The Only Good Thing or Mykel's Post-MRR Blog #28

Mykel's

Post MRR Column #28

The Only Good Thing

by Mykel Board

Imagine a country whose foundation is subjugation... a country where slaves are written into the constitution... officially “3/5 human.”

Imagine a country whose national anthem talks about bombs and rockets... where citizens trust God and not each other.

Imagine a country that holds more of the world's prison population than any other... most of the prisoners descended from slaves... Where jail terms never end... where the right to vote is permanently taken away... your debt to society can never be paid... You are always a slave.

Imagine a country whose people are so stupid that they can't find their neighboring countries on a map... where more people know the names of movie stars than scientists or philosophers... where people have more guns than passports.

Imagine a country where students aren't challenged to think. Where they're warned about “upsetting ideas” and can opt-out of learning. Where “education” has nothing to do with learning, but is only a means to a job where you work to make other people rich.

Imagine a country where the top 1% owns more than the bottom 90%... where huge, greedy corporations pay NO taxes. Where the answer to any violation of corporate interests is to kill people.

Imagine a country that defines “success” as being rich. That exports its love of money around the world, making fetishes of brand names, charging in foreign branches of its stores, a days wages for a cup of coffee... and through advertising and bribery... makes people want to pay it.

Imagine a country where the solution to EVERYTHING is WAR. Instead of looking at problems with a medical metaphor... like a wound that has to be healed... it looks at problems as THE ENEMY that has to be killed. WARS on drugs... Muslims... terrorism... hunger... even a (long ago discarded) WAR ON POVERTY.

Imagine a country that has, in this millennium, killed more people than all other countries on earth... combined. Image a country that continues to kill people, correcting past mistakes in killing people by killing other people.

What benefit could there be to such a pisshole of a country? What right would such a country have to exist? Why should the rest of the world tolerate such a gaping wound in its earthly body? Is there anything that fetid offal has to offer? Can we find one thing that hell-bent-on-world-destruction nation has done to justify its existence?

FLASH TO NOW: I'm in a 777 airplane flying from Manila to New York... via Taiwan. I've been in the plane for seven hours... with another eight to go. I can't sleep, having stupidly taken the aisle seat so there's no window to put my head against. When either of the two passengers next to me needs to take a piss... I gotta get up and move.

This is the end of my six weeks in Asia. The first four were in Japan: tightly planned... familiar... sleeping on friends' floors... couches... tours of sake breweries... a ton of drinking... a ton of innocent nakedness at public hot springs... a bit of not so innocent nakedness. Friends... familiar... comfortable... like slippers and a bathrobe.

Then there was The Philippines. I quote from my travel blog (mykelsdiary.blogspot.com)

Manila is a maze of narrow streets choked with barely moving traffic, blaring horns... people walking... hanging out... sleeping on plastic bags filled with trash.

Food stands sell Chinese pork buns or wooden sticks with your choice of pig's ear, pig's blood or pig guts. The narrow streets hold the auto exhaust of the immoveable traffic. Walking a block is like smoking a pack of cigarettes.

Every few meters, one young woman or another will smile at you... showing her braces and ask, “Hey Joe, you like me?” If you shake your head, she'll offer you her younger sister... or her daughter. My upper arm still has a bruise where a street hooker pinched me to keep me from walking away. Every few steps bring you to another encounter.

Backpacks become frontpacks here... watch your step...means a fuck of a lot more than be careful crossing the street. The heat is oppressive... a wet-heat. Your sweat mixes with the filth from the car exhausts. Simply scratching your neck leaves your fingernails black.

I love the place.

I've been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor in Taytay, a Manila suburb. Johnny Deadbrain lives here... with his mother who barely makes a living selling ice to the neighbors out of her refrigerator.

I get the mattress. Johnny sleeps on the other side of the living room... on a cardboard box. 

The toilet, as most in this country, doesn't have a seat. You flush it by filling a plastic bucket from a cold water wall spigot and pouring the water into the toilet bowl. A plastic dipper floats in the water. It's not clear whether the dipper is used to scoop water to flush the toilet... or to scoop water to wash your ass in lieu of toilet paper. There is never any toilet paper. Whenever I buy anything in the country, I demand a receipt. That paper comes in handy.

[NOTE: A few places-- mostly high class-- have toilet paper HOLDERS built into the wall. They are for decorative purposes only. There is never any actual toilet paper in them.]

