MRR Column for #361 (Lots of Lincolns)

 

 

 

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

Originally from MRR #361, as it turns out, this will be my last column printed in MRR

"What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland." --Abraham Lincoln

It's brother against brother... looking at each other through gunsights. Terrible... just a dividing line in the dirt... puts... FIZZ! BING! A bullet enters his face, right at the right cheekbone. It tears a small hole as it enters-- like a large wart-- then it tears through the inside of the skull, coming out through the back of the head... a baseball-sized hole, brain spraying gray matter before the expression of surprise can leave the now-dead face.

“It's terrible. Terrible,” says the president. “The nation is torn apart, but we have no choice, if we're to preserve the union.”

Flash to Riverdale in the Bronx. I'm at dinner with friends-- at a friend's house: shrimp, macaroni with tuna, little pieces of herring with toothpicks stuck through them, flatbread with all kinds of toppings. There is a TV... bigger than my apartment... somehow fastened to the wall. On the TV smiles some dork in a Tuxedo.

Goddamn! It's the fuckin' Oscars. I was looking forward to missing the Oscars, like I miss the Superbowl, and Obama's inauguration. Like I've never seen ET or The Titanic. Like I can't tell Rihanna from Guyana. I live to be as divorced from popular culture as that soldier's brain is divorced from his head.

But here I am. Stuck like herring on a toothpick in front of Hollywood Hell in all it's stinking glitter. The guys on TV talk about some movies. Nothing I've seen, of course. I don't like movies with white people in them.

There's one about killing Osamu Bin Ladin, another about escaping from Iraq, one about a colored guy and slavery and one about Lincoln. War movies all... in their own way. I hate war movies.

I love gore movies. Severed heads and still-beating hearts. I love to watch guys screaming as their balls are ripped off. Gangster movies too: the Chinese mafia taking out a rival gang... fists and bullets. Pow! Pow! Achah! Achah!

But I hate war movies. They're too close to the real world. I don't need movies for what I get in the NY Times. Besides, they remind me of football.

And Lincoln wasn't only in movies about the world of 1860. He's in the real world of now. That soldier in the first paragraph wasn't from the Confederate Army. He was from Syria.

That quote at the beginning of this column? I lied.

It wasn't from Abraham Lincoln. It was from President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria. The two, however, are not much different.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” That is a REAL quote from Abe Lincoln.

I bet Assad would agree.

FLASH TO THE 1970s: Marshall Tito is my favorite Communist. He's the president of Yugoslavia and will be until 1980. He keeps the various ethnic and religious factions together... without war. Today you have Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovco, and who-knows-what-the-fuckistan. Under Tito, there was only YUGOSLAVIA. He organized the fight against the Nazis. Everybody loves him. He keeps the new country together without war... only with charisma and statesmanship.

Tito is the guy who gives both Russia and the U.S. a big middle finger. Then goes off to make friends with Egypt and India. After he dies, there is chaos and half a dozen tiny fighting countries.

Are there other Lincolns? You bet! A dime a dozen. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who kept the Shiites and Sunnis in check and created a unified whole from a melting pot of fractious groups. Also without war... until the Bushes invaded and there was chaos.

More? Mao Tse Tung was the Lincoln of China. The Tibetans, The Uigars. The Inner Mongols. They want to secede. Make their own countries. Seek their own destinies... the blue and the gray... It's a war that the current Chinese Lincolns continue to fight.

Vladimir Putin, the Lincoln of Russia, has been fighting the Chechnyan separatists since he took office. And there are more.

You get the idea. But what I want to focus on, with all this Lincoln hullabaloo, is why I wish the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War. Fuck Lincoln and his gold-plated Hollywood statues.

Imagine we have the USA and the CSA, a ragged border between the two... following the Mason-Dixon line... leaping upwards over Texas, and Oklahoma. Newer regions join the USA or CSA. California and Nevada stay independent.

The relatively small United States needs the relatively small Confederate States for its cotton, bourbon, tobacco and oil. The Confederate States needs the U.S. for manufactured goods and a few resources like salmon and lumber.

Occasionally, there are trade disputes. The South puts a tariff on paper from the North. The North has a quota... or high taxes... on tobacco and booze.

Slavery disappears in the Confederate States, like it did in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Brazil. The government will try to keep voting WHITES ONLY, and to maintain segregation. Like they did in the U.S. until the 1964 or South Africa until 1990.

World pressure will end all that, like it ended apartheid. By 1990, the world will celebrate the first Negro president of the Confederate States of America... probably before the first one up north in the U.S.A.

More importantly, because what is now the US is in (at least) two independent pieces, neither side develops the power the U.S. now has. The sides join forces for WWII because of Pearl Harbor. The rest of North America (Canada and Mexico) are anti-Axis as well.

