(MRR 356) The SECOND COLUMN THEY WOULDN'T PRINT

THEY DID IT AGAIN!  MRR refused to print this column too. It came as a complete surprise, as this was a half apology.... at least an attempt to try to understand the reason for the FIRST rejection. Unlike the first time, this column was rejected (so far) without explanation.

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

“This is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.”

― Amanda Hocking, in Hollowland

I'm madder than a feminist with chlamydia. Not only do I get my “survivor” column cut, but I break out. Tonight is Furious George at the Bowery Electric. 

I'm meeting this fanzine girl who emailed me she'll do anything, because I love the way you talk about body fluids. Is that a dream or what? It might as well be. I'm in whitehead hell. You know, those pimples... you can feel 'em coming for days... then they break the surface... red pus-filled lumps. Suddenly I'm attacked... one on my shoulder... one on my ass... one on the side of my nose... now one on my upper palate. Right where she's gonna run her tongue... the first night of our tryst... Yeah she likes body fluids... but does pus count? I doubt it.

I donno, the lights are low in that club. Maybe I can get away with it. I'll feel a little guilty lapping those lower labia... might get my palatine pus in her sensitive spot. Ah, who cares? I'll never see her again. I just hope that she won't want to meet me tomorrow... hang out in Soho or something. Ugh! Can you imagine spending the day with a gender whose hobby is SHOPPING?

Suddenly a stench fills my apartment. It surrounds me like a blanket... a suffocating blanket. It's the smell of a mouse caught weeks ago... left in the trap to rot... times ten... an over-powering stench of death.

 

Ok Mykel, I think we've finally had enough. You are so full of shit your eyes are brown. What do you think it's like hanging out with a gender whose idea of a good time is football and cars? You think that's sexy? We'd rather shop for clothes... though in our current condition, it's hard to find something that'll fit.

 

I turn and see a whole bunch of people... I guess they are people. They're not looking too healthy, although it's hard to focus on any one of them. Most are missing body parts. Many are scarred around the face and between the legs. Broken bones poke through at odd places.

 

“Who are you?” I ask. “And what the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

 

We're the ghosts of every woman raped... dismembered bodies thrown in garbage bags. We're the ghosts of every woman burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. We're the ghosts of every woman killed because she wanted to attend school or drive a car or vote. We're the ghosts of every woman sacrificed to a male god. Of every woman who died in childbirth because she was forced to have a child she didn't want. We're the ghosts of every woman murdered to save the honor of some male shmuck. We're the ghosts...

 

“There certainly are a lot of you,” I say, speaking to the limbless-torso-with-a-head who's talking to me.

 

“There are millions of us,” she answers.

 

“How did you all fit into my tiny apartment?” I ask.

 

“We're dead, Mykel,” she says. “We don't take up much space... And what's that ugly thing on the side of your nose?”

 

“You should talk,” I say, “you're dripping blood all over my floor.”

 

“You're right,” she says. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get personal.”

 

“Okay,” I tell her. “Next question: What the fuck are you doing in my column? Who gave you permission...”

 

She laughs.... the limbless one... a deep throaty laugh that sounds like it comes from the depths of hell. Maybe it does.

“That's pretty funny,” she says, “coming from Mr. Free Speech Absolute. We need permission to speak???? That's rich!”

 

She laughs again. The teeming mass around her echos. It's like standing in front of a jet engine. Oh boy, the neighbors are going to complain.

 

“But you're dead!” I object.

 

“So dead people have no rights?” she answers. “It's a slippery slope, and you know it. First you deny rights to dead people. Then you deny them to black people.”

 

“Okay,” I say, “you're right. I buttered my free-speech bed, now I have to sleep in it. So WHY are you here?”

 

“We're here to do what your editors SHOULD have done. We're not here to block you. We're here to ANSWER you.”

 

“Why didn't you do this LAST issue?” I ask. “That's the one after the one they didn't print.”

 

“Publishing schedules,” she says. “We didn't have time to organize before the deadline. How long do you think it takes to get millions of dead women together? It's a big job.”

 

“Like meeting some after work,” I say. “Girls... always takes them a long time to do anything.”

 

“Sure Mykel,” she answers, “pick a cliche and jump on it. How creative of you. I think this whole ghost thing is a rip-off of George Tabb anyway.”

 

“Hey,” I say, “don't get testy. Is it time of the month or something?”

