BRAIN POLICE or Mykel's Post MRR Column no 52

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

POST MRR COLUMN NUMBER 52

Brain Police!

by Mykel Board

Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” --Buddha

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. --de Tocqueville

What will you do if the people you knew were the plastic that melted, and the chromium too? WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? --Frank Zappa

Yo! Yeah, I'm talking to you. No, don't look over your shoulder... There's no one there. Yeah you! You... the echo of every tweet that agrees with you. You... the spewer of every fashionable idea that every one of your friends spouts... verbatim. You... the cop-hating language cop. You the safe-spacer... the spouter of thoughts you take for granted... but are wrong. Yeah, I'm talking to you!

FLASH TO PORNHUB.COM: Damn it! A search for bisexual Africans is one page long and it only has lesbos with guys. What's up with that? Where is the doggie-style girl on her hands and knees... one guy on either end... the black twinks kissing each other as the girl gives head to one and takes the other up the wazoo? Forward me the links... please!

Elena once asked me if I still could jerk off only to what's in my mind... if I NEEDED porn to get a stiffy... if I could use my own fantasy to spew the few drops my prostate has left onto that faithful purple rag that hangs next to the computer.

An interesting question. The facile answer is Of course I don't need porn. An attractive REAL LIVE naked person will work just fine. That is a cheat... and it's not the point. The point? Can I construct a fantasy in my mind... one strong enough to get me off? With no pictures... no text... no outside inspiration?

I can do it, if I fantasize about someone I've seen. I can have an orgasmic mental vision if the people are real. I can rise and stroke if I have an image in my head of someone substantive... a real LIVE person. But I cannot create from scratch. I cannot make a face... a body... a dialog... out of nothing... and then jerk off to it. I USED TO be able to do it. But now I can't. Is porn responsible for that inability? We'll talk about that later.

FLASH TO LAS VEGAS NEVADA: Stephen Paddock, an ex-serviceman, open-fires on a Country and Western crowd. Blau... blau. BlauBlauBlau.. A....aaaaa.aaaaaaaaaa...aaaaa...

Bodies crash to the ground. That ground quickly turns to crimson mud. A young woman tries to run from the shots... she trips over a corpse... near corpse?... she's down. Ratatatatat across her back. Two corpses.... Then more. By the time it's over, the body count is 59.

FLASH TO SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, TEXAS: Devin Patrick Kelley enters a church on November 4... He opens fire. Heavy artillery... through the pews... KERPOW! KERPOW! KERPOW! Bullet-torn victims from 24 months to 70 years old.. A sea of bloody Christians... come together to ask for God's blessing and this is what they get. Almost enough to make you think God is not such a nice guy.

FLASH TO NEW YORK... HALLOWEEN: I hate Halloween. Next to Santacon, it's my least favorite holiday of the year. In NYU-land... around the corner from my apartment, Halloween is an excuse for every closet-queen fratboy to dress in borrowed frills and stuffed brassieres.. and parade his drunken idiocy on the street. It's gotten worse since the costume cops make even this unacceptable (sexist, they say)... limiting approved trans-costumes to Superheroes ... and inanimate objects.  

The morning of this Halloween a rented truck in Soho plows into a group of cyclists and pedestrians. The driver shouts ALLAH AKHBAR or something like that. BLAM! Right down the bike path. PITUM! PITUM! PITUM! Like a ball in a bowling alley. Bikes and people fly through the air like bowling pins. Eight people die. 

You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict the reaction. MASSACRE... MASSACRE... TERROR.

Social Justice Warriors twitter up a storm:

On and on... a tsunami of righteous indignation. When I object, I hear that old 1960s refrain. Mykel, you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

I say: YOU'RE WRONG! The solution IS the problem.

FLASH TO HATE-CRIMES: Somebody scrawls a swastika on a tombstone in a Jewish cemetery. It's A HATE CRIME!! That means the perp goes to jail... for graffiti.

It's a dark side street in Greenwich Village. Two young guys... matching haircuts... walk down the street hand-in-hand. The sound of voices rings from behind.

“Let's get 'em!”

A gaggle of colored teens is on the homosexuals. A fist to the ribs... one to the head. One of the attackers holds one of the gay pair. Another reaches into the victim's pocket and and takes his wallet.

“Yeah, you homos... I need this more than you do.”