Young Strom Thurmond, the 40-year president of C.S.A, threatens to withdrawal Confederate troops from the Pacific front if Truman goes ahead with his plan to drop a new fangled ATOMIC BOMB.

“I didn't want us to get into this war in the first place,” he says.

The bomb is never dropped. Japan surrenders anyway.

There is no Vietnam war. Although the U.S. wants to invade, the C.S.A wants no part in the invasion.

“We suffered our own invasion,” says C.S.A. president Strom Thurmond in 1966. “We don't want to be part of another one.”

After WWII, the CSA follows a policy of isolationism that would make Ron (or Rand) Paul proud.

Over time, the cultures develop along lines similar to the present. The CSA adopts Evangelical Christianity as the official state religion. The USA, following its constitution, maintains separation of church and state.

There are generally friendly relations between the two countries. People bunch in the North-- and in the new M.P.R.C (Mellow People's Republic of California). Texas Oil lets the CSA thrive, though the destruction left by the civil war, and the lack of advanced training of the former slaves, leaves a greater gap between rich and poor.

Something interesting also happens. Since the Civil War followed on the heals of the Mexican American War. The newly independent CSA says they had no beef with the Mexicans. The attack on Mexico was by the USA-- that country up North. California is already independent, so it's lost to Mexico. Arizona and New Mexico are just desert anyway. Who needs those places? Give 'em back to the Mexicans, the CSA urges the USA. We'll support Mexico until you do.

Thus a great new friendship is established between Mexico and the CSA. Travel between the two countries opens. No passports. No visas. As easy as crossing into Canada to see Niagra Falls used to be.

After World War II, the USA looks East, while the CSA looks South. Franklin Roosevelt, already pals with Stalin and Churchill, embraces Russia in a Grand Coalition. The USA continues to expand its welfare and social services and Russia continued to expand its personal liberties and access to pornography.

There's never a cold war. No one attacks the World Trade Center because the US does not have the power to wage the anti-Muslim wars that make Al Quaeda want to attack in the first place. The world becomes a happy and peaceful place from the end of the second world war, right until... well... right until now.

It all would have happened if it weren't were for fuckin' Lincoln. If only John Wilkes Booth were a few years earlier. The Oscars be damned.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Is it only me? dept: ABC NEWS reports that the U.S. census bureau is dropping the word NEGRO starting in 2020. Now, all that's left is me and the United Negro College Fund. Quick, I'd better send a donation!

-->Jailbird pal Kyle sent me an article about Samsung TVs. Their build-in cameras allow outsiders to gain "root access" to the TV. Remember in the book 1984, at the end, Winston Smith finds the camera behind a picture in the wall of his apartment? Now, it's not only that bedroom picture you have to worry about.

-->Oh no dept: Could it happen in Scandinavia? Home of my favorite governments? Well, according to the local paper, Iceland will "become the first Western democracy to ban online pornography." Yep, official government censorship... like in China. I fear it's the beginning of the end. Watch the Republicans change their tune about the evils of Scandinavia once those blonds ban porn.

-->My kind of city dept: On Feb 4, 2013 Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to pass a resolution against the domestic use of drones. It also calls for Congress and the state of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information from domestic drone use from being introduced into a Federal or State court. Furthermore, they want to prohibit drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, so people can not be killed remotely.

Hmmm, killing people remotely, trial by missile, who'd want to do something like that? It's hard to imagine, huh?

-->Legitimate targets? Is that like legitimate rape? dept: Reason.com reports that a US Army officer said Afghan children are “legitimate targets.”

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington. "We're looking for children with potential hostile intent." he added.

-->Ah Michigan, how you've devolved dept: Progressive Magazine reports that Michigan lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state's income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their twelve-week or older fetuses as "dependents." These same legislators pushed to cut a tax credit that applies to actual already-born children.

-->School? Prison? What's the difference dept: Wired.com reports the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, suspended a student for refusing to wear a tracking device. It was a leg bracelet similar to the ones used on probationed criminals. Since the school's funding is based on student attendance, they use the trackers to prove students are in class. As of this writing, a judge has temporarily reversed the suspension.

-->Students with balls dept: Censorship News (www.ncacblog.wordpress.com) reports that the school administration of La Salle University told the student newspaper that they had to run an unflattering story about the school "under the fold." (That means the part of the paper that's hidden when it's folded on a newstand or in a newsbox.)

The newspaper, the COLLEGIAN, printed the next issue with a blank top half, except for tiny print instructing readers to "SEE BELOW." Ten punk points guys!

-----------------------------
You can see Mykel's almost functioning website at www.mykelboard.com.