At Johnny's place, the wall spigot is also the shower and bathroom sink.

The Philippines are punk rock.

It's like New York in the 70's... when/where punkrock was born. Dangerous, mysterious, sexy, anarchistic, musical. Everybody and his father... grandfather... is a musician. Even the poorest homes have a turntable... and a collection of records that would make the Rev Norb envious.

Johnny shows me an original of the first Ramones album. From a small speaker attached to his android, comes The Ramones, GG Allin, and his own band DEADBRAINS.

Rock'n'roll came to the Philippines with American servicemen during and after World War II. Navymen wanted more than local nookie from the natives. They wanted their music.

They brought records... 78s... 45s... 33s... to these islands. Local musicians quickly learned the music to play for the sailors. It was as profitable as-- and less painful than-- an American maritime turgid sausage in their anuses.

From the songs learned from those sailors' records, the Philippines developed its own brand of rock... its own bands... its own style. Punk rock came here before anywhere else in Asia except possibly Japan.

BINGO!

That's it! The American contribution... America's ONLY contribution... its only value in the world. ROCK'N'ROLL... That great merging of cultures: black Jazz/Blues that came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans smashing smack dab into white Country music from the heartland. When Hank Williams buggers Muddy Waters... Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley are born.

That freeing, open, rockin music. That rock... that glitter... that punk... that hardcore... That rebellious, liberating, loving, aggressive force. That may be the only real gift America gave to the world... but it's a damn good one.

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]

→ It ain't music, it's a concept dept: Chuck Shephard reports that the group Matmos released their new album, "Ultimate Care II." The LP consists entirely of "music" made by an Ultimate Care II washing machine. The machine's 38-minute wash cycle was "sampled and processed." Matmos previously played canisters of helium on stage at Radio City Music Hall and a cow's uterus at the San Francisco Art Institute.

→ Tax dollars at work dept: One of the many evils of the Obama administration was the bank bailouts and lack of anybody going to the clink for the tragedy. The government claims a victory because it took in billions of dollars in fines from those banks. Same for corporate polluters like BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not so fast.

The New York Times reports that the money those banks and corporations paid is considered “tax deductible.” So those same corporations just listed the fines on their tax returns as a “business expense.” They paid no taxes on that money.

→ Bathe in this dept: Brandon Terry and Casey Fowler of Spartanburg South Carolina were arrested after calling 911 five times to report possums jumping out of their refrigerator and microwave, worms emerging from their floor, and midgets in camouflage. They denied any drug use, but police said it was likely "bath salts."

→ Sex & The Serviceman Dept: It probably didn't make the U.S. newspapers, but a Philippine jury convicted a U.S. sailor of murder. He strangled a prostitute and drowned her in the toilet, when he discovered she had... er... extra equipment. The Navy removed the sailor from the country before he could be sentenced. At last report, the prostitute was still dead.

→ Further Evidence Dept: The Daily Mail reports that they've seen video footage that shows Israeli commandos rescuing wounded ISIS fighters from the Syrian warzone, Many of the rescued are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. Almost every night, Israeli troops run secret missions to save the lives of Syrian fighters, all of whom are their sworn enemies.

Clearly, toppling Assad is more important to the Israelis than fighting ISIS. No wonder that Israel-obedient Obama calls for REGIME CHANGE in Syria, while the Russians just fight ISIS.

→ Endorsements Dept: Also on the Russian front. The Washington Post reports that Vlad Putin has damn near endorsed Donald Trump for the U.S. presidency. He called The Apprentice star, “the absolute leader in the presidential race.”

In October, Trump said that he would “get along very well” with Putin and applauded the Russian president for his intervention against the Islamic State in Syria.

→Vote Jew Dept: Next year it looks pretty sure I'll be voting for a Jew in November. If, by some (from my mouth to G-d's ears) miracle, Bernie Sanders gets the Democratic nomination... I'm there. If not, I'll have a difficult choice between JILL STEIN on the Green Party, or my pal SID YIDDISH on the Lincoln-Republican party. In any case, I'll be voting Jew in November!

-->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, they blame their 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.

-end-

Mykel's MRR Column for #321, (February, 2010)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 321, February 2010
by Mykel Board

"I do not take any pleasure in suffering the torments of travel merely so that I could dine out on them.”--Paul Theroux

It's amazing how easily my thumb slips into my right nostril. How it perfectly conforms to the skin inside. Better than an ice scraper on a windshield. It scales the inside nasal wall as New York's pollution collects under the fingernail. A little twist... a pinch... a pull. A bloody booger comes out with two hairs crossed through the middle. 

