Then They Came For Me aka Mykel's Post-MRR Column Number 15

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

Post-MRR Column Number 15

by Mykel Board

"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of a man asleep.” Henry David Thoreau

First they came for the smokers, and I did not speak out— because I was not a smoker. Then they came for the senile, and I did not speak out— because I was not senile. Then they came for the football players and I did not speak out— because I was not a football player. Then they came for me. --Mykel Board

I don't make it. Both hands cupped over my mouth, I run to the bathroom. I don't make it. Stomach contents... volcanic... force themselves upward... an enema in reverse... chunks of chicken... pieces of potato... whole croutons-- just the way they looked in the bar avocado dip-- spew themselves upward... through my esophagus... filling my cupped hands... spilling over... catching in my beard... dripping on a trail through my fingers.. SPLOTCH... SPLOTCH... SPLOTCH... from the bedroom. The food forces itself upward like liquid, not percolating, but exploding... upward with such force it fills my nose... overflows... my nostrils drip beer and buffalo wings. Sinuses cramp with calamari.

Finally... the toilet. I open my lips and let the primal ooze splash in. My packed sinuses ache... a huge pressure... I grab my nose from the top, spray out... nothing... harder... a green drop... the size of a pea... dribbles from a nostril. It IS a pea, mixed from the same gravy used to make chicken pot pies for decades... centuries... millennia.

No time to consider it. Here comes another heave... a giant fire hose... a brown gray mix up-chucking into the toilet with such force that the splash covers my face... my neck... my naked chest. Dripping with my own vomit, I sink to my knees. Barely able to keep my dripping face above the water in the bowl, I heave again... nearly drowning in the backsplash. I won't get drunk again. I won't get drunk again. It's just common sense.

Ok buckaroos, I've been writing for about 50 years now. MUCH of that writing has been rants against common sense, self-evidence, logic.

“Everybody knows that women make 80¢ for every dollar men make.”

“It's just logic that second-hand smoke is bad for your health.”

“If you only earn $1800 a month you can't afford a trip to Japan... It's common sense.”

All those and more are just wrong! If EVERYBODY knows it, it's probably wrong. Remember how everyone knew that margarine was better than butter. You know how many people DIED from that? Remember how everyone knew that you had to arm the Taliban in Afghanistan? It protected us from COMMUNISM. See what happened?

IN PRAISE OF SMOKING

Bottom of the eighth, two outs, Jeter on third. The Yankees are down 4 to 3. Teixeira’s up. Damn! He's barely hitting at the Mendoza Line. Yeah, he's got a bunch of homers... but. STRIKE ONE. Just as I feared. Swinging at something way out of the strike zone... Ever since his wrist injury... STRIKE TWO. Fuck! I don't need crystal balls to tell him to TAKE that next pitch. He's trying too hard. He's trying to make everything a home run. He'll... STRIKE THREE.

And now comes a public service commercial. A man's talking... not talking exactly... he's got one of those external voice boxes against his neck. A hole in his neck vibrates as he speaks. I used to be a smoker, until... Pissed off, I shut off the TV missing the ninth inning.

FLASH TO LATER THAT NIGHT: I'm looking for those lost videos on YouTube. There were only eight or so shows. Roald Dahl's WAY OUT... better than the Twilight Zone. On the screen, in that stupid side column are public service videos... one aimed at teens:

We can be the generation that ends smoking.

Jeezus fuckin' Christ. In the 60s, people wanted to be part of the generation that ends WAR. These days, they go for a bit more totalitarian goal. I wonder, if, in the 1920s there were posters saying WE CAN BE THE GENERATION THAT ENDS DRINKING.

I see anti-smoking propaganda plastered on internet sites, on subway posters, on billboards. Even the government gets in the act. I see it reflected in New York laws against smoking in parks... even if the park is just a slab of concrete at an intersection. Buildings are banning smoking by tenants... in their own apartments. The wildest logic... ignores everything EXCEPT smoking.

“Statistics show that children from buildings with more smoking have higher incidence of cancer and emphysema than children from smoke-free buildings.” What the fuck?

How 'bout that rich white folks tend to smoke less than poor folks. How 'bout that buildings with smokers tend to be closer to factories or frackers than buildings with non-smokers? Naw, that's not important. Yeah, right.