 

“No Mykel,” she says in a voice that would indicate hands-on-hips, though this girl has no hands to put anywhere, “we're dead. We don't have those times of the month.”

 

“I forgot,” I say.

 

“And besides, why is it when a woman gets pissed off it's always female trouble or that time of the month? When a guy gets pissed off the cause is something else. Something outside his body. How come everything a woman does is blamed on her own body?”

 

“Not everything,” I say. “Besides, girls identify with their bodies. For girls, things exist the way they do BECAUSE they're girls. In my censored column...”

 

She cuts me off, “It wasn't CENSORED, Mykel. The editors chose not to print it. That's what editors do. You got enough publicity out of it to satisfy even an egomaniac like you. MRR doesn't print ballet reviews. Is that censorship? Maybe they should print Bill O'Reilly?”

 

“Let me finish,” I say, “in that column... whatever you call it... I start with a quote from Catherine McKinnon, where she says that all heterosexual sex is rape. That's BECAUSE women...”

 

“What the fuck?” the torso asks. “Catherine McKinnon does not speak for me. She's a relic from the 80s... like you! She doesn't speak for any of us. She only speaks for guys like you who want to use her as an example of WOMEN. Men love her a hell of a lot more than women do. She's exactly their image of A FEMINIST. She isn't and never was. You just like to believe that. Does Bill O'Reilly speak for YOU? Does he speak for MEN?”

 

“I see you got a bee in your bonnet about Bill O'Reilly,” I tell her.

 

“We visit him next,” she says. “He lies. You don't lie..”

 

“Thank you,” I say.

 

“You distort,” she says. “Instead of letting the facts pick how you think, you get an opinion first, then find the facts to match. It's a step up from O'Reilly, but not a big step.”

 

“Can we get to some specifics?” I ask.

 

“Ok,” she says, “you make light of domestic violence...”

 

“I do not!” I answer, “I just say that domestic violence is a two way street. ANY gender can commit it, but only men are guilty until proven innocent.”

 

“There you go picking and choosing again,” she says. “The (somewhat) more objective NY Times says more women in NYC are killed by their husbands or boyfriends than in robberies, disputes, sexual assaults, drug violence, random attacks or any other crime where the relationship between the murderer and victim is known. And more: according to the Domestic Violence Resource Center a quarter of all women in the US are assaulted...”

 

I'm ready for this one. “So you think the answer is to throw the assaulters in jail, where they'll be assaulted and learn that assaulting is the way of the world?”

“We are together in this,” says the torso-with-a-head, nodding to the millions of others with her, “but we can't agree on everything. Some of us think that just getting these fuckers off the street is enough. Lock 'em away. Stop 'em from hurting others. Frankly, we don't give a shit what happens when they're locked up. It's not like drugs, Mykel. These are not victimless crimes...”

“So,” I say in triumph, “it IS all about revenge.”

“Don't get testy,” she says.

[OUCH! That hurts!]

She continues, “We don't ALL agree on that. Some of us think the way to deal with this is to make the assaulters work in a rape crisis center or a shelter... not as a counselor, but as a guard or something. Or send them out with the cops who sweep up after a “crime of passion.” Let 'em see the broken bodies... the results of their handiwork... US! That's punishment... and education...”

“Er...” I interject, “that's exactly what I think.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but it's not what you write. It's as if we don't have a right to our own issues, our own problems. We're women, but we can't talk about that. We have to think of equality, unfairness, other people who are getting fucked over-- oh yeah, and FREE SPEECH^®. But we are WOMEN. We're close to THIS ISSUE. This is what killed us. Look at this bloody mess, Mykel”

She makes a sweeping gesture with... with what? I donno. How do you make a sweeping gesture with no arms or legs?

“This is OUR concern,” she says. “We are NOT survivors. We are dead. Let's at least applaud the ones who made it.”

 

And the sound of applause of millions of limbless torsos fills my apartment. The stench of death rises even higher with the sound.

“And oh yeah,” says the talking limbless-torso, “that whitehead on the side of your nose just popped.”

 

I reach up and feel the pus oozing onto my finger.

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]

-->Messing with Texas dept: Remember last month when I reported that Texas wants to ban teaching "critical thinking" in schools? Looks like they needn't have bothered. Texas Judge Tom Head (his real name!) recently gave a TV interview where he said that if Obama were re-elected, the president would "hand over sovereignty of the U.S. to the U.N. The U.N. will then send in U.N. troops with the little blue beanies."

 

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon replied, "Not even the United Nations would mess with Texas."