Yeah, I'm back in THE CITY. My trip to Albania behind me. Gone. But far from being forgotten, despite my creeping senility. Last week I wrote about being tricked by a mysterious bus rider, into a spooky house? Hotel? Abattoir? “You can stay at my place,” he mimed, unable to speak a word of English, and my Albanian limited to less than a hundred words.Now, I'm in a room that only locks from the outside. I'm in the middle of the countryside, on a hill, in Albania. I don't know how to get to anywhere from here. I don't even know where here is. My tormentor's only motive for keeping me like this has to be torture and then (mercifully?) murder.

I don't sleep very well that night. When I do drift off the dreams are terrible. Fortunately, I can't remember most of them. Only one. I'm standing outside. Just standing... eyes closed... seeing nothing. I feel a hand grab the front of my shirt, at solar plexus level. In the dream, I know it is a dream. This is not real. I reach down and feel the hand. A human hand, masculine, holding tight. I grab the hand and squeeze. It crumples like hollow plaster in my grip.

Then I wake up.

I must have drifted off yet again, because I'm again awakened. This time by the sound of the glass door sliding open. There he is, my abductor, impossibly old, pillow-shaped, face frozen into a perpetual frown. He carries a large cup of coffee and more fruit. 

The only thing I've eaten in the past days is fruit. Figs, pomegranates, and a mysterious cactus fruit. It all grows in the garden 30 or so feet directly below. Fertilized, I'm sure, by many others who have stood in this exact spot. The fruit keeps constant pressure on my bowels. I don't take shits. I explode them. 

I understand why he asked me how long I'm staying. He hates what he has to do, and wants to postpone it until the last possible minute. I could escape, maybe. But I'm so far out of town, so lost, how would I ever get anywhere? And he'd see me with my backpack. That'd be a... er... dead giveaway.

He tells me his name. Cocho. I'm horrible with names, but somehow I feel if I don't remember this one, I'll be in even worse trouble. It becomes the most important task of my life to remember it. Let's see: Ocho is eight in Spanish. Co-means together like co-worker or cooperate. Two eights together. I fix the image in my mind and superimpose it over his face.

I take out my camera and motion that I want to take his picture. I figure when my remains wash up on shore, they'll find the camera and catch the guy. Surprisingly, he agrees. I guess he'll dispose of the camera when he disposes of me.

After the photos, he points out to the sea. He asks if I'm going to go swimming. I tell him it's too cold. He says maybe tomorrow. I say, “No I'm leaving tomorrow.”I can see the sadness in his face when I make it clear I'm not staying another day. The longer he can wait, the better. I know he doesn't want to do this, but he's got to. And now, it has to be tonight. 

Dua te shikoj Himara. (I want to see (the town of) Himara.), I tell him. 

I'm not thinking clearly. Even if I manage to get into town, I could never find my way back to his place. I get lost in Soho, for God's sake. And I can't take all my bags with me. He'd know. I have to come back here.

He points to me, then himself, and then makes a two-fingers-next-to-each-other sign that means together. Ok, we'll go together. People will see us. When they find the body, they'll be suspicious. 

At least that will get me back to the death chamber. 

So together we climb the stairs to the alley that leads to the tunnel that leads to the ditch that leads to the stone steps that lead to the road where the bus will come to take us to Himara. We wait for a bit. The bus does not come. 

I take a picture of the stone staircase, another of the garage door close to it, another of a sign that says QEPARO FSHAT, right near the descent from the highway. Qeparo is the name of this tiny village. I have no idea what “fshat” means, but maybe some cab or bus driver will recognize the sign. Besides, if I escape, like that girl in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I can use the photos as clues for the cops to find Albania's Ed Gein. Still, the bus doesn't come. 

A car pulls out of a nearby driveway, off the main road. Slowly, it makes its way to the outer street. Cocho walks over and signals the man to stop. They have a conversation. Cocho opens the front and back doors of the car. He motions for me to get in the rear. I do. Then he closes both doors and waves good-bye. We head into town.

The driver lets me and another passenger off at the post office. I look up the word return in the Albanian-English dictionary: kthim.

Ku kthim? I ask him. (When return?)