While smoking is (barely) legal... this is the time to act. This is the time to START SMOKING! If any one thing symbolizes the loss of freedom, it's the loss of the right to smoke. If any one thing symbolizes rebellion in America in 2014, it's smoking. Smoking is the great Satan of activities. It is the only legal (for now) way to flout convention... to say

I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE MYTH THAT I CONTROL MY DESTINY. I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE LIE THAT IF I GET SICK IT'S MY OWN FAULT... OR THE FAULT OF MY NEIGHBOR WHO SMOKES. I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE LIE THAT MY BAD LUNGS ARE NOT THE FAULT OF CORPORATE AMERICA AND THE SHIT THEY POUR INTO THE AIR AND WATER, BUT RATHER SOMETHING I DO MYSELF.

More than this. Smoking in 2014 attacks the entire idea of Your comfort is more important than my freedom... The easily offended society... The whiners who call for the boycott of everyone they disagree with. The censors who, instead of answering free speech with speech, answer it with calls to end that speech. The bullies, who in the name of stopping bullying, bully people into keeping their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves. The totalitarians who say that my emotions are more important than your art... who can't walk away or put something down because it triggered emotional distress. The single act of lighting up a cigarette is a proclamation as loud as any protest poster that says. I AM AN INDIVIDUAL... AND I WILL NOT COWER.

IN PRAISE OF ALZHEIMERS

"Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” --Franklin Pierce Adams

With age comes senility--- that disease of forgetting. Maybe it's not so bad.

I've written before about how the 70 years since World War II is enough time to FORGET ABOUT IT! So much evil has been done in the name of that war... from genocide to opera censorship. So much continues to be done. I've written plenty on that memory... and there are other things to forget

In Texas, they still Remember the Alamo and use that mudhut... a holdout in a war FOR slavery and AGAINST an innocent nation... a war that was nothing more than a land grab. Texans don't want you to REALLY remember the Alamo. You should remember it THEIR way. I say FORGET IT.

In the South, the Civil War still plays hard and anyone from George Bush Senior to Bill Clinton is a carpet-bagger. Remember the some-fucking-thing is the rallying cry of so much death and destruction, that just hearing those words should be an instant code to tell you blood's a-comin'.

Remember the Armenian holocaust. Remember the Lusitania. I cannot forgive... forget... absolve...release... relent... accept... bury the hatchet... let bygones be... let it go... let it pass... wipe the slate clean...

Remember means I can do what the fuck I want to you because someone, someplace did something to my ancestors. Remember means revenge. Revenge triggers counter-memories. I remember what you did to them because you remembered what we did to you.

Jews and Germans. Hatfields and McCoys. Clan Chattan and Clan Kay, Hamilton and Burr, Stalin and Trotsky, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, Snoop Dogg and Iggy Azalea. I donno. To all of 'em I say forget about it. It's OVER.

What you do starts NOW! If I fill a bag of dogshit, light it and put it on your front porch, that's NOW! You called my mother a slut 4 years ago? It's over!

IN DEFENSE OF FOOTBALL

“Female violence toward men is pervasive, although largely denied. Or if it isn't denied, it's excused. When a man insults or hits a woman, it's 'abuse,' but when a woman insults or hits a man, it's 'assertiveness.” --Jim Goad

“Feminism is very much like egalitarianism and if you believe that we are all equal then you are a feminist. " --Internet Website

Two months ago, I wrote about Robert Anton Wilson's book, Cosmic Trigger III. In that book, Wilson mentions violence in the movies. We always hear Christians and feminists complain about how movies cause Sandy Hooks or random street violence. What goes unmentioned-- except by Wilson-- is how that in (almost?) every major U.S. movie since the 70s, a man is hit by a woman... from the slap across the face to real ball busters.

My sister's house-- Rosh Hashanah eve.:The meal is finished. The Tsimmis is just settling in my stomach. 5775... a nice palindromic year.

“Hey Mike,” says my sister (the only person in the world who calls me Mike). “You want to watch some TV before you go to bed?”

Since I don't own a cable-connected TV, I figure why not? It'll teach me some references from Modern Culture^®. I can drop them in a column and people will think I'm up-to-date.

“Sure.” I tell her, settling myself in front of a TV that's bigger than my apartment. “What's on?”

