Guns and Abortion or You're STILL Wrong

 

 

Why You Can't Think Right

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's July 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

It’s okay to dislike worms because they’re ugly and slimy animals. It’s not okay to dislike worms because they might be snakes. --Brad Crandall

No, I'm the human here. I'm the life at stake. I'm the one with fingernails, who feels pain. Me. — Alicen Grey

“Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged. I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, 'Listen, you're not pregnant.' I said, 'Hey, just shut up and do your job. I'm exercising my right while I can, dammit.”
- Wanda Sykes

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. --James Burgh

I walk down Houston Street in Mykel Board drag… fedora, trench-coat… you know. There is construction. Fuckin’ NY fuckin’ U, tearing down supermarkets, parks, housing. Putting up ugly glass monsters to rent at outrageous prices to the few who can (or whose parents can) afford the blackmail called tuition.

As I pass the boarded up section I see a young woman on the far corner. Just my type: butch demeanor, flannel shirt, blue hair, bright red Chuck Taylors... dressed like a skinny young lad, oh boy! Somehow she seems oblivious... just standing there statue still, looking straight across the street.

Suddenly she raises her arms above her head, touching the finger tips together in a ballet pose. Then she jumps… up and down like a rope jumper without a rope. Then she starts kicking… a cancan dance… a Rockette at Radio city. Then comes the twirl.. hands still over her head, she twirls... jumping on one foot then the other. Jump… kick… twirl… jump… kick… twirl.

Foot traffic stops. People on the sidewalk freeze, watching the young woman. At the light, on the other side of West Broadway, an older woman... gray hair... neck bent down in a perpetual bow... holds tightly to a leash. On the other end of the leash is a little poodle, pulling valiantly... wanting to cross the street.

I see the older woman’s mouth move as she shouts at the dog. I can’t hear what she says, but it doesn’t matter. The dog wins and pulls the woman across the street.

The older woman tries to pull the dog away from the whirling dervette… Little Fifi is having none of it. Pulling closer he wants to see what’s going on with the spinning figure. He soon finds out.

One of the spinning kicks catches the dog… lifting it up… the dog like a limp dishcloth over the red sneaker. Then the kick out. The dog flies… onto Houston Street… smashes onto the pavement right in front of a large black SUV. I can’t hear the squishing noise as the dog turns into white fluff on a bed of viscous red liquid, but I’m sure there is one.

There is a scream. A girl scream… that, I can hear despite the traffic and my punk rock deafness. I spot a young woman, loose jeans, bright red blouse. She’s on the other corner… where the old lady and the dog were. First she screams as the dog is turned into mush… Then she races across the street… to do what? Attack the dancing woman? Recruit help? Sweep up the doggie pieces?

The young butch girl still dances in circles, kicking out her feet. If anything, she whirls faster and harder than before.

The woman in the red blouse keeps screaming while crossing the street.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she screams.

The dancing woman is oblivious, but as the younger woman approaches… you guessed it… a flying foot in a red sneaker catches her in the stomach. Instead of lifting her up like a little poodle, the foot slams into the young woman’s belly and pushes her into street traffic. She falls on her back on the street. A taxi screeches to a halt just in time to save a second puddle of blood.

There is a tough-looking black guy, with a fresh growth of beard… right next to me… frozen like I am... looking at the mess. Then, he looks at me.

“Come on!” he says. “Let’s go!”

Under his leadership, we run toward the spinning woman. The other guy tackles her, grabbing her around the knees. When she falls, I lay across her body, pinning her as best I can to the sidewalk.

“Men! Men!” shouts the butch woman on the ground. “All you want to do is control women’s bodies! That’s all you want.” She tries to twist away and escape us.

“You have no right to stop us. Men should not control us! Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies!”

NO THEY SHOULDN’T!

“Okay Mykel” comes the voice. I recognize it immediately. It’s Literary Device... come to the aid of women everywhere.

“Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies along as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.” she says. “You know what they say: my right to swing my fist ends at your chin.

BINGO!

