Change of Heart or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's April 2022 Blog

 

 

Change of Heart

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's April 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung,

The refusal to discipline our impulses is ultimately at the heart of everything from the negative way we conduct our political campaigns to the selfish and dangerous way we drive our cars.

--Stephen L. Carter

April is when the brown turns green… when nature calls from the night shouting: WAKE UP! Fools ignore the call. I’m not one of them.

It’s some kind of ladder… up against a wall. Wrists and ankles taped to it… duct tape… shiny silver under the floodlight. Another piece across the mouth seals the lips. Muffled screams catch themselves behind the tape. A long drip of saliva leaks from under the seal.

Here comes the candle… my favorite part. A red one… the drippings show against the bright white skin. Start on the chest… over the right breast… drip… drip… drip… The whole body shakes... another muted scream beneath the tape…

I unzip my pants. Another drop… hit the nipple right on it.. Yes! Yes! Now go lower… the lower parts… shaved and ready for drip… drip…

Oh my God! Keep going. Another one in the same place… I’m almost there. Drip… drip.. Yes! Yes! Uh.. Uh… aaaaaaaah! A few dribbles into the handkerchief.

Whew! I needed that.

I leave the website, clear my cache. I don’t need a fistful of advertisers trying to sell me duct tape. Then I get dressed.

Okay. I’m ready to start my day. Supermarket for a week’s TV dinners. Post office to mail off those eBay sales. Shit, I feel bad parting with GG’s Eat My Fuc (original Blood Records pressing) but five hundred bucks will buy me Rittenhouse Rye for a month. Then to the Union Square Farmers Market for produce, bread, and cheese.

Dressed and out the front door. Pfffffft. A bicycle barreling down the sidewalk barely misses me. I hate bicyclists. Self-righteous sons of bitches. Oh, I’m so environmentally correct. I can go the wrong way down a one-way street, ride on the sidewalk, not have a light at night. I don’t need to follow your laws. I’m saving fossil fuel, so get the fuck out of the way.

“Get on the fuckin’ street!” I yell at the cyclist.

Still peddling, he turns around, flips me the bird, turns back, and crashes into a trash can. The front wheel slips in the slats of the can. The driver tips… falling hard on the concrete. Luckily, he doesn’t hit his head, or my joy might be tempered. I can see his arm is scraped up and the bike wheel bent like a folded pizza. I can’t hold back a laugh as I pass him, wishing I had the balls to piss on him.

I walk on: post office, supermarket, heading toward Union Square.

“Yo Mykel, how’s it goin?”

It’s Kevin, my hugely fat street-living pal. As usual, I find him begging just outside the square. As soon as I see him, I reach in the watch pocket of my Levis, and take a dollar from the small pile of bum-aimed singles I keep there. I hand it to Kevin.

“Didja see the bike crash?” I ask him.

“Nope,” he answers, “what happened?”

“Some asshole riding a bike on the sidewalk flips me off… then crashes… It was sooo great!”

Kevin shakes his head.

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” he says. “I like you and you are always so kind to me, but you shouldn’t be laughing at someone else’s pain.”

“Waddaya mean?” I ask.

“That guy on the bike… he was probably a delivery guy… service promised in 20 minutes or it’s free. Guess who pays. His life is harder than yours, Mykel. Try to chill.”

I can feel myself starting to get pissed off.

“Chill? You want me to chill? I have to walk through this city where half the people on the street are afraid to show their faces? I can’t sleep because midnight trucks backing up BEEP BEEP BEEP warning who? The toddlers on the road at 3AM? Meanwhile half of NYU is worshiping Saint Patrick by vomiting in front of my door. And I should chill?”

“Calm down Mykel,” says Kevin. “I live on the street… and I don’t complain.”

“You should complain,” I tell him. “Sure your life is shittier than mine. Why not scream that to the world? Let them know how you’ve been fucked over! Spit in the face of every pedestrian who walks right past you… pretends he doesn’t see you… ignores your pain… your needs.”

