italy more than once, and your ears don't ring from rampant tinnitus caused by infrasound, another term American ignores.  Instead we sell you hearing aids at a 1000% mark up.  Seaboard Coastline came first.  Atlantic Coastline came first.  John Snow so fit to fuse the Chessie System with Seaboard hence CS.  X was their term for "whatever."  T stands for transportation.  This company has revolutionized container shipping.  Logistics and inter modality are a part of their corporate lingo.  They put stuff in big metal boxes, and then transfer them from ship to truck to rail, or rail to truck to ship, or truck to ship to rail.  You know they have built a railroad in Iraq, or Syria, or somewhere over there.  They have built a gas station too, and it cost the American taxpayers a pocket full of kryptonite.  (I mean coin)  I hope UNC wins tomorrow night.  I don't hate the squirrels for eating my host bulbs. There are a few plants left that are healthy and sprouting.  (I need to take a shower, but my funk is abstractly pleasing)  Multitonality is a harmonic system that embraces all the sonority of all twelve keys equally.  It is tonal, but it "in" all twelve keys at the same time.  Therefore you cannot analyze the music with a key signature.  You can use harmonic analysis, and it is the best way to study the music.  Chord symbols are not just efficient for jazz.  I have created a body of piano music, over eighty works, many of which are the length of sonatas, for a grand tee total of a Mercedes Convertible.  "Give that man a prize! I put it to you Greg.  My friends are crazy.  They are losing their minds."  Multitonality.  These pieces embody the emotion and intimacy of jazz and the eloquence and restraint of classical.  The melodies will prove timeless and will last as long as learned society exists.  These melodies will become America's newest Great American Songbook, if allowed.  You would not listen to a piano work by Anton Webern, but you would listen to a work by Paul Reichle lll.  This is my revenant.  This is my country. (but not really, because America sucks)  It's not really my revenant, but I wanted to mention that frightful mockery of a movie purchased by Leonardo DeCrappio.  I like Leo's work wholeheartedly.  I don't like The Revenant.  I like Birdman, and I was elated finally to see it.  It is a far cry from The Irrelevant.  Anyway, I have no vehicle for this piano music.  America is not sophisticated enough to acknowledge the Gershwin brothers.  We have taught our yute about Miley Cyrus, Tayor Shaft, and ?  

Mac the Engineer

So Mac is outside my house again.  He pulled up about 9:40 p.m. while I was napping on my bed.  (I always am waiting for the mafia to show up and riddle my house with bullets)  My neighbors get expensive convertible Mercedes for their anniversaries.  I blow my yard.  That is something the Sortopotamus would be good at, blowing my yard.  I need to get in touch with him about that.  Blowing my yard.  (I crack myself up, or rather I am cracking up)  So Mac is sitting off in the near distance.  Evidently no one else knows this except me, but they do.  They will not talk about it.  They will not accept that is it true.  I am learning this is because of Southern pride.  It's a survival instinct.  "We protects what is ours, the South."  I reckon.  I tend to call a turd a turd when I smell it, and this one is a big fat turd.  Mac in most probability has moved on home, and his big pimped-up ride is sitting on the tracks waiting for the next "shift."  Our federal boys do see fit to regulate the amount of hours a driver can steer a prime mover, but it isn't effective.  You can read about these foibles on online forums.  It is a huge weakness in the Rail Industry, another boring institution that no one seems to take interest in, but it controls our lives.  They are savvy.  They are stealth.  They are irresponsible.  They are the epitome of Southern survival.  I had a Norfolk/Southern engineer fire a pistol at me once, when I was photographing his "consist" late at night in Columbus, Ohio.  I have it on tape.  I used the gunshot in a musical work I created.  His pistol shot occurs at the climax of the piece.  Bueller.  "Why would a Norfolk/Southern engineer fire a pistol out of his cab."  Bueller.  "Because he was afraid."  "Bueller, this was before 9/11."  "Yes sir, he was afraid, because Norfolk/Southern like CSX-T like to break the power axle rule."  Bueller.  "What is a power axle rule?"  Bueller.  "A power axles rule dictates how many diesel prime movers can be hooked together to form a "consist."  The consists I observed in Cowtown where doosies.  I chased this one in my Nissan pick up all over town.  The engineer kept pulling forward to escape my scrutiny.  Bueller.  "Why would he do that?"  Bueller.  "Because he was in violation of the power axle rule."  That meant he had too many diesel prime movers hooked together in tandem for the good of humanity, or so says them federal boys.  Too much power.  Norfolk/Southern has "too much power."  Enter Erskine Bowles.   If I remember correctly Mr. Bowles was chief of staff of the Obama administration.  Then he appointed Holden Thorp the country's youngest university chancellor.  Then academic fraud was discovered at UNC, his college.  Mr. Thorp fired the Athletic Director at the beginning of the autumn semester.  Tarheels were not happy.  Mr. Thorp stepped down with a pocket full of kryptonite.  (I mean coin.)  Holden and Patty moved to St. Louis, enrolled their daughter in boarding school, and left their son to his own devices at UNC.  We have heard nary a word from them since.  Holden, like Chris Potter, played in my band.  They were different bands, and Holden's came first.  We won the high school talents show at Terry Sanford my senior year by masquerading as the Blues Brothers.  (Also we played well for high school students)  Holden played lead and rhythm guitar.  I spoke with such a soft southern accent back in l981, I barely recognize myself.  Evidently it was appealing to one particular female student, and we had sex a lot.  (That was in high school mind you)  Not many people were sexually active back then.  I learned early.  Life sucks, so get what you can.  I have not been successful at getting a lot of money, but my net worth is the future of classical music.  Let me clarify.  I don't like to use the term "Classical Music" at all, because it is a misnomer.  Rather I would say Contemporary Classical Music.  It is a more eloquent term and also more descriptive.  In essence what people erroneously call "Classical Music" like the radio station WCPE, should be called European-based chamber and orchestral music.  Slowly at the turn of the century it came to America.  If I had to choose this would be the time I would choose to live.  To keep it short, my net worth (which is not worth much) is the future of Contemporary Classical Music.  That is because I have invented the next style of composition recognized by scholars who study learned music.  We have the Second Viennese School, like AC Traction, electromagnetic waves, or prime movers is a complete obscurity to the mainstream American populace.  Instead they gather at Louie's Sport Pub and Tiki Bar outside on a Sunday and listen to bar music by musicians dressed like the grateful dead.  It is a bit like Halloween.  They get to play dress up, get drunk, and hoot and holler.  This is not the way I choose to spend my Sunday afternoon, because it is a waste of time.  There are no jobs, because the jobs that formed the core of middle class America were in manufacturing.  "Daddy is going to the plant."  They made things at the plant.  Important things happened at the plant.  Where are the plants now?  If I did go to Louie's Sports Bar, nothing would happen.  Maybe I might enjoy the music, but it wouldn't matter.  Things are set in stone in the South, boy.  Things have been the same way forever, and this is the way we like it.  What about the jobs we once had to keep the South alive?  What about the rampant poverty that has gripped rural North and South Carolina?  Ask the folks at Sierra Nevada Corporation what they think about that.  They are too busy building air terminals that float.  Not much helping the impoverished in the Carolinas.  They are helping the MOTSU ball.  It's all about the MOTSU ball that created ISIS.  

