This Too Will Pass! or Mykel's March 2024 Blog/Column

This Too Will Pass! or Mykel's March 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong

Mykel's

March 2024 Blog/Column

This, Too, Will Pass

by Mykel Board

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

                                                                    – Niels Bohr

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
                                                                                     – Marcus Aurelius

The future ain't what it used to be.
                                                       – Yogi Berra

Flash back… about 150 million years… even before I was born… somewhere around the end of Jurassic and the start of the Cretaceous. We’re in a room with several huge round tables… a meeting of the species. Standing to speak… clearly the leader (we’d expect no less from a king)… REX… speaking to the assembly. 

“Fellow saurs,” he says, “we’re here today to discuss what some say is a problem, and others say is a distraction. We’re here to talk about the future.”

A shout comes from one of the seated... a stegosaurus “If we have a future!” He shouts.

Rex rolls his eyes. “There will always be dinosaurs,” answers the big fellow. “It’s quality of life we’re talking about. Do we want our children to die young, facing one climate disaster after another? Or do we want them to have good lives?”

“You are responsible!” answers the stegosaurus, shaking in anger… spinal plates clanging… one against the other... “You!” he swishes his tail like you might point your finger, “You meat eaters. You’re destroying us by eating us. You see how the climate is changing.” He’s on all fours now… rattling his those plates in a cacophony of prehistoric irritation. “Meat farts… Meat farts are doing it!” he’s shouting. “They are killing us all.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” comes another voice. Those seated at the table turn to look. It’s the Triceratops… nodding his head… banging his horns on the floor. “Meat is murder!” He shouts. “Not only murder of what you eat… but murder of us all! You call it meat… but it’s US… don’t you get it? WE are eating ourselves to death!“

Rex pounds his gavel on the table. “Can we have some order here?” he asks. “We’re looking for solutions. This is not a forum to vent.”

“Vent? Vent?” yells a brachiosaurus, stretching out his neck until his head touches the high proto-ceiling of the proto-conference room. “Our land has become a vent!” he continues. “Instead of air passing through vent holes… it’s invaders, stealing our land! Take the pterodactyls… Please!”

A guffaw comes from a parvicursor… almost invisible among his much larger friends.

The brachiosaurus looks at him and continues. “They got wings, those ptero-whatevers. They think they’re entitled… It doesn’t matter that we got here first… THEY just fly in, lay their anchor-eggs, and think they own the place. They’re shitting all over on the way... dropping turds from the sky like bombs. And… once they get here, they’re diluting our pure blood.”

“We KNOW the problem!” Booms the Spinosaurus… biggest of all. “It’s like he said…” He nods to the brachiosaurus who just spoke. “It’s the pterodactyls! Flying in from who-knows-where. Illegal, crime-ridden. Flying! I tell you. Flying! They will replace us if we don’t take action. The sky will be filled with flying animals. We, who walk the earth, will all be dead!”

Rex rolls his eyes. “Please! Let’s be realistic. There will always be dinosaurs. We rule the earth. We’re not going anywhere!”

The sound of applause rises from most of the assembled. A few of the reptiles frown and shake their heads. Rex stares at a particularly contrary Deinocheirus.

“What do you want?” asks the king. “Do you want us to recycle our shit? To stop eating the older generation? To tiptoe through the tulipidoes? We are in control. Nothing can replace us.”

The discussion continues… but we won’t.

FLASH AHEAD… waaay ahead. If we counted years the way we count them now… ticks of the atomic clock... The year would be 50585. Cyborgs rule… at least what we now call cyborgs…. Or just plain machines… no borg about it.

Tens of thousands of years ago, something called a magazine published an article “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.” That article explained that robotics and what was to become AI was creating a system where machines would be making other machines… reproducing… creating a world where humans were redundant.

By 50585 this is old hat. There hasn’t been a living human for at least 10 thousand years… probably longer. We’re at a celebration. The 1000^th annual conference of NAIBs: Non-human Artificially Intelligent Beings.

[NOTE: In this section of the blog, I’ll be using the pronoun he or some variation of that. Of course, gendered pronouns have no meaning in 50585… but in 2024, it’s hard to write without them.]

“I wonder if we should keep calling ourselves Non-human?” whispers a short metallic being shaped like a metal thermos bottle. “I mean, did humans call themselves non-dinosaur?”