“And where would that get me?” He asks. “I already have a bum leg and I should be on insulin… but I can’t afford it. Do I need to add a stroke of stress on top of that? Do I need to carry around a lungful of hate and anger? Mykel, I live on the street and my life is better than yours.”

“I donno, Kevin,” I say, “Maybe you got something I lack.”

I take my leave and walk through Union Square

A bearded guy, wearing black, blocks my path.

“Are you Jewish?” he asks.

“No -ish about it,” I tell him. “I’m a Jew.”

He laughs. “Did you set Tefillin today?”

Instead of brushing him off like an errant cyclist, for some reason I’m tolerant. Listening. Maybe the talk with Kevin had something to do with it. The Chassid invites me into the mitzvah tank, wraps the tefillin around my arm and my head, puts a tallit around my shoulder. [NOTE: The picture is not me. It’s just an internet image I found that will explain tefillin to the goyim.]

“Now repeat after me,” he says. Then, line for line, he recites a Hebrew prayer. I repeat it.

As I hear myself speak, I feel my body empty. The tension and the anger slowly leave me. The release is ecstasy. Better than a massive shit. When I return home that night I find I have no interest in the pouring wax videos. I want to see people screwing, yes! But I want them to be in love with each other.

But wait! There’s more:

The next week… on Sunday… I sit on a bench in the park. I guess I’m still feeling the after-effects of the tefillin. An attractive young man in a suit and tie sits next to me. He glances my way. A week ago, I would have thought, Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! A fuckin’ Mormon! Blow me if you want, but don’t tell me how Jesus loves me. Now, I calmly wait to see what happens.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” he says.

I nod.

“The sky is blue,” he continues, “and we’re here, enjoying the sunlight, watching people have a good time… at the same time feeling we’re part of something bigger. Part of the universe.”

Okay, enough is enough. Tefillin or not, there’s just so much crap I can put up with. I don’t yell at the guy, but I do look him up and down and frown.

He laughs. “Oh these clothes… You must think I’m going to pull out a bible and beat you with it.”

I laugh. “You’re pretty close to right,” I tell him.

“I’m just dressed this way because I’m coming from my brother’s funeral. Half the time you’ll see me I’m wearing orange robes and sandals.”

“You’re shittin’ me,” I tell him. “How can you appreciate the sky and the universe and the people in the park if your brother just kicked the bucket?”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” he says. “The universe goes through us... live… die… if you believe, live again… if you don’t believe… it’s just turning out the day to enter the night.”

We talk for a couple hours.

FLASH TO NOW: I’ve changed. Maybe you’ve seen me in the park… You probably haven’t noticed. All those saffron robed bald guys. You wouldn’t see the tallit… you’d just turn your head or maybe look skyward… think “yeah, There’s another one.”

But that one is me. The rumors you’ve heard are true. That’s me of the shaved head… of the saffron robes. That’s me Jewish Buddhist… and Hebrew Monk. I call myself a Jewdhist Hunk.

I’m calm. Pissed off at no one. I still chat with my homeless friends… still give ‘em a dollar. But I don’t complain. I’m alive… calm… feeling the sun on my head and the music of the cosmos in my ear.

I start every day sitting on the floor cross-legged… breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Clearing my thoughts when some kind of joy-in-pain enters my head, I look at it like a chipmunk running across my path. I let it go and it scampers away. My joy is in the relief of inner pain.

The candle wax videos are gone. I pleasure myself to loversinlove.com. When I see cyclists on the sidewalk, I move to one side and let them pass. “Have a nice day!” I shout after them.

See you in hell... No! See you in the heaven we make for ourselves,

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]

→ April Showers Dept: By the time you read this, I will have taken my shower for April. I’ll be smelling like Irish Spring… with a touch of herbal essence. You might see me in Washington Square Park... sitting next to that jazz band by the fountain… chanting my mantras while the sax wails tales of love for the universe. Make sure you say hello. I won’t ask you for money.