“You'll love this show,” she says, flipping the channel to something called (I think) The Modern Family. It has all the current memes: the gay couple, the divorcees, the dysfunctional siblings. Shows like this are one of the reason I DON'T have cable TV. There's a scene... outside a restaurant... a guy and a girl-- she much younger, but still legal... his wife in the series, I think. He says something. She slaps him across the face, then grabs his chin and kisses him smack dab on the mouth. My sister laughs.

Could you imagine if the roles were reversed? Could you imagine an older man, slapping a younger woman across the face, then grabbing her chin and kissing her full on the mouth? The tyrants from Social Justice Warriors would be all over them. Boycott the sponsors! Shut 'em down. How could they allow... Violence against women!! Jeezus fuck! But this violence passes with a laugh.

What's the reality? Why is there a Violence Against Women bill, but not a Violence Against People bill? Why is the harassment of women in the military a more important issue than the military itself-- murdering hundreds of innocent people thousands of miles away?

Another YouTube video... this one of a hotel lobby. A young black woman hits a big black guy and they get in an elevator together. Flash to inside. Again the woman hits the guy... this time, he hits back. She's down. But what gets reported? RAY PRICE attacks his fiancée. Her initial violence isn't mentioned once (at least not that I've found).

Ray Price is found guilty of domestic violence. Not guilty in a legal court, but in the newsprint court... in the broadcast court... he's guilty. He's big and black so he MUST be guilty. Right?

“Hitting a woman is not something a real man does, and that’s true whether or not an act of violence happens in the public eye or, far too often, behind closed doors,” says President Obama.

Football to Get Tough on Domestic Abuse, headlines every paper in America. That is not EQUALITY. That is gender supremacy. This is Guilty until Proven... forget the proof! GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.

Okay, let's get this straight. I HATE football. It is war in miniature... a glorification of organized violence. It's played by idiots and controlled by jocks. Yet people are surprised that football players are violent???? They're SUPPOSED to be violent. That's their job!

All that doesn't change EQUAL PROTECTION. Idiots have rights too! That includes the right to a trial and a presumption of innocence. It includes the right for both parties to say: FORGET ABOUT IT. IT'S OVER. LET'S MOVE ON!

But we won't move on. We'll run around in circles. Cheering violence, then condemning those who are violent (especially to women). It makes me sick. Excuse me while I run to the bathroom. Maybe I'll make it this time.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

(Sorry buckaroos, no endnotes this time. The column, itself, takes up too many words this month. You can check out several endnote-type postings on my clippings blog.)

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TWO WOMEN or Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 14

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

by Mykel Board

"I knew it was possible to objectify and not disrespect, to objectify and not wish harm upon a person. I wanted to share a pleasure. “ – Nina Hartley, pornstar, and pro-sex activist

Note: this month's column is a bit late. Two reasons:

First, I've been busier than the mopboy at a peepshow... with the New Year (5775) and fasting away my sins, planning my life and impending doom. Second, a trip to Montreal inspired me to change the whole... er... thrust of the column. You'll see why. This one is called,

A TALE OF TWO WOMEN

Usually, having a penis is a convenience. It's easier to piss standing up, for example, or re-dress after a bathroom quickie. But sometimes, having a penis is a pain in the ass.

Right now, mine is somewhere between overcooked spaghetti and the Washington Monument. I sit at Le Gentleman's Choice, a strip club in Downtown Montreal. I'm here with three of my friends from New York-- all Japanese guys. One of them, Kenji, sits next to me. A quick glance as he shifts on his seat shows that he, too, is al dente. Takeshi and Taro are in the back, in private booth lap dances.

There are girls galore here, from a full-mast inducing Ethiopesque to a downright scary biker babe. On stage now is a collegiate-looking woman with an athletic body and small, pointed nipples.

I walk up to that stage and lay a crisp US dollar bill on it. No one else is tipping, maybe because Canadian dollars are coins. I return to my seat next to Kenji. The girl on stage picks up my dollar, smiles, and flashes some gash-- directly at me.

A beautiful girl... barely twenty... smooth skin the color of (white) piano keys... wearing a blue wig and not much else... sits down on the other side of me.

“You want a lap dance?” she asks. “Just ten dollars.”