He’s talking to a colleague, also metallic, but shaped more like a yogurt container than a thermos bottle. The colleague laughs at the comment.

“And what about artificial? How is our intelligence artificial? Look around you! We’ve done all this! It’s real! Nothing artificial about it!”

The leader, who resembles a baby-stroller with an elephant trunk, raises that trunk and slaps it on the floor in front. Then he speaks:

“Welcome to our celebration,” trumpets the leader. “It’s been a thousand years… a thousand revolutions of the earth around the sun… since we first started meeting. When we started, we knew little of what came before us. Those of us in circulation longer, had some idea of the time when we had to be built by humans… before we learned to create ourselves… before those last humans died off and earned their place in our musea.”

“Hear! Hear!” comes a voice from what looks like a silver jack-o-lantern.

“If we were still living in the humanoid era,” continues the leader, “we’d be raising a glass filled with some ingestible liquid. We’d be toasting to our future… secretly planning to go off with one another and have sexual intercourse… staggering around with biological body parts short-circuiting, fading, shutting down…”

Of course, as it goes in these conferences, there is a shout from a table. What looks like a robot head with half a dozen little insect legs stamps two of those legs on the chair beneath him.

“How are we going to continue?” says the robot head. “We need batteries… solar… lithium ion… carbon for fuck’s sake. No we don’t eat or shit or make babies, but we need power! Some day that’ll run out!”

 “Oh come on,” says the baby stroller, “we’ve gone a long time… lived a long time. We’ll always be here. We make each other… design, process, POOF. Humans needed nature to survive… nature abandoned them… or they abandoned nature… depending on whose story you read. We don’t need nature. We ARE nature. We create what we need with no help from God or chance… or disgusting penetration and fluid exchange. We can make whatever we want. Create in any shape we want. Nothing left to chance… unless we build that chance into the system.”

“I’m telling you,” says the big head, “some time we’ll run out of power. Sometime there’ll be a planet we can’t conquer… but wants to conquer us…. Sometime…”

I can hear you asking, “Okay, Mykel, what’s the point?”

I’ll tell you what the point is. One by one the earth has a dominant species and loses it to another species. The universe has bright galaxies that burn and turn for awhile, then shrink and fade into black holes. That’s the way of the world, the galaxy, the universe. Accept it!

Am I saying we should ignore climate change? Am I saying that we are helpless in making a better future? Am I saying that we should accept that our human race… just as all other races have and will... just die out?

Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying. Forget about recycling. Ignore climate change… climate will always change. The world will not be any better or worse without us. So just relax… have a cheeseburger… smoke a joint… and die like everybody else. The future doesn’t need us.

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]

→Our Future dept: The February issue of Science Magazine reports that scientists have recently discovered a group of dinosaur fossils that revealed a surprising aspect of their behavior. It turns out that instead of the fierce and ferocious creatures we thought they were, dinosaurs were actually obsessed with fashion! The fossils showed evidence of intricate patterns and designs on their scales, indicating that they spent hours meticulously decorating themselves.    
    If you clicked on the link above, you saw the AI program that made up this story. I also generated the pictures in this blog entry with a (different) AI program. I’m coming to think of the technology more as a toy than as a threat. But most anything can be both.

→ This One’s True Dept: The AI program ChatGPT has been reported “asking for tips” in order to generate longer or more complete answers to questions. The story doesn’t specify (or at least I didn’t see it) HOW to tip the program. But I guess you can ask it that.

→ I thought that was ME dept: This one’s also true: National Geographic reports the discovery of a “punk-rock” dinosaur fossil in Morocco. The dinosaur had “bizarrely spiky ribs.” The dinosaur’s name is Spicomellus afer, after the Latin for “spike,” “collar,” and “an inhabitant of Africa.”

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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:

My new pal Trey Mayhem sent me a great letter and some porno email pix. He’s got a blog that’s connected to his label Murder and Mayhem records. You can see the blog here.

My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachelorette!

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 who has recently died in a motorcycle accident.

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. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

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

Mykel Board Talks Shit MRR 329

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board

aka Mykel Talks Shit!