He shows me two fingers, one bent halfway. I guess that means in an hour and a half. I figure he'll park his cab here and return to it when it's time to leave. That doesn't give me much time, but I can buy some stamps and mail my postcards, go for a stroll down the beach, look at the ocean, have a last cup of coffee before I die. I figure wrong. 

When I get out of the post office, the cab is gone. 

I'll never find my way back now. My bags, most of my money is with Cocho. My computer, too. I know the only logic is death, but what if I'm missing something? What if he's just this nice eccentric old coot who really does want to take care of me? It's not logical (or true, it turns out), but what if?

I walk to a taxi stand near the post office. Maybe my driver will be there. He isn't.

Most of the cabs are empty. In the only one with a driver, the driver is asleep on the front seat with the door open and one leg out of the cab. Knowing my own consciousness on just awakening, I decide not to wake him for the drive.

From a nearby restaurant, another guy, late thirties, needing a shave as do all Albanian men, walks toward me. [Note: Albania joins that list of countries: Turkey, Mongolia, Brazil, where the women are neck-wrenchingly beautiful, but the men are as ugly as the Bush family.

Taksi? he says.

I pull out my camera and flip through the pictures until I find the garage on the main road. 

Ju dini ketu? I ask. (You know here?)

He squints at the picture and then shakes his head. “Po (yes),” he says. Then he says 13 Euros in English. I try to bargain, but he sticks to the price. 

Taxi-meter he says. 

During the ride, he never turns on the taxi-meter.

He does, however, get me to the garage. And actually a little past where the QEPARO FSHAT sign is. I get out and go down the stairs, trying to remember the way to the house of horrors.

A strange kind of trance music comes from someplace. It's like a pop version of Phillip Glass. I've never heard it before. It may be what's popular these days. I'm out of touch. But it sounds spooky to me.

I walk down some steps, through a tunnel, another tunnel, past a ditch, through an alley. I see a pile of bricks I never saw before. A door with a large round knocker... never saw it before either. I'm lost.

I turn to retrace my steps. An old man comes the other way. 

“Cocho?” I ask him.He laughs, and points back where I came from. Then he makes a downward motion with his hands, and a sweeping curve with his arm. I retrace my steps, and soon get lost again. 

“The sea, the sea,” I think. If I can find the sea, I can look up at the houses. I'll recognize my jail from the blue front and the sheer drop. If I go down, any path down, I'll find the sea. 

I pick a downhill path. The music is louder here, more menacing than mellow. Like a horror movie soundtrack. I follow the path until it ends... dead ends. Then I go up a little and take another path through a bunch of fruitplants, and then down again. Sand, plastic debris, I've found the sea. 

Turning my back to it, I scan the houses. There it is. Blue, in its glory, ready to fall with me, into the sea. I head right for it, up the path to the lower gate to the house. I know this gate, Cocho took me through it yesterday, to show me the fruit and the way to the beach. I'm sure this is the way back to the house. 

The gate is locked.

I do not scream. I do not pound on it. Instead, I keep the house in view, and go up through the trees, catching my sleeve on a cactus, then pulling free. The music continues, insistent, droning. Up to a small trail. I've lost sight of the house, but I think I know where it is. I follow the path. The house comes into view again. I can see it slightly below and to the right. I reach the set of steps I recognize. They lead down toward the house. They end at a gate.

The gate is not locked.

I walk through it and escape into my room. It's warm. I collapse on one of the two beds in the room and fall into a dreamless sleep. 

I awaken when it's still light outside. There is a rattle as the glass door slides open. Cocho brings a tray with more figs and other strange fruit on it. Much of the fruit from yesterday lies rotting by the sink. He doesn't seem to notice. He moves the food in smooth motions, like a robot. Gliding the tray to the plastic table in my room. 

He makes an eating motion, putting his hands to his lips. 

Bukë? (Bread?), he asks. 

Po (yes), I say. I need something besides all that fruit. It just goes right through me. I'll be a pretty messy corpse. He'll deserve it.

“Did you take a shower yet?” he mimes. “Yo (no),” I say.He shrugs, goes away and comes back with a couple slices of bread and a few cubes of cheese. He also brings about a cupful of cold spaghetti with tomato sauce. Everything looks homemade. Too homemade. 

Then he goes away for a bit and I write a little more. As the sun is setting over the Adriatic, he returns. He looks grim. 

Opening the sliding glass door, he takes a chair and puts in next to mine. 

The miming starts again. You eat. You sleep. Now you pay. I recognize the Albanian word. Pagoni. You pay.

