Q.E.D. or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 39

Q.E.D.

or

Mykel's

Post MRR  Column no 39

These days more people are interested if Lincoln was gay than if he was right.  – Stephen Carter

They were the kind of people that give heterosexuality a bad name... and what better place for them than in a gym lockerroom? They LIVE in a gym lockerroom... with hetero muscles out to here... You know the type.

NOTE FOR THE UNOBSERVANT: Both hets and homos love the gym. They love building muscles... and showing them under naked skin. But homo muscles are different from het muscles. Here's how to tell:

Homo muscles work together.... the focus is the shape. Homo arm muscles bulge, but not at the expense of chest muscles. The homo gym-body is a V mounted on a tight ass. No part is overdeveloped to ugliness. The body is a symphony... all the muscles complementing each other... large, but sculpted.

Het muscles are in competition with each other.... the focus is size. Arms can be two hippo legs mounted on a giant pumpkin. Het muscles are jazz... they fight each other for prominence... taking a solo here or there... rarely playing together. The key to het muscles is they must be built, developed... any muscle... all muscles. Fuck the other muscles around it. Het gym-bunnies usually look like they have very small heads because of the large muscles around that organ. Anyway, it's an organ they rarely use. Take a look:

So these guys are a pair of the het ones... as ugly as a pair of anal warts... and just as annoying. Oh yeah, they're white guys... at least they looked white to me. One is blond, almost surfer-looking. The other has a dark crewcut, just flecked with gray.

“Har har har,” says the blond guy, “I told her... you like my arm muscles? Wait 'til you see my LOVE muscle! Har... har... har...”

“Oh yeah,” says the other one, “I know that story....” he makes one of those flex moves you see on the GNC cans of protein powder.

“See this?” I tell the lovely ladies. “I'll let you run your tongue over my crevice, if you let me run my tongue over your crevice.”

“Crevice!” says the blond guy, “that's a good one! Har... har... har...”

By now they're blocking my locker... two non-green hulks right in front of where my school clothes are. I've got a class to teach.

“Excuse me,” I say.

The blond guy looks at me as I were something he mistakenly stepped in.

“Sorry,” I say. “I'm just trying to get to my locker... over there.”

The other guy shakes his head. “Some people,” he says in italics, “belong in a gym. Some don't.”

“Look,” I say to him, “I'm just trying to get dressed. It's nothing personal.”

He wrinkles his forehead in a questioning gaze, an expression common to het gym-bunnies.

“Look,” I tell him, “I support you guys. I believe in your right to get married. It's nothing personal...”

“What the fuck?” says the blond guy. “If you weren't shorter than my dick and older than my grandfather I'd put your lights out.”

“Thank you for not doing that sir,” I say. “And believe me. I have several friends who are... are... just like you. I'm not embarrassed by them at all.”

There's nothing as challenging to a macho het as a challenge to his heterotude. Likewise, there's nothing as challenging to a white guy as a challenge to his ubiquity. Take the focus away from a whiteguy's being Mr Average and he freaks out.  #Blacklivesmatter, for example, shouldn't challenge anyone. They know what's happening... they live it. It's as clear as the dead Negro in the street.

“Mykel,” says the voice that comes to me when I sit in the library and write this stuff. It's not a voice that makes other people turn their heads... it's just a voice inside my own head.

I know this way of saying my name. I don't mean wrongly pronounced... “Mickel” rhyming with pickle, for example... or Mi-KELL, like My Bell. Those mistakes I quickly correct.

This particular Mykel though... this one... pronounced with a half sigh... the M breathed through the nose like a bullsnort. This Mykel will have something following it... something that means what's wrong with you? don't you know that.....?”

“Mykel,” comes my name again. “How can you support #Blacklivesmatter? Don't you know that they're racist? ALL lives matter, right? Not just black ones.”

I feel the muscle strain as my eyes roll upwards. I don't even believe in a beneficent God... so who the fuck am I asking for help?... I can't help myself.

“They're not racist,” I groan. “They just want to include something long excluded. If my closet is filled with black clothes, and you tell me... Mykel, your clothes don't have any color. I'll tell you Black is a color. This is the same thing. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean other lives don't matter.”

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” that same annoying intonation... I reach for my gun... I don't have a gun. “If racism is discrimination by race and they are focusing on race, they're racist. Kyew, Eeee, Deee!”

“Did you say Q.E.D. to me?” I ask. “W.T.F?”

“By your own definition!” comes the reply. “You've said it yourself.”

So I have. That mysterious voice has got me there.

If my 67 years of causing trouble on this planet have taught me anything, they've taught me if the answer is wrong... Check the question.

Before I get to the optimum question let's go back to the 1970s. I was in my 20s, against everything. My young life was filled with late hour discussions with my friends and family... mostly about politics. My father was smarter than me. My friends were not.

“Mykel, (actually back then it was Michael, but the tone of voice was the same),” said Bobby, “How could you like Communism? Stalin was a Communist. He killed millions. You like all that murder?”

“I'm not talking about Stalin,” I say. “I'm talking about the idea of communism.”

“Same shit,” says Bobby. “Stalin was bad. Stalin was a communist. Therefore communism is bad.”

He did not say Q.E.D., but he might have.

What I'm writing about this month is what I label LABELISM. That is, ending discussion by definition. X=Y and Y is bad,  so X is bad.  Hitler was a vegetarian. Hitler was bad therefore vegetarianism is bad.         Q.E. non- fuckin' D!