M.O.T.S.O Balls, Oye Ve!

What is a MOTSO ball?  It is a military container shipping terminal gleefully hauling munitions to Kuwait and Iraq.  (Are we still doing this?  Are we still doing this?)  We did this in l990, when I became clinically depressed.  (What is clinical depression?)  Being depressed in a clinic?  That's ludicrous, just like the rest of modern America.  We did this in l990.  Anyone remember why?  The televised war?  Bueller?  The first time we watched war unfold on our TVs.  We watched the American military descend on Kuwait and immediately become the catalyst for a full surrender of the Iraqi army.  They laid down their arms and said, "Whoa poppy.  Like we give up."  What is a MOTSO ball?  The MOTSO ball singlehandedly enabled the movement of the American military over the Atlantic with merchant ships full of munitions.  It worked. Saddam Hussein was surprised, and ultimately ended up living in an underground gutter with a goat.  I don't know about the goat, but they strung him up like a sacrificial Negro and hanged him until death.  It wasn't over.  After failing to inspire the Iraqi military to live up to the grandeur and might of the American military, they surrendered again, laid down their arms, and open the flood gates for ISIS to occupy our fighting machines.  WAs the MOTSO ball successful?  It was not created until after World War ll, of which if I remember correctly we won by dropping bombs on Japan.  We didn't win the Viet Nam War, but it cluttered my adolescence with ten years of bloody murder also which was televised.  If you can't tell I am not a fan of the MOTSO ball.  When the MOTSO ball gets spinning "war trains" with "AC Traction" get rolling continuously from Fort Bragg to Sunny Point.  I remember it now.  I moved back from Columbia, South Carolina to Fayettenam, and I was depressed.  Why?  The answer is the same reason I am depressed now.  "War trains" with "AC Traction" rolling continuously from Fort Bragg to Sunny Point.  I didn't choose it.  I didn't choose to live in this state or this town, a town that unravels at the seams when spring comes.  UNC may win the NCAA national title, and that would be good.  Even if UNC committed academic fraud to enable athletes to qualify for college play time, still it would be good.  The money that is pouring in to UNC surely will be used to build more athletic facilities, like an indoor training facility for their football team.  Rah rah Tarheels.  Meanwhile colleges and university still are offering worthless degrees with fancy names, the the American economy supports none of them.  It is a recurring theme with me, but it is true, just like "AC Traction" is a dangerous thing despite its 47% adhesion.  So there is this huge prime mover.  Bueller?  "What is a prime mover?"  Bueller.  "A prime mover is an interest rate based upon the work ethic of a mover and shaker."  "Bueller, what is a Shaker?"  Bueller.  "A Shaker is a puritan American founder who finds tranquility by exorcising demons from their body by shaking them out."  "That is correct, Bueller.  Bueller, What is a prime mover?"  A prime mover is a huge, elephantine, colossal turbo-charged diesel engine, usually twelve cylinders, that is mobile on bogies that nowadays are steered radially.  They have dynamic braking, power inverters, and other amenities that salvage the conductor and engineer from death by electrocution.  This consists of wearing lead boots, Gortex insulating jumpsuits, Depends, and carbon gloves so the residual electricity instead of going into them goes into our power grid robbing it of its efficiency.  The conductor and engineer operate efficiently, but our local power grid like a sacrificial lamb, oozes its amperage into the air.  (This is a bonafide property of an electromagnetic wave, a nonexistent, non recognized, property of the aesthetic of physics, a bonafide scientific discipline.)  We don't hear about these much anymore here in America.  Instead we hear about mobile apps., which run on electromagnetic waves.  Just like AC Traction no one is much interested in either.  They're just some invisible thing that balanced the federal budget when Bill Clinton was getting head from Monical Lewinsky.  (I hope I spelled her name correctly.)  So if I live here in America, host to the MOTSO ball and Fort Bragg, Cherry Point, and Camp Lejune why don't I read about them?  Why don't we read about anything of value to our employment in America.  "I ask you Greg, what are the employers in America?  Is it too much to ask to know what the available jobs are?  Shouldn't there be a huge list that tells the country, the tax payer, what their jobs prospects are?"  Maybe there is.  Usually it is called a Chamber of Commerce.  I learned that term from Janet Beard, a lawyer who became Janet Thoren when she married.  The term Chamger of Commerce she discovered in the fifth grade during a social studies project.  I reckon any smart lawyer has a notion of what jobs are available in America, but I don't.  It used to be a matter of public interest.  We needed to know what the jobs were, so we could fight for them.  Why would we need to fight for jobs, when we are a Capitalist country?  It seems "a private means of ownership" likes to hire cheap labor, labor that would not be considered middle class.  The middle class has to fight for these jobs and hence their wages and benefits.  Does this sound familiar? There were these things called "Labor Unions" that organized and fought for the employed worked force.  Labor Unions were good.  MOTSO balls not so good, for us that is.  (to be continued...)