The colored guys are later arrested and charged with assault and robbery as a hate crime... sentenced to an extra two years in jail... just for the hate part.

FLASH TO JOHNNY CARSON 1960s:

Carson is playing THE GREAT CARNAC! Wearing a huge turban (politically incorrect in the 21^st Century) festooned with jewels, he takes a sealed envelope and holds it to his temple.

“And the answer is PETER PAN!” He says. Then he opens the envelope and reads:

“What do you use to fry a Peter?”

Next envelope:

“And the answer is Hi Diddly Dee.” And he opens the envelope.

“How do you say Good Morning to your diddly dee?”

Get it? Mind reading was a trick. A joke. Something that everyone knew was fake... an impossibility. That was 1965... Sometimes what everybody knew, nobody knows anymore.

Now, what's IN THE MIND is no longer a joke. It's not a parlor trick. It's a crime! TERRORISM, like a HATE-CRIME is in the mind of the criminal... not in the action. It is a thought crime. Your support for HATE-CRIME laws, makes TERRORISM laws possible. YOU... yeah you... give the okay to criminalize what people are thinking.

What makes the Muslim a terrorist while the white guys aren't? It's the same reasoning that makes a subway graffitier an artist and a swastika painter a hate criminal. It's the MIND.

Don't tell me there are other thought crimes. Crimes of intent. The difference between a killing by accident and MURDER. Intent requires SOMETHING in the mind of the perp... but it doesn't say what that something is. If I plan to kill you... that shows intent. If I stalk you. Follow your comings and goings... wait outside your door for you to show yourself... that shows intent. It doesn't matter WHAT the motive is... jealousy... fear... hatred... revenge... intent is the only requirement. It doesn't take a mind-reader to figure it out.

In the 21^st Century, things have changed. Where mind-reading was a joke, now it's deadly serious. People are going to jail... maybe executed... because of their thoughts! Because of what's in their minds.

You're pissed that the white guys massacred and the Arab was a terrorist! The reason is the thought, not the action. Terrorism is for political ends. The THOUGHT must be to make some political change. The massacre-makers had no politics. They were in it for the blood. More people died in the massacres, but the killers didn't THINK terrorist^® thoughts.

I've written before about my feelings on hate crimes. Now we see it reflected in terrorism. The same people who support hate crime laws, now complain about “unfair” terrorism charges. You... yeah you... you don't get it. You're the problem.

Once you allow MIND-CRIMES... once you allow the law to prosecute thoughts... what's in the mind... you unleash a terrible power. How many of my fantasies are illegal... and yours? How many women dream about getting raped... but would never want it in real life? What if there were penalties just for the fantasy? How many diaries... blogs... pre-bedtime jerk-offs... daydreams... nightmares are against the law... or will be?

Is my increasing inability to fantasize a reaction to increasing thought control? I donno, but it might be.

When we police thinking... we stop thinking. Americans suffer from lack of thinking enough. My inability to create a hard-on-inducing image from scratch is a precursor to ALL of our inabilities to imagine anything new, different, transgressive, strange.

The cliched answer to Why do they hate is? is: They're jealous of our freedom. As long as THINKING is against the law, we have no freedom to be jealous of.

--End of the Main Part--

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

--> I said it in the 80s dept: I found a link to a "song" I wrote in the 1980s that had similar ideas... called "terrorist." You can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqBBIxBYQ1I, but you might have to cut and paste, because Blogger is acting up today.  

-->Scalp em! dept: The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has dismantled an anti-slavery artwork that tried to recreate the gallows Americans used to help enslave non-white people. Why was it dismantled? Indians!

      Protesters said it was traumatic “because it recalled the execution of 38 tribesmen in 1862.” Traumatic? That's the idea! But you can't talk to people about trauma... it may cause a traumatic reaction.

-->Leaving Absurdistan dept: By the time you read this I'll be out of New York on my yearly adventure to... someplace. This year I'm going to:

     1.Los Angeles from Dec 1 through the 7th

2. New Zealand from Dec 9 through New Year's Eve
3. Tahiti (Pape-ete) for a SECOND New Year's Eve (It's on the other side of the International Dateline, get it?) Till Jan 8
4. San Francisco Till Jan 14

If you'll be in any of those places let me know... and we can meet up. If you've got beer and a couch, that's even better.