 

I say. Too bad. Maybe the U.N. could set up a program to educate those primitives.

-->Recycling won't help dept: According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40% of all food in the US ends up in the trash. The average family of four wastes 20 lbs of food a month. I know, it would be hard to give that up, right? I mean, they'd have to eat leftovers!

-->Is this a music magazine or what? dept: I wanna plug some great CDs & Records I got. World War IX should be EVERYONE'S envy. MRR reviewed their first CD as "the worst record I've ever heard." I take my hat off and expose my balding scalp to that one. If only I could get a review like that!

 

And then the GG-less Murder Junkies released their LP ROAD KILLER. Besides the hits like TWO DICKS IN YOUR MOUTH, and MY LITTLE FUCK DOLL, Merle finally made a song from GG's christening of Lenny: PISS DRINKING JEW. I hear a movie about the new band is in the works. I'd better get a THANK YOU.

-->Who cares who wins in the US? Dept: A protest against US drone strikes in Pakistan, led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has continued for several days. Khan led at least 1,000 supporters and dozens of Western peace activists to Tank, the last town before the area where the US claims Taliban and Al-Qaeda have strongholds.

 

"It's our right to go to our people," said student Fakhruddin Shinwari. He accuses the U.S. and Pakistani governments of trying to hide the real situation. "There's no security risk. There are no terrorists there. It will be shown to be a lie."

 

As I write this, US drones continue to kill unarmed people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the U.S. election draws near, my friends say voting for Jill Stein (Green Party) is like voting for Romney. They are wrong. Voting for Obama is like voting for Romney.

-->Letters perception dept: I hear from my editors that some people think I'm wimping out by not answering my hate mail in the letters section.

I answer in this column rather than after the letters. That's because I believe the letters section should be the voice of the reader. If writers always gets the last word it's unfair... like a baseball team that always gets to bat in the bottom of the 9th.

 

If you write a letter/and want me to answer after your letter, let me know and I'll do it. Otherwise, I'll stick to my... er... guns-- at least for now.

-end-

 

(MRR 353) Nice (Zombie) Ass

[This is the column BEFORE the one that MRR refused to print. It has never been posted.]



You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column for MRR 353 (Nice Zombie Ass, or Mykel Explores his inner Muslim)

""I see your point, but I still think you're full of shit." --The Improper Newspaper

It's a tight stall in the bathroom. From above, we see four highschool girls, all in Japanese school uniforms. They're crowded together in the stall. One is kneeling, head bent over the toilet. The others' hands push on that girl's head, forcing it into the bowl.

“EAT SHIT!” yell the girls.

“EAT SHIT!” they yell again.

What happens next is unclear, but after some splashing, the girls drag the poor abused one out of the stall on to the bathroom floor. The victim's head drenched, she shouts into the air.

“Sister save me! Save me!”

Another girl in uniform, cute in a slightly butch way, comes running... bursts into the bathroom... slams the door open against the tile wall. The three evil girls look at her.

“If you want to save your sister,” says one of them, “then fart. Fart right now!”

“Don't sister!” begs the drenched girl. “Don't lose your dignity. Don't do that for me... for anyone!”

The girl who had her head in the toilet breaks away from the other three. She runs upstairs. Apparently, they're in a gym, and she's now in the top seats... high up in the stands. She jumps, falling head first to her death.

Cut to a few weeks in the future: It's the first time out for the sister. She's on a camping trip with a few other girls. Along is an older 20-something who wears a low-cut blue dress. The valley on her chest separates bazzooms usually not found on Japanese women.

The crew is in a van driven by a sniffing cokehead: shaved bald, he has a perpetual runny nose.

Here they are, by the lake.

“Everybody out! We're going fishing!”

Little do these innocent hook-and-liners know that the fish from this lake host a tapeworm. Bazzoom girl knows. She also knows that those tapeworms steal food from their hosts' intestine. That theft prevents nourishment from reaching the host, making the fish thin, no matter how much they eat. Cleavage girl figures if she eats one of the tapeworms, she too can stay thin.

“I got one. I got one!” says our highschool heroine.

The cokehead yanks it off the line and slices through its belly. Inside is a tapeworm: white, wiggly and as long as a garter snake.

The woman with the tits snatches the worm and gobbles it down. Her stomach rumbles. She cries out in pain.

“I've got to fart! I've got to fart!” she yells, running to hide from the shame.

We hear the farts. She bends in stomach-ache agony. She farts again.