Learn It, Live It, Love It, Spicoli. "Hey Dude. What's MOTSU?"

Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point [MOTSU]
Southport, N.C.

The Sunny Point facility is operated by the 597th Transportation Group, on a 16,000-acre, Army-owned site. The facility, opened in 1955, is the key ammunition shipping point on the Atlantic Coast for the Department of Defense. The huge Sunny Point installation, located along N.C. Highway 133, was built with a large undeveloped buffer zone and huge sand berms for safety.

The Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point, N.C., the largest ammunition port in the nation, and the Army's primary east coast deep-water port. Military Ocean Terminal (MOT), Sunny Point, North Carolina, is the Department of Defense's key Atlantic Coast ammunition shipping point. It provides worldwide trans-shipment of DOD ammunition, explosives, and other dangerous cargo under the command of the 1303d Major Port Command. Sunny Point is the military ocean terminal (MOTSU) in North Carolina where munitions are brought in by truck or train and loaded aboard ships bound for Europe. It also supports Fort Bragg. If the 82nd Airborne Division is mobilized, which can happen anytime at short notice, heavy equipment and bulk supplies and ammunition for the division and its supporting units would be shipped out of MOTSU.

The terminal has a port with three docks and a temporary holding area for munitions. The Sunny Point facility, opened in 1955, is operated by the 597th Transportation Terminal Group. The facility is on a 16,000-acre, Army-owned site near the Cape Fear River with 212,000 square feet of building space.

Sunny Point is the only DOD terminal equipped to handle containerized ammunition. The terminal commander also supervises deployment and redeployment of joint forces through the North Carolina State ports of Wilmington and Morehead City. Its Civilian Personnel Advisory Center successfully regionalized under the Southeast Region at Fort Benning in 1996. Major functions of the terminal in support of its ammunition port operations mission include traffic management, Army rail service, Reserve Component training, public works, ammo surveillance and security, global communications, equipment maintenance, contract administration, resource management, and installation logistics. Population served includes 10 soldiers, 228 civilians, 3 USAR Reserve Units, plus 42 USAR IMAs.

Sunny Point had the mission of transshipping over 90 percent of the resupply munitions sent to and from the Gulf during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Desert Sortie. The 1303d Major Port Command (MPC) loaded and discharged 2.1 million tons of munitions from 186 vessels in support of those operations. The port reception and clearance of such vast amounts of cargo, in a relatively short period of time, were the most challenging and difficult tasks. Eighty percent of all ammunition that came to Sunny Point during the war arrived by rail, requiring the unloading of some 27,000 railcars. Like many of the rail lines on Army installations throughout the United States, Sunny Point's 100 miles of track had not been heavily used since the Vietnam War; as a result, they had been maintained only to meet minimum standards. To put it simply, the track was not in condition to suddenly accept a tenfold increase in use. The Army Reserve 1205th Transportation Railway Services Unit (TRSU) provided Sunny Point with the critical mix of manpower, skills, and training that ensured rail cargo operations would not be slowed or halted during the rest of the war.

