God Damn It! or Mykel's February 2024 Blog/Column

 

Monday, January 01, 2024

God Damn It! or Mykel's February 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong 
Mykel's 
February 2024 Blog/Column 
God Damn It!
by Mykel Board

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.      --Mother Teresa

God is emotional and impulsive and gets things wrong and even loses; just as He is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, neither a flawless robot nor an errorless computer--  so we too dear reader. We have been granted the right to do wrong. Rejoice!    – Ze’ev Maghen 

Aren't you one of those atheists who says God doesn't exist?"  "Who said that? I believe that God does, unfortunately, exist. It's just that he's a fascist."  – Umberto Eco

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'                                                            – C. S. Lewis

Who is it that makes you cry, cripples children lets them die, lets the bad guys win, puts acne on your skin, gives cancer to Aunt May, then she’ll giggle when you pray? It’s God! It’s God!                                                      –
                                                                 -- Artless, from the song GOD

This was the original first paragraph I’d planned for the blog:

By the time you read this, I’ll likely be dead. You’ll understand why by the time you get to the end… I think. In murder cases, they always ask for motive, means and opportunity. The rest of this blog will show the motive. The means, I haven’t decided yet. It could even be GOD, doing her natural causes bit… as if that had a meaning when ANYTHING that happens is a natural cause. More likely it’s something quiet… too much too soon. A mix of this and that… with an extra shot of that. Maybe I’ll ask Jim Testa to write the obituary. 

But all of a sudden, I had a change of heart. Instead of writing about me, I decided to choose a smaller and easier subject: GOD. I can escape from my bedbugs, my instant senility, my deafness and all the other effluvia ruining my life right now. So now I’ll leave my current life and join a continued discussion that’s spanned the life of everyone who’s ever lived in a college dorm. 

You’ll read later about a conversation I had with an atheist in Eastern Europe. Although it took place more than 40 years ago, I still remember it. In a way, the logic of the girl I spoke with is behind the logic of most current atheists.. though they wouldn’t admit it. 

More recently, a Jewdhist friend named Richard Goldberg told me. “Mykel, if you want to find God, imagine everything that exists in the universe. That’s God.”

But let’s go back to earlier times: 

Flash to Prague... commie times... the end of the 70s. I’m visiting the grave of Franz Kafka, one of my favorite writers. No, his tombstone is not crawling with cockroaches. He’s buried in the same grave as his father… spending eternity with someone he hated. There is a lot of Hebrew on the grave, but the tenants’ names are written using the Roman alphabet. 

 As I approach the tombstone, I see a woman… stout, with gray hair… tending to the grave… brushing away weeds… picking up garbage. When I come closer, the woman looks up at me.

“Shalom,” she says.

“Hi,” I say.

“Are you Israeli?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No, I’m not,” I tell her.

“But you are Jewish,” she says, her voice without any question intonation.

I nod… and smile.

“I have a daughter...” she says and invites me to dinner.

I don’t remember what we ate. I do remember that the daughter’s name was Helena. She was slightly zaftig, blond hair and she wore a mezuzah around her neck. After dinner mom says, “You children go into the living room and talk. I’ll have to clean the dishes.”

Together we go into the living room and sit on the couch. I look at her breasts.

“I see you’re looking at my mezuzah,” she says. “I wear it for my mother. She bought it for me and I promised to wear it. It tells people I’m a Jew… but I don’t believe in God.”

“Oh?” I ask. “Why not?”

“If God is up there in the sky… living on a cloud… he would just fall down.” She says, as if it were obvious.

BOING! I get it. It hits like an errant erection. If I believed rabbits were pink and delivered eggs at Easter… I wouldn’t believe in rabbits. The atheist commies (or maybe all atheists) believe God is an old man who lives in the clouds… then deny his existence. Of course!

If, like Richard Goldberg, you define God as everything that exists… then God must exist… otherwise nothing exists. The literal existence of Jesus Christ is open to debate… though I think most people will say he existed in some form or other. If you believe Jesus is/was God, then if Jesus existed, so did God. If you believe he had supernatural powers… turning water to wine or feeding a hundred on one loaf of matzoh… that’s open to debate.

What atheists do is define God like Helena defined God… an old man who sits in the clouds. Then they deny his existence… he’d just fall down. Supernatural powers? What are those? It used to be that flying flying humans would show supernatural powers until airplanes came along and made the powers as natural as a boarding pass. Yesterday’s supernatural is today’s mundane. We need some other way to judge.

For some, God is just a comforting thought… an appreciation that there’s something bigger than us… more in control… without physical shape or corporeal body. How can you NOT believe that?

People’s belief in God is a reflection of who they are… or who they want to be. I see God as a nine foot tall woman in a black leather bikini wielding a whip. She sees her job as making my life so bad that I kill myself… and she wins. I can prolong the game by refusing to give in. If SHE has to kill me, I win.

Is my God real? Of course she’s real. God isn’t a human. She’s whatever we make her. She’s what’s useful to us and what explains the universe. Bedbugs, cancer, war, earthquakes, plagues… what more do we need to understand the pestilence of the universe? Atheists tell me that mosquitoes are proof that God does not exist. Bullshit. Mosquitoes are proof that God is either not omnipotent or that God is not good… or both. But they don’t disprove her existence.