Therein lies the entire abortion argument. Is abortion hurting/killing another person or not. Of course, I’d include pets in that, as in no one has the right to hurt an innocent animal friend.

Let me make this clear. I’m pro-abortion… in fact, I don’t think there are enough of them. One look at the offices of government, Judge Judy, facebook debates, or the upper levels of any bank, pharmaceutical company or insurance bureau will show you how much better the world would be had there been a lot more abortions.

But I want to call a worm a worm. The ONLY valid discussion in the abortion debate, is the question if a fetus is a human being or not. The anti-abortionists are not trying to control women’s bodies. They’re trying to control what they see as murder. They’re wrong, of course.

Human beings are born. There isn’t a human alive who wasn’t born, whether by natural birth, surrogate birth, artificial insemination, who knows what. A fetus, by definition, hasn’t been born and is therefore not a human. A fetus is still attached and blood-nourished in its matriarchal cage. Destroying one is more like removing a cancerous tumor than murdering a child. Abortion should be free, safe, on request, with no more regret than the removal of a burst appendix. Get on with it!

But, don’t make a mountain out of a wombhill. It’s a medical procedure... no more a plot to control women’s bodies than the snipping out of a breast lump.

I walk back from the kicking woman adventure. On the way. I have to pass the very ugly New York University owned buildings in Washington Square Village.

If you look carefully, you’ll see a row of windows just at the ground level. The unfortunates who live in these apartments expose their daily lives to every passing stranger. Most have curtains drawn to cover their nakedness, or to keep prying eyes from watching the hot wax and ball gags. But on bright sunny days, the curtains are open, and it’s one of my life’s many joys to stare in the windows and see how other people live.

Today, I see something a bit disturbing. In one apartment, about 2/3 down towards Mercer Street, a young man stands at a long metal table. On the table are two boxes. They’re the same size and shape as the fruit and vegetable boxes you might see at the local farmer’s market. But each of them has an orange and black symbol on it. I recognize the symbol from the x-ray machine at the dentist’s office. It means RADIATION!

The guy in the apartment wears khaki shorts and a red t-shirt that says A&F on it. Somehow I don’t think that means Agnostic Front.

He is leaning over an oblong object that looks like a huge anal plug, with the tip cut off. His hands are plunged into the thing and seem to be tinkering with a pliers and screw driver. I climb through the narrow garden up to his window and tap on it. He looks up, first frowning, then changing that to a big smile.

He pulls his hand out of the butt plug to write something on a piece of paper and hold it to the window.

COME ON IN! APT 1G, JUST ASK THE DOORMAN!

I go to the entrance, enter, and tell the very doorman-looking doorman, a black guy in a crimson uniform… I’m going to apartment 1G. He calls the occupant… then motions me down the hall to the apartment.

I ring the doorbell. The door opens and there’s this guy… slightly taller than I am… in the same clothes I saw through the window.

“You’re Mykel Board, right?” He asks.

I nod.

“Wow, just the man I want to see… one who’ll understand all this. I’m a big fan.”

I follow him from the doorway to the room I saw from the window. In the corner of the room, hidden from window-view, is a stack of the crates... all with those black and yellow stickers on them.

“Are you some sort of x-ray technician?” I ask pointing to the boxes.

He laughs.

“More than that, Mykel,” he says. “I’m building an atomic bomb… a real one! I got the specs from an anarchist site… darkweb, ya’ know?”

I feel my already too-white skin pale further.

“You’re serious?” I stammer.

“You bet,” he says. “How else am I going to protect myself? They have a pistol. I need a pistol. They have a rifle. I need a rifle. They have an A-bomb. I need an A-bomb. The only thing that stops a bad guy with an thermonuclear device, is a good guy with an thermonuclear device.”

I swallow… hard.

“Look,” he says, “A-bombs don’t kill people. People kill people! It’s in the constitution. Right there in the second amendment. I have a right to the same weapons the government has.”

NO YOU DON’T!

You certainly should be able to buy a musket… just like any citizen of 1776. I guess a six-shooter is okay, too. You don’t need a background check… rights shouldn’t be denied because of past mistakes. But... you’re not entitled to an atomic bomb, or a semi-automatic machine gun.

