MRR column for 355 (The Column In Between)

This is the column in between the two that the editors refused to print. I guess there's nothing controversial in this one. Uh oh!

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column for MRR 355 (Love and Marriage go together like..., or Mykel sees history abused)

“How can an American woman go out with a Japanese man? They never say “I love you” or buy flowers or things like that.” --A Japanese woman showing surprise at my white female friend moving to Japan to live with a Japanese guy

“Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage.” -- Sammy Cahn lyrics; Frank Sinatra record 1955

Yes! It's so rare to find a girl who'll do your balls. One like her... right now... sucking first one, then the other, between her lipsticked lips.

I sit over her, my feet on either side of her head. My throbbing five inches alert.. at attention... as she runs her tongue over my hairitude.

Releasing my twin robins eggs, she moves her tongue through the taint, to the sensitive brown hole. Pick... pick... poke!!

Yowsah! Not only does this girl do tea-baggin... she's a rimmer too! I'm in love!

“Marry me!” I shout. “Quick marry me, before I come!”

Fortunately she can't answer. Her tongue is busy on other matters.

Part One: I've squirted screed against marriage ever since I first took chisel to rock to write for MRR. It didn't help. More and more screamed out for “the right” to marriage. Even homos got in the act.

These days, if I get an invitation to a wedding, I no longer fork over the tens of dollars necessary to buy some exotic gift... like a veg-o-matic. For what? A temporary team, that'll break up in 2 years? I don't think so. Sorry, from me, you'll get a five pack of beer-savers resealable bottlecaps. That's it.

But... what if the problem isn't marriage at all? What if it's the Shakespearean... the John Donne... the Harlequin Romance. What if it's the WAY we get married, rather than marriage itself.

Type feminist and arranged-marriage into the BING® search box that Microsoft® forced on you. You'll get 2,760,000 results. Most will be like: Arranged marriages: a subversion of feminism.

The idea that someone's parents... or a professional matchmaker should choose a mate is repugnant to Personal Freedom^®. To me, that's like saying the idea of someone else choosing your slave master is repugnant to personal freedom. We should be free to chose our own slave masters, right? I vote for ending slavery... but that's another story.

Even if you think there's something wonderful about marriage. That a family is the best way to raise some stinking brat who'll end up hating you anyway. Even if you believe all that, look at the numbers!

If marriage success is determined by the length of the marriage, marriage-for-love loses. The US, land where love rules, is first in divorce. (Or second to Sweden, depending on whose statistics you use.) The most stable marriages are in India, country of arranged marriages.

It's logical. People fall out of love. Their partners change. What they used to like about each other, they begin to hate. Or something's empty. Marriage-- or even dropping puppies-- isn't like they imagined. After the rim job, there's still someone else's dirty underwear on the floor... and that dingleberry on your tongue. People fall out of love. They don't fall out of an arrangement made by their parents.

Part Two: One of the few other columnists that I actually read criticizes me as being a Free Speech Absolutist^®. Like the muckrakers of old, it's an epithet I wear proudly. Let's check out the alternative view. I'll call it, No-free-speech-to-those-who-would-deny-it-to-others®.

The Scene: The big square in front of City Hall in Republicanville, Kansas. A rally... at least 50 people from Nazis for Romney. The speaker, a short man with deepset eyes and Frida Kahlo eyebrows stands at a makeshift podium. He addresses the crowd with a little click of the heels.

“My fellow white Americans...” he starts.

There's a commotion... some shouting... a scream. Some people charge into the crowd from the back... fists flailing... there's a chain...ski masks... black leather jackets. They push through the crowd to the small podium.

One of the attackers, a tall guy with catcher's mitt sized hands, grabs the little speaker by the upper arm. He spins the man. BLAM, a fist to the little guy's jaw. He's down.

The big guy shouts into the microphone. “NO FREE SPEECH TO THOSE WHO WOULD DENY IT TO OTHERS!”

The cops come... there's a melee... blah blah blah. You got it.

Then the papers. More publicity for Nazis for Romney... more sympathy than they would've gotten if nobody cared. But there's a deeper issue-- a moral issue.

If I say “No Free Speech to those who would deny it to others,” that means I want to deny free speech to some people. According to my own logic, since I want to deny free speech to others, my own free speech should be denied.

See where that goes? It's like the Hatfields and McCoys. EVERYBODY is denying free speech to someone, and then-- because of that denying-- is in turn denied by others. Only the strong can say anything.

Bad/stupid/wrong speech is best countered by good/smart/right speech, not by censorship. Not by government censorship. Not by The People's® censorship.

Part three:

MAP (Mothers Against Penises) marches down Market Street in San Francisco. The women, mostly walking advertisements for Sensa, hold aloft cardboard signs showing pictures of deformed babies. One is missing its arms... just stubs at the shoulder. Another shows an almost normal baby except that in the middle of its head is one enormous eye. The babies look dead, though the enormous eye is open. Under the various pictures is the logo: IF IT WEREN'T FOR PENISES, THESE BABIES WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN TO SUFFER.

Strange? Maybe, but their logic is based on fact. For these babies to have been born, a penis was involved. Even if the mother was artificially inseminated, you need a penis to milk the semen from in the first place. Eliminate penises, and you eliminate birth defects. It's logic. It's science. It's easy, right?

Add history to logic and science and you get the atheist/materialist trinity that radical and feminist intellectuals have been praying to ever since Karl Marx gave Catherine MacKinnon her first rimjob.