When you say you don’t believe in God, you’d better tell me what that God is that you don’t believe in: the egg-delivering pink rabbit or the bunny you see hopping around the garden.

Note: On the unlikely chance that I am still alive and not stroked out from the stress-- or allowing God to win the contest, you can donate to my bedbug fund through my GoFundMe. Just a little will help… and show me I haven’t been abandoned by all but the evil goddess. (SHE thinks of me continually) Thanks in advance for whatever you can do.

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]

→ Death and Taxes Dept: Well, no taxes in this one, but some death. My long term pal Roger Armstrong… who wrote the Japanese scene reports for MRR when I was the zine’s bad guy there… has bit the dust... a motorcycle crash. I visited Roger in Arizona where he lived with his son and Hiromi his Japanese wife. We kept in touch on facebook regularly and with a nengajou. (Look it up!) Roger’s wife answered this year’s nengajou with a “passed away last month” card. Who’s next?

→ Talk about Hol(e)y Dept: Uexpress reports South Korean model “Angel Box Girl”, is being prosecuted for obscene exposure. In Seoul and Gangnam, Angel walked through the streets wearing a large cardboard box with holes for her arms and legs -- plus two more in an unnamed place. She invited strangers to put their hands into those extra holes to grope around. She attracted large crowds that police were called to disperse. "It's freedom of expression," she said.
             “My kind of freedom” I’d say.

→ Irony Dept: I’ve become fascinated by the AI program Aria, that comes packaged with the Opera Internet Browser. It quickly answers questions without stupid weblinks that have nothing to do with those questions. So I asked Aria what country has the highest percentage of atheists. Here’s what she said:
The Czech Republic is often cited as the country with the highest percentage of atheists in the world. According to various surveys and studies, a significant portion of the Czech population identifies as atheist or non-religious. I wonder if they all think God is this old man who lives in the clouds and who would fall down if he really existed.

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, whose death you read about in this blog:.

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. mykelboard@gmail.com

This Column Sucks (Part 2) or Mykel's Post MRR Column # 21 V.2

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

Column 21

Better Than God

by Mykel Board

“Thou shalt not kill... Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ass.”

--God and Tuli Kupferberg

I skipped a month in this saga... went off on a feminist tangent... Now, let's get back to business.

When last we left, I was sitting... post orgasm... in front of my favorite bi-porn. My trusty DIRT DEVIL vacuumed me into ecstasy. That sucking became a metaphor for the city, the country, the world, the universe. An American middle class, sucked away, replaced by Chinese nouveau riche. The morality of God, family and country, sucked away, replaced by rules on speech, and avoiding other people's sensitivity. Destroyed governments of Libya and Iraq, sucked away, replaced with Al Qaeda and ISIS. Black holes in space sucking away at the rest of the universe, replaced by who-know-what. A great sucking... vacuum after vacuum, begging to be filled. Billions of vacuum cleaner nozzles filled with dripping semen.

Back in my apartment: We ended with a rustling... at the vacuum cleaner nozzle. There... breast-stroking through the pubic hairs is my muse... the amanojaku to my amanojaku personality...born from dust bunnies and semen... naked except for a lotus leaf skirt... fat as a Buddha. Its two lower canine teeth stick up outside its jaw... over its upper lip. Crawling out of the hose... spurted forth from the Dirt Devil... like Aphrodite from the brow of Zeus... it approaches me.

Using its tiny arms, it pulls itself out of the hose and crawls over the wooden floor. Then, it digs its tiny-though-nasty claws into the side of my leg and climbs upwards until it's sitting on my lap.

“So Mykel,” it says in a squeaky voice with just a hint of a Yiddish accent. “You and your vacuums. What do you want? You want to go back to a standard? Something we can all agree on? Something to fill the moral vacuum so the shit doesn't get sucked in?”

I nod.

“So Mykel,” it says again, “what might that be? The Ten Commandments?”

“I'm not a big fan of the Ten Commandments,” I tell him/her.

S/He frowns... or at least does a demon impression of a frown.

“The first one: “I am The Lord Thy God,” isn't even a commandment at all. But it continues:

“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

What a lame way to begin the most important set of rules in the world. God wrote this and it begins with ME FIRST? It's as self-centered as toddlers fighting over a bowl of M&Ms. That's how you start off the rules of life?

On top of that, God says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” It's right there in the unexpurgated version.

Jeezus Fuck! God, the all masterful and loving, is jealous? No thanks. Besides, if s/he is A jealous God, then there must be other Gods. It's grammar, ya know?

Besides, all those commandments are so negative. Just saying what you CAN'T do gives as much guidance in your life as: DON'T EAT FUCHSIA-COLORED VEGETABLES. Not very helpful. Rules to live by should be telling us what we CAN and SHOULD do.

“What about thou shalt not kill?” says Amanojaku.

“That's not bad,” I answer, “but it's only number six... Coming AFTER the one that says NOT to say GODDAMNIT! Which is more important?”

