7/12 On Extreme Heat, Electricity, and Radiation

Evening, happy Saturday folks. Here I'd like to jot down some general ideas on extreme heat, electricity, and radiation. 

    First, the weather has become ridiculous and unsafe for humanity, animals, and plants. We're getting our first big heatwave of the summer starting on Monday and temperatures will be in the 90s and 100s. On top of that there are lots of heat-related natural disasters happening all over the country and the world. 

    For example, in California there's been some dozens of fires all going on at the same time in different parts of the state. In other parts of the US, there are natural disasters like extreme rain and lightning storms, flooding, and the usual stifling burning heat that is downright dangerous if you are not probably hydrated. And of course I know you heard about the recent earthquakes in Venezuela and Japan.

    

    Of course, the main reason why all of this happening is cause and effect but I also believe that the Earth has always been hot and gotten hotter no matter what the circumstances. We polluted the environment by having everyone and their grandma drive cars all the time all day long, decreased regulation regarding natural resources, and we use a ton of electricity, power, and radiation. 

    For example, AI companies are now building AI datacenters and the datacenters require so much power and expend so much power and radiation to run them that they're using tons of water just to keep the datacenters cool, to keep them from overheating, and probably so they don't just start burning down. 

    Just think about the average person. They live in a home or apartment, they have tons of electronics, they own a smartphone as well as maybe some smart devices, they probably  own a desktop computer or laptop, and they definitely have a TV, or if they're old school, they might own a radio or something. Okay, so just think about that for a second. Any one or all of these things by themselves or together generate a ton of heat, electricity, power, and radiation. Yes, if you keep your smartphone in your pocket all day, yes it is generating heat, power, and radiation in your pocket, and yes, that might not be a good thing for you in the long run, but that's beside the point. 

    Rather, I want this idea to hit home, that pretty much anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. Let me say that again for the folks in the back. Anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. There are some people who believe you can actually feel and hear the electricity and radiation that is being used surrounding us although I'm not sure I can really feel it myself, but rather I believe that there are tools that could be used to hear and feel electricity and radiation around us, but we probably don't have the proper scientific tools and equipment to actually measure it because it hasn't been invented or created yet. 

    Now, there are people who believe that this is conspiracy thing, that the government controls the weather, and that its getting hot because they want to do population control and whatnot. There's even large groups of people online who believe that because of all this extreme overheating going on this Earth, that it changed time, that somehow time has suddenly sped up much faster than ever before on the planet.

    However, I don't really believe that is true. But apparently there are people who believe that the government has been able to control the weather since the 1940s, and perhaps even before that, if you go by that crazy logic [science fiction]. But rather than this being a government conspiracy or something like that, rather it just a fundamental fact of life in this era of humanity, its heating up. 

    Second, where am I going with this? Well, I guess I'm trying to just bring more awareness to the fact that extreme heat, overuse and overreliance on electricity, and radiation is just as much of a deadly threat to humanity [or more, now it seems like its much more of a threat] as the extreme right-wing MAGA base destroying and distorting the Constitution, or Fascism, The Ice Secret Police, or Terrorism within or without, public shootings/stabbings, or War, or Covid, Cancer, mental illness, old age and dementia. 

    I'm sorry to say it folks, but we're living in a pivotal epoch in this era of humanity, where pretty much anything and everything could possibly kill you, turn on you, inform on you, get you fired at your job, get you arrested, shit man, times are so bad that I don't really want to say this, but personally I believe this is true, that you really can't even trust anything or anyone right now in this era of humanity. From my last experience at my last gig, the reality is that if you do something wrong or make some kind of mistake even if you didn't hurt anyone or steal tons of cash, everyone will turn on you, and you won't get any help from anybody. 

    This is where I get to the more paranoid section of the blog, lol, but I stand by this, at least at this current moment in time [but I am able to change my mind and be more positive and uplifting], but yes, I believe you can't even trust people at your job, your inner circle of friends, family, shit man, you might even want to think about cooking more of your own homecooked meals because I hate to say it but, they could be putting something in your food to make it more addicting, and start to make you want to eat a lot more even though you're full. 

    Yeah, you might laugh at me when I say this or you'll say, 'he's paranoid!' like the Ozzy song, or whatever, but yeah man, I personally believe they put chemicals in the food, drugs [it goes without saying], and alcohol, to make it much more addicting and make you keep coming back for more much more often so they can keep making more sales off you. Even the extreme heat and capitalism are going together. 