“I'm going to die!” she says. “I've got to find a doctor”

Our heroine checks the map. There is a small town nearby. They run. They come on a house... with an outhouse in back. The woman runs to shit in the toilet... but from beneath the toilet comes a zombie.

Before long the campers are dead. Murdered by zombies and tapeworm-laced spaghetti, fed to them by a mad scientist. All die horribly... except for the sister who was saved from farting. Now she's in a sword fight with an evil giant tapeworm. They're aloft, she riding on a tenuous strand soon cut by the evil worm.

She falls. Head first downward. Doomed! Suddenly the sound of a tremendous fart. A huge BRRRRRAAAAAP! An anal tornado... from the rectum of our heroine. The power of the wind saves the falling girl and hurls her back into space. A series of superfarts allows her to keep aloft and eventually defeat the evil tapeworm.

The movie is: ZOMBIE ASS, TOILET OF THE DEAD. I've just seen it with a Toshi, a Japanese pal, Bryan and Randy, my Trini friends from ANTI-EVERYTHING, and Taina, the Puerto Rican singer of COJOBA.

“That may be the best movie I've ever seen,” I tell the crew as we leave the theater.

“Was that really Japanese?” asks Toshi, shaking his head.

“I don't think so.”

“What a great movie!” says Bryan. “Shitty but great.”

“It was feminist!” says Taini.

“Huh?” grunt the rest of us, eight eyebrows raised in unison.

“Sure,” she explains. “Don't you get it? Girls are told they've got to be thin. So they'll do anything to stay that way... even eat a tapeworm... and you see what happened to her...”

“Okay, but still...” I answer.

Taina cuts me off, as she is wont to do.

“There's more Mykel,” she says. “Girls are told to be proper. Nice girls don't fart. That's a boy thing. Girls should hold it in, be feminine.... but being feminine killed the sister. And only when the heroine could let it out... could fart like a man... could she save herself and save the world from the evil tapeworm. She had to let go of traditional femininity and become natural, human, to fart is to win...It's empowerment. Get it, Mykel?”

At first my contrary nature refuses to accept it, but the more I think about it, the more I realized Taina is right.

Flash to The Gambia, Africa Spring 2012:

Yesterday's dinner has worked it's way through my bowels. I squat, my pants pulled down over my knees, trying to aim my asshole at the hole in the ground that is the toilet. I'm outside, in a fenced off area that marks the toilet's boundaries.

“You need water?” asks ST (pronounced Esty), my host and one of the coolest people I've met in Africa.

My several weeks here have taught me the code. If you're going to piss, you just piss, shake off and zip up. If you're going to shit, you wipe with your left hand, and then use the water to wash the hand, and wash away any shit that misses the hole in the ground.

“Do you need water?” is the polite way to ask Shit or piss?

Although I'm a cultural rebel, I cannot get used to the eco-friendly hand method. I carry paper with me. I use water to flush the evidence of my squeamishness.

“Yeah,” I tell him.

The door creaks open and a teapot full of water comes through the gate. I re-squat, and let loose yesterday's dinner... blissfully unaware of the zombies that may lurk below.

It's dark... the only light is from a cloud-covered moon and a faint glow through the windows of the compound. I have a bit of trouble finding the hole in the ground. I use the water to clean up. Then, I make my way back through ST's room and into the back yard.

A group of students has already gathered there. It's time for their nightly think-a-thon.

Flash to right now:

I write this column in the THINK coffee shop, eating an almond croissant sipping on iced tea. Around me, a sea of glowing apples occupies the tables. Bob Marley is too loud in the background.

Me? I occupy two tables: one for my computer, one for the iced tea and croissant. I munch the $3 sweet roll and sip the tea. Across from me sits an attractive girl with bronze skin and wavy black hair.

The girl sips hot tea from a coffee cup. The teabag string hangs over the edge of the cup... like a tampon string hangs from a bloody twat.

My tea is iced. Hers is hot.

The Japanese are famous for their tea ceremony... a ritual in which every step from pouring to stirring to drinking has a method and meaning. Though it looks robotic, the idea is to transform the activity from mundane unawareness to perfect awareness. I never had the patience for it, but I love the idea.

In Africa too, there is a tea ceremony. I saw it in Morocco and Senegal. I see it here in The Gambia. It starts with boiling water and tea together in on a tiny charcoal stove. While the mixture is boiling, you fill a small glass with sugar. After a few minutes, you pour the tea-water mixture into the glass... swish it around to dissolve the sugar.