→ Hope she wasn’t in pain dept: WKBN reports: On March 12, a standoff in Pennsylvania dragged on for 10 hours after a woman made an odd appearance at a neighbor's home. The woman was naked, and forcefully entered the home, where she stole the owner's shotgun. As she walked out his back door with the gun, he asked her what she was doing. She said, "It's my house." The woman then returned to her own home. The neighbor called the cops, who set up a perimeter around the woman's house but couldn't extract her until late that evening. She was taken to a local hospital with self-inflicted injuries... from a sword

→ How Much Punk Rock Do You Hear In Russia? dept: Since I got through this entire blog without mention of the Russia-Ukraine war, I should at least offer a YouTube video with my feelings about the whole thing. It’s right here.

See you in hell, redux… No, not this time.

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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:

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.

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.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's November 2018 Blog/Column "Tolerance"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel’s Post MRR column No ???
or A CRITIQUE OF PURE INTOLERANCE

I write this sitting in a train traveling on a 15 hour ride from Agra India to Amritsan… I probably have the name spelled wrong. I’ve got an deafening headache from lack of coffee. I’m thirsty, having just finished the last of the water. The only available food is Chiwda, a nice mix of nuts, toasted rice and noodles… great any other time… but it’s salty… and there is no water.

Internet is spotty in Google… time to write is even spottier. So this month, I’m combining some facebook posts into a blog. Next month, I hope, I’ll be writing about India.

This month, with some repeat (Who me, repeat? Who me, repeat?) I want to talk about TOLERANCE:

Tolerance used to be a “liberal” principle. I remember all these teaching tolerance programs in school… kids’ books with different colored rabbits-- kidtalk for different racial groups. The moral was always: underneath it all, they’re all just plain rabbits. Get it?

Tolerance was a virtue. You should approach people without pre-conception. You talk with them... learn from them... maybe they learned from you. People who dressed differently, looked different, had different religions, different ideas. You might disagree with the ideas… and say so... but you should tolerate them because a free exchange of ideas is the way both sides learn. And a free exchange of cultures is the way both sides can have nice new eats!

No discrimination by race, creed or color, we used to say. Today the right has no tolerance for race and color and the left for creed. Every politician promises ZERO TOLERANCE for something or other… and that’s supposed to be a good thing.

Maybe the earlier tolerance was a product of the peace and love generation… or the burgeoning Civil Rights movement… where Martin Luther King learned non-violence from Mohandas K. Gandhi … His image is everywhere here in India. Like every podunk town in the US has its ML King Drive… every city in India has its MG Road. Non-violence is crucial to tolerance. Violence is the ultimate in intolerance.

I guess this began to change in the 90s… a reaction to the unlimited freedom and tolerance of the 60s and then the 80s. I think the first time I heard the words ZERO TOLERANCE was in the war on drugs. Any use of drugs… possession of drugs.. BANG you’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE. The WORDS became a hallmark of the Giuliani administration in New York. The Broken Windows policing policy, based on an idea similar to marijuana leads to heroin. The smallest “crime”-- pan-handing, pissing on the street, fare-jumping,… BANG! You’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE.

Of course this hit the poor hardest, if you’re not poor you don’t NEED to piss on the street or jump the turnstyle. The jails filled. The poor were in jail or forced out of the city… The rich, who no longer were forced to watch people piss on the street, moved in. ZERO TOLERANCE worked to reduce crime. But it made life worse for those not tolerated. And drove rents and other prices up… ethnic diversity down.

Like the swine flu, ZERO TOLERANCE, quickly caught on. ZERO TOLERANCE for prostitution. ZERO TOLERANCE for smoking in public places… and the list goes on. Then, like syphilis jumped species from sheep to human (I wonder how that happened), ZERO TOLERANCE jumped politics and moved to liberals… the so-called left.

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HATE is a sign I saw in a store window on Lafayette Street. It made me laugh. What better definition of HATE than ZERO TOLERANCE? They are the same thing! That was funny… but it wasn’t a joke.

Just like all Muslims were branded TERRORISTS by the right… All nationalists, alt-rightists, libertarians suddenly were branded NAZIS, or FASCISTS by the the left. And, guess what, ZERO TOLERANCE for “Nazis” and “Fascists.”