MRR Column for No. 360 (The Old Perv)

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Mykel's column for MRR 260, in which he explains how he'll never act

"A man does not learn very well. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down. A log is capable of learning more than a man.” -Edward P. Jones

She's in her late 20s... maybe Dominican... maybe from Brazil... with the kind of Latina ass that white girls tsk tsk about objectification but you know they really envy. She's in the middle of the gym, working with a trainer. I'm on the mats, stretching my 75 year old muscles, trying to keep the creaks from popping too loudly, depressed that my body will NEVER be objectified. I watch the girl as I spread my legs and pretend to stretch this gracilis, then that one. This satorious, then that one. This rectus femoris, then that one.

I watch her bend down and grab a barbell. Then, using her own rectus, she stands and holds it several feet from the mats. On the barbell are huge weights. The biggest in the gym... at least two hundred pounds on that barbell... She sets it down and lifts it again. My corpora cavernosa fill with blood and stiffen.

I shower at home, not wanting to deal with the engorgement problem among the sweaty jocks in the lockerroom. Leaving my bathroom shower, I dry myself, dress, and open the day's mail. There it is: in no wrapper at all, the newest MRR.

I flip to the letters section... scanning for my name. There it is: two letters. One's from my pal Marc Rentzer... upbeat and cool. The other, strategically run right before Marc's letter, is from someone complimenting MRR, and PS-ing that “Mykel Board is an old perv.”

Yes! Another dissatisfied customer.

The comment stokes the engine of a thought train. Are there young pervs? When young people do perv stuff, it's experimentation or curiosity. A teenager who jerks off to Victoria Secret catalogs is a victim of raging hormones.

But an OLD PERV? Isn't that redundant? The problem isn't the action but the age. Old people are not supposed to do that. They're supposed to sit in the park and feed pigeons.

It gets me thinking. What do people my age actually do?

In the summer, I see a few in Central Park, feeding pigeons or sitting on a bench slumped over a newspaper. But that doesn't account for most.

A Google images search for “old people” brings up mostly faces. But when the people are doing anything, they're flipping the bird, getting a tattoo, muscle building, fitting into a thong... anything but ACTING THEIR AGE. At least anything but acting the cliché of their age.

Maybe that's WHY the images are there. They're unique, because these older folks DON'T act their age.

Back when I was 30, I wrote a song called When You're My Age You'll Be Selling Insurance. Now, when they're my age, those letter-writing punk rockers will be cashing in their 401Ks.

I doubt if I'll be invited to the Bar Mitzvah of the guy who wrote the old-perv letter. But, if I live long enough, I might go to his graduation from business school.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY AGE.

Scene change to the school I teach in... teacher's lounge between classes.

I ask what April, my favorite colored girl, has been doing lately. She hasn't been at work. I hear she had made it to off-Broadway.

“Mykel,” says a liberal teacher, born and bred within the shadow of the Whitehouse, “you can't say colored. It's like saying Nigger!”

“It is not!” I protest. “Nigger is a pejorative... an insult. Colored People is used by colored people themselves! There is an organization called The NAACP. That's The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. You heard of them? Civil rights for colored people exist because of them. You ever heard of The National Association for the Advancement of Niggers? It's not the same thing at all!”

“That was an organization STARTED by African Americans,” she answers. “THEY can call themselves whatever they want. You're white. You can't do that.”

Her comment is like ACT YOUR RACE.

It gets me thinking. What do people of my race do?

In the summer, I see white people at the beach, trying to darken up. At night, they walk the streets in large chested packs of fratboys and soror-sisters? Boys ugh ugh ughing as they guzzle Bud Light while watching colored guys smash each other up in pro-football. White girls chew gum and worry about how their ass grows to the side and not the back like their more aesthetically pleasing colored counterparts.

Among the people I recognize from a Google search of white people, are Michael Moore, Bill Gates, John McCain. A screen capture from FOX News shows a little white girl crying with the FOX caption “Stolen Pony.” The headline, added after by the picture clipper is: WHITE GIRL PROBLEM?

Many of the pictures make fun of white people. A few defend them. There are almost no photos of people actually DOING anything... except one of a white girl on her knees... taunting a bull.

I spend most of my life with non-white people. During the day, I'm teaching Japanese folks how to talk good. When I travel, I mostly avoid places where white people live. I used to deny being white at all.

“I'm not white. I'm a Jew,” I used to say. Unfortunately, it is now fashionable to LIKE Jews, to bring us into the fold. We're anti-Muslim, ya know? That makes us white.

Well, buckaroos, my trip to Africa brought me a ton of Muslim friends... even to drink with. Just like some Jews (like me) eat pork. Some Muslims drink alcohol. The appeal to me? Most Muslims aren't white.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY RACE.

