System Upgrade or or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 38

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 38

SYSTEM UPGRADE

"Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.” --Brave New World, introduction

The more difficult a place is to pronounce, the more likely it'll be an adventure. --Mykel Board

I start this blog on a ferry boat about 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle... temporarily in port in Sisimut, the second largest city in Greenland. It's September 17 and I'm happier than a whore at a frathouse... on my way to Aassiaat, and then to Qeqertarsuaq.

Greenland is so far away from the horror of American politics that I could kiss it. No internet here. (Though if I wanted to pay $8 for a half hour, I could get the spotty connection on the boat.)

Right now, I'm on board. The boat is half tourists... mostly Danes. The rest are Eskimos or in PC talk Inuit.

[Crazy, as usual. The derivation of Eskimo is “raw meat eater.” The derivation of Inuit is... people. Of course Inuits are people... so is everyone. And they do eat raw meat... Many other people do not. And, I'm happy to hear, like American Indians with the word Indian, Eskimos are perfectly happy calling themselves Eskimos. It's only the guilty whiteman who insists on Inuit. Though I hear it's different in Canada.]

The only things annoying are technology that I brought from home. My little computer keeps beeping at me to update the virus database and send crash reports to Microsoft. My cellphone tells me to plug it in for a recharge, when I'm off in the middle of the Arctic Ocean looking at an iceberg. What am I supposed to do... shove the power cord up my ass? That might be pleasant for me, but I doubt the phone will get a charge out of it.

It's maddening. These time-saving devices take more time to do what the boring old devices did instantaneously. I wonder how many weeks a year I lose waiting for loading webpages or buffering porno videos.

In the old days, I put a tape in the VCR. It started. I flipped a light switch. The light turned on. I opened a book and BANG! There it was-- all printed out for me.

If I were in the U.S. where the political seascape is so rough and wavy... where a TV reality star is running for president against a shill for the banking industry... where the president chooses to drop bombs on the guys fighting terrorism... where... I donno, the list never ends... If I were there, I'd long for a place like this-- as away from it all as you can get. If I didn't have Greenland, where would I go?

I know exactly where I'd go. It's a place that's both familiar and exotic. It's been awhile since I've visited there, but I've written about it before.

Let's try it. Through the power of writing POW! I'm back in New York. BANG! I'm in front of Chung's Pub just on the border of Chinatown and Soho. I go in the front door, greet the bartender.

“Yo, Chung!” I say. “Long time no see.”

“Hey Mykel,” he says. “You want a Brooklyn?”

“Sure,” I say.

He pours the beer and sets it in front of me.

“You want the out of order?” he asks in italics.

I nod, drink the beer and head for the men's room. The out of order stall is right where I expect it. The now-ragged sign taped to the door. I enter the stall and close the door. Then, I drop to my knees, go behind the toilet, and push against the wall. It opens to another mensroom on the other side. Waaaaay on the other side.

I'm in a mirror image toilet stall... The passage through has ironically loosened my bowels. What better place to have loose bowels than in a toilet stall? I drop trou, and pull up the toilet top. At least I TRY to pull up the toilet seat... it's stuck.

A robotic voice comes from somewhere... a speaker in the ceiling maybe.

Please wait to shit. Our plumbing system is updating. You'll soon receive the newest in safe water.

I squeeze my sphincter shut... then squeeze the gluteus maximus around the sphincter... hoping that provides a double layer of protection. Meanwhile, my bowels feel like they've been coffee enema-ed. I wait for a signal. In less time than it takes to run the NYC marathon, the voice is back.

Your plumbing has been up-dated, it says. Thank you for your patience.

I open the toilet top. Sit down. Explode with pleasure... a huge stink of a shit... right on the borderline of liquid and solid. A bold beer-shit of a shit. I flush... or I try to flush... nothing happens. The beer turds just float... the now-brown water in the bowl not in the least reacting to the pushing of the lever.

I jiggle the handle. I'm beginning to figure out this world I've entered. I close the top of the toilet again. Count to twenty; then open it and flush. KRRRRRR-SHLUUUUUIIII! Works like a dream.

I leave the mensroom, waving to Chung on the way out. It's only a dozen blocks uptown to my apartment... but it's cold out and I'm anxious to get home and see what my life is like in the new New York.