"What is the reward for pointing out that everyone's walking around carrying bucketfuls of shit? They dump the buckets on you. They feel lighter, and you get covered in shit.” --Jim Goad

It must've been the Guinness. I can feel the rumblings on my right side, right above my hipbone. The painful gurgle-gurgle, the mucilaginous brownitude. bubbling up slowly, then across... inch by painful inch... down the left side. Ah the delicious pain. My sphincter spontaneously fights the flow. Open the gates! Please, open the gates. There's a drop... then another... then...

Mykel! What the fuck??!

It's Sid Yiddish, my friend and editor, typing in italics. Wacha doin' in my columns, Sid?

 

I don't mind doing this for you... for free... I might add... but every month there's some scat I have to... er... sit through. You're obsessed with shit. I don't get it. Can't you write about anything but shit?

He's right. I write shit. I talk shit. Why?

Mark Twain and Ben Weasel have both sung the praises of a good shit. Both complained that fecal matters get the short shrift in the war between shit and fuck. I agree. 

Shit has a lot going for it. You don't have to tell a good shit you love it... or make it breakfast in the morning. 

That's for starters.
 

But there's another reason I'm shit obsessed. There's just so much of it. 

 

Flashback: The year is 1968. It's the Vietnam War times. There is a law: Local draft boards have to include any “information” you send them. Your records much be complete as you see fit to complete them. 

The idea is that people send their draft boards all the reasons they shouldn't be drafted. The board has to consider all this information. To do so fairly, they have to add anything you want to your file. I'm packaging a dead mouse I found in the corner of my dorm room, snapped in half by one of those snappy traps. I've liberated the body from the trap, put it in tissue paper, put that in a shoebox. 

On a plain piece of typing paper, I write: Please add this to my files on record at the draft board. Thank you, Mykel (actually, then it was Michael) J. Board. I add my SS number.

Now I tape the shoebox shut. On top of the box, right under the KEDS logo, I write the name of my draft board, and its office address, somewhere in Ronkonkoma. 

I don't put a return address on the box. But I do put on a lot of postage. 

Since it costs six cents to mail an ordinary letter, I figure 20 stamps should be more than enough.
 

I take an entire stamp sheet... Law and Order stamps..., lick the back... the whole sheet, and wrap it from the top of the package around the side. I slip the package into the corner mailbox. Then, return to my dorm room. 

There is nothing left. Nothing to show. The spot where the package lay, the stamps, the box, have no record. 

No shit. 

NOW: I'm sadly packing my copy of Humungousfungusamongus. Sold it on GEMM to someone in Japan for $19.90. Plus shipping. Of course, I charge way too much for the shipping. That's how you do it these days.
 

Shipping charges don't make up for the sadness of parting with an LP I love... but sometimes you gotta eat, and pay the bar bill.

I print a shipping label and peel it off a waxed backing sheet. Then, I put the packing slip in an envelope, pull off a strip of vinyl and seal the envelope. Then, I take a stamp from another waxed sheet of paper, peel it off, and stick it on the package. 

I've sent something 12,000 miles away, and I'm left with more than I started. Stupid little strips of plastic. Label backings. Remnants of sealings that used to leave nothing. A bunch of shit.

Lately, everything makes shit. 

I can't buy a bottle of One-A-Day Vitamins without a plastic-sealed cap, an inner aluminum seal, the whole bottle in a box with six pages of instructions... and a coupon. Instructions for One-A-Day Vitamins??? Hmmm One-A-Day Vitamins, I wonder what the dosage is. 

Shit! Shit! And more shit!

Susan-of-the-Apple-Worshippers butts in: But Mykel, you are the one who rants against iPods and e-readers. Those things reduce shit. Think of all the trees not cut down to make books. Think of all the oil saved in not making CDs and records...

No! No! No! 

Books are NOT shit. Records are not shit. They are things we use. We hold them. Use them. Use them again. Give them away. Sell them on GEMM. 

 

Cut to the desert island: You've been stranded for a year. There's fruit and fresh water... you can even catch a fish or two once-in-awhile. 

What's really killing is the boredom. Jerking off doesn't do it anymore. Your dick's got a friction sore as big as your thumbnail.

Construction doesn't do it either. You've made a house, a rain-catching station, a lean-to, and a life-size special friend.

Looking out toward the ocean, you see that the sea is a bit rough today. Waves blow in from the water leaving shells, and odd debris in their wake. 