In the 20^th Century, the violently intolerant wore white hoods (and robes) and attacked violently in a wave of racial intolerance. In the 21^st Century, the violently intolerant wear BLACK hoods (and scarves) and attack with clubs and fists in a wave of political intolerance.

Flash back about 20 years. An old Caribbean-American friend of mine lives in Raleigh North Carolina. Last time she came to New York she seemed slightly stand-offish. I don’t remember the exact details, so my reconstruction will be slightly off, but close enough. (I’ve changed the protagonist’s name.)

“Olga!” I shout when I see her. “Great to see you! It’s been a long time.”

“Oh hi, Mykel,” she says. “My life has changed a bit since you saw me last. I have a new boyfriend now.”

“That’s cool,” I say, “but not so weird. How has your life changed?”

“Well,” says Olga, “He’s told me about Doctor Farrakhan. And I’m learning the proper way to act. Dr. Farrakhan says…..”

“Dr. Farrakhan????” I don’t say, “This is the guy who said ‘I’m not anti-Semite… I’m anti-TERMITE! THAT Dr. Farrakhan”

But I listen… I listen to ideas about modesty... about Jews position in history… about how Islam is the religion of the underclasses, the poor, the displaced, the oppressed. I listen.

And I have been listening ever since… or making the effort. I’ve traveled to Muslim countries (Turkey, Morocco, Senegal, The Gambia), and listened… and met great people, and have friends among them. I don’t hide my Jewitude… they check for horns when they find out… then they laugh and don’t care. We talk.

Flash to early 21^st Century, Laurens South Carolina: I’m with Sid Yiddish, who’s visiting from Chicago. Laurens is home to THE REBEL SHOP which my cousin tells me is run by “a real Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Sounds scary.

“Can we go, Uncle Mickey?” asks Sid.

We go.

It looks like it used to be a theater. The letters in the marquee say REBEL SHOP and there’s a confederate flag in front of it. Sid and I look at each other. I shrug. We walk in.

The owner of the shop, a chubby guy in his late 60s-early seventies wishes us welcome. Sid goes over to look at the t-shirts. I walk around to look at the posters, and Klan memorabilia. No lynching pictures… just guys on horses in robes with white hoods.

“This is the later Klan,” says one of the patrons-- a muscular guy, early 30s, I’d guess. “See the hoods… they don’t cover the faces like the early ones did. I guess they had more pride the second time around.”

Most of the pictures, in fact, are of the reformed Klan, where the hoods didn’t cover their whole faces… I wonder how long before Antifa is proud of what it’s doing. The story is scary, but fascinating.

The shop owner calls to us over the counter, “If you want to look at more pictures, you can check out my own room. I sleep in the back.”

He opens the door and shows us to the back room. There is indeed a bed there… along with what looked like several posters from BIRTH OF A NATION.

I look at the bed… nothing more than a couch with a few sheets and pillows... surprisingly coordinated, blue and an odd shade of beige. Then I walk out to talk with the guy.

“I’m surprised,” I tell him. “I thought you guys only used WHITE sheets.”

He laughs.

“You boys ain’t from around here, are ya?” he asks.

“Imagine your worst nightmare,” I tell him. “Imagine your vision of hell! The worst place you could ever be...”

“Ah,” he says,” You boys are from New York.”

The three of us laugh.

He motions to a younger man… 40s… muscular in an uncomfortable way-- like a grumpy version of the guy who told me about the hoods. The man is sitting by himself… arms folded… unsmiling. 

“I want you to meet (I forgot his name). He’s the head of the county National Socialist Society,” says the Grand Dragon.

“Hi” I say, extending my hand, “I’m Mykel Board from New York. This is my friend Sid Yiddish.”

The guy doesn’t look at us and only tightens his arms across his chest. He does not take my out-stretched hand.

Sid and I look at each other. He shrugs. We go back to looking at the t-shirts. Before long, we both find t-shirts we like. Mine is a very homo-looking one with a picture of a topless cowboy smiling and the logo IT’S A SOUTHERN THING! Sid gets one of an astronaut planting a rebel flag, with the logo SOUTH SIDE OF THE MOON.