I'm reading this book called Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's an alternative® to modern textbooks. The author complains that those gloss over the evils of American history. They don't mention that Thomas Jefferson had slaves... or that the British did not civilize a barren land but destroyed an already present civilization... or that people spoke Spanish in America much before they spoke English.

I've never read On the Use and Abuse of History for Life but, from the title, Nietzsche got it half right.

History itself is abuse. When books use it to gloss over the “bad parts” of American history, it's abuse. When books, like Lies My Teacher Told Me, use it to prove a point, it's abuse.

That book, for example, in an attempt to make it seem like the Civil War was fought about slavery, picks a quote from the South Carolina constitution. If it were honest, there'd be a pro-slavery quote from the Articles of Confederation. There isn't. The only mention of slaves in that document is the 3/5 voting rule... same as in the U.S. Constitution. Not much of a reason for war.

The reality? A bunch of reasons... a complex web... with the rich and corporate as the spiders.

To some, history is a series of big moves made by great men. It is presidents, generals, people whose achievements Changed the Course of History.® That too is wrong.

If I get a particularly good blowjob... one that includes my balls... that changes the course of history. My history, at least. EVERYTHING changes the course of history.

Maybe, history is a series of misdeeds and revenge, then revenge for the revenge, then revenge for the revenge for the revenge. Each time a different side wins, the winners rewrite the history, making themselves the good guys. I donno.

We can look at the past and see things from other vantage points. History is an interesting task, and it may be able to shed some light on the present. But it doesn't teach us what to do in the present. Neither does logic or science.

With free speech, the answer is not to ban it, but to provide a better alternative. With history, the answer is not to provide alternative history, but to let it go.

Penises make birth defects is logical, scientific and historical. It is also wrong.

What we need instead are absolutes... like free speech. We need some basic principles we can judge are right. Then we work from those principles. I propose the following as starters:

1. People have the right to say whatever the fuck they want, though THE PLACE and VOLUME they say it (like during the scary part of a horror movie) can be slightly regulated. Any regulation must apply equally to everyone. Content of the speech cannot be a criterion.
2. People do NOT have a right to riches, or money. It's the duty of the government to insure everyone has a basic level of existence: food, housing, clothes, healthcare. The government can and should do this by taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor.
3. Other countries have other systems of government. Ours should not interfere in other systems except to allow open and unlimited entrance to people who want to leave those other systems.
4. Consenting people have a right to do anything among themselves, as long as it doesn't physically hurt anyone outside their group.

Other suggestions are welcome. I'm sure they'll come.

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]

-->Sure corporate taxes are too high dept: The International Paper Company gave their CEO, John Faraci, a 75 percent pay hike in 2010. His new pay? $12.3 million. The company paid in taxes? Er... they got a $249 million refund. Good work John, you earned your pay.

-->T-shirts are speech too dept: The Lincoln Journal Star reports that officials at a Willie Nelson concert at the Nebraska State Fair told a woman she couldn't wear her Marijuana-leaf t-shirt. Why? It had a pot leaf on it.

The fair director said "this is a family event and we don't permit the promotion of illegal activity." Of course Willie Nelson himself is vocally pro-legalization of the herb.

-->Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, attacked Obama's proposal to tax the wealthy. His business took in $6.3 million last year, but he said "my profits are a fraction of that."

"By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over." Don't you feel sorry for him? By the way, the median US household income is just under $50,000.

-->It should be obvious department: The National Coalition Against Censorship reports that the TEXAS REPUBLICAN PARTY's new platform opposes teaching "critical thinking skills." Why?

"They have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Of course, they're right. Critical thinking DOES challenge fixed beliefs, but I think there's another reason.

Texas Republicans are afraid that if people thought critically, they'd never vote Republican (except for the 1%®)^.

-->Merry Xmas Nessie! dept: A religious school in Louisiana uses a textbook asserting that THE LOCH NESS MONSTER is a relative of a dinosaur... and that proves dinosaurs are alive and evolution is wrong. That school will get state funding under a new voucher plan in Lousiana. The plan will also give money to schools that teach that "apartheid preserved cultures" and “the Ku Klus Klan was an agent of reform.”

-->Police Dept. of the Year dept: The Palm Beach Post reports that a Florida cop honored in 2010 as OFFICER OF THE YEAR, was busted for selling meth for the last two years.

I say, meth, huh? No wonder he was OFFICER OF THE YEAR... a real go-getter, I bet.

-->Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you shortsless dept: WTSP.com reports that Polk County FL Sheriff Grady Judd said the county was ending their Free Underwear for Men in Jail® program. Says Judd, “If inmates want to wear underwear in jail, they can buy it, just like had-working Polk County citizens do.”

I guess he means the citizens OUT of jail, earning enough money to buy underwear. Otherwise, it's like asking a slave to pay for his own housing and food. Oh wait... that's capitalism, isn't it?

-->Remember him? Dept: According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, 80% of the new jobs in Texas while Rick Perry's was governor went to newly arrived immigrants. Half of those were in the country illegally. The employment rate for native-born Texans actually declined during Perry's regime.

-->Take that Bribe, please dept: There is an international organization that creates a "Corruption Perception Index."

It is a view on how "clean" different governments seem in countries around the world. Cleanest is New Zealand. At the bottom of the list, ranking # 182 is Somalia.

The U.S? Number 24. And I think the only reason America scored THAT high, was that someone paid off the survey takers.

-->Thanks dept: I want to thank the Rev Norb for the inspiration to strategically use those little Registered circled R's(®) to make several points. If those R's don't appear in this column, blame the typesetter for interfering with my free speech.

 

--Mykel Board's barely functioning homepage is www.mykelboard.com, you can also find him wasting way too much time on facebook.