And it doesn't say what KILL is. Only people? Animals? Plants? Only those who have not tried to take over your oil fields? It's not detailed enough.

“Ok,” says Amanojaku. “Forget about the Ten Commandments. How about The Golden Rule^®? You know, Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.”

“That's better,” I tell it, “but there are too many masochists out there. Masochists want to be hurt. Following the golden rule, they'd be tying up people and sticking pins in their captives' nipples. The Golden Rule^® turns masochists into sadists.”

“Come on, Mykel,” says Amanojaku, adjusting a lotus leaf that's in danger of revealing its gender. “That's a stretch. People want to be treated politely and just left alone.”

“Left alone?” I say. “That's part of the problem. Leave me alone. Don't tax me. Leave me alone. Don't tell me I can't put shit in the air and water. Leave me alone. Don't tell me I can't hire Sri Lankan immigrants for 26 cents an hour. This is a SOCIETY. People live together. If you want to be left alone... move to Nepal... but even there, God won't leave you alone. Take earthquakes... please! You think those buried in snow and rock... nearly dead... want to be left alone?”

“So tell us, oh great Mykel,” says Amanojaku... his sarcasm dripping like semen in a vacuum cleaner hose. “What is the principle? How can we fill the moral vacuum left when family, country, and God died?”

“That,” I confess, “is something I haven't figured out...”

Amanojaku smiles smugly.

“But,” I continue, “I have an idea where to start. We need some basic principles...”

Amanojaku raises his/her eyebrows

“Like Civility,” I say.

“Oh pull eeese Mary,” s/he says looking skyward and limping his wrist like a drag queen in training. “You're supposed to be a punk rocker and you want CIVILITY??? Isn't that a bit... er... dainty?”

“I don't mean simple politeness,” I tell him(?). “I mean something closer to SLACK. I mean thicker skin. I mean some basic tenants of tolerance.”

“Ah,” says Amanojaku, “what are the TEN COMMANDMENTS OF MYKEL BOARD?”

“I'm glad you asked me that,” I say, slapping hard with my hand and squishing him/her into blood and cartilage against my leg.

“My last action was a violation of one of them,” I tell the mess.

So here are the my commandments. Sure, there are details and problems... but it's a start in the quest to fill the vacuums left by the deaths of The Old Morality, The Old Feminism, and The Old Privacy. These are calls to ways of acting. They are not calls to legislation.

BASIC RULE NUMBER ONE: Thou shalt CUT PEOPLE SOME SLACK. People are different, use different language, have different values. We can live with those differences. Relax.

What people say and how they say it is something to discuss. It is wrong to stop them from speaking. That includes by law or by boycott or by social pressure or by shouting down. That's related to...

BASIC RULE NUMBER TWO: Thou shalt ANSWER SPEECH YOU DON'T LIKE WITH SPEECH YOU DO LIKE. Discuss, discuss, have a drink, a laugh, listen to music and discuss again. If you don't like what someone says, answer them. Show the other side. Don't organize to stop that speech or make someone lose a job. Talk!

BASIC RULE NUMBER THREE: Thou shalt first consider CONSENT. CONSENT. CONSENT. A key part of any relationship must be consent. If someone is forced to do something either by law, by hunger or something as simple as lack of money... that is NOT consent.

If you want to kill and eat your next door neighbor and that neighbor hands you the gun, fork and knife... Shoot and dig in!

But consent is more than just saying yes. Consent is not being intimidated or bullied into action. If I have to work at Walmart because the other stores have closed and I have to feed my kids and the government has taken away my welfare... that is NOT consent. I'm FORCED to work. Economic bullying is no less bullying than governmental or big ole jock bullying.

BASIC RULE NUMBER FOUR: Thou shalt TREAT HUMANS LIKE PEOPLE. Okay, you can't afford to give a buck to every guy on the street asking you for spare change... but you can learn his name.. you can say “Hi, howzit goin?” You can respond to a stranger's “Hey babe, how ya doin'?” with “I'm okay... just late for work... see ya!” Considering humans as people makes it more difficult to cut their heads off, put them in jail or drop drones on them.

In personal relations, it means not being an asshole to your waitress... not ignoring the poor K-Mart cashier who's smiling at you while you're on your iPhone dissing someone on facebook. It means stopping your car when someone by the side of the road has his hood up. It means winking at the ugly girl or smiling at the fat guy.

BASIC RULE NUMBER FIVE: Thou shalt BE USELESS. Your last year in High School:

“So, where are you gonna go to school?” she says.

“I donno, I heard that Monsanto U is pretty good. It's my first choice. Maybe I can get a wrestling scholarship,” he answers. “I need to take some finance courses. I gotta get a good job.”

“Finance?” she says, “I guess that sounds good. You'll be landing the big bucks. I'm going for marketing myself.”

STOP! STOP! STOP! Why not go to air conditioning repair school? or become a dental hygienist? What the fuck? Learning, discovering new things is FUN. It's a challenge. It takes you places you've never been and teaches you thoughts you've never thought.