It’s not a question of who can buy a gun. That right is guaranteed to everyone. It’s a question of what gun people can buy. Congress has compromised exactly the wrong way on gun control.

So called “Red-flag laws” punish people for what they say on facebook or in emails to their friends. They punish speech and set a horrible precedent of denying rights to people because they may commit a crime in the future.

How many people won’t seek help for mental problems, because the act of seeking that help may deny them a gun.

It’s like: “Hmmm, you cannot leave your apartment after 9PM. We’ve seen you drunk on the street at midnight, and if you drive then, you might hit someone.”

No! No! No! Innocent until PROVEN guilty. Not guilty and punished without there even being a crime! And the craziest of the new laws: If you’ve been guilty of wife-beating (now called spousal abuse) it’s not enough. The girlfriend/boyfriend loophole closed under the Biden-signed law prohibits gun ownership to anyone convicted of any close-friend abuse… matter who or how long ago. This this new rule places a new penalty on gun owners accused or convicted of these crimes, and applies to those who were convicted years or even decades ago.

Knowledge of this new penalty changes the plans behind any decision regarding your legal defense, such as whether to take a plea deal. For a large number of people who pled to a misdemeanor simple assault charge for no jail time, this would mean, even 30 years after it happened with no further offenses, they are a prohibited person in possession of firearms. No grace period for getting rid of them. So, those who pled guilty to get the crime behind them, no longer have that option. You’re gonna need a lawyer and a lot of bucks from now on.

Let’s get this straight. People don’t mass-kill innocents who can’t protect themselves. Semi-automatic rifles mass-kill people. Even plain old AR-15s where you have to pull the trigger 70 times to fire 70 shots… they kill people. One guy with a knife may be able to do away with half a dozen little kids, as long as there’s no burly guard to pin his arms behind his back. With a simple pull-and-reload rifle, you may be able to shoot, reload, and shoot again, drop a few more before the cops can come in and put one between the eyes.

With a semi-automatic, you can spray a crowd… a classroom… a supermarket filled with a race you don’t like. A-a-a-a-a-a-a! Pow! Yeah, the constitution guarantees you can arm yourself. But it doesn’t guarantee what those arms can be.

Laws need to focus on the shooting, not the shooter.

Who knows what will happen between this and next month? Right now. I have plans to write about other ways you don’t know how to think. About how it’s RIGHT to shout fire in a crowded theater? About how free speech is more than the first amendment, and how it includes the right to be heard as much as the right to speak? About how immigration should be free and unlimited… welcome mats instead of borders. We’ll see how far I get with that.

But before then, something stupid is bound to happen, and that could change the blog focus… or maybe there’ll be a nuclear war. Biden seems intent on provoking one. It’s tough to get decent internet in a bomb shelter. But my neighbor down the street… He’s ready for it.

See you in hell.

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.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. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

--> The hits keep coming dept: Highland Park IL, another shooting 7 dead, weapon "more than 70 rounds were fired from the gunman's high-powered rifle, which was similar to an AR-15." Here's the report from ABC news.

→ Second amendment solutions dept: The Huffington Post reports former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens released a campaign ad that shows gun-toting supporters bursting into the homes of his political enemies and “hunting” them.

“I’m Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL,” the gun-toting candidate says. “And today, we’re going RINO hunting.”

For those who don’t know RINO means Republican in Name Only, and, these days, refers to Republicans who are not Trump supporters.

→ Speaking of fans dept: I had drinks and snacks with Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnis. Great conversation, and though we disagreed on immigration and abortion we got along well. When I posted on facebook the details of the meeting, the reaction was horror and reprimand.

“How could you drink with such a horrible person?”

“Do you know he said to kill and strangle people?”

What the fuck? I wrote the Artless tune, “We Want Nuclear War.” The Dead Kennedys wrote “Kill The Poor.” In “53^rd and 3^rd” Dee Dee Ramone sings about slitting someone’s throat! Then, of course, there was GG Allin.

What do you call that?