-->Busy little beaver dept: There's lots to pimp this month. First, there's an essay I wrote (actually a version of an MRR column), about GG Allin's last show in New York. The book it's in is expensive, but great! Click on it for more information and Amazon ordering. Maybe you can get it used.

-->Something for the girls dept: I contributed a lot of photos, but they only wanted the ones that presented a “positive image.” So I think I have one picture in the book... even then, it's a fine inspiration and memory of a time when females did more than complain about being touched.

-->You're kidding dept: Those who REALLY know me, know that I'm a fan of haiku and senryu (more human, usually humorous, haiku). I don't mean those idiotic 5-7-5 internet joke haiku. I mean REAL stuff. Stuff that ignores 5-7-5 and goes for something deeper. For 25 years or so, I've belonged to The Spring Street Haiku Group. We do small chapbook anthologies. Here's the current one... and it's cheap. If you can't connect by clicking on the book, it's because I'm out of town. Try again at the end of January, or send a crisp $5 bill to me at POB 137, NYC 10012. I'll send you a copy when I get back.

-->Last With A Hard-on dept: Remember when homos celebrated QUEERNESS instead of pushing to be JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE? You can see me, Tom Jennings, Larry Livermore, Bruce LaBruce and the terrific GB Jones (among others). In the Queercore documentary... Here's a link to their facebook page. 

MORE PLUGS

If you're interested in my travel writing , check out http://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com/

You can read some of my classics as far back as the 70s at: http://mykelsoldies.blogspot.com/

I also have some random postings including several on how rich people spend their money.

Those are at: http:/mykelsclippings.blogspot.com

AND FINALLY

LINK TRADE:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to.

Here's a start:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

• And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

• Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

• Sometimes I contribute to an interesting multi-talented blog called OgFomK Arts see me there!

• And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes. 

• And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

See you in hell!

--Mykel Board

#MENEITHER or Mykel's Post MRR Column no 51

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 51

or

The Harvey Touch

or

#meneither

"Physical revulsion at sex with the wrong person was a learned and socially instituted response. More than that, it was an effective social management tool, since once internalized, it institutes the psychology of monogamy as a self-enforced system.” --Laura Kipnis

It's the mother of all beershits... a bowl-filling steaming pile of brownitude.. no --black... blacker than a Japanese businessman’s suit... blacker than an NFL player... blacker than your ex-wife's heart. A bubbling bowl of churning feces... neither solid nor liquid... with the gaseous aroma of a turned-on oven whose flame has gone out.

The power of anal expulsion lifts me to new heights. I'm only vaguely aware of the splash against the back of my legs... I can deal with that later. Right now, the relief lifts me up... up... my balding head nearly touching the bathroom ceiling... on the way to nirvana.

Everything is right with the world. I've turned inside out... emptied myself of doubt, fear, evil, the horror of day-to-day life. Ennui replaced by ecstasy. I walk on air from the toilet paper to the bedroom to the street below... where I say hello and blow a kiss to the ugliest girl I see.

“Fuck, you!” she says... and then. “No, I take that back. I WON'T fuck you. Not now or ever.”

My beer-shit high leaves me, and I crash down to the filthy streets of the city.

That's just the start.

I leave the subway at Grand Central Station. As usual, a nest of tourists gathers at the exit... consulting their cellphone maps,.. turning this way and that to orient their Google to the simple streets of Manhattan.

A young white woman... judging from the width of her hips, probably not a New Yorker... squints with confusion at the tiny screen in front of her.

“Are you lost?” I ask.

It's as if I'd asked, “Can you show me your twat?”

Her eyebrows raise in half anger and half terror.

“No!” she shouts and walks off... no-- stomps off... in the wrong direction, I hope.

What happened?

FLASH TO THE NEWS: Harvey Weinstein, a rather unappealing-looking man is charged hither and yon with sexual harassment. Like a Bill Cosby redux, any vaginated creature who was ever in the same room with the guy... now claims she was harassed... violated... humiliated.

Even males who try to cast aside their penis privilege get their balls nailed to the table. Take Ben Affleck... please... Like most male feminists, Affleck clearly wants to get on the good side of women. It's called the urge to get laid. When the Weinstein affair is announced Affleck tweets:

I am saddened and angry that a man who I worked with used his position to intimidate, sexually harass, and manipulate many women over decades....