FLASHBACK: Highschool gym class; Hicksville High School 1960s. Along with study period, it's the class I hate most. Out the back yard... over a fence... to Al's Pizza on Newbridge Road. I'm convinced that my regular consumption of pizza while cutting gym class was responsible for my serious teenage acne. But at least on the days I made it to Al's, I didn't have to suffer through being the last to be picked for the baseball team, football team or any team.

In baseball, when I can't cut out of class, I hide in the outfield... hope that no one hits a ball to me... run away when they do... use my glove to protect my head instead of catching the ball.

“You play like a girl,” one of the jocks tells me. “Why don't you pick flowers or something?”

Flowers? What about flowers? I love flowers. In America, guys never get flower. One of my life's highpoints was visiting a friend in Holland and meeting him at the airport. In his hand was a bouquet of tulips. Girl enough for you?

I ask directions, for G-d's sake. Several times. Is that non-manly enough? It's one of my favorite ways to meet people... and to judge the character of a country.

ASIDE: The worst place to ask directions is Venezuela. Even if you ask in Spanish, the people look right through you... as if you're not there.

Better is Japan, where instead of explaining, people will walk with you a bit, and make sure you're going the right way.

Best is Trinidad, where, when you ask directions the answer will be. “Yeah man, what's your hurry? Let's be havin' a drink first, a little limin'. I'll get you where you want to go. But what's the hurry?” END OF ASIDE

What does asking directions, hating to play sports, and liking flowers say about Men from Mars and Women from Venus?

Way before that book, Samuel Johnson said: Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant.

Weakest? Most Ignorant? I don't think so. I certainly don't want to hang out with... much less fuck... any girl who can't beat me up. But that's not how guys are supposed to think.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY GENDER.

I may be an old pervert. Chronologically I'm old, even if I refuse to act it. A pervert? Well, if we go back to the Latin root it comes from pervertere "overthrow, overturn, corrupt, subvert, abuse..." sounds pretty punkrock to me. So my answer to the guy who called me that? Guilty as charged... and I'm just getting started.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Drug your kids for money dept: Does your child have bad moods? Poor school performance? Difficulty focusing? Even if s/he doesn't, could you use some extra cash? "Compensation for time and travel."

Let us drug your kid and we'll pay you!!!

So says a company called Acurian Health that encourages parents to submit their kids to drug testing... and will pay them cash to do so. Get those welfare kids into something productive... like drugs! Go to www.KidsDepressionStudy.com for details.

-->Speaking of act your gender dept.: I'm in love. I went to Brooklyn to see my friends WORLD WAR IX and BLACKOUT SHOPPERS play at the Trash Bar. Opening for them was this band called inCircles. The girl vocalist/guitar player is amazing. She moves on stage like Sam McPheeters or that dancing guitar player in Meryl (sp?). Wow! Best new band I've seen in ages. And that girl, hah! Guitar hero showdown time! No boy is gonna match that!

-->Record stores are not dead dept: Used to be that Bushwick was the SCARY part of NY. Now it's got an organic bakery... scary in a different way. But, it also has a great record store: Heaven Street Records. No CDs, but they have an extremely tolerant buying policy. They're honest, and owner Sean sings barefoot with Cult of Youth. Find 'em on Facebook and ask 'em to carry your records! They probably will.

-->Faith in humanity... even the Swiss dept: The Nation reports that the residents of Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland polled slightly in favor of a nuclear waste facility near their town. An industry group figured that they could get more support by giving money to each citizen who endorsed the facility. Instead, local support for the plan went down. The bribe cut the rate of acceptance in half. Even when locals were offered more than $8,000 each, they turned against the program.

Yow! PUNK ROCK, I'd say.

-->Was the harasser acting her gender? dept: The Associated Press reports that the widow of a New York City police officer says her husband committed suicide because his female supervisor demanded sex from him in exchange for a favorable work schedule and job assignments. The widow is now suing.

According to the suit, the cop's career depended on his "submission to the sexual advances" of his married supervisor.

"Officer Schindler was made to understand that he would suffer tangible detriment in his job, job assignments, working conditions and future prospects if he did not submit to the sexual advances," the suit says.

The pressure was too much and the cop shot himself.

You haven't heard this story, but if the dead cop were a woman, I bet you would have.

-->Google Acts Its Race dept: A new study has found racial bias in ad results from Google. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney studied names typically associated with African Americans. She found they were 25% more likely to produce Google ads offering background checks or suggesting the person had a criminal record. Sweeney conducted the study after a search for her own name turned up an ad reading, Latanya Sweeney, Arrested? with a link offering background checks. Sweeney concluded: "There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads."