Her accent does not seem French.

“I don't do lap dances,” I tell her. “They don't work for me.”

She starts to get up.

“But,” I continue, “I'll buy you a drink if you talk to me. You get a commission on that, right?”

She nods.

I signal the waitress, a pretty, but not very friendly woman, dressed in black with a white

apron.

“Une bière, et ce qu'elle veut,” I tell her.

“Now,” I say. “First, tell me about your life. Start with your name.”

“My name's Veronica,” she says.

“Come on,” I tell her. “What's your REAL name?”

She smiles and shrugs, “It's Marta, in English, Martha.”

And then she talks to me.

MARTHA'S STORY

“I'm from Poland,” she says, pronouncing it like BOW-LAND, “You know Poland?”

“I may be American,” I tell her, “but I'm not an idiot.”

She laughs.

“My first dream was to go to America,” she continues, “but I have a cousin here... she works in Montreal.. It was a lot easier to come here.”

“Does your cousin work here?” I ask, nodding toward the stage.

Martha laughs, shaking her head. The wig shakes slightly slower than her head. “She would be afraid to do this. She's a waitress, in one of those tourist beer gardens... it's awful... filled with dumb French tourists... and Americans.”

She looks at me and pouts... a prostate-aching pout... “Sorry,” she says, “I didn't mean to say bad things about Americans.”

“It's all right,” I say, adjusting myself, “I say bad things about Americans all the time.”

She frowns again, then looks at my face and laughs.

“I love it here,” she says. “It's such a... how you call it... ego trip... dancing for all these guys. They all look at you. You're number one in their minds... you excite them. On stage, you are the center. You're like a queen.”

“Does it pay?” I ask. “I was the only one tipping.”

“No,” says Martha, “they don't tip here. The girls' money comes from lap dances. $10 a song. I take home nearly a hundred thousand a year. I don't need dollar tips.”

“Are there male strip clubs in Montreal?” I ask. “Either for men or for women?”

“There's Le Two Eight One,” she says. “That's guys who dance for girls. I guess there are some gay clubs too. But I don't know them.”

“You know anybody who works at one of those clubs?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Those clubs don't pay. Girls don't want lap dances as much, and the clubs are... I don't know... how you call it... slow Z.”

“Sleazy?” I offer.

“Oui,” she says. “Sleazy. The boys don't make much money unless they... you know... they have to...”

I nod, surprised at her modesty.

Just then Takeshi comes back... scowling. He ignores me, but sits on the other side of Kenji. They speak to each other in Japanese. I look at him, frowning a question.

“I was cheated,” he says to me-- in English. “I thought the dance was ten dollars, but it was only for one song. The girl didn't tell me when the next song came on.”

He says something else-- in Japanese-- to Kenji. I can't hear it, but I do see another girl... the one he went to a private booth with... jogging from the booth. She kneels in front of Takeshi. In her hand is a ten-dollar bill.

“I'm sorry,” she says to him. “I thought you understood. Here, take ten dollars back. I don't want you to feel cheated.”

Takeshi shakes his head. “I had the dance. You should get the money.” She smiles and leaves.

It's a little while later that Taro returns, grinning like a chimp on Animal Planet.

“I went,” he says in English as he approaches the table.

“I think you mean you came,” I correct him.

He nods.

Back in New York: I sit at a bar in Midtown... right near my school. It's a typical NY faux-Irish bar. Waitresses with Irish accents and breasts. Customers with jackets and loosened ties (men)-- or business casual skirts and sensible shoes (women).

It's 9PM. The woman next to me is slightly tipsy... about 30 years old... faint crowsfeet at the edges of her eyes... dark circles underneath. She's dressed like any midtown secretary. She looks at me looking at her... squints, as if trying to get me in focus.

“Hey, sailor,” she says. “...or whatever you are. How 'bout buyin' a girl a drink?”

“Sure,” I say. “If you'll tell me about your life.”

“You don't want to know about my life,” she says... surprisingly NOT slurring her words.

“Sure I do,” I tell her.

“Hey Maggie,” I ask the bartender, “give this young woman a drink on me. Nothing top shelf, but... how 'bout a Jameson's.”

“Well thanks... er...” says the woman.

“Mykel,” I say.