    Keep in mind, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I'm not into that kind of wrong-headed thinking, but I can sort of understand why people could feel like the Covid vaccine was a hoax. If the vaccine was a hoax, why did so many elderly customers from my market job die from Covid just because they refused to take the vaccine? A good portion of elderly customers dropped dead from Covid after refusing to get the vaccine. That place was depressing and sad!   

    Third, my point with this post is just to bring awareness, but also you should ensure you stay grounded because things aren't what they seem and things are not normal folks. None of this is normal. When I was in high school during the 2008 financial crisis and we were going through the Iraq War after 9/11, as crazy as those times were, those were normal times. These years, these post-Covid Trump years are not normal. 

    I just can't state that enough right now, none of this is normal. We got a lunatic running the United States and almost every day, every 12 hours something he or his Cabinet did is reported in online news, and almost every single one or many things he did is a scandal worthy enough of impeachment but because the news is on a short cycle, almost all the bad things Trump and the MAGA Republicans do gets reported, dismissed, and somehow swept under the rug, and 12 hours later, it or something like it happens again, and they get away again and again. Make it make sense, folks. This ain't normal.

    In conclusion, you might not agree with me, you might even be a right-wing nationalistic almost fascist type of person and you voted for Trump, however, I believe that its good to get information from various sources and from a variety of different sources and types of sources and even types of people. 

    You might find this entire post boring and unimaginative because you're a young person who likes to party, drink, do drugs, and play video games, that's fine too. I hope this content reaches a wide variety of people. Remember folks, I'm just a 40 year old black guy with a high school diploma. 

    If this stuff doesn't interest you at all then you just haven't enough experience in life. If you're a kid and somehow this post got to you, remember, you're young now but at some point you're going to get big, and you're going to have to take the rap for this stuff, and mommy and daddy aren't going to be there forever, so you better start learning to understand this stuff at a young age, probably even younger than when I did because I learned about life through the school of hard knocks and it wasn't pretty, fun, or pleasant. Remember folks, when you [or they/them] fuck up, its reeducation through labor. And that's every country, every state, every city, every village.  

    Lastly, if you weren't aware yet, what you don't know can hurt you. That being said, no need to panic, worry, or be paranoid about anything at all, but just keep in mind, that there's something strange going on during all this heat and destruction. 

    I would've liked to have become a teacher in this lifetime because I believe kids are naturals at knowing things like the truth, and that even when bad kids seem to act out against teachers and whatnot, that sometimes they are not completely in the wrong, rather it is just that they out of all the 'normie' kids, have somehow picked up on the fact that the teacher could be bullshitting them, and they're calling it out. If you're someone who's kept that sense of childlike wonder and intellect and call people out when they BS you other people will notice and you will stand out. But that's a whole other post.  

    Concluding, in other news, Lindsay Graham died. He had a good reputation until his good friend John McCain died, then he become a MAGA Trump sycophant, so he ended up sort of disgracing himself after what otherwise could be seen as a pretty decent right-wing leadership position in US government. Watch this space. 

October 1st, 2020, Thoughts

So, here we are, 2020, October 1st. Let me start that by saying it's a blessing all of us reading this are even alive today. As of this writing over 200,000 Americans have died due to COVID and it's expected that at least 400,000 will die by the end of the year, and those are considered "good numbers". Grim to say the least. Tonight I will jot down some ideas on life, politics, work, music, reading, writing, a little bit of everything to show some appreciation for the fist day of October. Happy Halloween folks!

The reaction on the internet today is mostly praise or disavowal of the Presidential Debate last night. Most of my Facebook feed was disavowal but you can imagine that some of my right-wing friends were praising the President. It easy to see that Trump would never condemn white supremacist groups, in fact, I believe he's only condemned white supremacy once as President, and he only did so when he was asked three times, and said it with no conviction. 

So we know that Trump is a white supremacist. We know that he likes the fact that these right-wing militia groups support him. He will use them as force if necessary to quell violence between right-wing racist groups and leftist protesters who get a little too aggressive, maybe Antifa or BLM. He would be cool with using the Proud Boys as an intimidation tactic in black and brown communities to get people to steer clear from their voting stations, so they can't vote, so they can't vote for Biden, and so they [Proud Boys] can undermine American democracy. Yes, we know all that. 