Learning how to make people want things they don't need is not an adventure. It's a waste. Learning how to use other people's money to fill your own bank account-- or worse, your boss's bank account-- is not an adventure. It's sleazy in the BAD sense of that world.

Take art history... please! Take Gilyak, theoretical (NOT APPLIED!) physics, philosophy, gender studies, ANYTHING that exists for itself. That has a thrill in learning... that is not to be USED for a good job, exploiting people, or contributing to the general distress.

Your twat should drip in anticipation of your class... of each adventurous day exploring new ideas... like Starship Enterprise explores new worlds... for your adventure and the adventure of your fellow explorers... not despite that it's useless, but BECAUSE it's useless. Because it exists only for knowledge, because there are erection-inducing thrills to be had in THE KNOWING, THE LEARNING, THE UNDERSTANDING.

If you want useful, take air-conditioner repair. Get a job. Make money. Hate your life... Do it for the kids. What a waste!

…

Oh no! I did it again. Ran out of self-imposed space after only five commandments... er... basic rules. I think I'm gonnna have to have a supplement later this month to finish up.

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]

-->Beverage Dept: The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society reports that they followed 749 senior citizens for over 9 years. This doesn't mean stalking, but checking what the oldsters were drinking. They found that the DIET SODA DRINKERS gained nearly three times as much belly fat as those who didn't drink any soda. Yet there are still people who want to tax SUGARY DRINKS (take former Mayor Bloomberg... PLEASE!), and force even MORE people into Diet Soda hell. Sometimes (often) I think HEALTH is a cult rather than a science.

-->TMI Dept: Under the heading "Innovation of the Week" THE WEEK Magazine on April 3 tells of a "new system... to give police more real-time information on locations where shots were fired" The system will be linked to "license plate readers, radiation sensors, and 911 calls."

Of course that means every street will be watched by "license plate readers and radiation sensors." Makes you feel safe, doesn't it?

->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 their (firing me as a) contribution to the world of censorship. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm still on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, CDs, posters, and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

-end

Pro-Choice: To have slaves... or not! Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 9

 YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMN NO. 9

Mykel is pro-choice: To Have Slaves or Not

by Mykel Board

"The freedom for which Davy Crockett, James Bowie and the rest fought at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves. As soon as Anglos set up the Republic of Texas, its legislature ordered all free black people out of the Republic.” --James W. Loewin

“One of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized. But that doesn’t mean we approve of it.” – Rand Paul on the faults of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which outlawed racial discrimination at private businesses.

It happens all the time... an itchy nose... an errant hair grows from inside and begins to tickle. Micron by invisible micron, it lengthens and begins to press its way out, invisible in the mirror... but more and more irritating.

I run my index finger under my nostril. Ah, there it is! I squeeze the hair between my thumbnail and finger. Pull! A hard fast downward jerk. Damn.. slipped right through... still there... invading the privacy of my nostril. Try again, this time squeezing hard, digging my nail against my finger until it bleeds... almost. JERK HARD... there's ping of pain inside my nose. I DID IT.

I examine the hair. The whole thing, I got it. From gray tip to white root. There it is. I drop it in the waste basket and celebrate my new nasal freedom from irritants. Then I think... what about that single nosehair?

Here's the deal: Rand Paul and several other “Libertarians” claim that the idea of freedom is the right to make your own choices, free from government interference.

They say the 1964 Civil Rights bill, passed under Lyndon Johnson, takes away the freedom of restaurant and hotel owners to refuse to serve whoever they damn well please to refuse to serve.

Sheldon Richman, a Libertarian writer for the Christian Science Monitor sums it up:

I write as a Libertarian, something Rand Paul claims not to be. The essence of the Libertarian philosophy is that each person owns him- or herself and whatever belongings he or she honestly acquires. Thus individuals are due freedom of association and, logically, non-association. It also follows that the owner of property should be free to set the rules of use, the only constraint being that the owner may not use aggressive force against others.

Admittedly, that leaves room for loathsome peaceful behavior, such as running a whites-only lunch counter. Who imagined that freedom of association couldn’t have its ugly side?

Nevertheless, individuals are either free to do anything peaceful or they are not. If politicians decide, we have arbitrary government. But government is force, and force is moral only in response to force.

[Flash to an alternate 1963] The segregated South gets whiff of the Civil Rights plans. There's a meeting in the basement of the Baptist church in Lubbock, Texas: a dozen men, each with his rifle. Tough-talking Sheriff “Wild” Bill Jackson tells the assembled crew:

“I know Johnson,” he says. “He used to be one of us. Now, he wants to take away our rights... like Lincoln did... He needs the same solution. You ready boys?”

“We're ready Bill,” comes the reply.

“Let's go,” says Bill.

It's inauguration day. Lyndon is taking over from Kennedy. We're in Washington DC for the swear-in... somewhere behind an alternate grassy knoll..

PEKYUUU! Johnson's dead as a Kennedy. President Humphrey has all the support of Klansman in Harlem. There is no Civil Rights Act.

The lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro spread throughout the segregated South. To Woolworth's, to diners, to catfish shacks from Myrtle Beach to El Paso. Colored folks walk into restaurants and just sit, waiting to be served. Often there is trouble.

“Now you boys just go to your own places,” says a waitress. “People like to be with their own kind.”

“But we want to eat here,” says a coffee-colored young man. “This is a public place, and we're the public.”

“If you don't leave,” says the clerk, “I'm afraid I'm gonna have to call the law.”

“Now,” says the young man, “we're just sitting here-- not causing any problem.”

Before long, the cops come. “You're under arrest, boys!”

They refuse to leave. There is violence.

Wake-up buckaroos. Can't you get it? BOTH SIDES need to use the force of government. The Civil Rights Act says that owners of public accommodations must serve everyone. If they don't, then the government uses force (fines, police protection etc) to ensure they do.

By Libertarian rules, if colored folks sit at a whites-only lunch counter, and the owner has a “right” not to serve them, what does he do? He can use force (private cops) to get them out, and if they fight back POW! Call the city cops and have the government use force.

The question is NOT intimidation by government force, but only which side is intimidated. It's too easy to only think about the nostril and forget the reality of the nosehair.

Libertarians would allow slavery, because it should be a private CHOICE whether or not to have slaves. Right? But what about the SLAVES' choice? Libertarians oppose the minimum wage, because it should be the employer's CHOICE how much to pay his employees. But what about the EMPLOYEES' choice?

Oh yeah, don't tell me they can just leave and find other jobs. With high unemployment, there are NO other jobs. And double oh yeah, Libertarians oppose unemployment benefits. Can you say SLAVERY?

More recently, these Libertarians, along with a gaggle of religious rightists are asking the government for the “right” for corporations to refuse to serve-- or provide for-- people based on their religious beliefs.

Take Mormonism... please! Mormons used to believe colored people were less than human. Their skin was cursed by God for some past sin I'm too lazy to Google. Recently-- probably due to Mitt Romney's inability to crack the double digits among black voters-- the Later Day Saints have relented. For Mormons, Negro nosehairs are now just as good as white nosehairs. It reminds me of the 1960s Catholics unblaming the Jews for killing Christ. Gee thanks.

But imagine pre-Romney Mormons owning a restaurant and that restaurant refusing to serve Negroes because their “religion prohibits it!” Is that freedom? What about the Negroes?

A couple months ago I wrote about the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn. After a colored kid was struck by a car in a Lubavitch procession, a Lubavitch ambulance appeared... and picked up the driver.

Since I wrote that, I found out that the driver had been attacked by a mob and the pick-up was for his protection. Good reason. But, couldn't they have picked up the kid too? I dunno. Maybe there was a religious reason.

Let's go to 1990... an alternate 1990. A Libertarian world. Little Moishe Pippik is crossing Steinway Street in the Middle East section of Queens. He steps into the crosswalk. The motorcade of Imam Jooshmoo comes to the crosswalk at the same time.

SPLATT! Looks like little Moishe is not going to make it to his Bar Mitzvah.

WEEOOO WEEOOO BLAU BLAU BLAU WEEOO WEEOO, a Sheik-Saver volunteer ambulance pulls up to the front of the motorcade. The Imam gets in. Little Moishe goes to meet that other Moishe in Jewish heaven. Of course, there is a riot.

Could you imagine a city (country? world?) where an ambulance, say from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital would only pick up Presbyterians? What about the guy lying in the street? Should he just wait for the right ambulance? Do they check his religious ID card? Doesn't sound like freedom at all.

“Should Muslim butchers have to serve pork?” shout the Libertarians.

“Of course not,” I say, “but they have to serve Jews.”

If they're public butchers, licensed to operate on the public streets of the city, they have to serve everyone. There is no requirement that butchers serve pork at all. No public pork license... no mandated meat... only that it be uncontaminated..

It's a little different with Hobby Lobby. That company is owned by Evangelicals. Because of the owners' religious beliefs, they refuse to provide their employees with some kinds of contraception (as required by law). The law already exempts religious institutions from having to provide these benefits, but HOBBY LOBBY is not a religious group. It's a company open for business with a government (state, Federal tax ID) license. There IS a law that says employer insurance must pay for birth control for its employees.

Does Hobby Lobby have the “religious freedom” to deny benefits to their employees? If that's their freedom, what about the EMPLOYEES?

FLASH TO ALTERNATE 2014: I've got a shopping list of things to do: a visit to the doctor for a check-up, a visit to the drug store for stomach medication... and condoms, to replace the ones in my wallet-- expired 1999. Then to the grocery store for coffee and shrimp for dinner.

“Hey, doc,” I say, “it's time for a health check. Gotta see if I'm gonna make it to another birthday.”

“Sorry Mykel,” says Doc, “I've converted to Pentecostal. I don't examine or work with anyone who drinks alcohol. My apologies and I hope you'll see the error of your ways and give up drinking.”

Shit! What am I going to do now? My insurance is limited. I can only get a check-up from an “in-network” doctor. I'll have to find another doc. Do they list their religions on the web? Maybe I'll just skip it this year.