The tweet goes on to say how wonderful women are and how they need to have more power. blah, blah blah...

Does it work? Does Affleck suddenly have a harem of women begging him to taste their liberated juices? You bet your Anita Hill he doesn't. Instead, more harassees come out of the woodwork... like termites from a burning log. One of them accuses Affleck himself of “groping” her. What did he do?

“He touched my breast.”

I shit you not. He touched her breast!

I live in New York... Do you know how many breasts I touch on any given rush hour train? How many times my own manly nips are brushed? Breast-touching is as common as crossing the street against a red light... and just as offensive.

The atmosphere is getting so that people are afraid to touch each other at all. Every tap on the shoulder... every hug... every peck on the cheek is sexual harassment. Sex itself... is sexual harassment.

As I write this, Weinstein, a former Hollywood mogul, is in trouble because he used the casting couch to get laid. He's a big ugly bulldog of a man, but there are few reports of force or brutality.

“Hey kid, you wanna be in pictures? Put those fat lips around this flesh cigar ticket to stardom?”

And why not? Is pay-to-play for Hollywood any worse than pay-to-play for the smuggling truck for that Mexican delivery boy? Is a multi-thousand-dollar-movie-contract-to-fame worse than immigrants sleeping 6 in a room for tips? Who do you think suffers more?

Why is SEXUAL harassment worse than any other kind? Why is giving a blowjob for a movie role worse than suffering hours in a truck... maybe dying... to mow lawns? Why is giving a blowjob-- once-- for Hollywood-- any worse than the toadying that office workers do every day to KEEP their jobs.

Work late with no pay? #metoo

Wake up early to wear clothes you hate to work 8-10 hours at something soul-destroying? #metoo

Grind your teeth at night because the boss criticized some minor infraction of a work rule? #metoo

Rather flip tricks than flip burgers. #metoo

What's the difference between all this exploitation and the victims of Harvey Weinstein? It's SEX! SEX! SEX! It comes back to Christianity... to the idea that sex is a SIN! Though most modern feminists are atheists... their morality is Protestant... Evangelical. Of all the horrible things people do to get a keep a job... of all the overwork, low/no pay, theft from the public, deceiving... involved in the American workplace... only SEX is the bad one.

Remember when sex was fun? Spontaneous? As politics-free as a good beershit? #metoo

FLASH TO THE SUBWAY: It's the 23^rd Street stop. From my seat I see the doors open and an old woman... leaning on a walker... heading toward the train. She shuffles, pulling her right foot ahead and then bringing up the left... then pushing her right foot ahead once more. On her face is a grimace... the snarl of continual pain and frustration. Through that snarl, I can see a single tooth on her lower jaw.

She slowly approaches... The BONG BING of the closing door... I bolt... just make it... pry the doors apart so the woman and her walker can squeeze inside. She makes it... looks at me. I can read her thoughts. They say, I KNOW WHY YOU DID THAT! YOU WANT TO FUCK ME!

That's it. All social intercourse has become harassment! All contact between genders is for sex. I never thought I'd agree with Betsy DeVos, the woman who wants to destroy public education... but she said “If everything is harassment, then nothing is.” She's right.

Kidding, jokes, honest flirtation, courtship... all are dead in a world so sex-obsessed that words are RAPE. Is spin-the-bottle sexual harassment? Young men, just exploring their own sexuality... forced to face verbal castration or be accused in the #metoo-ism of harassment. Will heterosexual sex become as contractual as accepting a job offer: in writing-- or not at all.

(Side note: maybe the benefit of this mentality will be an increase in homosexuality.... Aaah... a small silver lining.)

In 2006, members of the Duke University lacrosse team were accused of gang-raping a student. The young men went through hell... were shunned... isolated by their friends... shamed by the media... found guilty in the press... held as examples of “rape culture” by puritanical feminists... They were not guilty.

In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine reported another gang rape. This time at the University of Virginia. A horrific first-person account of multiple forced penetration by multiple partners. It was a lie.

In 2017 the main rape victim in America is THE TRUTH. Along with other victims: humor, banter, and a sense of anything other than OUTRAGE. Sex is like politics... there's only US and THE BAD GUYS.

