Millennial Entitlement

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

The Sacrifical Lambs of National Defense

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

A Toxic Waste Dump

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

Medical Malfeasance

When I woke up this morning somehow I found a sense of peaceful condolence.  I discovered that it is because I am not crazy, and if openly I allow Fayetteville's environmental demons their due, it is undeniable that the residents of Fayetteville are cursed with pollution that may not be found elsewhere.  I have spoken of this influence many times.  In light of the world's recent heat wave, it has become obvious to me these demons and global warming are intertwined.  Always I have known this, and from time to time I rant about the dangers of tower top microwave ovens, electricity in our air, diesel-produced infrasound (low frequency sound waves which cannot be heard), and the rest.  No one cares, just like our American medical establishment will not simply come out and say tinnitus is created by these low frequency sound waves.  They alone to a healthy ear do not create the ringing many people hear.  Only if there is hearing loss do these particular frequencies ring when influenced by a low frequency sound wave.  I do not know why.  I am not a scientist, but it wouldn't take much gray matter to explain why.  Our modern medical establishment, while unbeknownst to possibly the majority of Americans, prefers to treat symptoms.  To my eyes in the colloquial town of Fayetteville, there is not much science happening in our medical establishment.  Rather it seems to be personified by meatball surgery, a hodgepodge of post Appalachian holistic divergence.  If you really want to be cured a trip to Duke or Chapel Hill is in order.  I found this out first hand being marketed through Fayetteville's various technical medical facilities.  It is like a mill, one which offers little treatment and no seeable product.  In essence it is a bit of a ruse, a tried and true methodology of smoke and mirrors building revenue for Fayetteville's medical community.  I saw one particular doctor, who in my educated opinion fueled by nine years of collegiate musical study, who was ignorant.  Not only did blatantly he lie, but he knew less than I did about my own symptoms, and chose only to suggest treatment that would fill his pocket with my money.  It was an erroneous suggestion his "procedure," and almost a year later I discovered that his negligence concerning probable infection in my urinary tract, bladder, kidneys, or gastrointestinal tract could be considered an act of malpractice.  Simple antibiotics would have solved by illness, and yet he chose to recommend extraneous things only that supported his medical specialty.  This must be why doctor's practice.  They like to practice, and in the process they do not learn much or attempt to heal illness.  Even an auto mechanic provides you with a tangible product, a running vehicle.  A doctor that likes to practice on your dime is unnecessary.  We have lots of these today.  The legal profession suffers from the same flaw.  Many lawyers like to make money manipulating the law but often not helping a particular legal predicament.  This has become our America.  This is why the lower and middle class are being held hostage.  This is why our economy is stagnant.  This is why there is a growing rift between the elite rich and the rest of America.  Until morality once agains enters the culture of America possibly tendered by religious philosophy, we are doomed.  

The Mortality Industry

I would like to attempt to summarize the empty shell that has become America.  When I wake I must realize and then understand drugs are marketed for monetary gain.  Their exorbitant exaggeration of worth personified by price to the consumer both is insulting and criminal, but it continues.  The FDA has implemented a policy whereby a prescription only is valid for one year necessitating a return visit to a doctor needed or not.  Eyeglasses are under this blanket ensuring a doctor will be compensated without the choice of the consumer who uses his product.  While prescription drug abuse is rampant and majorly the fault of irresponsible and fraudulent physicians, why should consumers pay the price for their contrition? Are we priests?  It is because America no longer is a democratic republic.  Instead we are a corrupt, fascist, oligarchy.  The corporation General Electric with their manufacturing, sale, and continued promotion of the now omnipresent 7FDL diesel prime mover has all but destroyed the goodness of the human race.  In the hands of Appalachian sodomites lies the psychology of America.  Their influence is known daily by senseless, unexplained, unmitigated murder.  When a lowly Amtrack engineer moves his lever without regard for the pollution he alone creates, three things happen.  Pressurization occurs in our atmosphere making what once were easy tasks difficult.  Heat occurs.  The power grid unnecessarily is taxed depriving the consumer again of his democratic process, receiving a fair product for which he pays.  It is America's common thread.  The consumer pays, and the consumer pays "the man" to mitigate his failures of professional ethics.  What socioeconomic system does this, paying the corrupt in the name of democracy?  Russia.  America's gradually implemented robbing of the American people has replaced the America that once was, economic mobility and thus freedom.   I have to experience this scenario each day I rise.  I live in a country that chokes the life from its populace for the gain of an elite few.  Television once was the core of American culture leads the war terrorizing us with insolence, immaturity, amateurism, and glorification of the ignorant.  There no longer are programs, only infomercials about the drugs that are tempting the weak and fueling the rich.  Like cigarette advertisements which were removed from television in a social movement in the l970's, so too should be removed harmful drug advertisements. They should be reserved for the physicians who should be required to navigate their fraud.  Instead of paying physicians to cover their mistakes and get rich, require them do their job at an unfair wage like the rest of the country.  Mortality has become the new socioeconomic system of America.  