I head for the subway: the F-train. When I get to the station, there is a pink tape across the entrance. A notice hangs on the green lamp that is supposed to signal a working subway.

DUE TO A SOFTWARE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SUBWAY AND BUS SYSTEM, THE SUBWAY IS NOT RUNNING AT THE MOMENT. THE MTA IS AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM AND IS WORKING WITH THE BUS MANUFACTURERS TO CORRECT IT. IN THE MEANTIME, AS A WORK-AROUND, WE SUGGEST YOU DISABLE YOUR SUBWAY EXPECTATIONS AND TAKE THE BUS. WE WILL NOTIFY YOU WHEN THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

I walk.

It takes me about a half hour to get home. Opening my front door, I feel inside for the lightswitch. I flip it up. Nothing happens. I flip it down again... up again. Nothing.

I flip up the switch... wait... the lights glow faintly, then get brighter... in five-- maybe ten-- minutes they glow full force.

I take off my fedora... my trenchcoat... my Philippine army boots. Ah home! Then a stirring comes from behind me... a scratching... like a mouse in a cupboard. Some critter has gotten inside my shoes. My apartment often gets mice in the winter. It's warmer inside than on the streets of New York. A mouse in my boots is perfectly possible.

I walk over to them, ready to shake the critter out onto the floor. What falls to the floor, though is not a mouse... but a piece of paper. On the paper is written:SYSTEM CLOSEDOWN FAILURE. REBOOT NECESSARY.

I put the boots back on... check my watch... one minute. Then I take them off again.

No problem, this time.

Everything looks familiar in the apartment. Books and records where they should be. Porn cabinet closed and locked... Years of photo New Years cards barely stapled to the wall. Just like I left it.

The wooden ladder that leads to my sleeping loft looks a bit odd. I wonder if something has changed during the transition to this new world.

I walk over to it for a better look. The nails in the side seem loose. One or two of them are missing... very odd... and potentially dangerous.

Okay, off to the closet for hammer and nails. I'm enough of a DIY-guy that I can repair a ladder. I return to the ladder, lay it on its side. Next, I scatter nails of various sizes around and choose one slightly larger than the empty hole.

I insert the nail in the hole. When I pick up the hammer, I feel a tingling in my palm... at first just a light vibration... then warmth... then the handle grows hot. Then the same mechanical voice I heard earlier:

DON'T FORGET YOUR FREE UPGRADE: HAMMER TEN... NOW WITH THUMB-PROTECTION, INCLUDED FREE AS PART OF YOUR UPGRADE. TO UPGRADE NOW, JUST HIT ANY NAIL AND THE PROCESS WILL BEGIN.

I strike the nail I just inserted in the empty hole and bang it in with the hammer. The hammer grows hot again in my hand. I drop it to the floor. I see the wooden handle glow slightly red. I'm afraid it will burn, but the glow fades and the voice returns.

CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR HAMMER IS READY TO USE. AND... YOU ARE PROTECTED. AND NOW, YOU'LL HAVE A PERMANENT RECORD OF EVERY STRIKE... EVERY NAIL... THE TIME, LOCATION, LENGTH OF NAIL AND THE NUMBER OF TIMES YOU STRUCK IT. ALL IN ONE CONVENIENT PLACE... PROTECTED IN CYBERSPACE FOR YOUR PERMANENT RECORDS... AND OURS. PLEASE CHECK YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS IF YOU DON'T WANT SEARS TO KEEP THIS INFORMATION. BE SURE TO AGREE TO OUR 25 MILLION WORD PRIVACY AGREEMENT. YOU CAN READ THE AGREEMENT SIMPLY BY SUBMERGING THE HAMMER IN SALTWATER FOR 25 HOURS. THEN DRYING IT IN AN OVEN HEATED TO 278^OF. WE CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY.

I pick up the hammer and prepare to finish the job. Then I notice that all the nails are gone. I had them placed around... in size order... ready to be chosen for the job... now they've disappeared.

I've had enough. It's back to Chung's Pub. I go in, wave hello to Chung. Head for the out of order stall, Duck under the toilet and push through the secret passageway. This time I do not come out in another mensroom in New York. I'm in the ferry cabin toilet... off the coast of Greenland... in a very rocky boat headed from Aasiaat to Quqertarsuaq on Disko Island. There is no wifi on the Island.