Ever rape anyone? #meneither

Do you only talk to strangers with the intention of getting sex from them? #meneither

Would you prefer to operate a jackhammer for $10 an hour to giving a handjob for a million dollar movie contract? …. #meneither

If you have your choice between slinging fried eggs in a diner for the rest of your life or letting some ugly guy screw you once for a dream life... would you chose the diner? #meneither

If you found a world where people are afraid to touch one another... where every hug is harrassment... where every kiss is rape... Would you want to live in that world? #meneither

Do you find yourself feeling guilty because you looked at someone lustfully? Because you had sex when you were drunk? Because you didn't get a written contract before touching genitals? #meneither

Do you like living in a world where fame means every sexual peccadillo of past mishaps gets waved in your face-- and pulled out of your wallet? Where real and fake accusations... sometimes dozens of years old... are pulled out in legal blackmail? #meneither

The tweets have already started. It was too logical to pass up... there are dozens. But they seem to lack focus. Would you object to adding your own so we could have a real conversation? #meneither

-end-

==============

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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Public admissions dept: Actually, I love my job (teaching English to Japanese people), and I'm rarely angry or annoyed with the boss. The #metoos in the piece above are based on the lives I see around me... not on my own. I don't have to wear a tie to work.

-->If that's not racist Dept: The Whitney Museum removed a painting based on the dead civil rights activist Emmit Till. Why? Because the artist was a white person. That makes it exploitation, don't you see?

As long as some races are allowed to speak (write, make art) and others are forbidden... there can ONLY be racism. As long as EVERYTHING is race... or sex... or gender... as long as basic principle of the right to a point of view is ignored... Society will be more racist, sexist, genderist... and less free.

-->If that's not censorship Dept: Students “affiliated” with Black Lives Matter shut down an ACLU a “free speech” discussion at the College of William and Mary. Why? Because the ACLU defends the right of all people to express their ideas. That includes Nazis, The Klan, and... Black Lives Matters. The ACLU speaker offered platform time to BLM, but they preferred to keep shouting so that the event had to stop. Someday, I hope, that's going to come around and bite them in the ass.

-->Nasal Harassment Dept: Chuck Shephard's great News of the Weird reports: Neven Ciganovic of Croatia was undergoing the latest in a series of plastic surgeries (this one a rhinoplasty) in Iran when he "reacted badly" to the general anesthesia and developed a painful, long-lasting erection, known as priapism. As he recovered in a Serbian hospital, Ciganovic was denied painkillers and was only relieved of the condition after another surgery, although he says it will be months before he is fully recovered. The tattoo-covered Ciganovic is hoping his latest nose operation will improve his looks enough to launch him to international stardom.

I say, looks? Who cares about looks? He could achieve stardom with his priapism! Pictures please!

-->This Just In Dept: Former President George HW Bush (the REALLY OLD ONE) has said he was sorry after actress Heather Lind accused him of sexually assaulting her during a TV show promotion in 2014. They guy was 91 years old in 2014... in a wheelchair... What kind of sexual assault? “He touched me... twice.” Okay Lind... what is it? Did my agent pay you to prove my point?

--> 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.

I have another blog of short interesting things at: http://mykelsclippings.blogspot.com.

And finally, my oldies from last century are slowly being scanned and uploaded to: http://mykelsoldies.blogspot.com/

LINK TRADE:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to.

Here's a start:

David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Smoking Can Save The World or Mykel's Post MRR Column no 50

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no. 50

or

Smoking Can Save The World

I write this a week before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Ten days after the New Year is Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. That's the holiest day in the Jewish calendar... a 24-hour fast (no food OR liquid), Hardcore Jews spend 18 of the 24 hours confessing their sins, beating their breasts, making a clean slate.

Me? I keep the fast and spend about 4 hours in breast-beating.

During the holiday, the Rabbi reads the story of the ancient temple, where-- every year-- Aaron brought two goats... male goats. Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the LORD at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting; and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the LORD and the other marked for Azazel. Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for the LORD, which he is to offer as a sin offering; while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before the LORD, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness for Azazel

(Note: it's not clear what Azazel is. Some say it's hell. Some say it's just a rugged mountain. In any case, it's a place of no return.)

He shall then slaughter the people’s goat of sin offering, bring its blood behind the curtain, and do with its blood as he has done with the blood of the bull: he shall sprinkle it over the cover and in front of the cover. Thus he shall purge the Shrine of the uncleanness and transgression of the Israelites, whatever their sins; and he shall do the same for the Tent of Meeting, which abides with them in the midst of their uncleanness.

Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

I've left out the stuff about sacrificing a bull and doing all kinds of nasty stuff with the blood and fat... The rabbi reads all this in Hebrew. Most of the congregation is left less disgusted than they'd be in English. But you get the idea... It's a scape goat... carrying the sins of the Jews off into the wilderness.
Keep that thought in the folds of your codpiece and we'll

FLASH TO THE MODERN WORLD
China's industrial cities are so polluted that Black Lung Disease is as common as the measles. According to the American Lung Association: In the U.S., Houston comes in at 16th for year-round air pollution tournament. It also ranks 12th out 228 cities for ozone levels.

The report also says, while Oregon has a “green” image, the Medford-Grants Pass area ranked among the highest for pollution.

Vassalia California wins as the Most Polluted City in America. Their local paper says: the heavy volume of truck and car traffic on Highway 99 and Interstate 5 is spewing massive amounts of noxious fumes and dangerously small particles of smoke.

The world is sick. People die from breathing the air, drinking the water, eating fish that beathe and drink an oceanful of plastic. It's not getting any better.

Dealing with pollution caused by industrial fertilizers, plastic, energy plants and gasoline? Business suffers. If we cut down, workers can't use their filth-spewing cars to get to work in the factories whose effluvia gives cancer to their kids-- in order to make products that no one needs. We'd better take care or people will demand FEWER goods. What will happen if there's NO DEMAND... if people want LESS? The business world could collapse! It would be the end of capitalism.

FLASH TO NYC: 1972 United Nations... basement conference room. It's an “informal” meeting of the G8... before Russia got kicked out for being too punk.

Hollis Chenery

Citizens are beginning to get pissed off at how their lives are getting worse... at how they're dying younger... at how they can't get rid of their chronic coughs... how their kids have asthma before they're old enough to jerk off.

At the G8 meeting they speak English. It's the only language the Americans understand.

The speaker is Hollis Chenery, famed American economist... expert on international development... and brother of the jockey superstar who ran Secretariat into world racing renown. He's the kind of guy whose ears wiggle when he smiles. He's not smiling now.

He speaks... pacing back and forth across the plush UN carpeting.

“We're here for development,” he says. “We want to build the world's economies. We want to import... to export... to produce.”
He stops and clears his throat.

“A big part of that development is energy,” he continues. “We need energy to produce, to distribute, to consume. We need energy to MAKE energy. But we have a problem...”
The representative from the UK... a fat cigar smoking man... takes the cigar from between his lips and gestures with it... flicking some ash onto the floor.

“We're here for economics,” he says, “not to talk about your stupid fucking war.”

Chenery stops in his tracks, spins and faces the fat man.

“Let me finish you pompous ass,” he says through gritted teeth. “I'm not talking about THE WAR. I'm talking about what people are calling the environment. I'm talking about the movement to STOP DEVELOPMENT. I'm talking about the end of growth...”

The fat man turns slightly red under the glare from the others in the room.

“The problem is that people are getting sick... and they're blaming DEVELOPMENT,” Chenery continues. “If we don't watch out they're going to call for an end to growth.”

A sexy middle aged woman, the representative from France, raises her hand like a school child.

Chenery gestures to her. “Ms Gueulevelue, do you have something to say?”

“Oui.” she says. “I mean yes. What if we make people believe they're responsible for their own disease? Or the disease of their neighbors? Why not choose one industry... make it a scapegoat... and connect it to an INDIVIDUAL'S behavior? That will let the developed world be free... to... to develop.”

Chenery rolls his eyes heavenward... as men often do when an attractive woman makes a suggestion.

 “And you think people will just turn from business, and start blaming themselves?” He asks. “What could we possibly use to make people think they are making THEMSELVES sick instead of our global network making them sick?”

You can guess the rest. Of course, the solution was TOBACCO! An herb used medicinally by the American Indians. A cultivated weed with a longer history than the wheel... a scapegoat.

H. L. Menken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

But he was too narrow. It's not just the American public... It's the WORLD public.
We tell people that if they get sick... it's THEIR OWN FAULT. We focus on stopping people from smoking. Make it more difficult to smoke. Claim smoking causes all the problems. Send the tobacco companies to Azazel.