PUNK ROCK is what you call that. 

 → How much punk rock do you hear in Russia dept: In a completely fresh view of the Ukraine situation, an interview on Al Jazeera brings a really fresh perspective to that war. So much I suspected, turns out to be right… and even stuff I didn’t suspect. You can see it here.

See you in hell, redux,

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S MARCH 2020 BLOG UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES (PT.1 )

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S March 2020 BLOG
Unintended consequences (PT.1 )

[Last month’s test –breaking the blog into weekly parts– was a near complete failure. It was at least an unpleasantry for several blog readers. So starting this month I’m going bi… weekly that is. Let me know if you think it’s better.]

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

March 2020 Blog/Column

Unintended Consequences

by Mykel Board

It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.

--Ian Tattersall

Just do it.

--Nike

New York February 2020 The Black Sheep bar on Third Ave: I’m with my friends Richard, Miho, Hazem. We sit at a table next to the end of the bar. At the bar, God is punishing me for my eternal complaint about the girl with that voice. You know the one… she’s at a table one over from yours… squeally Long Islander… a laugh that can incite murder… drunk as a fish. It’s a rare night that there isn’t one to complain about.

Tonight, though, it’s all boys, a couple jocks and their fathers… or father figures… with guffaws from hell… glass-breaking loud. Probably from large families-- used to fighting to be heard. Right now each one yells over the others... as if this quiet bar required a chorus of alpha males to compete for attention. No girls here… just this stinking pack of machotude... making communication impossible among our multiculturals. I’m not going to complain to them, as any one of these guys is TWO of me.

Then I see it…a way out: right at the bar, in front of the loudest guy… wearing a white toque. (What is it these days wearing wool caps inside? And not only bald guys!). I walk over to the group… stand behind them… about an arm’s length away.

“Hey guys,” I say pointing to the beers in front of them. “Don’t you know that you can die from drinking that beer?”

“Huh?” asks the second loudest… and most annoying... a two-ton gray-haired guy in a bright red jacket.

“Corona,” I say. “Why do you think the virus has that name?”

“You’re full o’ shit,” says the man. “Corona is Mexican. The virus is Chinese.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but the whole problem started because Corona began to outsource its beer-making to China. The main factory is in Wuhan… where the virus comes from. It was the first thing closed after the outbreak.”

Richard, the only native English-speaker in our group, hears what I’m doing and pipes in from our table next to the bar.

“Yeah,” he says, “I heard about that.”

The others in the loud group, all drinking Bud Lite, move away from him.

I cough, then say, “I know about it because my boyfriend is Mexican and he told me his uncle works for the Corona company and was in China on assignment…” I cough again… trying to bring tears to my eyes. “He’s in the hospital right now in Mexico City. The first case of Corona virus in that country.”

I cough again and go back to sit with the others. Richard struggles to keep a straight face. In less than five minutes, the entire crew has left the bar.

In another five minutes, Mary, our regular Irish waitress comes over to us. She glances over her shoulder at a tall white guy with a scraggly beard.

“Mykel,” she says in a low whisper. “I think we’re in trouble. One of our regular customers complained about ‘a sick person who just returned from China.’ I think you guys had better leave until this blows over. I’m so sorry.”

FLASH TO Ulan Bator, Mongolia 1995… The air is breezy… there’s no humidity. Outside my apartment block is a field of dry dead grass. I run across that field chasing a small white plastic bag that tumbles in the breeze… edge over edge… like a girl doing cartwheels on the beach. The wind suddenly changes direction... I turn... twisting an ankle sprawling face down in the dry dirt. Pain… but not serious.

ネバーギブアップ say the Japanese. (The pronunciation is something like: NEBA-GIVU-AHPPU… I’m not shittin’ you.)

I get up… run/limp after the bag... stopped, for now... caught on a sprig of weed. I tackle it. Yes! Now, I have somewhere to throw my garbage for the week.