So, I'm off to the pharmacy for my stomach medication. I have chronic heartburn... GERD... and need to take a stupid brown pill every day to stop the pain.

I walk to the back of CVS and give a pretty young clerk my prescription. She hands it back to me.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Board,” she says. “I'm a Christian Scientist. We believe that God alone heals us. Drugs and doctors are like voodoo... black magic... prayer makes healing... not drugs.”

And you can guess how far I get looking for condoms. I feel like a discarded nosehair.

So what about Hobby Lobby? The law says that employers of over 20 people have to provide healthcare for those people. “Healthcare” is defined to include birth control.

ASIDE: I don't like Obamacare, but my reasons have nothing to do with religious rights. I believe that it's the duty of the GOVERNMENT to “provide for the general welfare” of its citizens. (Article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution) If health isn't “general welfare” I don't know what is. Employers shouldn't be burdened with this. It's the job-- the main job-- of government. But Obamacare is the law: for everyone. END OF ASIDE

Companies do not have religion. Corporations do not get Bar Mitzvahed. Starbucks will not have a first communion. Catholic bookstores, if they're in a church, do not have to provide abortions for their employees. But a company? A store? How can they be free to choose among benefits in the name of religion? What about the EMPLOYEES' choice?

I'd write more, but my nose itches.

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.]

-->Don't plug my loophole baby dept: Loopholes4all.com is a website that gives you a foreign address, a company, and an offshore bank account where you can safely stash your dozens of dollars without the feds knowing. The website says it's "a service to democratize offshore business for people who don't want to pay for their riches. It empowers everyone to evade taxes, hide money and debt and get away with anything, by stealing the identities of real offshore companies."

PayPal has suspended all payments to Loopholes... An interesting development, since PayPal avoids paying US taxes by situating itself in Luxembourg. Is that offshore enough for you?

-->Maybe it's the language dept: Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum was the first English-speaking mayor of the city in more than a century. He was elected in 2013 with a campaign promise to "end an era of sleaze" in the city government. He recently resigned after being arrested for fraud. He is accused of accepting bribes for awarding construction permits. In Toronto, the (of course English-speaking) mayor has resisted calls to quit over a crack-smoking scandal. In fact, he's running for re-election.

-->Sounds like the CIA dept: Lots of Brazilians have been protesting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Like the Olympics, the World Cup is high status, but really bad for the locals. The influx of tourists causes huge price increases, and housing shortages. Often locals find themselves in near lock-downs in the name of "security." But these protests have the smell of something more. The Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was a leftist activist and she is loved by many on the left. The vehemence of the protests says that there may be something more than Olympiphobia behind them. Anyway, that's where I'd place my bets.

-->Sometimes conspiracies are true dept: Anytime someone accuses the government of being bad, and not telling people it was bad, you hear "It's some conspiracy nut." Trouble is... lots of conspiracies are true.

ABC News revealed that, in the early 1960s, America's top military leaders drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities. Why? To create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

Makes that stuff about the The World Trade Center seem... er... plausible, doesn't it?

-->Keeping the pressure on dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel concerted effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. He forwarded me an answer to a letter MRR printed where the editors excuse my firing not as censorship for content, but because I “refuse to answer letters in the letters section.”

That is not true. I only asked that I be allowed to say I don't LIKE to answer letters in the letters section. It's unfair to the letter-writer for the columnist to always get the last word. If MRR demands I answer there, I will. SO, here I'm publicly agreeing to abide by their rules. Here it is in ones and zeros. Their excuse for censoring me disappears.

I hope you'll cut and paste the paragraph above into an email, and send it-- along with your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.

MRR also has a facebook page, (as does (did?) Mariam Bastani, the girl who fired me. In any case, you can't get to her page from here. It may be gone.) You might want to let them know how you feel in any case. 

-end-

If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by joining the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You're also welcome to use that group to have discussions, ask questions, etc. Personal attacks though, will be deleted.

And I almost forgot. I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, Cassettes, VHS videos, CDs. Just pay the postage. Details at: tinyurl.com/MykelsGiveaway

(MRR 353) Nice (Zombie) Ass

[This is the column BEFORE the one that MRR refused to print. It has never been posted.]



You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column for MRR 353 (Nice Zombie Ass, or Mykel Explores his inner Muslim)

""I see your point, but I still think you're full of shit." --The Improper Newspaper

It's a tight stall in the bathroom. From above, we see four highschool girls, all in Japanese school uniforms. They're crowded together in the stall. One is kneeling, head bent over the toilet. The others' hands push on that girl's head, forcing it into the bowl.

“EAT SHIT!” yell the girls.

“EAT SHIT!” they yell again.

What happens next is unclear, but after some splashing, the girls drag the poor abused one out of the stall on to the bathroom floor. The victim's head drenched, she shouts into the air.

“Sister save me! Save me!”

Another girl in uniform, cute in a slightly butch way, comes running... bursts into the bathroom... slams the door open against the tile wall. The three evil girls look at her.

“If you want to save your sister,” says one of them, “then fart. Fart right now!”

“Don't sister!” begs the drenched girl. “Don't lose your dignity. Don't do that for me... for anyone!”