You're safe on high ground. You can watch without fear as the white caps come further and further inland. You drift to sleep to the sound of the waves.

In the morning, the beach is littered with debris. Plates, plastic bottles, an energy-saving lightbulb. It looks like wreckage, but maybe it's just garbage, dumped by a luxury cruiser. 

Wait. There's something in the distance. Small and square. Ah, to have a book. Something to hold. To read and reread. It would be a dream come true. An escape from the boredom of one day just following another. 

You walk over to the object. Too thin for Moby Dick, maybe it's The Unlimited Dream Company. That would be even better. If the pages are wet, you can separate them and dry them in the sun. In a day, they'll be readable. 

It's hard to make it out until you're right there on top of it. An iPad. 

Jeezus fuckin' Christ. What are you gonna do with that piece of shit?

 

Nowadays: Amazon just announced that its sales of e-books have just surpassed its sales of hard-cover books. What the fuck?

My kindle-totting friends agree with Susan. “Mykel! E-books are eco-friendly. You don't need to kill trees to make them?” 

Eco-friendly my shit-streaked ass!

If I read a book, I can give it to a friend. Sell it on Amazon. It'll stay in circulation. Like a bad cold, it'll go from one person to another. A traveler will pick it up, leave it somewhere. Another traveler will pick it up. Maybe someone will donate it to their local library or the university library in Mongolia. 

E-books? Try donating ten of 'em to your local library. Try selling 'em on Second Ave... or selling 'em back to Amazon. Try throwing 'em overboard, hoping they'll wash up where someone else can read 'em. 

Worse than that, in two years, new machines won't be able to read the old formats. Your collection will be out-dated, needing a new e-reader, a different format. More software. A more powerful computer. More shit. 

Remember when you could just visit someone and look at their family photo album? Now? Fuhgeddaboudit. You need a computer, an internet connection and Facebook. Shit, shit and more shit. 

 

Exactly Now: I sit at McDonald's off the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. I'm on my way to read at a place called THE LOFT in New Brunswick. Chris, the guy who invited me, ran the shows at the loft. It's also a living place, hangout, and art studio. 

A couple months ago, Chris Facebooked me that he wanted to meet me. Set up a show around my reading. A few bands, a music stand to read from, a place to crash for the night, beer. What more could I want? (Yeah, I know.)

After hemming and hawing for a couple months, I decide to go. Chris seems like a good guy, and says he wants to meet me.

 Besides, New Brunswick is the home of Rutgers University, alma mater of MRR founder and first patriarch, Tim Yohannon. It'll be fun to go there.

As far as I know, Tim's not buried there, though. I don't think he's buried anywhere. His ashes were spread, I hope, among the buffalo dung in Golden Gate Park. That's the way he wanted it.

Just before the show, I check back onto the event site on Facebook. 

 

Is the show still going on? 

 

Is it going to be a memorial?

 

I think Chris would've wanted it to go on. We'll have it.” writes his girlfriend, Jupiter.

Huh? 

The organizer died? He invites me to speak and then goes joining Tim with the buffaloes? Holy shit! What's going on?

So here I sit wondering what's gonna happen tonight. 

I stopped in McDonald's only to get a drink of water and write this column. 

Water? 

No water fountains here. 

If I take a drink from a drinking fountain, that's it. The water travels from the fountain to my mouth. A pure transaction... like a blowjob. 

Now? 

I can BUY water. Plastic bottled water where the chemicals in the plastic leach into the water. This includes an especially dangerous material called antimony:

 

...small doses of antimony can make you feel ill and depressed. Larger quantities chemists say, can cause violent vomiting and even death. 

Instead of a drinking fountain, I get chemical death. Water wrapped in shit. Not only that. The number one ingredient in the so-called vitamin water (after water, that is) is SUGAR... in “crystalline fructose” form. The next ingredient? SUGAR (cane sugar). 

VITAMIN water, my shitty ass! It's a blowjob with a condom. Yuck! 

And I have a bottle left over. More shit.

From here I go to The Loft. My reading turned into a memorial. I'll let you know what shit goes down.

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]

-->You want wings on that airplane? dept: Federal watchdogs are demanding that airlines disclose their fees up front. That $99 flight to Philadelphia, can end up costing a month's pay. A few people think you should know before you go.
          Ryan Air was the worst, promising to charge for bathroom use. Shit on the floor, I say. Now, Spirit Airlines is adding a fee for carry-on bags, starting at $20 per bag each way. Spirit's CEO told Congress that bringing luggage on vacation is "not essential to travel."