So it seems fair to say that we don't need to spend much air time on national TV news talking about how much of a racist he is and how he won't condemn right-wing white supremacy groups. Another thing we know is that most Americans are middle of the road. They aren't entirely overly left-wing or right-wing, they're mostly moderates in middle class or lower middle class. The one thing I don't get is how upset and/or surprised white people are over the, "stand back and stand by," which is a military language. 

Dear white people: 

Stop being surprised by Donald Trump. We all know what the man is about, what he stands for, and how he's corrupted every aspect of American government and organizations. That's why his cronies are trying right now to jump off the sinking ship. Former Trump supporters and government officials are trying to get Biden elected. That's very telling. We, collectively, as a nation, as a body politic need to stop being surprised by what Trump does and come together as a country to elect a real leader, in this case, Biden/Harris. 

The more airtime that Trump gets on TV and/or online news for being a "race-baiting, xenophobic bigot," the more we see that he's a disgusting monster. The problem is that's all old news. If people keep thinking like that, they'll say, "this is why I hate politics, I'll stay clear of all that shit, I don't need to vote," and that's how he will get lots of more votes because he will make good people think that politics and voting isn't for them. Obviously those people are intimidated and will be fearful about taking action by voting against him. I know lots of people like this in my friendship groups. It is what it is. 

But we have to stay vigilant. It's much harder being a good man than an evil man. Nobody ever said having a democracy would be easy. That's why we're here. 

In other news I had a great jam session with my friend Jason, who plays the alto saxophone. I'm beginning to get a better feel for jazz guitar. I realized in a simple jam that if I play a lot of simple triad [chords that are only three notes] but use a lot of inversions, that I can get that real authentic jazz guitar sound from the 50s. Instead of relying on big chords all the time I need to play more triads to play smoother and faster chord inversions. Chord inversions are the sounds of the same chords but the notes are re-arranged. On piano it's a little more tricky to play but on guitar there's a physicality to it, a formula form, if you will. It's all shapes, chord shapes that every guitarist knows, but maybe haven't played extensively before. 

Also, I've learned to tighten up my solos more. I start with a slow melody, expand upon it, get some speed in there, and end it with some more melodies. I'm beginning to tell a story with my solos, a beginning, middle, and end. Things make a lot more sense that way rather than playing everything fast. Heck, I think jazz guitar solos sound better when they're slower anyways because its more bluesy, and I think it meshes more with the saxophone if I don't shred that much, if at all. A more moderate, medium tempo for the licks gives it much more form, in my humble opinion. 

In other news, I'm about 100 pages away from finishing Tolstoy's War and Peace. This novel took so much out of me on an emotional level and a philosophical level. I thought a lot about love, misery, despair, existentialism, war, brotherhood, wife-hood, and much more. What made War and Peace so difficult for me was not the fact that its 1200 pages long; rather it was the fact that every sentence is somewhat thought provoking, every line-paragraph-page-chapter-book kept making me think a lot, more and more, even when I wasn't reading the novel. It's a powerful force. I will definitely read the book Tolstoy considers his first real novel too at some point: Anna Karenina. But War and Peace is unforgettable. Most of the readers I run into at work say that they've never managed to read it, either out of intimidation of the challenge of such a long emotive work, or possibly they think the 1200 pages much too long. The book is worth the time and effort to read it and it reveals much. I'll be sure to write my last post about it tomorrow or sometime thereafter. 

Work has been much slower this year due to COVID. In most of my years working this current job, I was working over 40 hours a week due to being the go-to guy who helps out and covers other peoples' shifts. But due to COVID the store has cut down most employees' hours so much that most of the emergency staff hired from the beginning of the pandemic have already left or quit, most of them did so after only a month or two of work. It's crazy that the company is cutting hours so much even though my store is a million dollar store [its like LAX, you'll run into everybody and anybody there] and they're doing very well there, they decided it was the time to cut hours and not give workers more pay. As for me, I can still pick up extra hours here and there but it seems like for now my hours will stay pretty low but steady. I've realized that most people are hurting from COVID, they're unemployed and relying on unemployment. Lots of them are going to food banks to get food to feed their families. The hard thing for me to do has been to find a way to live with less money and spending less money. But the more difficult problem for so many Americans is how do you find a way to live during COVID without a job? Or also, how do you find a way to live during COVID if you're working from home, stuck with your family and kids all day? There's a whole discourse to be talked about on the subject for sure.  