The Mysterious Leaking Coagulum

Recently when we arose in the morning a lake had sprung up around our Coldspot Kenmore fridge.  Upon scrutinizing the landscape (pulling out the behemoth and removing the cardboard dust splash) it appeared this pastel plastic piping was the source of the agua.  (our lines were not leaking, but there was a steady stream of teardrops crying from one of the fittings of this three fitting coagulum.  Knowing we would have to wait two weeks for our trusty Sears store to schedule a repair technician to arrive at our domicile, and that for each of these trying days the lake would continue to fill, instead I opted to use them trust internets to find the correct replacement part.  As with all purchases on the internet, there were multiple items listed each with their own story.  Some were overpriced.  Some were the wrong part.  Some desired exorbitant shippings fees.  This auction had the correct  numbered part at the reasonable price.  I bought it through eBay, and it arrived in the time specified less than a week later.  I devised a plumbing system that would collect the lake water and allow me to hand pump it into a headless gallon milk jug.  After the part was ordered I resigned myself to this pilgrimage and dutifully syphoned the extraneous water out of the under-unit condensation evaporation pan.  Or is it evaporation condensation pan?  UUCE or ECP?  Only  I defaulted on this responsibility once, and the lake re-emerged in front of our Kenmore gas range.  Quickly I sopped up the mess.  In the meantime it became clear to me a T valve necessarily should be installed in the feeder line in case of a future recurrence.  I ventured to the local pipe shop and for $17.00 acquired the appropriate accouterments.  With uncertainty but gusto I Dremeled off the old copper compression sleeve, replaced it, and tightened in the new valve.  It worked!  I was able to turn the water off before it reached the leaking coagulum.  Joy!  The replacement valve came on a Thursday, and I took one day to survey it.  How exactly do these hose fittings work?  There are no threaded sleeves.  There is no solder, so there should be no bother?  After mulling over the situation I became determined to be successful.  I loosened the two mounting screws holding the double solenoid valve to the chassis of the fridge.  Slowly and carefully I pulled it out of its burrow, and by lightly pressing on the round perimeter sleeves was able easily to extract the appropriate water lines.  One feeds the water dispenser.  One feeds the ice maker, and one is the water inlet from the filter.  To seat these lines in the new valve, simply push the end of the line into the orifice as far as it will go and pull back with a degree of force to seat it.  Evidently there is an "o" ring and four teeth in the fitting which automatically seat the line with no torquing necessary.  (No torquing necessary, the name of my next novel)  Simply I plugged in each differing electrical connector and reattached the coagulum in its original position underneath the fridge.  With the newly installed copper "T" valve attached, connecting the fridge water line was as easy as tightening down the original nut with no compression sleeve required.  The feeder tube to the system has a flange which seals against the new valve.  You must tighten this nut securely and with enough force to seat the flange but not break it.  This means almost as tight as you can turn it without demolishing the flange.  No leak.  