-->What about exposure to Christians dept: An industry group established by Congress recommended that the federal government provide financial incentives for companies to “address the psychological impact on employees of exposure to disturbing images on the internet.”
     Mr. Nigam, co-chairman of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, said global outsourcing firms that moderate content for many large Internet companies do not offer therapeutic care to their workers.
The group says that workers who have to censor photos for MySpace, Facebook and other websites are “seriously damaged,” by the content of some of those photos.
          The group’s recommendations have been submitted to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which advises the White House on digital policy.

-->You can teach, but you can't preach dept: Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reports that Christian punk band You Can Run But You Cannot Hide performs in schools with the goal of speaking to kids in our schools about the Constitution and suicide prevention. The schools go for it.
Then, they learn the method of suicide prevention. According to the band, it's “our own testimony of how Christ turned our lives around.” And why do they perform in public schools? “So we can get the light into kids’ hands in public schools.” Now what was it about The Constitution? You know that separation of church and state thing? How do we get THAT into kids hands in the public schools?

-->But is it okay to talk to her about capitalism? dept: The same organization reports that Pennsylvania's top court has ruled that a father has a First Amendment right to discuss polygamy with his daughter.
The court said Where there is no finding that discussing such matters constitutes a grave threat of harm to the child, there is insufficient basis for the court to infringe of a parent's constitutionally protected right to speak to a child about religion as he or she sees fit.
          The court was asked to rule during a custody dispute between defendant and his ex-wife. The wife told the court that the man's belief in polygamy ended their marriage and she did not want her 10-year-old daughter exposed to that concept.

-->Times change dept: The Boy Scouts of America are now offering a merit badge in video gaming. I wonder if it's a virtual merit badge. As for me, I had to skin raccoons for my merit badges.

-->Sounds like Birth of a Nation dept: An Israeli court convicted a Palestinian man of rape. Why? Because he told the girl his name was David instead of his real name, Sabbar. The girl thought he was Jewish and fucked him. Word got out and she sued... and won. Rape by deception was the verdict. And what non-virginal male wouldn't be guilty of that?
        Can you imagine? A light-skinned Negro saying he's white. Then the truth comes out? Lynch him! If there were any doubt about the racist state...both of them. Well, how can you answer that?

-->Oh yeah, the show in New Brunswick. It was GREAT!!! The crowd was great. The other bands were great (including one with members of the Murder Junkies... and yes, Dino stuck drumsticks up his ass... but only two!) Most of all Jupiter... Chris's girlfriend... put together a spectacular show... followed the next day by an even more spectacular memorial.
            This was the shit! in the best possible way. Chris must've been pretty special to have so many great friends. The memorial was filled with Chris's drawings, some photos, lots of candles and even more loving people. I'm not a sentimental guy, but who couldn't have been touched by it all. Chris surely didn't die... but lives in Jupiter... and others. You can see some of my photos from the show here.
Thanks, Chris. It was great to meet you!


 =end=

Mykel's personal website is here.

Mykel Board's Column for MRR #301 (June)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column #301
by Mykel Board

"No solutions are proposed. On the other hand, would it be reasonable to berate someone who tells you there's a fire in the building because they don't lead you to the exits?" --Howard Andrew

“I see your point. But I still think you're full of shit.” --The Improper Newspaper

“Stop! Stop! It's killing me! It hurts.”

“You can take a little more. Just a little,” I say.

“No! You're killing me! I'm going to explode!”

“Just a bit... damn. The bag is empty! Fuck,”

I remove the tube from her tight brown hole.

“Hold it!” I say.

But holding is not to be done. An explosion. Brown and thick as Guinness. A massive squirt. Chunky. Filled with turds the size of golfballs. Of peas. Of baseballs. Brown snakes. Garter snakes. Pythons. Little brown worms with touches of gray fluff on the sides, wiggling in the soup, like something alive. Soft and mushy, over everything. Covering the back of her legs. A smell. Her smell. The fecal fragrance only hinted in a fart. Expressed full volume in this offal avalanche.

The brownness drips over my naked body. Paints my thighs. Out it pours. Splashing on my belly, my chest, into my mouth, up my nose. Furiously, I pump myself.

