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's MRR Column for #319, (December, 2009)

If you want to read more about Mykel's adventures in Albania, The US South-- or life in General-- check out Mykel's Diary For a look at the weird, the scary and the funny in real life, check out Mykel's Article's and Propositions.         

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 319, December 2009
by Mykel Board

“"They knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty-- and that one man's certainty always threatened another.”-- Barak Obama

L'shona Tovah. Today is the first day of 5770. Pretty amazing we made it so far. At least I made it so far. Jim Carroll and Lux Interior did not.

SETTING THE SCENE: I sit in Café Café, a small place on Greene Street, tucked far enough into Soho to charge $9.50 for a sandwich. Too far south to be crowded with horrible NYU students, it's café enough to have teeth-grinding jazz blasting at the inmates. It's better than home, though. Fewer distractions. No dishes that suddenly need washing. No garbage that suddenly needs to be taken to the basement.

In front of me, behind my laptop, is a covered cup of coffee, the cover torn just enough to let me sip from it. The lid slowly melts in the coffee beneath.

In my lap (there's not enough room on the table), is a children's book called ALBANIA IN PICTURES. It's open to the page about Shkodër, one of the few “big” cities in the north of that country:

The residents of Shkodër rebuilt many of its buildings after a strong earthquake in 1979. One of the city's main attractions is The Museum of Atheism, which Albania's Communist government built to celebrate its ban on all forms of religious practice...

The Museum of Atheism??? Holy Pentateuch Batman! Sounds like my kind of place.

By the time you read this I'll probably be back from Albania. I leave in two weeks. No punk connections. No nothing. I just take the plane to Rome, a train across the boot, and a boat from Bari to Durres. I can't tell you what I expect to find (except, maybe, a museum of atheism.) That's why I'm going.

Give the Context: A couple months ago, I wrote about factives. This group of verbs creates truth... or at least the image of truth.

To review: verbs like know, realize, understand are factives. Phrases like everybody knows that, or nobody knows that... are factives.

If you say, “Everybody knows that Arnold is a piss drinker,” Arnold is a piss drinker. If you say, “Nobody knows that Arnold is a piss drinker,” Arnold is still a piss drinker.

Extend the context: There's another kind of factive-- a truism-factive. This one involves a cliché that unconsciously controls your point of view. It's a phrase that molds what we think. A one-sentence assumption.

My father used to say, “Never assume. It makes an ASS of U and ME.”

That phrase itself is one of these truism-factives. People say it all the time. Utter the words I assumed... and someone's sure to spit it out. Sometimes they'll just say “never assume.” You're supposed to fill in the rest. Everybody knows it. But... it's WRONG!

You assume all the time. You can't live without assuming. If you drop a marble, you assume it will fall to the ground, not shoot upwards through the ceiling. If you buy a cup of coffee at a Soho café, you assume it will not be laced with acid, tearing your stomach out, bubbling blood from your mouth at the first sip. As I type these words, I assume when I push the F key, the letter F will appear on the screen.

These assumptions come from 70 years of marble dripping, coffee sipping, and F-pushing. But even babies assume. If they press their lips against a warm nipple, for example, they assume it will dispense some tasty milk. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but to live, they have to assume.

Life is assumptions. Sometimes we're wrong. But we HAVE to assume in order to live. It's obvious. But people think in truism-clichés so they miss the obvious. The cliché trumps the reality.

More Context: It's 1989, somewhere on Second Avenue. This guy in Doc Martins wears a plastic jacket with a bunch of patches on it. He runs his hand over his smooth head.

Having recently been punched and booted by a colored skinhead, the image does not attract me. That this guy is white is scarier. As I turn to walk back to the Mars Bar, I read one of the patches on his jacket: IF IT DOESN'T KILL YOU, IT MAKES YOU STRONGER.

What the fuck? How many people have this truism-factive doing maneuvers in their mental battlefield? It's easy to see where it came from. If you give chickens antibiotics, the antibiotics kill off the weak bacteria. The strong ones survive. They do the bacteria screw, and the surviving bacteria get stronger. But that's it. Bacteria. Otherwise, the truism is WRONG.

I visit my father in an old folks home. I see people in wheelchairs. I see blind people. I see folks unable to speak, howling like wolves howl at a full moon. These people have diabetes, alzheimers, emphysema. Thousands of medical problems that don't kill them.. but make them WEAKER-- not stronger.

Of course, you die in the end, so you can say EVERYTHING kills you. But at any moment, if it doesn't kill you (unless you're a bacterium), it will probably make you WEAKER... not stronger. It's as obvious as the cancer on your nose, but you think in truism-clichés and miss the obvious.

The Crux: It's not only verbs, and truism-clichés that act this way. It's an entire mindset, a brainbug.

You hear something and it triggers a string of thoughts. Newspapers headline that a highschool girl is gang raped in the bathroom. Cops arrest four guys. They're looking for a fifth. The public is outraged.

Our girls, our daughters. How could we let this happen? We need more security in schools. We have to protect our women.

Here is the NY Post front page of September 19^th, several days after the “rape.”

Danmell Ndonye, 18, told cops she had been raped during a restroom romp at a Hofstra dorm early Sunday.

Stalin Felipe (left) and his cousin Arvin Rivera talked about their ordeal yesterday. Felipe credits Rivera, who had filmed the bathroom orgy, with clearing his and his friends' names.

He and his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, and pals Jesus Ortiz, 19, and Rondell Bedward, 21, were all charged with first-degree rape, which could have landed them in jail for 25 years.