The girl who had her head in the toilet breaks away from the other three. She runs upstairs. Apparently, they're in a gym, and she's now in the top seats... high up in the stands. She jumps, falling head first to her death.

Cut to a few weeks in the future: It's the first time out for the sister. She's on a camping trip with a few other girls. Along is an older 20-something who wears a low-cut blue dress. The valley on her chest separates bazzooms usually not found on Japanese women.

The crew is in a van driven by a sniffing cokehead: shaved bald, he has a perpetual runny nose.

Here they are, by the lake.

“Everybody out! We're going fishing!”

Little do these innocent hook-and-liners know that the fish from this lake host a tapeworm. Bazzoom girl knows. She also knows that those tapeworms steal food from their hosts' intestine. That theft prevents nourishment from reaching the host, making the fish thin, no matter how much they eat. Cleavage girl figures if she eats one of the tapeworms, she too can stay thin.

“I got one. I got one!” says our highschool heroine.

The cokehead yanks it off the line and slices through its belly. Inside is a tapeworm: white, wiggly and as long as a garter snake.

The woman with the tits snatches the worm and gobbles it down. Her stomach rumbles. She cries out in pain.

“I've got to fart! I've got to fart!” she yells, running to hide from the shame.

We hear the farts. She bends in stomach-ache agony. She farts again.

“I'm going to die!” she says. “I've got to find a doctor”

Our heroine checks the map. There is a small town nearby. They run. They come on a house... with an outhouse in back. The woman runs to shit in the toilet... but from beneath the toilet comes a zombie.

Before long the campers are dead. Murdered by zombies and tapeworm-laced spaghetti, fed to them by a mad scientist. All die horribly... except for the sister who was saved from farting. Now she's in a sword fight with an evil giant tapeworm. They're aloft, she riding on a tenuous strand soon cut by the evil worm.

She falls. Head first downward. Doomed! Suddenly the sound of a tremendous fart. A huge BRRRRRAAAAAP! An anal tornado... from the rectum of our heroine. The power of the wind saves the falling girl and hurls her back into space. A series of superfarts allows her to keep aloft and eventually defeat the evil tapeworm.

The movie is: ZOMBIE ASS, TOILET OF THE DEAD. I've just seen it with a Toshi, a Japanese pal, Bryan and Randy, my Trini friends from ANTI-EVERYTHING, and Taina, the Puerto Rican singer of COJOBA.

“That may be the best movie I've ever seen,” I tell the crew as we leave the theater.

“Was that really Japanese?” asks Toshi, shaking his head.

“I don't think so.”

“What a great movie!” says Bryan. “Shitty but great.”

“It was feminist!” says Taini.

“Huh?” grunt the rest of us, eight eyebrows raised in unison.

“Sure,” she explains. “Don't you get it? Girls are told they've got to be thin. So they'll do anything to stay that way... even eat a tapeworm... and you see what happened to her...”

“Okay, but still...” I answer.

Taina cuts me off, as she is wont to do.

“There's more Mykel,” she says. “Girls are told to be proper. Nice girls don't fart. That's a boy thing. Girls should hold it in, be feminine.... but being feminine killed the sister. And only when the heroine could let it out... could fart like a man... could she save herself and save the world from the evil tapeworm. She had to let go of traditional femininity and become natural, human, to fart is to win...It's empowerment. Get it, Mykel?”

At first my contrary nature refuses to accept it, but the more I think about it, the more I realized Taina is right.

Flash to The Gambia, Africa Spring 2012:

Yesterday's dinner has worked it's way through my bowels. I squat, my pants pulled down over my knees, trying to aim my asshole at the hole in the ground that is the toilet. I'm outside, in a fenced off area that marks the toilet's boundaries.

“You need water?” asks ST (pronounced Esty), my host and one of the coolest people I've met in Africa.

My several weeks here have taught me the code. If you're going to piss, you just piss, shake off and zip up. If you're going to shit, you wipe with your left hand, and then use the water to wash the hand, and wash away any shit that misses the hole in the ground.

“Do you need water?” is the polite way to ask Shit or piss?

Although I'm a cultural rebel, I cannot get used to the eco-friendly hand method. I carry paper with me. I use water to flush the evidence of my squeamishness.

“Yeah,” I tell him.

The door creaks open and a teapot full of water comes through the gate. I re-squat, and let loose yesterday's dinner... blissfully unaware of the zombies that may lurk below.

It's dark... the only light is from a cloud-covered moon and a faint glow through the windows of the compound. I have a bit of trouble finding the hole in the ground. I use the water to clean up. Then, I make my way back through ST's room and into the back yard.

A group of students has already gathered there. It's time for their nightly think-a-thon.

Flash to right now:

I write this column in the THINK coffee shop, eating an almond croissant sipping on iced tea. Around me, a sea of glowing apples occupies the tables. Bob Marley is too loud in the background.

Me? I occupy two tables: one for my computer, one for the iced tea and croissant. I munch the $3 sweet roll and sip the tea. Across from me sits an attractive girl with bronze skin and wavy black hair.