FLASH TO NYC 2020: In 6 days, single use plastic bags will be illegal in New York. Here, I generate a dozen times more garbage than I did in Mongolia. (In Ulan Bator, I had a plastic egg container that I brought to the market and refilled as I needed it. I carried groceries by folding my coat around them.) I refuse to buy garbage bags… I will not buy something to throw it away. Right now… before the ban… I use grocery bags for my trash.

So it looks like I’ll be chasing plastic bags down Bleecker Street, as they grow less and less common. In Mongolia, only the high-end stores –mainly for foreigners-- had plastic bags. I’ll need more here than I did there.

I open my closet door. On a rack inside the door are two dozen “reusable” carrier bags. Some I bought in an emergency when I needed something for a heavy purchase. Some were free bonuses for renewing my subscription to one or another liberal political magazine. Some were left by couch-surfers who just didn’t want to carry that shit around with them. I’ve tried to give them away, but the answer is always I’ve got tons of them. This will only get worse during the ban, as with each shopping trip, people will buy a new one.

The glut of thin plastic bags using a little oil to make will be replaced with a glut of thick plastic carrier bags using a shitload of oil to make. The small grocery bags that are reused for trash will be replaced by huge purchased trash bags used once and then thrown into the landfill.

The ban was well-meaning. The effects will be disastrous.

FLASH TO NEW YORK 1970s: 6AM the city awakens to the banging of Oscar The Grouch style garbage cans. KABOOM! KABOOM! The diesel garbage trucks are almost as loud as the cans themselves. Someone’s got to do something about the racket! People gotta sleep!

As is usual when there’s a problem… either someone gets killed or they pass a law… or both. So they pass a law. No metal garbage cans… or even rubber. It makes too much noise. You’ve got to take the plastic bags OUT of the garbage cans, pile them curbside, so they can be disposed of quietly.

While most new laws are universally despised, this one was loved… by the city’s rats. It used to be so hard to gnaw into those metal cans. Rats were visiting the rat dentist by the pack. Just awful… but now… three seconds to get through the plastic. Come on! It’s a food orgy… we’ll eat, fuck and make more rats! Wow!

We read about unintended consequences in history books. How alcohol prohibition created the mafia. How nuclear power destroyed Chernobyl and made the land uninhabitable. How the routine use of antibiotics created drug-resistant microbes… How the treaty ending World War One set the stage for World War Two… How starlings brought in to control sparrows became pests themselves.

It’s harder to find positive examples of unintended consequences. In the history books, in my life, and in the world.

An internet search gives me this example: In 1973 the Supreme Court declared (Roe v. Wade) that abortion was legal and could not be outlawed by the states. 20 years later the crime rate plummeted. One of the reasons? Unwanted/ abandoned/ not supported kids --instead of roaming the streets to become criminals-- were never born in the first place. Instead of building more jails, you keep jails from being needed in the first place.

There are, of course, other good unintended consequences. The scaffolding construction companies put up when repairing or cleaning buildings… in a rainstorm it’s a welcome respite. That light outside the doorway to keep muggers away from the shadows also keeps people like me from pissing in those doorways.

AND THIS JUST FOUND: In the German city of Kleve, the owner of a chicken that took 10 hours of training to appear in a movie was awarded the equivalent of $680 when a dog mauled it. According to reports, regular chicken wrongful death would bring the owner about $20. But because this one had acting lessons and appeared in a movie, the court ordered the dog's owner to pay much higher damages. Who knew acting lessons for chickens would be so profitable?

Are these positive unintended consequences harder to dig up because there are fewer of them… or are there just as many (or more) and fewer people notice?

I don’t know.

Then what’s the solution? There will always be unintended consequences. Seems like you’ve got some choices to make.

A. Before you make a decision, think about all the possible consequences and then choose the one that will have the best outcome… or at least do the least harm. Deal with the consequences later.

or

B. Don’t act at all. There are ALWAYS unintended consequences and the only way to avoid them is to do nothing to create those consequences.

or

C. Go for the Nike and JUST DO IT. Deal with the consequences -- unintended or otherwise-- when they happen. Of course, you’ll run into unintended consequences of dealing with the consequences. You can deal with them too when you get to them.

