POST
MRR COLUMNS
Post-MRR Column Number 15
by
Mykel Board
"Why
level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as
common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of a man asleep.”
Henry David Thoreau
First
they came for the smokers, and I did not speak out— because I was
not a smoker. Then they came for the senile, and I did not speak out—
because I was not senile. Then they came for the football players and
I did not speak out— because I was not a football player. Then they
came for me. --Mykel
Board
I
don't make it. Both hands cupped over my mouth, I run to the
bathroom. I don't make it. Stomach contents... volcanic... force
themselves upward... an enema in reverse... chunks of chicken...
pieces of potato... whole croutons-- just the way they looked in the
bar avocado dip-- spew themselves upward... through my esophagus...
filling my cupped hands... spilling over... catching in my beard...
dripping on a trail through my fingers.. SPLOTCH... SPLOTCH...
SPLOTCH... from the bedroom. The food forces itself upward like
liquid, not percolating, but exploding... upward with such force it
fills my nose... overflows... my nostrils drip beer and buffalo
wings. Sinuses cramp with calamari.
Finally...
the toilet. I open my lips and let the primal ooze splash in. My
packed sinuses ache... a huge pressure... I grab my nose from the
top, spray out... nothing... harder... a green drop... the size of a
pea... dribbles from a nostril. It IS a pea, mixed from the same
gravy used to make chicken pot pies for decades... centuries...
millennia.
No
time to consider it. Here comes another heave... a giant fire hose...
a brown gray mix up-chucking into the toilet with such force that the
splash covers my face... my neck... my naked chest. Dripping with my
own vomit, I sink to my knees. Barely able to keep my dripping face
above the water in the bowl, I heave again... nearly drowning in the
backsplash. I won't get drunk again. I won't get drunk again. It's
just common sense.
Ok
buckaroos, I've been writing for about 50 years now. MUCH of that
writing has been rants against common sense, self-evidence, logic.
“Everybody
knows that women make 80¢ for every dollar men make.”
“It's
just logic that second-hand smoke is bad for your health.”
“If
you only earn $1800 a month you can't afford a trip to Japan... It's
common sense.”
All
those and more are just wrong! If EVERYBODY knows it, it's probably
wrong. Remember how everyone knew that margarine was better
than butter. You know how many people DIED from that? Remember how
everyone knew that you had to arm the Taliban in Afghanistan?
It protected us from COMMUNISM. See what happened?
IN
PRAISE OF SMOKING
Bottom
of the eighth, two outs, Jeter on third. The Yankees are down 4 to 3.
Teixeira’s up. Damn! He's barely hitting at the Mendoza Line. Yeah,
he's got a bunch of homers... but. STRIKE ONE. Just as I feared.
Swinging at something way out of the strike zone... Ever since his
wrist injury... STRIKE TWO. Fuck! I don't need crystal balls to tell
him to TAKE that next pitch. He's trying too hard. He's trying to
make everything a home run. He'll... STRIKE THREE.
And
now comes a public service commercial. A man's talking... not
talking exactly... he's got one of those external voice boxes against
his neck. A hole in his neck vibrates as he speaks. I used to be a
smoker, until... Pissed off, I shut off the TV missing the ninth
inning.
FLASH
TO LATER THAT NIGHT: I'm looking for those lost videos on YouTube.
There were only eight or so shows. Roald
Dahl's WAY OUT... better than the Twilight Zone. On the screen,
in that stupid side column are public service
videos... one aimed at teens:
We
can be the generation that ends smoking.
Jeezus
fuckin' Christ. In the 60s, people wanted to be part of the
generation that ends WAR. These days, they go for a bit more
totalitarian goal. I wonder, if, in the 1920s there were posters
saying WE CAN BE THE GENERATION THAT ENDS DRINKING.