Oh yeah!

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->It takes Greenland to know dept: Among the things I've learned here is that those polar-bear-stranded-on-floating-ice pictures are fakes. No, they're not photoshopped, but they're used in a lie.

Those bears are NOT stranded. They can and do swim well. It's just a common trick for the bears to catch a ride on the floating ice. Saves energy. They've been doing it for as long as there have been polar bears. They are not floating away... global warmed to a death by starvation. They're ice-surfing.

-->Pressure Cooker Dept: After two and a half lovely internet-free days on the ferry from Nuuk to Aasiaat... Inuaraq, my couch-surfing host meets me at the port.

“Hey Mykel,” he says. “I need to take you to my home.”

(I wish more people said that to me.)

“Sure,” I tell him. “My place is too far.”

He doesn't get it.

“And isn't it awful about what happened in New York? That explosion?”

“What????”

“Happily,” he tells me, “no one was killed.”

I'm glad I'm not in the the US right now, though I don't look forward to going through security on the way back.

This is just after Obama bombs Syrian troops-- killing 5 dozen-- after his Secretary of State engineered a “cease-fire.”

Maybe I'll just stay in Greenland. At least until after the election.

-->Stay on the lookout dept: In Denmark, I recorded a new song with The Cleanboys. Recording under the name THE BEND OVER BOYS the song is called IT'S PUNKROCK. Done from scratch in one evening... it really is punkrock. I'm not sure what will be done with it. It may see life as a 7”. I'll keep you posted.

If you're interested in my travel writing, you can follow it at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.

-->Ain't capitalism great dept: In the journal BIOETHICS a writer proposes that if assisted suicide is a right, we should permit business that "painlessly" kill people.

Switzerland already allows "non-profit suicide clinics" whose owners-- without making a profit-- kill people for about $9,000 each.
If you can't afford the fee, I guess they WON'T kill you... or maybe they won't kill you PAINLESSLY.

--> Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for censoring me.

As their revolving editrixes move on to commercial ventures, each blames her predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.

Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

See you in hell.

-end-

NOTE: If you're interested in my travel blog, you can read it at mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.

Bully! or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 34

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 34

“A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.” --Criss Jami

Bully

by Mykel Board

It's 1958. The school yard at Lee Avenue Elementary School... in Hicksville. I'm off in a corner, as usual... trying to avoid being dragged into some sport, like baseball (I like watching, but hate playing)... or football,... (I detest on all counts).

Harvey McConnell... who, in my 8-year old mind is Harvey O'Jerk... has cornered me in the playground. Harvey probably isn't very tall, but he looks tall to me... tall and wide as a house... with a blond crewcut and the kind of square face only the goyim have.

“Okay, you little faggot,” he says.

I have no idea what faggot means, except that it's not something nice.

“Your mommy gives you money for lunch,” he continues. “I watch you sometimes. You hardly eat anything... just suck up that milk and have a slice of bologna... I eat lunch. I need your lunch money. You don't.”

“Fuck you! If you want it, you're gonna have to take it from me,” I don't say.

Instead, I reach into my pocket and pull out three crumpled dollar bills. I hold them out to Harvey. He laughs, takes them from my hand, turns around and heads toward the guys playing baseball.

FLASH TO NOW: I sit here at the Toshiba thinking about bullying and how fashionable it is to complain about it. In liberal circles, The only way you can establish street cred is to talk about being bullied. You're nobody unless you've been bullied. The more, the better.

If you played football in school... you're a loser. If you had kind parents, were never bothered by your classmates, had a smooth childhood... you're an unfeeling robot who can never understand what it's like. It makes no difference what IT is... you can still never understand it.

So me and my flip-fone and my barely-this-century computer with my MS-DOS database, need to establish ourselves before I continue with my story. I did. Okay? Do I have my cred?

Yeah, I want to talk about bullying? It's all the rage and people are right to be concerned... but not in the way you think.

Let's review:

I've written about the verbal war I have with the lefty no free speech to those who would deny it to others people. They believe it's not censorship if the government isn't the censor. As if getting fired for saying something is less damaging in America than getting fined for the same thing. Can you say Imus and Curt Schilling? That's not censorship... that's the market place, they say.