Am I going to tell you which way to act? Do I seem like the kind of person who tells others how to act? Ok, I will… but maybe later.

- end -

ENDNOTES AND LINKS will appear in 2 weeks. You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com.

The Art of The Deal or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 37

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 37

One of the tenets behind a win-win negotiation is that all parties must be satisfied with the deal. It isn’t a win if someone feels he/she got the short end of stick, right? --Karrass.com

Mykel's ART OF THE DEAL

Trade ya!

Several years before his election, President Trump wrote (or put his name on) a book called The Art of The Deal. I've read it several times... Yeah right.

I never read it, but I can imagine its content. And what I imagine is that much of the book will be about trading. That is, if I have something you want, and you have something I want... we can trade. I'll take a loss for a bigger gain. You have different values, so you take a loss for what YOU think is more important. Finally, we reach some kind of equality... both sides feel happy after the deal. In business, they call it a win-win solution.

You're a mechanic. I'm a plumber. You take the ping out of my car engine. I'll make sure those monster beer turds will sail smoothly down the toilet. Win-win!

So, in my never-ending quest for beneficence, I propose some win-win deals that will make the world a better place for all sides.

First:

GIRLS! Here's your chance! I'm offering big trades. The feminist goals, just what you want. You only have to give up a few things and then: end the patriarchy!

Let's start with the 79¢. The cliché is that for every dollar a boy earns, a girl earns 79 cents. A closer look shows that this is the result of experience and time on the job, rather than vaginal possession. But for this deal, we'll pretend the gap is real. Girls earn 21 cents an hour less than boys... for the same job. Let's make a deal!

According the the CDC, Women in the US live, on average, to 81.2 years old. Men live to 76.4 years old. Do the math: women live 4.8 years longer than men.

Here's the deal: We'll trade! I'll give up 21¢ per hour. Take it!... the whole 21 cents. It's all yours. Go wild. Have a ball, do with it as you like. I'm donating 20% of my $20-an-hour job. It's on your plate. Buy Ms Magazine with it. Donate it to Hillary Clinton... anything.

In return? Just give me half your extra 4.8 years. We both live 78.8 years. Fair trade! Equal pay... isn't that what you've been wanting? You only need to trade for equal longevity. Win-win. Finally, equality! Do we have a deal?

And the government. There are 100 senators. 20 are women. That's a ratio of 1 to 5. Pretty unequal if you're counting genitalia. What can we do about that? Get some equality here.

Let's consider that in 2016 only 18 year old boys have to register for the draft. Women can stay home and complain about the nanny.

In Iraq and Afghanistan 130 women soldiers have died in the past 10 or so years. During those wars about 5700 men have died. That's a ratio of about 1 to 43. We need some equality! So here's the deal:

I'll give you 30 senate seats and you send four and a half thousand women to certain death in Hillary's next war. Plus... to even things out... girls will have to register for the draft. In case, for some reason, there's a sudden lack of people wanting to die in the Middle East.

Waddaya say? Fair trade?

Come on girls, this is equality I'm talking about.

And then there's abortion. Women have the right to choose whether to drop their puppies or throw them in the stem cell bin. That's how it should be. You've got and deserve that benefit. I'll defend to the death (fetal death, that is) your right to do that.

But why only women? Shouldn't men have that choice? If we've got a brat sprouted by the slip of a rubber, shouldn't we be able to say Dump It? If it takes two to tango, shouldn't it take two to untango? I'll be pro-choice, if you're pro-choice.

It's not men's bodies, you say. Women have to go through an ordeal for abortion. It costs money, and it hurts. Fair enough. So here's the deal. Women have absolute choice: pop one or cut it out. Men have secondary choice. If a man wants the little twerp and the woman wants to donate fetal organs... She wins. BUT, to make the deal: if a woman has a kid when the man say KILL IT, the man is not responsible. No child support. No lawsuits. No Daddying. If a woman decides to have a child over the father's objections... then the guy walks away clean. It's a trade. Fair enough?