During Operation Noble Anvil the Air Force sought to replenish its stock of M117 (750-pound) and Mark (MK) 82 (500-pound) bombs in Europe. This was a high-priority Air Force requirement for a very large number of bombs. The requisitioned quantities were too large for air transport, so the bombs would be moved by rail and then on ocean vessels to Europe. They were loaded onto eight trains for delivery to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, North Carolina. Six of the trains had arrived at Sunny Point, and two vessels loaded with bombs had headed for Europe when the Yugoslav Government agreed to NATO's peace terms. The two remaining trains were diverted to storage depots.

Deployment Support Command's 597th Transportation Group at Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point, North Carolina, proved it could handle the challenge of meeting depot-to-port ammunition distribution and surge requirements when it completed the upload of the Military Sealift Command's MV Chesapeake Bay in two grueling 24-hour workdays. The operation was in support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise, Turbo Cads '99. This was the first time the North Carolina port was used for a Turbo Cads exercise-a test designed to confirm a unit's ability to distribute containerized ammunition. After leaving port, the ship sailed first to Guam to unload 256 containers of munitions, then on to Korea to discharge the remaining 597 containers.

Sunny Point boasts the best safety record in the Military Traffic Management Command and is a recognized leader in environmental stewardship. The humid climate in North Carolina produces lush vegetation throughout the summer and becomes a fire hazard in drier fall and winter months. This has prompted the US Forest Service to give the Southeastern Coastal Area a fire-danger rating comparable to California's West Coast Chaparral Area because the dense growth often provides fuel for hard-to-control wildfires.

To combat this hazard and promote the health of select plants and animals, the 597th US Army Transportation Terminal Group, Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point, N.C., designed an efficient program to reduce ground fuel through prescribed burning with low-intensity fires during moderate weather conditions. Carefully managed burns create a buffer should a wildfire occur, giving needed time to protect other sites on the terminal property. Managed burns range from 1,000 to 4,500 acres each year. Sites chosen for prescribed burning are "rotated" so that the same site is selected for controlled burns every three to five years.

On 31 July 1995 Weeks Marine, Inc., Camden, New Jersey was awarded a $7,585,452 Firm Fixed contract for deep draft dredging, Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point North Carolina: Deepening entrance channel number 1 from its current depth to 38 feet mean lower low water (MLLW) and widening the channel from its current width to 400 feet, deepening Basin number 1 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW, deepening Entrance Channel number 2 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW and widening the channel from its current width to 400 feet, deepening Basin number 2 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW and widening a portion of the basin from its current width to 1,500 feet. Disposal of dredge material was in the Wilmington Ocean Dredged Material Disposal site (ODMDS). The total quantity of material to be dredged was estimated to be 4,349,100 cubic yards. Work will be performed in Sunny Point, North Carolina, and was expected to be completed by 20 June 1996.

Wilmington is one of only two deep-draft ports in North Carolina and the only one that handles containerized cargo, so the Cape Fear channel is critical to commerce. In September 1996 wave action from Hurricane Fran had reduced the minimum draft across half the channel width by three feet, setting up a severe navigational bottleneck. Philadelphia District sent the dredge McFarland, the only oceangoing vessel in the world equipped for three dredging methods -- bottom-dump, pump-ashore and sidecast. For this assignment she worked exclusively via bottom-dump dredging. Dredged material was deposited in open water outside the channel, where it helped build up an underwater berm to protect nearby shrimping areas. The McFarland concluded its emergency mission on 29 September 1996, having removed more than 167,000 cubic yards of sandy material that was limiting navigation in the channel.

The Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point needed dredging in early 1998. The Sunny Point Army Depot had scheduled a deep-draft ship to arrive in mid-March. That left only two months for the New Orleans District's dredge Wheeler to dredge and dispose of 2.3 million cubic yards of sand, silt and clay. The Wheeler operated 24 hours a day, dredging the Cape Fear River and the depot at a production rate up to three times faster than the McFarland, a much smaller dredge. The goal was a 38-feet project depth. The Wheelerfinished dredging in North Carolina 10 March 1998, meeting its goal and making the channel and berth areas ready for the incoming deep-draft ship.

Opening the Sunny Point, N.C., facility to commercial cargo is part of a new initiative of the Military Traffic Management Command. The commercial use will enhance the training of port personnel and earn money for the facility's operation. The first cargo, which arrived 24 June 2001 on the Giga Trans, presented unique challenges. The steam turbine generator, moved in two separate pieces, weighed more than 760,000 pounds. Intermodal Terminal Inc., a logistics company based in Houston, Texas, searched for a port that could handle the offloading and transport of the oversized generator. The firm discovered the cargo was too large to fit between various train trestles and bridges along the rail routes from nearby Atlantic Ocean commercial ports. The solution they found was the Military Traffic Management Command's Sunny Point facility. A pilot program allowing the US Army to conduct commercial movements from the Carolina port was approved in April 2000.