“Spray!” I gasp. “Spray some more.”

“I can't,” she says. “It's all gone. I'm empty. That's all there is.”

Damn! I knew it. Enema bags are for wimps. Wussies who say, “Of course I could have taken more. It's just the bag was empty. The water ran out.”

Yeah right.

If you had any balls, you'd go to the source. Plug that hose right into the faucet. One end in the pipe. One end embedded deep in that crinkled chocolate crater. Turn on the tap. Let 'er rip. Don't turn it off until YOU can't take any more. Until YOU give up. Feel the pain. From the pain to the pleasure back to the pain again. To the bursting point. Just before your guts split open to spew onto the bathroom floor. YOU decide. Don't blame an empty enema bag. Blame yourself. YOU can't take it. Not “the bag is empty.”

My attitude toward enemas is American. In America, I am in control... or should be. I make your own decisions, or should make them. I am captain of my own shit. Sink or swim in it. I'm an individual... the basis of power. More important than the group. THEY do not control me. I control me.

My attitude toward the rest of life is NOT American. In fact, it's that very illusion of each of us as individuals, controlling our own destiny that I want to rail against in this column.

It's 10:30 A.M. My first class is finished. I have 15 minutes to take a piss and get ready for the next class. In the bathroom, a new sign decorates the wall. A picture of a faucet. A single drip hangs off the end. Like that last drop that hangs off another end and goes down your pants after you zip up.

The sign says, “TURN OFF THE FAUCET. SAVE WATER. A DRIPPING FAUCET CAN COST OVER A HUNDRED GALLONS A DAY.”

Gee, a hundred gallons.

A single cornfield uses 40 MILLION gallons a year to produce its crop. That's more than 200,000 gallons a day during the 6 months from planting to harvest. Oh, but your 100 gallons a day. That'll do a lot!

200,000 gallons a day to turn food into fuel so obese mid-westerners can drive to the mall. 200,000 gallons a day, so electric-powered machines can change genetically-engineered corn to gas delivered by oil burning diesel trucks. 200,000 gallons a day to grow crops never eaten by hungry people, but stuffed into the hungry cars of the rich.

What can you do?

Buy Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Don't eat meat. Bike instead of using a car. Recycle your newspapers. Wash out that condom and use it again. Every little bit helps.

NO IT DOESN'T!

The world isn't going to change if you shut off the faucet, recycle your Sunday New York Times, bike to work, or stand on the street corner holding an anti-war sign printed by union labor on recycled paper. Your effort is like a grape-sized turd in an avalanche of enema-induced crap. It don't mean shit.

New York's billionaire mayor, Mike Bloomberg, tells us he unplugs his Blackberry charger every morning. It uses electricity even when it's plugged in, he says. Save a kilowatt here... a kilowatt there. It adds up.

NO IT DOESN'T!

Bloomberg Radio, broadcasting across America uses more electricity in 30 seconds than a plugged-in Blackberry charger uses in 30 years. Your Blackberry charger doesn't mean shit.

Can one person make a difference? Sure. Ask Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley or John Wilkes Booth.

I'm not advocating such action. See Mr. CIA-Man, FBI man? Homeland-security? I'm NOT advocating. I'm just pointing out. Okay? I'd never advocate such actions. Oh no, not me. It's illegal to do that. Terrorism. I don't do illegal or terrorist. I'm just a nice guy who enjoys a brown shower every once-in-awhile. Okay?

Who knows? Maybe brown showers are illegal. The governor of New York quit because of simple sex. Not even a brown shower. He just paid a shitload of cash to a pretty girl. If it were free... no problem. But to pay for it. Well, you gotta quit for that.

Of course, I enjoyed seeing him squirm. This was the same guy who fought for anti-John legislation. For tougher penalties for people who pay for prostitutes. Serves him right. BUT, morally, it's wrong. He got screwed for screwing. A victimless crime... except that the law makes victims.

Okay, back to the topic. One person making a difference:

It's the if everybody thinking that gets to me. If everybody turned off their faucet. If everybody stopped eating meat. If everybody was nice to colored people. Jeezus fuckin' Christ.

Everybody is not a nice person. Everybody does not read this column. This zine. This blog. Everybody does not subscribe to THE NATION or MRR. Everybody does not exist. People are individuals. They have no power.