-->Oh yeah dept: I expect you figured it out. My last column, about taking over the dictatorship of MRR, was an April Fool's column. The endnotes, however, were all true.

MRR column for no 359 APRIL 2013 (Mykel Takes Over)

 

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column 359 April 2013

"What does a guy want with his arms and legs? He doesn't need arms and legs to write with. He needs security... peace... protection. If you could be sure of that I'd say let's have a war tomorrow. I wouldn't give a fuck about the medals-- they could keep the medals. All I'd want is a good wheelchair and three meals a day. Then I'd give them something to read, those pricks.” --Henry Miller

It's a small turd. Just a brown chili, floating halfway down in the toilet. If I pasted it atop my clenched fist, the guy across the hall might think I was flipping him the bird. So small... so neat... yet what a mess!

Takes a whole roll of paper. The smear half way up my back... covers both cheeks... thick... like dark brown tofu... I need to wipe down the toilet seat...the backs of my legs... Sheet after sheet... leaking off the paper... my fingers covered... dripping... then the phone rings.

Fuck. If I pull my pants up, it'll make a worse mess. The this month's laundry'll smell like shit. So I waddle from the bathroom to the bedroom/livingroom/den... pants around my ankles, naked below the waist... covered in smeared feces.

I pick up the phone.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Mykel?” comes the voice.

“Of course, it's fuckin' Mykel.” I don't say. “You called me!”

“Who's this?” I do say.

“Hi,” comes the female voice on the other end. “I was hoping to get you at home. I'm just calling to tell you we finally decided on the new editor of MRR.”

“Great,” I don't say, “like I need to know the name of my next task-master. What do I care?”

“Who?” I do ask.

“I'm talkin' to him right now,” says the voice.

Yeah, I know this is probably old news to you. Such a long long search and it turns into a great circle and bites you (me) on the (shit-stained) ass. But it takes me by surprise. I sit down.... yeah, I know. That chair is out on the street right now... attracting flies. But the rest, is future.

This is the April issue of MRR. Starting next month, May, I'm in charge. Do I expect to make any changes? Will you notice a difference? You bet your shit-covered ass you will.

What changes? What's the problem with MRR the way it is?

Ask anyone... just go out on the street... stop that housewife on the way to Walmart... that homeless guy picking through the trash... that bike courier on the way from C-squat to the Apple Store... just stop 'em and ask, “What's wrong with MRR?” You'll get the same answer. Always... it's been that way for 30 years:

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PICTURES OF NAKED PEOPLE.

You know without asking... you don't need me to tell you. It's as plain as the twat on your face.

Well, I'm gonna change that. Under my regime, every issue will have dozens of 'em. Any (legal) age... any gender or race you can name. Dwarfs, amputees, nursing home residents. All of 'em. Naked people up the wazoo.... every month. Bands... cartoonists... MIT intellectuals... everybody.

A stimulating publication? Yeah, you'll find that famous rub-off ink on more than your hands. You ain't seen nothing yet.

More changes?

Start from the front. The cover. Right now: if it's not a crappy line drawing, it's some band of white people from some hillbilly town in some state you wouldn't touch with a six foot hog call. Under my reign? NO WHITE PEOPLE ON THE COVER OF MRR!! MAYBE we'll have an exception if the band agrees to appear naked, but it would require a substantial endowment.

And the columns? What about the columns?

The columnists would not change. I like everyone who writes, though I'd include bigger pictures as column headers... and, of course, every columnist will appear naked in those headers.

Columnists will have absolute freedom to say whatever they want. Although, if I disagree with anything, they will be required to spend time in the notorious MRR Special Room. After all, if you say something you have to take responsibility for it. We have ways of MAKING YOU take responsibility. Get it?

AND, I will replace the current random order of columnists with a strict order... the same every month... in exact order of the AGE of the columnists... oldest first, of course.

What about English? Fuckin' English. I've said before that people spoke Spanish in America way before they spoke English. You think Nina, Pinta, y Santa Maria are English names? What the fuck? First thing: the NAME of the magazine changes to MAXIMUM VERGA Y CULO. Maybe we'll have a small English section-- at the end of the zine-- the last page or two to tell you what you're missing. For the rest: HABLAS ESPAÑOL O MUERTE!

And reviews? Those fuckin' reviews? MRR reviewers are a bunch of prissy whitefolks (or at least native-English speakers) who think eating a California roll with a dab of soy sauce is oh so exotic and foreign. That's gonna change.

NEW RULES FOR REVIEWS:

All reviewers have to ACTUALLY LISTEN TO OR READ what they review. Don't say, “Well, it's not my taste.” If you don't like the style, don't fuckin' review it! If you don't understand the language then give it to someone who does! Why does every issue of the German zine TRUST have an MRR review-- in English-- and every MRR has a review of TRUST that says, “I wish I could read German.” I know seeing your name in print is an ego boost, but speak what you're gonna review or don't review it. SPRICH DEUTSCH ODER VERRECKE!