Sid, who looks even Jewer than me, pays for both shirts by credit card. The credit card has Sid’s real name on it. (Hint: think something-berg or something-stein.) The Klan guy looks at it, laughs, rings up the sale and hands us applications to join the Klan. Neither of us qualify… you have to be a “loyal white Christian American.”

We wave to him, and leave going back to my cousins.

“Wow!” says Sid, “That was quite an adventure. The Klan guy was funny.”

“I’m surprised the town allows a store like that,” I say. “Seems like it’d be bad for its reputation.”

“The great thing is,” he says, “that the landlord for the place is a black church… Southern gospel. He pays his money, and they’re friends.”

“Holy shit!” I say, “A black church and the KKK… now THAT’S tolerance.”

“It’s a Southern thing,” he answers.

Flash to 1998: The phone rings… I don’t answer… I never do… I hate the phone. In an hour or so I listen to my messages… I recognize George Tabb’s voice…

“Mykel,” says George’s voice, “I have some bad news. Tim died today. I thought you’d want to know.”

People die all the time. I lived through the 80s… the AIDS era… dropping like butt-fucked flies then. I lost some people very close to me. There was a lot of sadness, but I didn’t cry.

ASIDE: I’m one of the least macho people I know. No muscles to speak of… I hate team sports (except baseball… and that isn’t really a team sport). I even ask directions on the street… can anything be LESS macho?

But if there’s a speck of machotude in my body, it’s the crying thing. I used to be sooo sensitive… as a kid I cried when Lassie didn’t come home. Later in life, I saw the movie, Once Were Warriors. It was about the Maori in New Zealand. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember that I cried… at a fucking MOVIE... I cried. What the fuck?

I felt manipulated… used… by the director.. I decided to stop crying. (Of course, when my parents died, I allowed myself the luxury. Most people cry when their parents die.)

But when Tim died, I cried. I didn’t feel guilty or girlish about it. I loved Tim. He was funny, opinionated, stubborn, and a good friend. We disagreed about music. Tim said the first hardcore band was THE MIDDLE CLASS. I said it was THE BAD BRAINS... politics Tim was a Commie... I was-- and still am, a Libertarian Socialist... baseball teams (but not baseball as an institution). Tim was a Giants fan… I liked the Yankees.

I remember Tim taking me to Candlestick Park for a Giants game. When the Star Spangled Banner came on, I stood up and took off my hat. (This was just to get Tim’s goat. I am not a fan of America, or The Star Spangled Banner? Oy vey! Is there another national anthem with bombs and rockets in it?)

Tim asked me to write for Maximum Rock’n’Roll and kept me on through several purges (I LOVED Tim, but he was not a tolerant guy. Not only Politically Correct, but Musically correct, and business modely correct.) Tim only censored me once in my time at MRR. That was when I mentioned John Crawford… creator of the Baboon Dooley. Tim hated the guy.

But we got along so well. We both respected and made fun of each other. I would never miss hanging out with him on my frequent visits to San Francisco.

Bob Black once asked me why I continued writing for MRR despite the totalitarianism of Tim.

“Don’t you know?” He said, “Tim is using you to try to prove he’s open minded. You’re just a tool.”

“But, I LIKE the guy! He took me out for my first El Salvadorian burrito. He’s like a musical encyclopedia (Example: I once was talking about subjects for punk songs. I was a fan of the early Texas homocore of the time like THE BIG BOYS and THE DICKS.)

“It’s a shame there are no homo baseball-loving bands,” I say.

In a flash, Tim is gone only to return with a 7” from a band whose name I can’t remember, but who had a song “I fell in love with a guy on a baseball card.”

So, when Tim died, I cried.

Someone set up a memorial page for Tim… I contributed. A friend of mine sent me an email message:

“Did you see Gavin’s obituary for Tim? It’s really good.” And she sent me a link.

I thought she was talking about Gavin of Artless guitar fame. But it turns out to be a guy called Gavin Mcinnis… someone I never heard of. But I really liked the obituary. It was obviously written by someone else who loved Tim.