I
see anti-smoking propaganda plastered on internet sites, on subway
posters, on billboards. Even the
government
gets in the act. I see it reflected in New York
laws against smoking in parks... even if the park is just a slab of
concrete at an intersection. Buildings are banning smoking by
tenants... in their own apartments. The wildest logic... ignores
everything EXCEPT smoking.
“Statistics
show that children from buildings with more smoking have higher
incidence of cancer and emphysema than children from smoke-free
buildings.” What the fuck?
How
'bout that rich white folks tend to smoke less than poor folks. How
'bout that buildings with smokers tend to be closer to factories or
frackers than buildings with non-smokers? Naw, that's not important.
Yeah, right.
While
smoking is (barely) legal... this is the time to act. This is the
time to START SMOKING! If any one thing symbolizes the loss of
freedom, it's the loss of the right to smoke. If any one thing
symbolizes rebellion in America in 2014, it's smoking. Smoking is the
great Satan of activities. It is the only legal (for now) way to
flout convention... to say
I
REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE MYTH THAT I CONTROL MY DESTINY. I REFUSE TO
BUY INTO THE LIE THAT IF I GET SICK IT'S MY OWN FAULT... OR THE FAULT
OF MY NEIGHBOR WHO SMOKES. I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE LIE THAT MY BAD
LUNGS ARE NOT THE FAULT
OF CORPORATE AMERICA AND THE SHIT THEY POUR INTO THE AIR AND WATER,
BUT RATHER SOMETHING I DO MYSELF.
More
than this. Smoking in 2014 attacks the entire idea of Your comfort
is more important than my freedom...
The easily offended society... The whiners who call for the boycott
of everyone they disagree with. The censors who, instead of answering
free speech with speech, answer it with calls to end that speech. The
bullies, who in the name of stopping bullying,
bully people into keeping their mouths shut and their opinions to
themselves. The totalitarians who say that my emotions
are more important than your art... who
can't walk away or put something down because it triggered
emotional distress. The single
act of lighting up a cigarette is a proclamation as loud as any
protest poster that says. I AM AN INDIVIDUAL... AND I WILL NOT COWER.
IN
PRAISE OF ALZHEIMERS
"Nothing
is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”
--Franklin
Pierce Adams
With
age comes senility--- that disease of
forgetting. Maybe it's not so bad.
I've
written before about how the 70 years since World War II is enough
time to FORGET ABOUT IT! So much evil has been done in the name of
that war... from genocide to opera censorship. So much continues to
be done. I've written plenty on that memory... and there are other
things to forget
In
Texas, they still Remember the Alamo and
use that mudhut... a holdout in a war FOR slavery and AGAINST an
innocent nation... a war that was nothing more than a land grab.
Texans don't want you to REALLY remember the Alamo. You should
remember it THEIR way. I say FORGET IT.
In
the South, the Civil War still plays hard and anyone from George Bush
Senior to Bill Clinton is a carpet-bagger.
Remember the
some-fucking-thing is the
rallying cry of so much death and destruction, that just hearing
those words should be an instant code to tell you blood's
a-comin'.
Remember
the Armenian holocaust. Remember the Lusitania. I cannot forgive...
forget... absolve...release... relent... accept... bury the
hatchet... let bygones be... let it go... let it pass... wipe the
slate clean...
Remember
means I can do what the fuck I want to you because someone, someplace
did something to my ancestors. Remember means revenge.
Revenge triggers counter-memories. I remember what you did to them
because you remembered what we did to you.
Jews
and Germans. Hatfields and McCoys.
Clan Chattan and Clan Kay, Hamilton and Burr, Stalin and Trotsky,
Jack Benny and Fred Allen, Snoop Dogg and Iggy Azalea. I donno. To
all of 'em I say forget
about it. It's OVER.
What
you do starts NOW! If I fill a bag of dogshit, light it and put it on
your front porch, that's NOW! You called my mother a slut 4 years
ago? It's over!