The girl sips hot tea from a coffee cup. The teabag string hangs over the edge of the cup... like a tampon string hangs from a bloody twat.

My tea is iced. Hers is hot.

The Japanese are famous for their tea ceremony... a ritual in which every step from pouring to stirring to drinking has a method and meaning. Though it looks robotic, the idea is to transform the activity from mundane unawareness to perfect awareness. I never had the patience for it, but I love the idea.

In Africa too, there is a tea ceremony. I saw it in Morocco and Senegal. I see it here in The Gambia. It starts with boiling water and tea together in on a tiny charcoal stove. While the mixture is boiling, you fill a small glass with sugar. After a few minutes, you pour the tea-water mixture into the glass... swish it around to dissolve the sugar.

Then you raise the glass and pour it into another glass the same size. You have to pour from a great height. Only a thin stream of liquid... from the right hand down into the glass in the left hand. Then left to right. Back and forth until the tea is cool enough to drink. When the tea is ready, it's handed to you. Then the host starts on the next glass. You only get a tiny bit... like a shot glass... but it's perfect.

A bubble of gas slides through my large intestine.

Let's shoot, gliding on my fart-- from the tea of THINK CAFE to the tea ST is making in the back yard. There are eight of us, crowded around a few benches, sipping the small glasses of tea ST hands us, one-by-one.

Babucar, whose fauxhawk could be on any teenager in America, likes to gangsta-gesture, extending the pinkie and forefinger of both hands-- pointing downward.

“Mykel,” he tells me. “I want to visit America... to live there maybe.”

“You need an American wife,” I tell him. “If you get an American wife, you can live there.”

“How 'bout an American SECOND wife?” he says. “You know Muslims can have five wives. My first wife should be Gambian.”

“I'm not sure that American women would like to be second wives,” I tell him. “I don't even think it's legal... Even if you're a Muslim-- or a Mormon-- or anything that starts with M.”

“Here it's okay,” he says. “Don't worry Mykel, we'll find you a Gambian wife.”

“I don't want a wife,” I tell him, “Gambian or otherwise.”

Babucar sucks down the rest of his tea.

“What if your parents said that?” he asks. “Then you wouldn't be here.”

“I'm not sure the world would complain,” I tell him.

ST chimes in, “I would complain,” he says. “I like you. You're a nice guy.”

The conversation continues through the night. The tea flows. Ideas jump from one person to another like tapeworms in zombies. Only nobody gets sick. Nobody gets angry.

“Mykel,” asks ST, “do you ever give money to beggars on the street?”

“Often,” I tell him, “I think begging is a noble profession.”

“See,” he says, “you're a Muslim.”

I wish I had space to include the whole conversation, the rational debate. The tea drinking on tea drinking. The participation of Adama, a local deaf-mute who is as much a part of the group as any of us. Just a guy... his “disability” as unnoticed as a nose pimple.

The key is the discussion: reasoned, in good humor, with laughing, farting, back slapping, but NO anger. No American-style “question my religion or my politics and you're THE ENEMY.” No making US and THEM. No WHITE and BLACK. No zombies and free-farters. Only WE, a bunch of guys hanging out in a back yard in The Gambia.

Maybe I AM a Muslim.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, CDs/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Wouldn't want to be offensive dept: The New York City Department of Eduction is removing "upsetting words" from their standardized tests. They are afraid the nasty words might offend the test-takers, or their parents. The words include "dinosaur" (might offend creationists), "Halloween" (might offend Christians because of its pagan origins), and "birthday" because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate their birthdays.

-->3some Thanks dept: I don't know how you got the PO Box address, but I'm glad you did. Not that I believe the names: Connor, Kale and Trixie? Come on! But I sure believe the video. Thanks a lot!!! I've used up half a dozen tissues so far. You've even inspired me to include my postal address in every column. Thanks again... and I'm waiting with baited cock for the rest of my readers!

-->More thanks dept: I also want to thank Vanessa X, the editrix of Asswipe Zine (POB 82010, Los Angeles CA 90008) Not only did she send me a copy of her cool little zine, but she also wrote a personal letter... in pen... by hand! She says she loves me! Yowsah!

-->True Game App dept: http://tinyurl.com/phonegame1 connects you to a game you can download for your iHell. In the "game" you get to see the shit people go through to make the phone. In the words of the creator:

Phone Story is a game for smartphones that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. The game represents the process of device creation through four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in The Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West.

Let's see how long before Apple puts the kibosh on THIS one!

-->What's good for business dept: The Wisconsin state legislature has repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, that guarantees equal pay for men and women doing the same job. State representative Glenn Grothman said, “This is an important bill because it improves Wisconsin's business climate.”

-->Ungrateful dead dept: There are very few famous people whose death would bother me. We all gotta go sometime. Here today, plant food tomorrow. But recently deceased Alexander Cockburn was a hero. I never read anything he wrote that wasn't right. I don't mean sort of right or a little right... I mean EXACTLY right. The Gay Marriage scam, Obama as a banana republic dictator, and a ton more. I've mentioned him often in my columns. The world has lost an important voice.