“Pay with my life?” I don't ask.He holds up one finger. A thousand Lek?? That's ten dollars. Hah, that's wonderful. I give him two thousand. 

“You're my friend (I use the Italian word amici, since it was a word I never needed in Albanian),” I say. “Take more.”

He nods NO.I don't understand. 

He shows me with more miming. His face never changing: One night, four thousand lek. Two nights, eight thousand.

That's robbery. That's more than I paid in my Jacuzzi hotel in Vlora. This is a haunted house! $80, that's ridiculous. I'm not going to... Yeah, right.

I hand him the money. It's most of what I have left. But, he's only robbing me! He won't kill me. It's just extortion. He's a hustler, a con artist, not a murderer. Take my money, please! I could kiss the guy.

I ask him what time the bus leaves for Saranda tomorrow. He tells me 9AM. I say I'll get up at 8. Too late, he says. 

OK, I tell him. Statë ore. Seven o'clock.

I set my cellphone alarm (that's all it's good for, it can't make calls here) for 6:30. I want time to clean myself up and empty out all the fruit. 

At 6:15 Cocho opens the door to wake me up. He stands and watches as I get dressed, stuff my remaining clothes into my pack and go out the door with him. He leads me back upstairs through the alleys and ditches to the road. 

My bus comes and I get on it. He does not say good bye. I watch him cross the street to go back to Vlora, where he found me.

He'll wait at the bus stop. Someone not from around here, will get on a bus headed South. He will ask them where they're staying. Then he'll offer his own place. Eventually, someone else will say yes, and move into the room I just left.


ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

-->Somehow it sounds like propaganda dept: Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal reports that the family of a protester in Iran was told that they had to pay a $3000 BULLET FEE-- a fee for the bullet used by security forces-- before they'd get the body of their son.

I don't believe it. Sounds like the Saddam Hussein dead babies stories, or the Qadaffi drag stories. Or the Japanese-women-built-differently stories, during a much earlier war.

-->Democracy Now, yeah right dept: Democracy Now, a liberal magazine, complains that a Tennessee Republican State Senator refused to fire a staffer who sent out a racist image of President Obama. The staffer sent out an email with images of all the Presidents. Obama was in the bottom right hand corner-- only a pair of bright white eyes on a black background. 
It was Nat Hentoff who wrote the book "Free speech for me, but not for thee." Go Nat! Now more than ever!

-->Clark University, in enlightened Worcester Massachusetts, canceled a talk by Norman Finkelstein who is both a Holocaust scholar and critic of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. The reason for the cancellation? The university said the talk "would invite controversy." 
I say, what the fuck are universities for if not to invite controversy?

-->Also from Massachusetts dept:, a bill in the legislature proposes to criminalize nude pictures of people over 60 and people who are disabled. Why? For their own protection, of course. We can't have old people or cripples thinking about sex... or even nudity, can we? It just wouldn't be... er... liberal?

-->1984 Redux dept: Many people who read their books with Amazon's kindle e-book reader suddenly found that Amazon had deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from the device... even after they purchased it. The reasons are obscure, but just that they CAN do this, should scare people back to paper. But then again, paper can be deleted too. Fahrenheit 451 anybody?

-->It's all happening in South America dept: Lawmakers in Uruguay approved a bill to legalize gay adoption. It's not finished yet, but it should become law later this year. In the same week, the Argentinean Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish anybody for possession of small quantities of cannabis. The week before, Mexico passed a law that decriminalized possession of small quantities of most drugs, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and LSD. Then, earlier in the year, a Brazilian appeals court ruled that possession of drugs for personal use is not illegal. Mind you, they are way behind Portugal which decriminalized all personal drug possession back in 2000.
Time to move?

--> Progressive Pollution dept: The EPA in 2006 named BP (British Petroleum) as the worst polluter in the U.S. Guess who advertises in the liberal NATION magazine... with a green flower as their logo.

-->Spy vs. Spy dept: Jim Hightower reports that Starbucks' newest competitor is... well... Starbucks. According to Hightower, the awful coffee giant is finally getting the message that people don't want to drink coffee produced by an awful coffee giant. According to Hightower, Starbucks will open new shops, keeping their name off the marquee. 
Hightower reports, “The new shops strive to be the anti-Starbucks, with funky stylings and localized names that disguise the corporate presence behind them.” 

  So, before you buy from that new coffee shop down the street. Ask 'em who signs their paychecks.

Mykel's homepage is here.