Lastly, its October 1st and it was 100 degrees today. Let's hear it for California! October is a great month because its right after my birthday and I've always loved Fall and Fall weather. Halloween is always a fun holiday, as it's really the beginning of the regular holidays after the high Jewish holidays. 

I end with a jest. Lucifer [Milton's Lucifer] gave rock and roll to you down at the crossroads. Happy Halloween!

Post Chicago Blues

I came back from Chicago a few days ago. I was only gone five days but it was the best five days I've had in a year, since I was there in 2017. Coming back home, being here a couple days, I'm really feeling that post Chicago blues. Let me explain. 

1) Food
The food in Chicago is way better than the food out here in LA, or in my case, the Valley. Chicago seems to have less chains, the food is cheaper, and the food just tastes way better. I'm actually pretty depressed about this because I've realized all the places I eat at here with my friends are either fast food, or way overpriced decent food. Its a lose-lose! 

2) Music venues
LA has its share of great music venues, that's true. However, they are all overpriced in comparison to the gigs I went to in Chicago. The jazz gig cost me $12. The blues gig only $7. Not only would a bar in LA charge that much (probably more actually) but they would also have a one or two drink minimum. At both clubs/bars I went to in Chicago none of them had drink minimums. Music events are better over there. Not only that but I think for the kind of music that I like and play, Chicago would be a much better city. Jazz, classical, modern classical, etc.

3) Weather 
The weather in Chicago is cold, that's for sure. However, sometimes the cold is good. The always summer weather of LA gets tiring, and you lose a certain movement of the Earth here in the Valley. Like every year is the same, every day is the same, every hour is the same, its a sort of labored continuity, driven by the fact that everyday is completely identical. This almost made me lose my grounding when I first moved here, when I didn't write or play music, instead I became absorbed into the 'bio-mass' of California culture-video games, technology, movies, rock and roll, night life, and a retail job.

4) People 
People in LA are fake. Like really, really, really fake. Not only that but they can be real stuck-up assholes, guys and gals, I've met them personally on musically levels or when I help out customers at work. The thing about Chicago is that its hard to be fake and a cunt. Everyone can spot you out a mile away and call you out on your bullshit. In LA everyone preens themselves as an artist, musician, businessman, manger, etc but when it comes to their actual jobs its often not what we expect (usually lame, boring, or they don't get enough respect, etc), or they turn out to have a shitty personality. Not saying everyone in LA is like this but a lot of them are. Hell, even my brother's academic roommates were nicer, more intelligent, and interesting than most of the college students I've come to meet in LA. There's something about the Midwest, the people are a lot more wholesome, and they'll take time out of their day to help you or speak with you. Midwestern hospitality! 

5) Cost of living
The cost of living in Chicago is much cheaper than LA. You can rent a room for as low as $500. Sure it won't be a palace and you might have to share with roommates but it beats the $1500 one room apartment price here in the Valley. At one point I was thinking about moving out of my dad's place but it ended up not working out because it was still too expensive between three people. I think my cost would've been something like $800, which is too much. 

6) Scenic Historical City
We spent two or three days downtown Chicago just checking places out. You can spend a lot of time just walking down the streets and enjoying the scenic historical city. Its one of the most well known cities in the world, and for good reason.

7) Trains and buses 
The trains and buses in Chicago are great. Sure, the buses might be extremely full at times, and the trains too in the morning commute, but they are reliable, so reliable in fact that you don't even need a car. This is perfect for me because I don't drive and don't own a car. The trains are fast, even the buses are fast. Its great. 

Jotting all this down is a little depressing because I see all that I'm missing now that I'm back in the Valley. However, the good news is that I'm planning on moving to Chicago in about a year or so, when I can go back to visit, and find a place. In the meantime I'm going to continue with creative pursuits and working, as well as further my education in the classics and philosophy. In the end it will be very sad because I'll be leaving behind my vast network that I've created here since 2013. I have a lot of very good friends and although my job is a lowly retail job, it has also helped me to make friends, musical associates, and afford to buy things. It will be sad when I leave but I will also be glad in a way, to start a new life in the windy city.