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!”
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.