Scene reports? What's up with those? If I see one more band name written with the Roman alphabet, I'm gonna shit. There are hundreds of languages in the world. Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Thai, Urdu, Bulgarian... the list goes on. Why do we see... month after month... scene reports from places that use A,B,C,D instead of ALEPH, BET, GIMMEL, DALID? No more of that under my reign! New Rule: No more scene reports from places that use the Roman alphabet. A,B,C, is for wimps. Hey, buckaroos! Wake up! This is PUNK ROCK! Learn to read.

It won't be just changes. No sireebob. There'll be a ton of new stuff. More things people actually want:

BODY FLUID OF THE MONTH, TIMMY Y SPEAKS FROM THE GRAVE (transcripts of monthly séances held at the MRR house on night of the full moon.), THE SELL-OUT REPORT (listing what bands it's cool to like and which are on the boycott list), and a new scanned letter section. All letters written entirely IN BLOOD! Anyone answering those letters, must also write in blood.

That's a taste of things to come... a teaser...the start of the change from a punkrock zine to a PUNK ROCK ZINE. Like my turd in the toilet, MRR is not all that big in the world... but it's gonna make a HUGE mess!

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Irony on irony dept: In the Martin Luther King days, The Southern Poverty Law Center was a good group. Then it ventured into "Anti-Defamation" territory. Like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League who calls every critic of Israel "anti-semitic" (and even accuses Arabs, who are Semites, of being "anti-Semitic") the SPLC jumps on any group it disagrees with and labels them "racist" or "terrorist."

Reuter's now reports SPLC is coordinating an "anti-bullying program." (That's ironic since they themselves use bully name-calling tactics.) As part of their anti-bully program, they've organized 3000 schools to have a "Mix It Up at Lunch Day." Students in those schools are encouraged "to sit by someone in the cafeteria they would not normally sit next to.”

The right-wing American Family Association, is boycotting the event because they say it's "a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools." Doubly funny because the intolerant name-callers are getting name-called for promoting tolerance.

-->Sissy Bradford, a criminology professor at Texas A&M University lost her job after complaining about a taxpayer-funded tower with four Christian crosses. The tower also featured the official university seal. Thanks to her protest and a letter from the legal department of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the crosses were removed. Then followed several threats from cross defenders. These that got so bad that Ms Bradford asked the campus cops for protection. Her request was ignored. Now she's without a job and no campus for the campus cops to protect her on.

-->Bad news for Christians and Feminists dept: A new study has found that porn stars have "higher self-esteem, self confidence and a more flattering image of their bodies" than others. Of course! If you've got hundreds of folks jerking off to your image, it's only logical that you're gonna think a lot of yourself. You can get the full article at: http://tinyurl.com/selfestemeArt

-->Secret major label dept: If you're suddenly seeing advertising for a "micro-brewery" called SHOCK TOP, you guessed right. It's Anheiser-Busch, the Budweiser giant, now owned by a Belgian company. The beer sucks anyway, too sweet and I donno... wrong. But don't be tricked, like Blue Moon, it's a FAKE micro-brew.

-->12 years for NOTHING dept: Of course I'm talking about prison. There are millions of such stories. People who hurt no one languishing in jail under FEDERAL SENTENCING LAWS. I've written a lot about this. But a spot of maraschino cherry in the diarrhea of our legal system is GORILLACONVICT publishing. It's a company that gets the word out FROM the men behind the bars. They publish books (remember them?) by the 2%... the 2% of Americans, that is, who are behind bars. Their website is gorillaconvict.com.

-->Is that a screw in your kneebone or are you happy to see me dept: First Class Magazine reports that Australian airports have introduced full body scanners for all international air passengers. The scanners use wifi length radio waves to scan, rather than the X-ray machines that are used in the US.

Both Europe and Australia have banned the US machines as too much of a cancer risk. The US government doesn't care. It's SECURITY, ya know?

-->Help, 'em but don't let 'em help themselves dept: In Ashland Oregon, public officials have removed three boxes for public donations to help the homeless. The reason is that the boxes were pilfered and the money stolen. After an investigation, a man was arrested, fined and jailed for the theft. You guessed it. He was homeless. Now, please tell me how a homeless person can steal money meant for the homeless. I guess the answer's easy. That's DIRECT giving. If you do that, how does an ADMINISTRATOR get paid? It would destroy the whole American concept of charity.