A fire erupted on an ammunition ship berthed at the Military Traffic Management Command's Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point on 14 July 2001. The fire erupted in the engine room of the "Edward Carter" at 4:10 p.m., Saturday afternoon. The vessel is operated by the US Navy's Military Sealift Command.Firefighting units from Sunny Point and nearby communities in Brunswick, New Hanover, Pender and Horry counties responded. Heavy smoke poured from the unit and compounded efforts to extinguish the blaze. As a precaution at the height of the fire, the US Coast Guard closed the adjacent Cape Fear River for four miles in either direction to maritime traffic. The fire was reported extinguished at approximately 10 p.m. One body was recovered on the vessel. A second crewman, reported to have jumped from the ship into the Cape Fear River, was reported missing. The Edward Carter arrived at Sunny Point on June 14 for the loading of prepositioned explosives. The vessel was to have departed for Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean on July 27. The vessel was not being loaded at the time of the fire. The vessel carried approximately 1,232 ammunition containers, the equivalent of 5 million net explosive weight of assorted munitions and missiles.

Black Power or Superpower?

Wake up and smell the coffee.  America no longer is a superpower. I can watch Charlie Rose and listen to each and every guest regurgitate, how America is the leader of the world.  I chuckle.  I chuckle, because a nation with no monetary power cannot be a superpower.  No nation with trillions of dollars in debt (although to whom I honestly do not know) can be a superpower.  We are a cheap whore.  Is it flattering to be India and China's whore?  There must be a joke here.  A Jewish American Princess believes "cooking" and "fucking" are cities in China.  Isn't this a bit of whom we are?  America.  A bit of an overstated, narcissist, bully trying to police the world?  No.  There is a reason we are in the Middle East, but do you know what it is?  Does anyone?  Poppies anyone?  Bueller?  Natural resources?  Bueller?  America is a used up whore, and the pimps are parading around in mink coats and feathers in their hats.  Once this was Hip Hop.  Once this was "Blaxploitation."  When it was clear, when it was understandable, it was cool.  Now it is just a facade of invisible factions, ghosts, battling for control, like the shallow gods of Greek mythology.  America is not a superpower.  Why would be considered such a thing?  It is not possible (Republican) [sic] to believe that because once we were so still we are now.  IBM is extinct, just as are the rest of American ideals that once represented a great nation.  Greatness no longer is a tangible quality of America.  If it is, what qualifies us?  What have we done to exhibit greatness, leadership, or virtue?  President Obama was successful plotting the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and it was good.  Possibly it is the best thing America has done in sixteen years.  The list of inexorable ills that define America are more prevalent.  Wall Street.  The Iraq War.  Halliburton.  Exxon.  BP.  The list of America's platitudes is defunct.  We reached the moon, but so did the Soviets.  We solved the Cold War to see the Soviet Union deteriorate into mob corruption.  We created ISIS.  We created ISIS.  Let's get one thing straight.  America no longer is a superpower, so I wish we would stop saying it.  A superpower is defined by economics, economic gain.  ECONOMIC GAIN.  I don't mean economic gain for the pimps parading around in fur coats with feathers in their hats at Bilderberg rallies.  The shallow gods of Greek technology (I mean mythology) will not inherit the earth.  The meek shall inherit the earth.  It is torture the wait, and watching them destroy our planet.  What?  My microwaves of which my fortune are made are dangerous?  Bah humbug.  This is the thought process of the mentally taxed and the demented.  It's called denial.  America is in denial.  Maybe it's good that Donald Springer is stirring the stew.  