"We went to Hofstra just to have some fun, and it turned out to be a nightmare," Felipe said. "Cops were telling us, 'You are going to rot in jail.' "

They were exonerated only after the fifth man -- Felipe's cousin Arvin Rivera, an 18-year-old senior at Harry S. Truman HS in The Bronx -- contacted prosecutors through his lawyer and said he had videotaped the sex romp with his cellphone. The video showed the sex was consensual.

Get it? The girl was lying! But we're so conditioned to believe the woman, the cops who were investigating reached their conclusions before they started. So did you.

How many innocents are in jail because people believe the victim. How many times have you heard cries against blaming the victim, when it may be that the victim is to blame!

This happens again and again. Remember the Duke University LaCross scandal in 2006? Even if you do, it probably won't matter. Let a woman cry rape and the guy is guilty. It's in your brain. Everybody knows men rape and women are victims, right?

The innocent woman/guilty man image is an idea thousands of years old. It's responsible for most of the gender inequality in the world. Woman's circumcision is mutilation. Men's is “protection against disease.” Husbands defend women's honor. Women can't defend themselves. Men are perpetrators. Women are victims.

Take Sweden... please.

“Enlightened people” say that Sweden has found the right way to handle prostitution. Instead of punishing the whores, as in most countries, Sweden gives them the right to ply their trade. BUT, if you frequent a prostitute, if you pay for the offered service... then you can go to prison.

Huh? That's the opposite of enlightened drug policy... or any criminal policy. It would be like saying, it's okay to sell heroin, but if you buy it, you go to jail. Talk about blaming the victims!! This is jailing the victims.

Where does such perverse thinking come from? It's a brainbug. An unconscious everybody knows it's true. The same brainbug that creates the knee-jerk reaction to cries of RAPE!

Women are victims. Most prostitutes are women. Most purchasers of prostitutes are men. That means the victims are the women. If that's the case, the criminals are the men. Jail them. Bullshit!

Careful thought shows the only victims are those created by the law. Prostitution, even more than drugs, is simply a paid relationship of mutual agreement. How could it be legal to have free sex between consenting adults, but illegal to have paid sex? Is there anything else in the world that's legal to give away, but illegal to pay for? I can't think of it. It doesn't make sense.

But sense has nothing to do with this. It's the mindset. Women are right. Women need protection. If there's a crime, women must be the victims. It never occurs to people that there may be NO victims.

Throwing up my hands: Ah fuck it. I'm going to Albania. There are no clichés about Albania. No performatives. There's NOTHING everybody knows about Albania. My brain will be free to make its own discoveries. Let's see what happens.

*******

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]

-->Gimme Nuuk department: Greenland had its first election since it won near-independence from Denmark, my favorite country. The leftist Inuit Ataqatigiit Party of Greenland took control.
   Why? Global warming has melted the Greenland ice. Suddenly, the natives have access to natural resources worth exploring. The Greenlanders wanted control of their own resources. Danes, being Danes, let them have it.
    Speaking in the Greenlandian capital, Nuuk, the new leader said, “Greenland deserves this.” I hope he's right.

-->What's up Doc? dept: It used to be that doctors were the biggest block to healthcare in the U.S. In the old days, doctors opposed Medicare and any other government interference in the health biz.
    After a taste of rule by insurance company, a bunch of doctors are now head-banging to a different speedmetal song.
   Physicians for a National Health Care Program includes more than 16,000 healthcare professionals. It was started by Dr. Linda Farley who has since died of cancer.
   “The doctors who have been on the front lines can tell you,” Dr. Farley said, “there only one real 'public option.' It's single-payer.”
    That means socialized medicine. Yeah!

-->Plugging myself department: During my trip to Albania, I'll be blogging my adventures. And, depending on if I can find an internet site... and if my computer gets stolen, you can read that blog regularly at: http://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com/

-->A weird church-state issue: A Washington D.C. Christian Science church has sued that city's historical landmark department.
    They asked for the right to tear down their own church. It looks like a windowless war bunker, they said.
   At a press conference, church leaders said, “Little is more representative of a church’s theology than its architecture, and this building is not us.”
   The landmark department has reversed its ruling because of the suit. But since there is no plan for a replacement, the building still stands.
    A windowless war bunker, huh? Sounds like a pretty good representation of any religion to me.

-->A tougher church-state issue: During the last days of the Bush administration, the president issued new regulations about healthcare. The rules say the government will cut funding to any group, state or local government that does now allow workers to follow their religious conscience.
    That means pharmacists don't have to fill birth-control prescriptions if it goes against their beliefs. Lab workers don't have to give lesbians in-vitro fertilization if it goes against their beliefs. Catholic hospitals can refuse to provide morning-after pills to rape victims, if they believe it's a sin.
    Who is right? Should the government force workers to violate their beliefs? Or should there be equal treatment for all in need of it?
   I say, if you're gonna go for the belief side, you gotta go whole hog. My belief system says that wage-slavery... expending effort for the profit of someone else... capitalism... is immoral. For me, to participate in such a system is a sin. I want the right to my paycheck without the duty to actually work. If my employer has to respect MY BELIEFS, then I agree with the religious guys. Let 'em follow their conscience.
   Otherwise, face it, in capitalism, we DON'T respect the beliefs of working people. That's the whole point.

-->Good news department: Ward Churchill, the guy who was fired from the University of Colorado for saying the World Trade Center victims were little Eichmans, won a lawsuit against the university. It's not clear whether he'll be rehired, but it is still one small victory in the fight for free speech and academic freedom.

-end-