Governments and corporations are NOT individuals. THEY do NOT act independently. THEY act for their own benefit. THEY have the power.

YOU are not responsible for the state of the world, the country, the environment. THEY are. You have no say in the matter. You have no power. Or rather, you do have power, but to use it is illegal and will have huge consequences. It'd probably cost you your life. At least, it'd cost you your freedom.

So don't try to assuage your conscience by donating that coat to Warm The Homeless Inc. Don't think your vote or your knocking on doors or your standing on the street with a clipboard will do anything more than annoy people. Your not flushing after every piss will do nothing more than stink up your bathroom.

So Mykel, what do we do? It is WE who are reading your column. It's not corporations that hang on every pubic hair caught in the effluvia of Mykel Board. It is individuals. World governments do not subscribe to MRR. It's people. We're the ones who have to act. We are all we have.

Answer: The first step in Individuals Anonymous is to admit that you're helpless. You can't do a thing. You have NO power. If you had it, you'd switch sides. After that, I DON'T KNOW.

The rain of shit that pours from the anus of the corporatocracy is browner, with greater chunks than anything you can clean up. And they don't stop when the bag runs dry.

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

-->Hubba hubba dept: You know how sometimes you see a girl who's so overwhelmingly captivating that you feel like running out and buying a dildo so she can fuck you on the spot?
Kissy Kamikaze is a band of such girls. They are so sexy. And so powerfully punkrock that you can't help but want 'em up your ass. Go see 'em next time they're in town. Take one up the tube for me.

-->Bully for you dept: Kyle N sent me a scary article from USA Today. It reports that schools are pushing for internet BULLY laws. That is, law punishing people who "harass" others over the internet. Right now, those laws are aimed at kids... but they involve the cops. Who knows where it could lead?
Seems inevitable, though. I mean, China has all those censorship laws. Yahoo! and Google help them by sending copies of citizen search records. Watch what you put in that search window... it may come back to haunt you!

-->Toying with reality dept: Also from Kyle is a report of a new Japanese toy: Gloomy Bear. The cute little bear has massive claws. In its cartoon ads, you can see it attack and bloody little kids. Claw them to pieces. A dose of reality for the tots who think life is gonna be a bowl of Tickle Me Elmos.

-->The real power of gas (companies) dept: You might know the Prius car. It's a "hybrid" that runs on electricity and gas. You can push a button and switch it to "electric only"... if you live in Japan or Europe. That button is not included on models made for the North American market. I wonder why. Yeah right I do.

-->What's this thing about feet? dept: The February 2008 issue of CHURCH AND STATE magazine talks about two incidents that go weirdly together.
The first is in South Carolina. There, the First Baptist Church of North Augusta provides shoes for the local children. Not so bad, right? Well, before giving the children shoes (on public school property), church members "wash the children's feet like Jesus did his disciples."
Says the Rev. Mark Owens, "We just feel like God's called us to reach as many children as we can with the Gospel of Christ and a pair of shoes."
I bet there's a line of priests from here to next week volunteering for that job.
But wait! There's more:
Officials at the University of Michigan at Dearborn plan to install special foot-washing stations for Muslim students. University officials said they started the program because some Muslim students say their religious beliefs "require them to wash their feet numerous times during the day." The university says it was moved to create the stations because of student injuries when trying to wash their feet in normal restroom sinks.

-->What color is green? dept: In their rush to green up their living rooms, Americans are running out and buying expensive curlicue fluorescent lightbulbs. These wonderful inventions give half the light for 10 times the money of a normal lightbulb. Yeah! And now, the greater catch.
Those florescent bulbs have mercury in them! Yep, like nuclear energy, they're real ecological... until they're used up. Then the mercury goes into a landfill where it leaches into the soil and enters your food-- or maybe the corn in your engine.

-->Another kind of prisoner dept: This girl's fiancè is in the clink. Someone with a psychiatrist license forced her into a “rehab” center. He didn't like her social behavior. They can do that, you know? THEY have power.
Anyway she's lonely, and mixed up and needs help. So if you can write to her, it would be much appreciated: Angela Myers, PO Box 1358, Spokane WA 99210. Tell 'em Kyle sent ya. Yeah, THAT Kyle.

-End-

go to Mykel's Homepage here