Harnessing Your Anger

Anger is a reasonable reaction to disrespect.  Perhaps anger's volatility is a potent antidote capable of dissolving illogic and neurosis.  Perhaps anger's volatility should be used as a vaccination against ensuing dementia.  When one's only contacts in tandem spew forth contradictory statements is it only a plea for their own well being?  Perhaps when you are struggling so are your friends.  So are your relatives.  It never seems that way.  Instead it feels like purgatory.  Consequently boundaries must be created and priorities set.  Anger is a reasonable reaction to disrespect.  I don't know about the rest of America, but I know I am disrespected often.  When humanity is struggling it is overwhelming, because you are your only salvation.  Is this correct?  Is praying to God the answer? Is asking for help from one's environment and friends and family the responsibility of God?  How can God possibly fix both?  I find it highly improbable, that God will solve either of my problems.  The national defense of the United States of America takes precedence. I did not choose to live in Fayettenam.  I did not choose to live on the perimeter of what now has become the world's largest military installation.  Until BRAC decided to conglomerate Ground Forces Command underground at Fort Bragg, my situation was not as desperate.  When I reflect over my depression in the early 1990's, two disparate things were in motion.  One was the beginning of AC traction technology, of which nary a soul in our country will acknowledge, its existence or possible negative impact upon our health and environment.  I am beginning to develop a neurosis myself about the phrase "AC traction technology," yet each day when I view the webpage of Reuters, the BBC, or the Huffington Post some "new technology" has made their front page.  Does strapping a lens to an iPhone like a giant dildo really qualify as "new technology?"  The technology we need as the human race to thrive all ready has been invented, but it is stale.  IBM is stale.  International Business Machines.  Remember them?  There only used to be two technology companies, IBM and Apple.  Now there are a host of "new technologies," who purport to be the holy grails of human existence.  They are not.  Wireless communication is not a new technology.  Only is it as a common tool for the common man. Once one had to become versed in HAM radio technology to communicate wirelessly.  Once one had to learn Morse Code.  Once one had to assemble their own computer consisting of parts such as a "motherboard."  Millennials are spoiled, naive, and ignorant, and it is not their fault.  It is the fault of Capitalism with a capital "C."  When the good of the nation falls a distant second to the wealth of a few, Capitalism has failed.  I am angry, and I don't want to be angry.  I would rather go about my daily business unabated and uninterrupted, but I can't.  The nation's defense takes precedence.  For two weeks, not unlike the two weeks surrounding Christmas, I have experienced a nation coming unraveled at the seems, as our jubilant military deploy to fight ISIS.  Since widely it has not been reported, I will coin my own phrase of operation.  It shall be called, "The Nocturnal Underground Railway of Fayettenam."  Not only do munition trains hide underground at Fort Bragg, the accompanying rail networks which serve Fort Bragg both directly and indirectly choose to hide in the dark.  I know because I hear and feel them minute to minute, day to day, and week to week.  (It is going on two weeks now, and my ears would appreciate a break from the bleating of the lambs)  It is like they now they are being hauled to the slaughter.  The tinnitus created by infrasound, another tidbit that our nation will not recognize, is like a death cry.  It is humorous and entertaining to see how Capitalists twist the inhumanity of untruth into product.  If you can't sleep, it must be your mattress.  We will sell you a better one.  If you can't fuck, it must be your testosterone.  We will sell you supplements.  If you feel unhealthy, it must be because of they way you are mistreating yourself.  This is the irrational and demented thought process of the mentally taxed and the aging.  It is alarming when logic is superseded by untruth, deception, and Capitalism.  This is what evil does.  It is disguised as truth, and yet it is untrue.  It is disguised as good, and yet it is bad.  Evil is the most wily adversary, and with the decline of the United States of America and its accompanying Capitalism it is the majority.  I do not think God can help, so what good is praying to Him about it?  Isn't it futile and childish to pray to our Creator to help with some of the problems?  Do for one's self I always thought, and yet it is not possible today.  The playing field is so mine-laden and tilted, I am having trouble sanctioning life.  Is it only me that is disrespected?  The rest go to the beach for the holidays.  I take abuse.  I clean the yard and cook the meals, and yet I take abuse.  I am the problem.  If I have a health problem, it is my fault.  There is no way this chosen property or town could be the source of disease or death.  Those people who are continuing to be diagnosed with cancer at alarming rates are all at fault.  They are bad people.  This is the thought process of the mentally taxed and demented.  It is difficult, recognizing this thought process and rising above it.  It is difficult when there is no one there, and the thought of praying for assistance to God seems selfish and inane.  How possibly can God fix America?  How can God reign down on the evil inherent in modern Capitalism and stop it?  Possibly the answers are snow and ice and rain.  When it snows and freezes the tyranny stops for a few days or a week.  Is it because airplanes no longer can fly?  When it rains buckets and the earth becomes drenched in the life-giving properties of water, it stops.  Is it because manmade ills cannot penetrate?  Is it the weather that will be the judge and jury?  Not if we control it.  

Donald Springer

It should be no surprise.  Trump is a wannabe TV celebrity.  It is surprising it took this long for his presidential campaign to descend into afternoon tabloid television.  Tabloid television is where it began.  Enter the former mayor turned talk show host.  All of the pretense and propaganda cannot change reality.  America has been doing this since George W., lying about reality.  At least Trump rallies are exposing the true core of America.  They did it during abolition. Why not now?  It should be no surprise when the first murder occurs.  I mean the fourteenth or twentieth.  Just because short-penised ex-security guard cops are acting out their childhood oppression by killing folk doesn't mean they get to steal the show.  There will be a murder soon at a Trump rally, and who will take the fall?  It is great tabloid television.  With Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffet running the country and our media, it should be no surprise their personal profits take precedence over the integrity of America and her governance.  Word.  

Pseudonyms

The recent film "The Revenant," which may become the most pretentious and juvenile of all time, fittingly cries out for a nickname for its director.  "I have it Jim!"  "NOSFERITTU"  
(This is a clever symbiosis of Inarritu and nosferatu.)  My second choice is, and most probably the more fitting seeing as George Lopez would call Inarritu this himself, "Beanerittu!"  (Get it?  A 'Beaner' is slang for a Mexican."  Inarritu is Mexican.  "BEANERITTU" is possibly the best nickname ever devised for a Hollywood personality.  To think that the bulk of his purpose in the film "The Revenant" was to depict the most realistic and vicious bear attack ever filmed....   Well that is a high moral purpose.  I'm sure God is very happy about that.  "Well Him, I guess we have another beanerittu."  (noun for flop.)  Thank you and goodnight.  