More deals:

Hillary Clinton has never met a war she didn't like. She voted for the Iraqi war, has supported the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and the coups in Honduras and Ukraine. She wants to strengthen NATO and, like her buddy Obama, supports making new ISIS fighters by drone-ing innocents abroad.

Most Americans support these long distance wars. Many want even more of them. What's a drone here or there? They deserve it anyway, don't they?

The problem is: Americans don't know war. They don't know drones. They don't know mechanized death except on the giving end... and those rare times that some sympathetic guy with a machine gun unloads a “terrorist act.” Here's the deal.

ISIS: you stop recruiting local killers. Quit the ad campaigns, the dead-baby sympathy pictures... all that. We'll do it ourselves. For every small city we bomb in Syria, we'll bomb one in Kansas. Every innocent person we slaughter in Kabul, we'll slaughter one in Omaha. It's win-win. And look at the benefits.

ISIS stays out of the US. The American government can use its own bombs and bullets... always profit makers... and we reach equality. Added bonus: Americans get to learn about what we do in other countries... first hand. Education through life (and death). So, do we have a deal?

`

OUR FINAL DEAL: One for the guys who are squeamish that some of their membered-members... disguised as women… will enter a ladies’ room and... I donno... look under the stall door? Peep in the make-up mirror? Steal cosmetics? I never quite figured out what they're afraid of. In any case, here's the deal.

If men-dressed-as-women use the ladies room, they will agree to restrict their actions to shitting, pissing, putting on make-up,.. in other words, doing THE SAME THING that ladies do in the ladies’ room. They will not be allowed to stand next to another room-user while pissing and say, “You don't buy beer. You rent it.” or “Nothin' like bleeding the snake, huh?” And they will always put the toilet seat DOWN after use... Do we have a deal?

Waddaya think?

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]

-->Uh Oh dept: Since I started writing this I found out that Trump's book was not about win-win at all. It's about how you should enjoy the GAME of negotiation and not care if you lose, because there's a bigger deal around the corner anyway. My apologies to Mr. Trump's ghostwriter for the misrepresentation. I hope he doesn't sue me.

-->I wrote much of this column on a bus from Copenhagen to Aarhus. I'm keeping a blog of this trip, whose ultimate destination is Greenland. My goals there:

1. Eat Seal

2. Rub noses with an Eskimo

3. Sleep in an igloo

4. Ride on a dog sled

You can read the travel blog at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com and know if I've done those things-- or what else.

-->Tardcore: Wow! One of my Aarhus pals works in an institution that takes care of “Mentally Handicapped” people who were sentenced because of some crime. In a way that's typically Danish, these folks are separated from the general prison population and given special attention. Not only do they get “job training” and work experience (mostly gardening, but also woodwork, and plumbing) but the caretakers actually ask them What do YOU want? I bet that's a question never heard in the American penal system.

My pal Pedro, who works in the institution, also plays in THE CLEAN BOYS, a punkrock band. And he found that some of the inmates want to play music. They love it... or just love making noise. They mostly can't play their instruments... So what do you do? Start a punk band!!!

Here's a video of their first live show. You might recognize someone famous (not me) in the audience.

Since my first encounter... I've found that world-wide there are several other Tardcore bands in the world. They include one in Finland and the most famous (now disbanded, I hear) HEAVY LOAD in England. What could be punker? With so much shit going on in the world, this is inspiring!

Come on! Help me set up a US tour!

-->Third Thoughts Dept: Last month, I wrote about how Bernie Sanders supporters should vote for Donald Trump. Lately, Trump is looking more and more like a shill for Clinton. He fires and replaces people and derails “his party” more and more. I don't know if it's all part of the elect-Clinton plan, but if so, it would be sad.

I still think, there's never been a more punkrock presidential candidate than Donald Trump... ever! Even if it's all a show... it's a good one. Tardcore Rules!

But in the next election, I'm convinced it doesn't matter how you vote... or if you vote. Maybe it's best to cast your ballot for some minor party candidate... just to tell 'em FUCK YOU BOTH. I'm still going with Sid Yiddish.

--> 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.
(Note somebody told me they currently have a MALE editor. I'll believe it when I blow him.)

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.

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