We label something racist, sexist, PC, ableist, communist, terrorist... the list is endless. We claim that just by affixing the label, we've answered/ended the argument... without justifying what we're saying. If we don't end the argument, we change the focus, so the debate no longer focuses on the topic of discussion, but on the label itself.

Donald Trump is a misogynist... No he isn't... Yes he is....

Yo! It doesn't matter. What matters is... is he right? Who cares how many pussies he's claimed to have grabbed? Will he threaten Russia or make peace with it?

LABELISM paints with such a wide brush that the painter herself gets splashed. Some maniac in Florida turns a machinegun loose on a homo-filled disco. TERRORISM! shout a ton of politicians, anti-homo Republicans among the loudest. So what do we do? Once we have a label, we know who to kill.

We drop drones on Pakistanis... figuring a terrorist here... a terrorist there.  They're all terrorists... kill 'em!

There is no reasoned discussion. No thought that Pakistanis had nothing to do with California. No thought that killing someone in some other country makes sympathizers in this country. Kill more... get more sympathizers.

The question is not whether #Blacklivesmatter is racist or not. The question is whether they are right. Of course it's racist (to make choices based on race) to focus on Black, rather than all lives. Just as it's racist to give preference to a student university applicant because she's black... but is it right? If I label something RACIST... does that put an end to the discussion? Often the answer is YES... but it shouldn't.

Racist or not, #Blacklivesmatter is calling attention to a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never attitude when cops confront Negroes. This attention-calling is the right thing to do. It doesn't matter if it's racist or not.

Affirmative Action-- racist or not-- gives an ever-so-slight extra boost to people who have more than a hundred years of hindrance. The label racist does not answer the question: is it right?

Or take the case of the Oregon bookstore that featured a display on Banned Books. They wanted to show how the freedom to read... and the freedom to write has been hampered throughout American history.

Among the books in their display was Little Black Sambo, a 19^th century story about a black boy who out-smarted a tiger.  The art in the book is stereotypical of colored people in American history: big eyes, big white lips… A local arts group organized a boycott of the store and, at last report, the place was set to go out of business. The book is racist, they say. No it isn't say others.  

IT DOESN'T MATTER. The bookstore was displaying censored books in a display to oppose censorship. One of the key points in the opposition to censorship is that even (ESPECIALLY) ideas you don't like should not be censored. RACIST answers nothing! It's not the question. Censorship is the question, and-- in this case-- the reaction to the display proved the point.

And so it goes. Instead of discussing merits... good points and bad points... right and wrong... people talk about labels. It’s impossible that prisoners have micro-chips implanted in their brains. Why? Such talk is conspiracist! That ends the conversation. Forget if the charges are true or not. Just labeling CONSPIRACY is enough to end the argument.

Flying saucers, Roswell, the anti-vaccinists... they're labeled conspiracy. As if that serves as an answer rather than... are they right?

Forget that there really are conspiracies. The CIA really did plan to assassinate Castro with a poison cigar. The US army really did test LSD on American soldiers. The US government really did infect colored men in Tuskegee, Alabama with syphilis-- just to see what would happen.

Calling something conspiracy doesn't invalidate it. PROVING something is a conspiracy theory doesn't invalidate it. The only thing that matters is if it's true.

Yes, we need labels to live. We can't talk about anything without labeling it. Labels enable thought. I'm not objecting to labels. I'm objecting to letting labels be the end of the discussion. The period on the sentence. The semen in the blowjob. The beershit the morning after. LABELISM prevents thought.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or 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]

-->Conspiracy Dept.: This blog will appear just before the 2016 presidential election... probably the most useless presidential election in American history. From the get-go, I predicted a Clinton victory... and as time progressed, I've become more convinced that it was the plan cooked up by the Clintons and the Trumps from the beginning. For most Americans, Clinton's ONLY appeal is that she's not Trump. I bet that's enough to get her elected... and maybe... sometime between now and WWIII... we'll see Donny and Bill on the golf-course together again... yucking it up just like they used to. Conspiracy theory? Maybe. But is it right?

-->Creative cops dept: Douglas Lydic was sitting in the back of a cop car. He didn't have much choice. He was put there-- in handcuffs. The cops were holding him while they searched his house for drugs. They didn't find any. But, while the cops were searching, the guy managed to climb out the window of the cop car-- still handcuffed-- and run away. The cops captured him and this time brought charges. Those charges?
          1. Escape.

          2. Theft of handcuffs.

I shit you not.

→> Violence from the left dept: New York University canceled a speech by gay conservative, Milo Yiannopoulos. The speech was supposed to be part of Yiannopoulos's Dangerous Faggot Tour. The university's reason? “security concerns.”

     It is a victory of propaganda to claim that the RIGHT is the violent sector, when all the violence at right-wing events is initiated by leftists in protest. Ultimately, it proves violence works!

-->Proving my point dept: While this blog was waiting for a final proof-read, I read this a friend's facebook page. It's about Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president.

As I understand her view, she believes that some vaccines cause problems and we are discouraged from discussing this out of a fear we will be labeled "anti-vaxxer" or "anti-science." But she believes, as do others, that our general comfort with Big Pharma is based on arguably corrupted FDA reviews, which we don't question out of fear of getting stuck with the aforementioned labels.

See what I mean?

--> Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for censoring me.

     As their revolving editrixes move on to commercial ventures, each blames her predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.

     Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

See you in hell.

-end-

NOTE: If you're interested in my travel blog, you can read it at mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.