What happens if you get sick and you don't smoke? EASY ANSWER. Your neighbor smokes... someone in your building smokes. Your parents smoked before you were born and the smoking curse entered your blood in the womb.

FLASH TO THE FUTURE:

Washington Square Park: May 1, 2020. It's the SMEC (Smoking Makes Everything Clear) smoke-in. Marijuana has been legal for the past two years, but tobacco is prohibited everywhere except one doorway... on 167 Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

SMEC has organized this protest... the first of what they hope will be a yearly event. They wear t-shirts with a cartoon of a goat smoking a cigarette. The caption: Don't Let Corporatism Scapegoat Tobacco. 

The police wait warily on the sidelines. What's left of the press... CNN and Fox News... sit on the grass... cross legged... The other participants sit around them. They all look at the stage... faces aglow... like churchmen watching an evangelist.

This priest is Rökning Ändtarmen. She looks and dresses like the smoking goddesses of the 1930s and 40. She's got a husky smoker's voice with an unidentifiable touch of a foreign accent.

“Thank you all for coming,” she says, taking a puff on her American Spirit. “We are here today to tell that world that we won't take blame... this stick of fire won't take the blame...” She gestures with the cigarette, “for the air, the lungs, the health of our citizens.”

The audience applauds.

“We are here to smoke together... illegally... in solidarity... to show the world... and the corporatocracy... that we know what they are doing.”

More applause.

“We are here to tell them that everyone who takes a puff of tobacco in 2020 knows what the global capitalists are up to.... We are here to tell them that every cigarette smoked is a voice against big oil... big energy... big agriculture... We are here to tell them that every smoker is a fighter... a fighter against fracking... against Exxon... against Dow... against Boeing... against Ford.”

“Can't you just quit smoking and be against that stuff too?” shouts Cub Blitzer. the son of a retired CNN reporter, now a correspondent on his own.

Rökning laughs... a deep throaty laugh. “Sure Mr TV news. That's worked so well during the past half century.”

Blitzer's face contorts into a question mark.

“No one notices... no one cares,” explains Rökning. “They believe the problem is TOO BIG for them to manage. AND they have another focus... something they... as individuals can police... smoking! The war against cigarettes is a smokescreen. It hides a much bigger war that needs to be fought. We're here to tell them WE CAN SEE THROUGH THAT SMOKESCREEN!”

More wild applause... this time with cheers.

“We smoke because we know... We smoke because our protest gets noticed... gets reported... gets support... We smoke because we're saying it's not OUR individual behavior that is society's cancer. It is THEIR behavior. THEIR thirst for profit over all else. THEIR support from Wall Street, the banks, industry... that is the cancer!” she takes a deep puff from her cigarette and sexily lets the smoke out through her nose.

“We smoke to say, WE WILL NOT BE FOOLED.”

FLASH TO May 1 2021... the size of the smoke-in doubles.

FLASH TO May 1, 2025, Five states have legalized recreational use of tobacco... anywhere. NOT coincidentally, that is the first year that electric cars out-number gasoline cars... and the war continues.

-end- 

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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Note: The poster at the start of this blog/column hangs in my apartment I bought it at a brewery. THEY know what the story is.

--> Full disclosure dept: Hollis Chenery is a real person... and he was very involved in the Development section of the World Bank. The meeting described here is, however, a complete fabrication... I think.
Also, the Mencken underestimating quote is often quoted, but there is considerable debate as to its veracity.

-->My kind of elderly dept: A 73-year-old Daytona Beach man was banned from local beaches after he was caught handing out business cards that said Sugardaddy seeking his sugarbaby.

          Richard G. Basaraba was approached by cops after a mother of a 16-year-old girl complained to officers that her daughter had received one of the cards. The card shows a young woman wearing shorts and high heels sitting on the lap of a man dressed in a business suit. The man’s right hand is on the woman’s thigh.

            The mother also complained that Basaraba showed her daughter bra padding from a bathing suit and told her that he was looking for someone to fill it. Basaraba told the girl she would be “perfect” and to contact him when she turned 18.

--> 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. I have another blog of short interesting things at: http://mykelsclippings.blogspot.com. And finally, my oldies from last century are slowly being scanned and uploaded to: http://mykelsoldies.blogspot.com/