“My name's Justine,” she says. I don't ask her for her real name.

JUSTINE'S STORY

“How long've you been in New York?” I ask her.

“About a year,” she tells me. “I was born in Missouri... small town. It was my dream to come to New York.”

“So you did it,” I say.

“Hah!,” she answers, taking a sip of her Jamesons, “more like a nightmare than a dream.”

“You don't like the city or you don't like your job?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says.

She tells me about her job. It's with McKenzie & Cromwell, a law firm. She is a paralegal. “That means a secretary who has to kill time on LexisNexis.” She explains that LexisNexis is some kind of database for looking up precedents and court cases.

“Mckenzie and Cromwell?” I ask. “Sounds goyish. Do you like your job?”

“It's as boring as golf,” she tells me. “Oh, I hope you're not a golf fan.”

“Do I look like a golf fan?” I ask her.

She smiles and shakes her head.

“The pay is shit. The men make twice as much,” she continues shaking her head. “I know strippers who make more than me.”

“Me too,” I don't say.

“But that's not the worst of it,” she says, draining her glass. I signal to Maggie to bring two more drinks. Another Jameson for her and a Yuengling for me. “It's the... I dunno... impersonality of it all.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I'm like a cog in a wheel,” she says, mixing her metaphors. “I mean I sit in a little cubical with dozens of other people sitting in their little cubicles. I don't know their names. They don't know mine. I'm not a person. I'm a thing... a piece of meat. Nobody ever says nice job or even nice haircut. The company tells me how to dress. I might as well be working at McDonald’s for all the attention they pay to me as a person.

“And every day I feel like shit about myself,” she says. “The whole purpose of the company is to cheat people. We bill more than a hundred bucks an hour... for dicking around on the internet. I get home and want to wash the smell of scam off my body. It's awful.”

I nod.

“And I'm not the only one,” she continues. “There are girls working there... from all over... I think some recruiter promises them jobs with (she uses her fingers to make air quotes) A BIG LAW FIRM, and they sign the papers. Once they get here, they can't get out of their contract without being shipped back to Kabukistan or wherever the hell they're from. It's like slavery.”

““It's called Human Trafficking,” I don't tell her. “It's only illegal if you show your twat.”

“Thanks for the drink,” says Justine. “I hope I didn't bore you with my story. I wish I could invite you home, but I got a lazy boyfriend I gotta support. I hope the story was worth the two drinks.”

“It was,” I tell her. “just what I needed.... I went.”

“Huh?” she asks.

I just smile.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Huh? dept: Jason Torpy, The president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said, "The lack of belief in a god should not be a disqualifier to access to chaplaincy." And in April 2014, the U.S. Army announced that "humanist" would be an officially recognized "faith," although so-far, they're not allowed to have chaplains. 

I say: a CHAPLAIN is a religious leader serving the military. “Lack of belief in a god:” kind of puts the kibosh on “religious” doesn't it? A lot of atheists are dogmatic and evangelical... but somehow I don't think that's enough to qualify.

-->Your private donations aren't dept: Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla gave $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would outlaw same-sex marriages. This was in 2008-- six years ago. Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla and only recently became the CEO. He has since resigned because of the stink raised by the donation.

-->Rush Limbaugh... again dept: The girls are on Rush Limbaugh for saying that every adolescent knows that when uttered by a girl “No doesn't always mean no.” You can read the petition here. Of course, Limbaugh's right... but that's irrelevant to the outrage. Something as mundane as the truth never stopped a feminist before... won't stop one now.

-->The good guys dept: Not In My Name is a group of Jews, some in Israel, some elsewhere, who reject the Israeli-caused genocide in Gaza and Palestine. They also reject the Jewish hawks and other rightists speaking for “all of us.” Mazel tov!

-->More about strippers dept: There a great article in This Week called Surprising Facts About Strippers. After reading this column, you won't be surprised.

-->Twisted numbers dept:I just read Michael Bloomberg, former king of New York, bragged that during his term "the life expectancy of the average New Yorker increased three years." He wanted to claim stupid anti-smoking and pro-bike lanes were making New Yorkers healthier.

The real reason? Rich people live longer than poor people on average. Mike Bloomberg threw out the poor and replaced 'em with rich. Violá! An increase in longevity!

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, CDs and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

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