Then you raise the glass and pour it into another glass the same size. You have to pour from a great height. Only a thin stream of liquid... from the right hand down into the glass in the left hand. Then left to right. Back and forth until the tea is cool enough to drink. When the tea is ready, it's handed to you. Then the host starts on the next glass. You only get a tiny bit... like a shot glass... but it's perfect.

A bubble of gas slides through my large intestine.

Let's shoot, gliding on my fart-- from the tea of THINK CAFE to the tea ST is making in the back yard. There are eight of us, crowded around a few benches, sipping the small glasses of tea ST hands us, one-by-one.

Babucar, whose fauxhawk could be on any teenager in America, likes to gangsta-gesture, extending the pinkie and forefinger of both hands-- pointing downward.

“Mykel,” he tells me. “I want to visit America... to live there maybe.”

“You need an American wife,” I tell him. “If you get an American wife, you can live there.”

“How 'bout an American SECOND wife?” he says. “You know Muslims can have five wives. My first wife should be Gambian.”

“I'm not sure that American women would like to be second wives,” I tell him. “I don't even think it's legal... Even if you're a Muslim-- or a Mormon-- or anything that starts with M.”

“Here it's okay,” he says. “Don't worry Mykel, we'll find you a Gambian wife.”

“I don't want a wife,” I tell him, “Gambian or otherwise.”

Babucar sucks down the rest of his tea.

“What if your parents said that?” he asks. “Then you wouldn't be here.”

“I'm not sure the world would complain,” I tell him.

ST chimes in, “I would complain,” he says. “I like you. You're a nice guy.”

The conversation continues through the night. The tea flows. Ideas jump from one person to another like tapeworms in zombies. Only nobody gets sick. Nobody gets angry.

“Mykel,” asks ST, “do you ever give money to beggars on the street?”

“Often,” I tell him, “I think begging is a noble profession.”

“See,” he says, “you're a Muslim.”

I wish I had space to include the whole conversation, the rational debate. The tea drinking on tea drinking. The participation of Adama, a local deaf-mute who is as much a part of the group as any of us. Just a guy... his “disability” as unnoticed as a nose pimple.

The key is the discussion: reasoned, in good humor, with laughing, farting, back slapping, but NO anger. No American-style “question my religion or my politics and you're THE ENEMY.” No making US and THEM. No WHITE and BLACK. No zombies and free-farters. Only WE, a bunch of guys hanging out in a back yard in The Gambia.

Maybe I AM a Muslim.

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]

-->Wouldn't want to be offensive dept: The New York City Department of Eduction is removing "upsetting words" from their standardized tests. They are afraid the nasty words might offend the test-takers, or their parents. The words include "dinosaur" (might offend creationists), "Halloween" (might offend Christians because of its pagan origins), and "birthday" because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate their birthdays.

-->3some Thanks dept: I don't know how you got the PO Box address, but I'm glad you did. Not that I believe the names: Connor, Kale and Trixie? Come on! But I sure believe the video. Thanks a lot!!! I've used up half a dozen tissues so far. You've even inspired me to include my postal address in every column. Thanks again... and I'm waiting with baited cock for the rest of my readers!

-->More thanks dept: I also want to thank Vanessa X, the editrix of Asswipe Zine (POB 82010, Los Angeles CA 90008) Not only did she send me a copy of her cool little zine, but she also wrote a personal letter... in pen... by hand! She says she loves me! Yowsah!

-->True Game App dept: http://tinyurl.com/phonegame1 connects you to a game you can download for your iHell. In the "game" you get to see the shit people go through to make the phone. In the words of the creator:

Phone Story is a game for smartphones that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. The game represents the process of device creation through four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in The Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West.

Let's see how long before Apple puts the kibosh on THIS one!

-->What's good for business dept: The Wisconsin state legislature has repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, that guarantees equal pay for men and women doing the same job. State representative Glenn Grothman said, “This is an important bill because it improves Wisconsin's business climate.”

-->Ungrateful dead dept: There are very few famous people whose death would bother me. We all gotta go sometime. Here today, plant food tomorrow. But recently deceased Alexander Cockburn was a hero. I never read anything he wrote that wasn't right. I don't mean sort of right or a little right... I mean EXACTLY right. The Gay Marriage scam, Obama as a banana republic dictator, and a ton more. I've mentioned him often in my columns. The world has lost an important voice.