On the right, people say it's not censorship, if iTunes, Amazon and Walmart-- the only source for music for many Americans.... require changes in cover art, or lyrics before they sell something... as if that's less intimidating than a visit from the Sheriff of Mayville.

Lately, I've been in facebook debates with progressives^® who say that slavery is where people are forced to work and the benefits of that work go to someone else. Yet these same progressives^® think some good ole boy Southern landowner with a whip is more of a slave master than hunger... that Southern Negroes were slaves because they had to work to live... but modern McDonald's workers are NOT slaves, even though if THEY don't work, they die. Raise your hand if you hate your job! If you work only because you need to have food and shelter, tell me you're not a slave.

It occurs to me that slavery is the ultimate bullying. Legal, as well as physical threats. You work or you're whipped. Or maybe I'll whip you for the hell of it. All depends on whose history of slavery you read... or believe. But bullying didn't end with slavery. Even slavery didn't end with slavery.

When I was robbed in that playground... my lunch money ripped from my hands back in 1958, of course, that was bullying. These days people worry about more. We hear about microaggression (aka microbullying). A snicker, an elbow nudge, a raised eyebrow. In New York... according to a recent law... the use of a wrong gender pronoun is bullying. Bullying is something white hets do that makes others feel uncomfortable. Anything they do.

FLASH TO MIAMI: I'm with my friends in Wynwood... a fashionable part of Miami, gentrified through graffiti. Instead of building ugly new buildings and keeping them

pristine through jail for artists (like Guiliani did in NY) or with graffiti-rejecting paint (like in San Francisco)... Wynwood has embraced graffiti artists, turned 'em loose, turned the town into a sea of color... a river of big eyes, sexy ladies and sexy men... funny aliens... slogans... a feast for the eyes. It's a joy to be here.

The only problem is parking. Richard is driving. He's a Cuban-American pal who knows Miami better than I do.

He drives around the block... another block... back to the first. We're trying to get to Wynwood Brewery, fine makers of one of my favorite American Porters.

Ah here's a parking space... Richard slides in.

I know the tricks. They charge for parking, sometimes hide the meters. You gotta go to a machine someplace, get a receipt, put it in the window. The city makes a ton of cash by towing cars whose owners thought they got free parking. Richard pulls out his smart phone. 

“Who're you gonna call?” I ask. “Can't it wait? Let's get some beer!”

“Mykel,” he says. “I gotta pay for parking.”

“I got quarters,” I tell him.

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” he says, shaking his head like a parent wiping the face of a chocolate-guzzling toddler. “You can only pay by phone. You need to download the app, register a credit card, then put in your location and pay.”

Richard points overhead. I look up. A sign: To pay for parking, please use PARKPAY. If you don't have the app, download it to your smartphone at parkpay.com.

What if you don't have a smartphone, motherfucker? This is bullying! I can't park here if I don't own a smartphone. I'm being bullied into buying something I don't want. How much longer before I won't be able to get into a movie theater... or board an airplane without a smartphone?

This extortion... several hundred dollars if you include the contracts, the accessories and the other shit... is worse than any innocent white guy calling his wimpy classmate “a faggot.” It's certainly more expensive.

“What?” I say. “The city bullies you into having a credit card, a smartphone, and downloading an app that knows where you are every second?”

“BINGO!” he says.

“I have no smartphone,” I say. “Does that mean I can't park in Miami?”

He nods, pointing his finger at me in a YOU GOT IT gesture.

BINGO! is right.

THAT is the kind of bullying people should be complaining about. I got over my lunch-money theft decades ago, but technological bullying never ends.

Is this the first time?

You bet your walkman it's not. You're too young to remember when we were bullied into buying CD players because companies stopped making vinyl... or into buying DVD players because of the end of videotape.

The bullying never ends.

FLASH TO THE SCHOOL I TEACH IN: It's my first class of the day. I stumble through a hangover haze from last night at BAR BACON.

My brain feels like it's trying to escape my skull. My stomach is so churned it doesn't know which end is up... and doesn't care as long as it can spill something. I can feel my eyebags dragging on the floor. Kiko, the receptionist, squints as I enter.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Your first class was canceled.”

