Fragility aka Mykel's Post-MRR Column Number 16

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

by Mykel Board

Mykel's Post-MRR Column 

No. 16

“Some American schools have stopped giving spelling tests because many of the children couldn't get all the words right and the resulting failure damaged their confidence, i.e., made them feel bad.” --The Xenophobe's guide to the Americans

Only a few of us sit upstairs in the Korean deli... it's a kind of secret place... a pub for those in the know. You can't wander in off the street. You have to know it's here. I sit in the middle at the mostly empty bar. Two men sit in the corner, debating the merits of this or that basketball or football player I've never heard of. The huge TV behind the bar shows a Toyota commercial. Ellie pours me a HITE beer. WEHIGHYO! I toast, when she sets it in front of me. She smiles and goes to sit at a table... break time.

I sip the beer. The TV screen changes. It's THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING show. But this one is girls. One colored girl, with a crewcut.... the other a thin, dark-haired white girl, tattoos down both arms. The colored girl wears a look of intensity... not hatred... a focus... more like a chess player than a boxer. The black-haired one is wild... screaming... out of control... wailing away.

Whoa! The colored girl is on her back. The other is whacking her... fists flying POW! POW! POW! Kidney chops. Neck chops. The girl on the bottom fetals up, protecting her head. Then, between blows, she pushes up, forcing both hands under the white girl's chin. I switch the beer to my left hand. My right hand falls to my crotch. I'm starting to firm up... I need adjustment. My right hand does the adjusting.

On the TV screen, both girls are back on their bare feet. Bouncing up and down, jabbing. BLAM! to the face. BLAM! to the side. A kick to the forehead... legs spread wide enough to (in my imagination) turn her twat into the Lincoln tunnel. Kick... kick... kick... The white girl's against the ropes. The black one head butts her... BLONG! right in the stomach.

I take another left-handed sip. My right hand unzips my jeans and slips inside. I have a prostate-paining raging six inches of hardness. Quickly, I check around to make sure no one is watching me. No one is.

On the TV, the girls have switched position. I missed something, but now it's the colored girl against the ropes. The white girl is using her knees knees. BAKOW! BAKAW! BAKAW! Right to the ribs. Left to the ribs. Knees high and hard

My fingers close inside my pants. Trying to keep my shoulders level... using just wrist motion... I begin to rub up and down.

Back on the screen, both girls are on the ground now. Rolling... first one... then the other... knees pressed between each other's legs... elbows slamming and defending. They stop rolling. The colored girl's on top. The camera zooms in on her face. That same intense look. I don't hate you. I just want to win. She bounces on the other girl's stomach. Her fists slam into either side of the neck beneath her. BATOOM! BATOOM! BATOOM! I come, physically.

FLASH TO NEW YORK... JOE'S PUB NEXT TO THE PUBLIC THEATER: On stage is Penny Arcade, long-time New York performance artist. We met very briefly when I was in Thailand with Lily Burana-- sometime last century.

Shorter than me, with bright pink hair, and a Mae West-ish figure, she's by herself in the spotlight, reading from a script... rap and electronic music plays in the background.

I feel the pain of people who have been physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually violated... who have been demeaned and made to feel like they are less.. less than others... less than human. I have been one of those people for most of my life...

She reads from a music stand, taking each sheet of paper in hand, then-- when finished-- letting it float to the floor.

I have always refused to identify myself as a victim. I always saw myself as a target. I could never afford self pity because self pity is a hindrance when you are trying to survive. For a long time, I believed that I became who I am IN SPITE OF the horrible things that happened to me and that were done to me... But when I was about 47 years old I began to understand that I became who I am BECAUSE OF my response to those horrible experiences. First and foremost those experiences introduced me to my own grace, to my own dignity. Cruelty taught me what it means to be kind, the lack of compassion I received taught me empathy, the hurling vitriol, lewd innuendo and brutal remarks led to my unswerving need to define myself by my own standards and to develop my own values and to bear no one's judgment. The threat and fear I lived under grew my courage.

She sips from the plastic bottle of Poland Spring that rests on a stool next to her.

Slowly I learned that it is impossible to avoid pain, but that suffering is a choice and that happiness is an innate quality I possess, that happiness does not reside outside of me and I don’t need someone else to give it to me. I know that joy is our natural inheritance as human beings and resides plentifully within each of us.

I come... mentally.

Yes! Yes! Yes! There are women in the world like these. Ultimate fighters, performance artists, fearless women who have gone through a fuck of a lot more than any Bill Cosby bedmate.

[Bill Cosby Aside: It's amazing that women will complain about being abused because they're in the weaker position... but will think nothing of abusing a 70 year old man who looks like shit... because of unsubstantiated rumors of events that took place more than 15 years ago. Come on... it's a new millennium. Release grudges. It's over! Leave the poor guy alone.]