-->Mix government and religion at your own peril dept: Germany's top court has ruled that Catholics who do not pay religious taxes must automatically leave the church. The judges ruled against Hartmut Zapp (great name!) who wanted to leave the church as an institution, but remain a member of the Catholic community. Germany's bishops announced that believers who refuse to pay the religion tax won't be able to receive the sacraments, become godparents or a have a religious funeral. In Germany, the government subsidizes religions through taxes on members of the religion. In the US, the government subsidizes religion through taxes on EVERYBODY. They call it "faith-based."

-->Good suggestion bad reason dept: Israeli Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky ordered his followers to "burn their iPhones" in order to maintain Jewish insularity and keep the outside world away. I'm not sure iPhones burn very well, but they probably flush nicely down the toilet.

MRR column for no 358 (Violence in Connecticut)

You're Wrong

 An Irregular Column
 by Mykel Board
 Mykel's Column for MRR # 358(February)

"Children suffer the world that adults create for them and try their best to adapt to it; in time, usually, they will replicate it.” --Michel Houellebecq

Bzzzzz: Drone 593 launched. Passing 120 miles from Pakistan border. Over.

 

Bzzzzz: Roger, following on radar. 593 approaching target. Satpix show small house. Over.

 

Bzzzz: Roger, reaching target in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Bingo! Over.

 

Bzzzz: Radar reports slight miss. Hit family wedding party, target 2 miles West Southwest. Over.

 

Bzzzz: Got it. Plus two West Southwest. Will launch Drone 594.

 

FLASH to Newtown Connecticut: Adam Lanza shoots his way into an elementary school. Twenty-six people die-- 20 of 'em kids. The president flies in... hugs family members... TV spends days covering teary relatives... casting blame. Pundits cry out from here to NRA.

 

USA Today writes (in a horrible run-on sentence): Several hours before Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults Friday in an attack on a school in Newtown, CT, a 36-year-old man a half-a-world away in China attacked 22 children at a primary school. None of the kids died. The reason? The man in China had only a knife

 

The NRA answers: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun

 

The NRA also blames the media, saying news organizations sensationalize mass murders. In an equally horrible run-on sentence they say,

 

"How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave?"

 

That rage-against-the-media-machine has strange net-fellows. Something ostensibly posted by Morgan Freeman makes the Facebook rounds:

 

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse...Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

 

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another... Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet... Congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

 

Someone else posts that the message was fake. Or at least not from Morgan Freeman. It doesn't matter. It's what a lot of people think.

 

A Mexican pal of mine suggest that police profile white males since most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men... Follow them like the airports and CIA follow Muslims... like NYC cops target black or Latino guys for Stop and Frisk. My Mexipal suggests that WHITE MEN need some targeting, at least an extra look when they hang around school yards.

 

Then there's salon.com. They point out the important fact that the shooter was a vegan. This is a tantalizing but somewhat irrelevant point. There is no report of the assassin actually trying to EAT his prey.

 

The Huffington Post prints an article by the mother of a mentally ill child called, I Am Adam Lanza's Mother.

 

She's not really, as Adam offed his mother. But she has a son, Michael, who she says is like him:

 

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

 

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself, after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan -- they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

 

In the rest of article, the woman explains how so many mentally ill people are left untreated. That can lead to behavior like that of the shooter, or any other kid who goes wild!

 

Only AFTER some kid hurts someone else can they do something... and that something is jail.

 

Says the writer:

It seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise -- in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill -- Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.

There's more: Some TV Talking Heads blame the shootings on slasher films and Quentin Tarantino. I'm surprised no one's blamed it on tobacco.

Joel Randell, who, as far as I know, is just some guy, tweeted, Going after the NRA and assault weapons only treats the symptoms. We need to treat the root: the American cultural psyche.

BINGO!

FLASH BACK TO AFGHANISTAN: Reuters reports two marines face criminal charges. They were photographed pissing on the bodies of dead Afghanis. Is that against the law? Nope. Piss where you please. So what are the criminal charges? "Posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties." Get it? It's not the pissing that's the problem. It's that someone took a picture of it. Piss on whoever you want, just make sure you shoot the photographer.

In Vietnam, vets cut the ears off enemy corpses as souvenirs. Seems logical to me... at least American. No, they didn't eat them. Maybe they were vegans.

In Iraq it was the tortures in Abu Ghraib... and smiling soldiers in front of corpses.

Americans have killed more innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq than in a thousand Newtown Connecticuts. And it hasn't stopped.

It's not (only) the mass media that glorifies killers, it's America itself. What is Veterans Day, if not a day in celebration of killers? We can feel sorry for vets. Many have been railroaded into the service to avoid jail or deportation. But they are NOT heroes.

America has been killing people since it's birth. For the last 100 years it's been MASS murder. In this century (and most of the last), not one of those murders has been justified. The US hasn't been on the right side of any war since 1949.