Our Puritan Roots

With my ears whistling madly and pollen wafting onto my hard contact lenses, Miles Davis pines away on his and Gil Even's seminal recording of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess."  My Nakamichi CR1-A, unlike the cassette decks for sale on eBay, still is functional.  I purchased it new possibly from Stereo Sound Systems on MacPherson Church Road.  Almost thirty years later I have no issues with its 'belts.'  The repair techs on them internets would have you believe moving the earth is as difficult as repairing a nakamichi CR1-A cassette deck.  The minimum they want to charge is $300.00, approximately five times what you will pay for the deck used today.  $300.00?  That is a steep bench fee with no knowledge of what actually is ailing the deck.  It has two rubber belts and an idler wheel, which evidently stretch and quit working.  I ordered these belts at a cost of $40.00.  It seemed a bit high, but from the hubris they should be OEM replacement belts of the highest quality.  I guess this is why the original Nakamichi decks work so reliably and for so long, until the belts slip.  My original deck is playing right now Miles Davis' "Porgy and Bess," and it sounds amazing.  This deck is of importance to me, because while I was finishing up what was left of my doctoral studies I used it to record CD's from The Ohio State University's music library.  A good friend of mine and Phd Rob Taylor was manning the desk in the "Media Center."  He bent the rules a little, and allowed me to check out up to four CD's each evening which I dutifully recorded unbeknownst to anyone except my damn self.  Today I have three Napa Valley cassette holders bolted together to house my collection of cutting edge contemporary classical music and jazz.  It is important to me, because although WCPE does play high quality classical music on their radio station, they do not play the breadth of the repertoire.  When they do play a string quartet is is of the romantic version.  You won't hear an Elliott Carter quarter or one of Bela Bartok.  It seems the Second Viennese School is beyond the ears of Americans, but that wouldn't take much observing what America calls music these days.  The Beatles have become an anachronism in only a few short decades.  I can't imagine what the crooning of Frank Sinatra would suggest to millennials.  Potent masculine sexuality purveyed through music with sensitivity?  Billy Bigelow is not a character American society can relate to today.  Most Broadway characters have morphed into gay, and that is not just me.  When one is unable to understand God's purpose for man and woman, and if understood implement it in a healthy way, then we turn it into a drag show.  Courting women never has been easy, and expecting virgins when you go to hell is not a realistic expectation.  Only ignorant men would believe such a thing.  Only ignorant men would pay $300.00 sight unseen to have a Nakamichi cassette deck rebuilt.  Instead I know a tech. who is willing to do the minimum to get it operational again.  As a matter of point this represents America today.  We have become "Do or Die."  "All or Nothing."  "Winner or Loser."  "Rich or Poor."  I don't get it, like I don't get most of what America has become.  When people do speak about American Popular Music, why does anyone have to be a star?  What's the harm in doing your thing moderately and casually and letting those who are interested pay attention?  Ah yes, that doesn't make money.  Who needs a hit record?  I suggest a market of moderation and ease, which doesn't require a merchant or an artist to be a "pop star."  Why do we all need to be Michael Jackson?  Why does anyone need to become "The Voice?"  How about we return to a society which values grass roots experiences that do not require monetary return from integral human creation?   Now that's a stretch.  

