Stuck Needle

Stuck Needle

            This writer is a collector-seller of antiquarian books and records, multi-thousands in which I have a lifetime involvement.

            Radio was a very new thing for me as a child. I loved radio then, I love radio now. So expensive, my parents could not afford a radio but they had a Victroller (product of R.C Victor-large black cabinet instrument on which you played records). Earliest recordings were on cylinders, mostly hymns. I owned 47 cylinders, have sold them all. Old records, grooves, were easily broken. The vinyl on which later records were made was much easier to handle and did not scratch as easily. Often the needle would get stuck in a groove, happened even at the radio station. When the needle was stuck, you heard the same thing over and over. In recent years, broadcasts, nightclubs, disk jockeys learned to mix music. Many young people knew more about vinyl records, the rock stars who made them, than anything else. I believe many became addicted to music, and would even carry a JAMBOX (easily transportable, large radio with handles). In taverns, cafes there were large jukeboxes in which you put money to play your favorite songs. These records were usually 45 rpm. To keep from paying royalties to stars, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), who collected and protected fees for the playing of records, counter fit records were produced, often owned by children. I have a large collection of these counter fit records, where the artist names were changed. Example: Beatles, to Bugs. The music business, in all its areas, was a large, profitable area of Americana. So many of my high collectable records are sold in Europe and Asia, where pop music was never as addictive as here. The phenomenon of records, CD's, and now radio talk shows, can best be described as a stuck needle for awhile....a passing interest. The greatest phenomenon is the attention an artist-talk show host, get for awhile. Much like the movie magazines of the early 20th century, a new definition of "fans." We hear the listeners, participants in the talk shows, telephone communication, show an almost IDYLLIC rapport with the shows host.  You hear such words as, "I never miss a program" or "I listen every day."

            You wonder if these people have as much concern in their religious life, especially those who call themselves "Christians", a word so easily thrown around. You wonder if they have a prayer life. I have relatives, associates who never miss listening to Rush Limbaugh's three hour diatribe every day. They can quote him or any of the stars, like movie stars-rock stars-sports stars, know all the news available about the individual. It is easy to understand the interest of their heart-mind, people who claim to be Christians-Jews-Patriots, can never quote one verse of scripture, one article of The Constitution yet know all about the NEWS MAKERS. They get the same quotes from the same people, over and over...Gloria Allred, Donald Trump, Ann Coulter, Ted Turner, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Chris Matthews, Larry King, etc, etc, etc. Why don't these people just go away? We have heard from them over and over. Ted Turner, "Everyone should be like me, enlightened." I'm sickened by the second greatest egotist on the planet, Rush Limbaugh, paid a fortune to spread rumors and would dare use such a fraise as his brain "on loan from God."

            With a stuck record, you seldom get real news. Just the lies, opinions, miss-information which the government wishes you to have.

            Only a very stupid person has not learned by now that all news, whether from the government or else ware, is carefully controlled. IT IS AN INSIDERS GAME, high paid surrogates produce just what they want the general public to know. If politicians told the truth, they would never get re-elected and they know it. The two dominant political parties, in absolute control of government. On the surface, they may appear partisan but when you dig into the morass of government, you find the crooked pieces of the governmental jigsaw puzzle just being shifted around to FIND A FIT, some department, some office, so all shapes(crooks) can continue having a high paying job, can continue to be popular, politically correct in the cocktail circuit.

            I never cease to be amazed by the television-talking heads- sparsing words in answering questions. Truth is the most scarce-lost word in their vocabularies. When will the producers, not the moochers, become concerned? When will the defenders(military veterans and parents who have produced the military veterans) become as important as the pretenders-dependers (50% of the population welfare dependant, 100 million of the American population receiving entitlement checks)? To show you how far astray this nation has gone, things that used to be normal are now considered pathological. No manual has grown as rapidly as the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on mental disease. Anything that goes wrong with a child, once considered normal, now handled by medication. A 7 fold increase in psychotropic prescriptions for children.  There was a time when parents wanted their children to obey, now, to be happy. We have a society of dependency (cradle to the grave with no relation to reality). $40 billion dollars is spent each year on anti-depressants. In the microwave mentality, selling perception not reality.

            The church has become a willing camp stool for the Devil to sit. Evidently, the Christian no longer has the ability to recognize satanic forces. As is the case in writer C.S Lewis', The Screwtape Letters, the old Devil tells his demons, "They do not even realize we are around."  Most church members do not realize that the church is at war with the world, they are too busy envying-copying the activities of the world. If you have the spirit of God in you as a Christian, one easily sees it in your living and giving.

            Long ago, Kalahari area of Botswana (I still had some vision then), I watched lions in the bush as a herd of thousands of wildebeest ran by. The lions would pick off the young, disabled, a pregnant mother dropping a baby. The weakest always get taken first, those not alert.  "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

            There was a time when medical science did not feel that the tonsils, adenoids, appendix, were important. Think of the money made in excising them. We know now that they had their place-function-importance. This writer is convinced that if the church, people who profess to believe in the mission of the church, people who are true patriots of America, would get away from the clowns of today (stuck needles), puppets of profits, and concentrate of the salvation of our nation through prayer, we would see great and immediate changes.