A Failure of Public Education

When I allow myself to observe and try to assimilate currents events in the United States, only can I think that a massive failure of public education has occurred.  This failure whether conspiracy, a natural occurrence, or neglect has been coupled with Capitalism, our chosen socioeconomic system, and manipulated to oppress Americans who are not wealthy.  While as followers of Jesus toil and labor with nothing, it is difficult to imagine that even wealth today in America buys contentment.  Obviously that is not the case, as policemen are dead in Dallas, a retaliation for recklessness and racism in the Caucasian populace.  America always through Capitalism has championed both racism and slavery.  Even after massive loss of life through our Civil War, Southerners continued to wage our campaign of bigotry and hate.  With effective leadership in the White House the country has made great strides.  During the first Bush presidency the "Three R's" became a national campaign, and education was promoted through our system of public education.  America prospered through intelligence and the revering of our youth, the future leaders of this once great country.  Conversely "No Child Left Behind" left our teachers and our youth behind a Capitalist insurgency which usurped creativity, honesty, and Christianity in favor of cheap, prosperous, immediate gratification abandoning the future of America's economy.   In its wake America is floundering shrouded in a cloud of spin, government and corporate malfeasance, and greed.  It would be difficult to find a time of American history when we were less of a country.  No longer are we clever, hip, cool, or leading.  We are a representative contingency of whining rich kids accurately personified by Bieber and West.  We have become a joke, and with the emerging joke of America it becomes far easier to disengage and laugh.  Our survival instincts only can continue to worry about our salvation.  It is far too easy to continue to blame media, but media has become the culprit.  Communication is a more operative term describing the need for a country to unite and find common ideals.  Television and radio, once this voice, have failed on a massive scale.  What could one think, an immigrant visiting America, attempting to digest the mind numbing corporate and governmental propaganda hurled at us daily on television and through the internet.  As soon as an American opens their mouth, I cringe.  There is no readily available solution other than social unrest.  The violence which has beset America in response to social injustice will continue and perhaps proliferate until power is returned to the masses yearning to breath free.  

Musical Insincerity

Ben Harper recently was being interviewed by Mr. Charlie Rose.  Like his interview with an Apple higher up, Ben gave a performance not unlike Jim Baker.  If one were to believe the rhetoric spewing forth from his mouth, one would believe the heaven's were opening and Ben Harper's new album was shining down.  "It is the most sincere album I ever have done," along with J.T.  Uh, what?  James Taylor also on Mr. Rose's program said exactly the same thing.  It seems his Scotch/Irish connection was destiny, and "This is the most sincere album I ever have done."  (Play simple James Taylor tune with new lyrics)  Funny, it sounds like the rest of his songs but with new lyrics.  If we all were to believe what is coming out of the mouths of struggling musicians, we all would believe, sincerely, it is the best work they ever have done.  Horse hockey, as the sound of a C-17 passes overhead.  Lying is rampant on television and on the internet, and it is being cloaked in sincerity.  

Advertising Coercion and the Hustle and Flow of America

I don't feel like writing, just as I do not feel like making music.  Congratulations and kudos to the 82nd Airborne and their German brethren for completing their clandestine and nocturnal jump activities at the Sicily Drop Zone.  There was a reason why I have not slept in days, the constant distant hum of low-flying paratrooper aircraft.  The security of a nation after all takes precedence to the peace and contentment of lowly citizens.  Such is the grift of owning a home in Fayettenam.  I am too tired to assemble a thought.  Torture is a bitch, and the Army should know.  Lack of sleep may be the first technique on the list at Gitmo.  Then again I don't live in Cuba.  I am not a detainee at Camp Delta JTF Guantanamo.  It feels like it most of the time.  I have come to realize how coercive television advertising has become.  The preppies of the l980's have turned to them internets and mass media to amass their fortunes built upon immoral and unethical practices. As I attempt to watch late night television the majority of the time I am watching late night advertising.  Often each channel I queue has an almost endless stream of commercials.  As I attempt to channel surf to a reasonable program, it seems big Brother has orchestrated I must watch commercials and only commercial.  Each network airs their commercials at the same minute mark forcing you to get distracted and lose interest in your program.  Is this destructive promotion or not for the television industry?  Often I think they are discouraging you from watching any content.  If the advertisements were pertinent, interesting, or entertaining it wouldn't be so painful.  Contrarily the subversiveness of the ads is frightening.  I assume they believe anyone watching late night TV is either stoned or drunk.  We do have a substance abuse problem in the U.S., and simply it is because our environment has been polluted to the highest level.  Life pretty much sucks if you walk out the door and try to feel good.  Consequently we try to buy our happiness with illicit drugs.  The conspiracy of drugs is no stranger to the conspiracy of television advertising.  It is unconscionable.  Television ad's have become fodder for naive unsuspecting children.  Never have I seen such subversive media.  No longer to ads try to explain the virtue of their products.  Instead subliminally they try to coerce you into buying their shit products.  It has become a bit like Romper Room.  The more childish the ad???  What gives?  Are millennials really buying these products?  I am ashamed of this country. 

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.