Americans are the most blood-thirsty people in the world. A bunch of white guys sentence Charles Taylor to 50 years in jail for cutting off people's hands in Liberia. Who's gonna sentence our boys in uniform? And the professional murderers in American prisons whose job it is to kill people (often wrongly) to prove that killing is wrong? We're so PUNISHMENT oriented we have more people in prison... a higher percentage of the population... than any country on earth, including Russia or China.

America's bloodlust isn't in slasher movies. It's in war movies. It isn't in glorifying crazy child-murderers. It's in glorifying cold, calculated, paid-by-the-government child-murders.

It's not the guns, mental illness, or Fox news. It's AMERICA. It's the culture that tells every one "if you don't like it, KILL IT!" We worship killers. Have national holidays for them. We travel halfway around the world to kill people who've done nothing to us. That is America, the worst world plague in almost a century.

Listen America, you pathetic excuse for a civilized country, you want a REASON for so many mass murderers? Don't look to pundits, the NRA, Quentin Tarantino, or the media. Look in the fuckin' mirror! You'll find the reason.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->This is from a punkrock pal o' mine who's stuck living in his car. I even gave him $5!

Here's old Bob, he wasted his life with punkrock, he's really hardcore. He carried the torch, he suffered and martyred so that you might rock, he was a true-believer to the point of idiocy and now he's homeless and broke and can't get a decent job, but he hates all the right political things and cares about puppies and babies.....please help him out..

Sad and pathetic, but thats pretty much the truth......I just keep pricking my finger when I try to pin the punkrock hero badge on myself. Can you help? Cheers!

http://igg.me/p/170207/x/494862

-->Life imitates entertainment imitating life dept: The Utne Reader reports on a 300-acre "hunting ranch" outside San Antonio Texas. The site streams live video from a platform with a computer, a video camera, and a 22-caliber Remington rifle. When an animal wanders into view, users take aim with their mouse and a remote control device does the rest. For a few hundred dollars more, the cyber-but-real corpse can be sent to a local taxidermist for stuffing and delivery.

-->Vegans strike again dept: I found an old issue of Censorship News that had an interesting report on a San Francisco Institute of Art exhibition. Actually, it was only a planned exhibition, canceled because of a video called DON'T TRUST ME. The video showed animals "being killed by a single blow to the head." The C.N. analysis is perfect:

The images in Don't Trust Me are deeply disturbing, though probably less so than videos of animal abuse distributed for advocacy purposes by some of the animal rights organizations that protested the exhibition... Had the director stated that this work condemned practices of slaughtering animals... it seems unlikely that SFIA would have been subjected to the threats that caused it to cancel the exhibit.

Sounds like "hate crime" laws. Don't punish the crime, punish the thought. Of course the victim, in either case, is dead.

-->Behind every pillar of evil is an American Christian dept: Conservative lawmakers in the Ugandan Parliament are pushing a bill that would make being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender a crime punishable by death.

After he initially endorsed the bill, Ugandan President Museveni responded to international outrage and promised to veto it. But there's intense pressure at home for him to follow his original endorsement.

The newest version of the bill would pit Ugandans against each other. Teachers, parents, and landlords — among others — could be criminally charged if they fail to denounce their students, children, and renters they know to be gay.

Homophobic fervor has been brewing for years in Uganda, but was most recently stepped-up by American, right-wing evangelicals. They traveled to the country to spread disinformation about homosexuality and encourage anti-gay legislation. They've been cheering this bill on and pushing for its passage. (Late news: The bill has been tabled by the Ugandan legislature.)

-->Pray to Pay dept: Also on the religious front Church and State Magazine reports that Washington DC had plans to provide $12 dollars to the CENTRAL UNION RESCUE MISSION. The mission "provides food and shelter to the homeless, but only if those served attend Christian religious services-- once for each benefit. Clearly a $12 million violation of the separation of church and state... as well as the general freedom to worship (or not) as you see fit.” As of this writing, the grant is still up in the air.

-->Pay to help dept: The magazine REASON reports that a 10 year old girl wanted to raise money for the Japanese tsunami victims. She decided to sell cookies and lemonade in front of her home in Miami Beach. The city government, however, refused to grant her an "occupational license" so she was unable to open her stand.

-->You can kill 'em but you can't fuck 'em dept: Germany has just banned sex with animals. The acts had been legal since 1969. The badguys, as are often the case, are "animal rightists" who say that animal sex "forces animals to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."

Michael Kiok, the leader of a Zoophile group, has spearheaded opposition to the ban. "There are already laws against hurting an animal," he says. "Of course animals can show if they want to have sex. They can show if they are hungry or want to exercise."

Christian-- and vegan-- morality strikes again.