I find this Gavin on facebook and friend him. Turns out he knows who I am… and he played in a punk band himself. I check out his page and see he’s got his own TV show… on Fox. Who am I to judge? One of my best friends-- and fellow yippie at Beloit-- had an investigative reporter job on Fox. (He’s since worked for Bernie Sanders… and helped expose the Russian connection during the last election.)

I invite Gavin to go drinking with my roving group of drunks in New York… He promises to join but never does . Then I heard about THE PROUD BOYS.

Actually, that’s not quite true. It wasn’t that quick. Gavin and I had some brief exchanges about Drink Club in New York, and a bit more about punkrock. I had already been fired from MRR by the latest in a succession of post-Tim MRR editrixes. I was fired for complaining about MRR policy of censorship that I never had to suffer under Tim... but times were changing.

Then, I didn’t realize Gavin had a TV show until… and didn’t know that he had anything to do with VICE in NY or anything else. Now, I realize he’s kinda famous.

---------------------------------

FLASH TO BERKELEY… the home of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. The movement sparked the naming of a square FREE SPEECH SQUARE.

Now we’re in the 21^st century. Some group called AntiFa had stopped a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing homosexual. It was the first I heard of the Antifa or Yiannopoulos, but I enjoyed the irony of a blocked speech in Free Speech Square.

As time passed, I heard more and more about the hooded AntiFa’s intolerance… and their violence used to suppress the speech of those they don’t agree with. Labeling their antagonists NAZIS, they feel it’s right to stop them BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, including murder to judge by the cartoon.

I suggest to Jeff Bale, another former MRRer, that we start a counter group to AntiFa where we go to meetings of the totalitarian left and stop THEM from speaking BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Jeff puts the kabosh on that idea.

“We need to maintain the high road,” he says. “Let them be the thugs.”

“But how about if we don’t stop them from speaking,” I offer, “but just get together to protect speakers from being attacked and censored by the hooded ones.”

He wasn’t up for that either.

“Mykel,” he says, “You’re nearly 70. I’m a year older. You think we can fight a bunch of macho 20 year olds with chips the size of a hammer and sickle on their shoulders? Besides, I thought you were non-violent.”

He’s right. I’m, letting a bit of 70 year old macho get in there. My mistake.

Shortly after that conversation, I heard about the Proud Boys. I didn’t hear much, but they sounded like my fantasy-- a version of it anyway. They are a group dedicated to fighting the censors… and ready to fight. They are not non-violent. They are macho brawlers willing to stand up for the right to speak. And willing to fight back when attacked. A kind of tolerance police… freedom defenders… At least that was my image when I first heard about them.

That they came from the right is logical. Free speech in America (this century) has been physically attacked by the left more than the right. If I had my druthers, I’d rather they came from the libertarian left. I’d like to see the war between freedom fighters vs the totalitarians… though with a different ending than in the Spanish Civil War. 

But, as I’m learning here in India, you eat what’s on your plate… even if-- in two hours-- it’ll give you the shits.

What happened in New York with The Proud Boys vs Antifa? I don’t know. Gavin says THEY started it, with a physical attack-- a thrown bottle. The press… at least the non-Fox press… says The Proud Boys were just a gang out to commit hate crimes... toughies looking for trouble

My guess: the truth lies in the middle, as it usually does. But in any case, the war will continue. Because talking is over. Tolerance… discussion… learning… compassion… understanding… are values long gone. Those who disagree are NAZIS, if you’re Antifa… or ANTIFA if you’re on the other side. 

Me, I’m on nobody’s side. I fear for the future though… Tolerance was a great value… as was non-violence. Both are gone now. It’s anyone’s guess what’s gonna happen. Being near 70… I’m lucky enough to have less of a future than the rest of you. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

1. I know about Carl Popper… He’s wrong.

2. I will be spotty on answering comments. I’m now in India and Internet access is not as available here as you’d expect… and I have other things to do.

3. If you want to read about my adventures in India and other places, check out my travel blog at: https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

(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.