IN
DEFENSE OF FOOTBALL
“Female
violence toward men is pervasive, although largely denied. Or if it
isn't denied, it's excused. When a man insults or hits a woman, it's
'abuse,' but when a woman insults or hits a man, it's
'assertiveness.”
--Jim Goad
“Feminism
is very much like egalitarianism and if you believe that we are all
equal then you are a feminist. "
--Internet
Website
Two
months ago, I wrote about Robert Anton Wilson's book, Cosmic
Trigger III. In that
book, Wilson mentions violence in the movies. We always hear
Christians and feminists complain about how movies cause Sandy Hooks
or random street violence. What goes unmentioned-- except by Wilson--
is how that in (almost?) every major U.S. movie since the 70s, a man
is hit by a woman... from the slap across the face to real
ball busters.
My
sister's house-- Rosh Hashanah eve.:The meal is finished. The Tsimmis
is just settling in my stomach. 5775... a nice palindromic year.
“Hey
Mike,” says my sister (the only person in the world who calls me
Mike). “You want to watch some TV before you go to bed?”
Since
I don't own a cable-connected TV, I figure why not? It'll teach me
some references from Modern Culture®. I can
drop them in a column and people will think I'm up-to-date.
“Sure.”
I tell her, settling myself in front of a TV that's bigger than my
apartment. “What's on?”
“You'll
love this show,” she says, flipping the channel to something called
(I think) The Modern Family. It has all the current memes: the
gay couple, the divorcees, the dysfunctional siblings. Shows like
this are one of the reason I DON'T have cable TV. There's a scene...
outside a restaurant... a guy and a girl-- she much younger, but
still legal... his wife in the series, I think. He says something.
She slaps him across the face, then grabs his chin and kisses him
smack dab on the mouth. My sister laughs.
Could
you imagine if the roles were reversed? Could you imagine an older
man, slapping a younger woman across the face, then grabbing her chin
and kissing her full on the mouth? The tyrants from Social Justice
Warriors would be all over them. Boycott the sponsors! Shut 'em
down. How could they allow... Violence against women!! Jeezus fuck!
But this violence passes with a laugh.
What's
the reality? Why is there a Violence Against Women
bill, but not a Violence Against People bill?
Why is the harassment of women
in the military a more important issue than the military itself--
murdering hundreds of innocent people thousands of miles away?
Another
YouTube video... this one
of a hotel lobby. A young black woman hits a big black guy and they
get in an elevator together. Flash to inside. Again the woman hits
the guy... this time, he hits back. She's down. But what gets
reported? RAY PRICE attacks his fiancée. Her initial violence
isn't mentioned once (at least not that I've found).
Ray
Price is found guilty of domestic violence. Not guilty in a legal
court, but in the newsprint court... in the broadcast court... he's
guilty. He's big and black so he MUST be guilty. Right?
“Hitting
a woman is not something a real man does, and that’s true whether
or not an act of violence happens in the public eye or, far too
often, behind closed doors,” says
President Obama.
Football
to Get Tough on Domestic Abuse,
headlines every paper in America. That is not EQUALITY. That is
gender supremacy. This is Guilty until Proven... forget the proof!
GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.
Okay,
let's get this straight. I HATE football. It is war in miniature... a
glorification of organized violence. It's played by idiots and
controlled by jocks. Yet people are surprised that football players
are violent???? They're SUPPOSED to be violent. That's their job!
All
that doesn't change EQUAL PROTECTION. Idiots have rights too! That
includes the right to a trial and a presumption of innocence. It
includes the right for both parties to say: FORGET ABOUT IT. IT'S
OVER. LET'S MOVE ON!
But
we won't move on. We'll run around in circles. Cheering violence,
then condemning those who are violent (especially to women). It makes
me sick. Excuse me while I run to the bathroom. Maybe I'll make it
this time.
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]
(Sorry
buckaroos, no endnotes this time. The column, itself, takes up too
many words this month. You can check out several endnote-type postings on my
clippings
blog.)
-end-