The Outsourcing of Oxygen

In my continuing quest for honesty and the environment, I have discovered why Major Suckage is affecting change.  It began with my sheers being sucked out of our house.  After I went to the trouble of making my own sheers for my windows, so I can sit naked inside and not be accused of being a flasher, nary do I get a slight breeze, a whisp of cool air that refreshes my tired body and mind.  A cool breeze is all I ask, and yet there is none.  When there is it is a gust laden with pine pollen.  Is it possible mankind has robbed me of one God-given anodyne, a cool breeze on a warm day?  It is possible, and it is happening today.  No one seems to care about the root causes of any of mankind's ills.  Media acts like they care and even more offensively giant corporations outright lie about their concern with the environment.  The entire "Green" movement is a sham.  It is a media-produced facade that suggests corporations are aware and making attempts to reduce emissions.  Bah hum bug.  Saying the word "green" over and over does nothing.  It certainly does not have the power to change gas mileage, a ludicrous claim CSX-T makes in their propaganda.  Conversely diesel-electric locomotives have no attributes to our environment.  Period.  Diesel-electric locomotives have no attributes to our environment.  There is nothing about them that in any way shape or form contributes to the health of our earth or our human bodies.  Conversely they pollute on a massive scale which is disguised in a "Green" campaign suggesting these mammoth heat and noise sources somehow make our lives better.  Bah hum bug.  The only lives they make better are the shareholders.  The stock market is a sham.  Conversely diesel-electric locomotives like jet planes burn oxygen at an alarming rate.  Because we can't immediately see and measure this consumption as consumers does not mean it does not exist.  Take my sheers for example.  I have been trying to figure out what could be sucking air out of our house.  The inside of a domestic home cannot contain that much oxygen.  Seeing as the intake ducts for most climate control systems are inside a home, getting fresh air into your house is a matter of diligence.  The Germans at one time began their days by opening all of the doors and windows of their homes allowing fresh air to flow in.  It is a good idea, and when the weather allows I do a similar thing.  Now it has become pollen season, and the air is laced with yellow soot.  This changes this picture somewhat.  What could be sucking air out of our house?  There is only one answer, and it is a process that requires and burns oxygen.  We all know automobiles burn oxygen, but we don't know how much.  Similarly jet planes and diesel-electric locomotives burn huge quantities of oxygen, our oxygen.  This oxygen formerly would have been for the human race and our accompanying mother nature.  (or that should be the other way around)  In previous decades before the rail industry decided they wanted to be Fortune 500 companies and make their shareholders money, this was not so much of an issue.  Truckers still were on our interstates hauling freight for a marginal profit.  Then rail decided they would launch a campaign not dissimilar to corporate outsourcing that would make shareholders money at the expense of fairly-paid laborers.  This is modern America, and I don't see it changing.  WalMart is broadcasting a television campaign suggesting their are spending billions bringing manufacturing back to America.  Do you believe it?  I can believe the scenario of "The Walking Dead" before I can believe the resurgence of American manufacturing.  One reason is America's environment has become so polluted that it is unpleasant to live here anymore.  This is proven on a daily basis by ordinary citizens taking up arms and murdering their peers.  This brings me to my point about Major Suckage.  Our bodily senses uniquely are human.  Our bodily senses uniquely are reliant upon several things in our environment.  Our bodily senses are reliant upon air to hear and to taste, electricity to see (because visible light is a frequency of the encompassing electromagnetic spectrum), and our bodily senses are reliant upon both air and electricity to feel.  I will repeat that statement.  Our ability to FEEL is reliant upon both the air around us and electricity.  Feel in my mind can be defined in several ways.  Feeling can be considered tactile or relating to touch, meaning our skin is a huge receptor of pain or pleasure.  Feeling also can be considered emotions, which are waves of electricity triggered by waves of air.  Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I am in the ballpark.  Vivaldi or other schooled composers may have described emotions as temperaments.  Sanguine, bile, etc are fluids in the body that determine consequential emotions.  In any case our human bodily function, the function that was created by and intended by God for our betterment is reliant upon both the air around us and electricity.  If you rob the human body of these two things, chaos will ensue.  What you get is what we have now, which is unexplainable murderous violence.  Humanity is being robbed of our natural system of moral conscience, check-and-balances, and pleasure.  We are being overwrought with aberrant electricity and under wrought with oxygen to allow us to function as healthy human being.  Each time an irresponsible train engineer hammers down on the throttle of his mammoth 4,400 horsepower heat-producing pick up, our oxygen is being spent for their gain.  Suckage is the result.  Suckage is a term I created to humorously describe low pressure being created in our environment that is destroying the earth.   When machines burn the normal level of oxygen surrounding us, it creates a vacuum.  Air that should be and once was there now is gone, and like space becomes a vacuum.  Interesting and alarming things happen in a vacuum that should be filled oxygen.  The one that annoys me the most is that the insulating property of air disappears.  Air pressure that moves sound waves in a traditional pattern is gone, and the nature of audible sound changes.  This harmful process is evident all around us when one takes an opportunity to listen to our environment.  The earth sounds nothing like it did fifteen years ago, because the air that should be there is absent.  The ensuing low pressure is what will continue to create violent weather patterns that will torment the earth.  It all ready has begun.  All of it is being caused by low pressure.  Take a listen to the thunder.  No longer does it have a resonant and pleasing low-frequent rumble.  It is tinny and thin, because the air it once exited is absent.  I can hear my neighbors clearly, because the air that once insulated our voices if gone.  It is reasonable, that if aeronautic and rail companies continue with the expansion of their technology, they should be required to manufacture the resources they consume.  That means stop burning the air meant for humanity and mother nature and burn air they create for their own wealth.  Thank you and good night.  

The Boob

First of all I was elated to see on the front page of the paper today troops are being deployed to Kuwait and Bagdad.  We are paying them to be soldiers, so now I believe we should let them soldier.  Secretary of State John Kerry has classified ISIS's business as genocide, which it is.  That raises the ante.  Let's rock them with more air strikes and boots on the ground.  It's better than doing the limbo.  I forgot one more notable professional man in Fayettenam who ruined two of my teeth.  The Boob attempted to fill two of my teeth, both resulting in chaos.  The first tooth broke off the same night he filled it with the bite of a piece of chicken.  I had to embark a new ship the next day, so he dabbed a little gel into it.  Months later I had a terrible tooth ache in Australia.  Luckily a Russian speaking oral surgeon discovered the dead nerve and gave me the appropriate root therapy.  In Turkey a crack young dentist crowned the tooth and filled an ugly discolorment I have had since puberty.  Not that long ago the Boob did it yet again.  He performed his filling magic and a month later the tooth broke off the same way.  I had to pay $300.00 to have the tooth filled by a professional making the total bill for one filling $465.00.  Fuck the medical profession.  

A Sticky Situation with Major Suckage

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

Fayettenam's Three Stooges

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

It's Too Damn Quiet

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

Hitler's Hair

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

Apple Records

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

Now America Can Share My Pain

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

Weighing In at Oscar

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