“What???”I say, trying to both speak and hold down the vomit at the same time.

“I sent you an email,” she says.

I should be glued to my email ... my computer, my smartphone, my brain-implanted chip? I should check my email, or respond or be ON 24 hours with a PING if something new comes to gmail or if someone LIKES my vasectomy photo on facebook.

I'm being bullied into NOT using email as a convenience... sent, like a letter, when I'm able to... responding in time. They're making me a slave to email.

Other people say DON'T SEND EMAIL AT NIGHT, don't text me after 10. Why? Because they don't shut off their smartphones! They're already slaves... slaves to the technology. On the plantation, THOSE slaves could sleep at night. They could stop and eat, the slavemaster had to keep them in good shape... they were expensive. They had plenty of time to sleep to get ready for the next day of cotton picking.

Slaves of today are as disposable as videotape players. Use it up, hire a new one... there are more where they came from. Today's slaves are on call 24 hours. They don't have to be cared for. Waddaya mean you want to sleep? I sent you an email.

This is the bullying you need to worry about. You'll get over your boss frowning when you say my partner. You'll get over someone complementing your ass when you walk up Fourth Avenue. You'll get over someone using the “wrong” pronoun when you ask directions.

But you WON'T get over technological bullying. You won't get over being forced to BUY BUY BUY and then throw out what you just bought. You'll get over having your lunch money stolen on the playground. You won't get over the extortion from Apple, Amazon, facebook, Microsoft or Google.

Don't talk to me about how my “privilege” (penis, roundish eyes, easily-sunburned skin) protects me from being bullied. Bullying is the name of the game, and if you live in the modern world... you have to play the game.

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]

-->Who needs Trump dept: The Pew Research Center reports that more Mexicans are leaving the US than entering.

Says the report: From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico. This according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). U.S. census data for the same period show an estimated 870,000 Mexicans left Mexico to come to the U.S., a couple hundred thousand fewer than went the other way.

-->Special Congrats Dept: My very long-time friend, performance artist, and half of my blog proof-reading staff, has finally graduated from Columbia College in Chicago. I was there, and Sid's fish-hat/mortarboard was the hit of the show! Sid Yiddish, (who it's looking more and more like I'll be voting for for president) got his Masters in Interdisciplinary Art... while the bachelors looked on. Omedeto, Sid!

-->Right again dept: I'm often wrong in my predictions. Can you say, “America will never have a colored president?” So when something comes out right, it brings an ear-wiggling smile to my face.

Several months ago I wrote a piece about the left's tendency not to binge and purge, but to purge and purge. All lefties better get used to watching their backs, because being a lefty requires a tattoo of a target there.

Now I hear that Gilman Street, the totalitarian club started by Tim Yohannon at Maximum Rock'n'Roll (bands have to submit their lyrics for approval before they can play there), is the victim of a boycott.

The boycott organizers didn't like that some bands were offensive. This is PUNK ROCK! It's SUPPOSED to be offensive. But these humorless overlords don't get it.
I'm glad to be right this time.

-->Speaking of Bar Bacon dept:

I had a great Drink Club a Bar Bacon. Great crowd and great irony that there were two Jews and two Muslims (among others) together in a Bacon Bar.

     One of the Muslims was the great Joe Kidd. In case you don't know, Joe Kidd is the Malaysian Luk Haas. Mr. Punk Encyclopedia, Joe is the hero of everyone in Asia. He's written about them all. He's lived on more islands than I have, and taken the obscure and let everybody know about it. He writes (used to write? I don't keep up with the purges anymore) the Malaysian scene reports in MRR. You can contact him on facebook... and you should.

---->Your cheatin' heart dept: A Spanish mattress maker called "Smartress" has invented a mattress that "detects rhythmic patterns."

Any... er... extra curricular rhythmic activity will be reported by smartphone. In order to avoid "false positives," the mattress also reports the number of people on the mattress at the time of the rhythm.

Yet another reason to keep smartphones out of the hands of spouses, lovers, and other jealous people.

--> Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for censoring me.

As their revolving editrixes move on to commercial ventures, each blames her predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.

Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-end-

Mykel Through the Looking Glass or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 30

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