FLASH TO NEW YORK CITY HALLOWEEN 2014: Dear Tenants, if you would like to receive Halloween trick-or-treaters today, please take one of these pumpkin invites and hang it outside your door. That way the children and their parents know that you welcome visits.

What???? The little princesses from Frozen are going to places that WELCOME VISITS? This is TRICK or Treat... get it? There's danger and excitement and something special for you if you don't come up with the treats. That's the whole idea of Halloween. It's a threat! It isn't an invite for the kids. It's not Christmas from the neighbors. This is very wrong.

FLASH TO YOUTUBE: A video of a white girl walking in a colored neighborhood? A passing guy says, “How are you doing today?” By coincidence, it's the same thing Chris, the homeless guy on the corner, has been saying to me every day for the past 4 years. Then we hear a “What's up beautiful? Have a good day.” Something, I unfortunately rarely hear. Then, “Hey beautiful,” and, from someone else “How are you this morning?” The video is less than two minutes long. At the end it complains about 100+ instances of verbal street harassment. What the fuck?

“How are you this morning?” is street harassment????? Are we so uncivil, that a greeting is HARASSMENT??? Are we so fragile we break from the completely harmless? Unbelievable.

FLASH TO BLEECKER STREET: I-- and most any other writer with two ounces of understanding-- have written about trigger warnings: the idiocy now making the college circuit. Like WARNING stickers on records, they warn students that a course or book content might make them uncomfortable. Today's college women want the same kind of protection their parents gave them as children. The kind of DON'T TOUCH IT-- IT'S DIRTY protection that created the boatload of allergies (peanuts, gluten, shellfish, dustmites) adults now suffer from. No natural immunity, because their parents CARED. Today's women want the same kind of mental protection, with the same kind of results... equally predictable.

A casual internet search will lead to statements like this-- from a Rutgers University student:

reaching a compromise between protecting students and defending their civil liberties is imperative to fulfilling the educational potential of our university's undergraduates. This could be done through the use of trigger warnings, so that the plot of a story is not spoiled, but that students can immediately learn whether courses will discuss traumatic content.

What would Penny Arcade say... or those ultimate fighting girls? Traumatic content? Life is (or should be) traumatic content! One of the main purposes of college should be to EXPOSE people to traumatic content. To challenge them... to confront them with things they've never seen before... thoughts they've never thought before... the unsettling, the disturbing.

American universities are turning into employment mills. Technical skills... learn what you need to get a good job. Work and earn money. No! No! No! That's NOT what it is (or should be) about.

The examination of suicidal tendencies in Mrs. Dalloway may trigger painful memories for students suffering from self-harm," wrote that same Rutgers student.

Yo! That's not a bad thing! 

Art, like the university, is SUPPOSED to be confrontational, disturbing, provocative. If it's only pretty, it's not art. It's Hallmark. Real art belongs right where everyone can see it. In Times Square.... in Red Square... at Hollywood and Vine... in Wellesley College.

This is from the petition to remove the statue The Sleepwalker from the campus:

This highly lifelike sculpture has, within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community. While it may appear humorous, or thought-provoking to some, it has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work in this space.

Oh my God! Undue stress! How horrible a thing for a college! You can't concentrate on The Psychology of Selling: How to Sell More, Easier, and Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. How're you ever going to pass that Marketing Class?

FLASH TO CHICAGO: The University of Chicago commissions a mural, a piece of of neo-graffiti madness. Fascinating. Just the thing to spice up the South Side. It's a wild mixture of horror, comedy, science-fiction and cartooning. Exactly what and where art should be. And what happens?

“The residents of this community consider the mural offensive... and it portrays us with negative images.”

Can you imagine? A negative image of the Chicago South Side? Ptui! The college paints it over-- blanking out the whole thing... But wait! There's more!

How about A Violence Against Women act in congress? I thought you girls were talking equality. What's wrong with a Violence Against Humans act? Whoops, I'm a sexist... AND there's more.

But you'll be spared... at least for now. I wouldn't want to make you feel uncomfortable.

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]

-->What should rational politicians do? Dept. - Polls show overwhelming support for quarantining returning nurses from West Africa. Meanwhile, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that they pose no danger to anyone. How can governors Cuomo and Christie justifying such confinement? Monitor them? Maybe. Imprison them in solitary confinement? Huh?

It's caving in to the crowd on a disease that's, according to comedian Howie Mandel, "killed fewer people here than there are Jews in the NFL."

-->Scary News dept: Something called the "Safe Schools Improvement Act has over 200 sponsors in Congress and the Senate: The bill "will establish a clear, effective national policy to prevent bullying." Can you say MORE censorship? How 'bout NO MORE Penny Arcades?

-->And scarier news: Homosexual-related questions will now be included on the standard CDC student survey, instead of being in the OPTIONAL section. Students will now be forced to CHOOSE, and those private things... nope... government statistics! And weirder,most gay groups SUPPORT this child privacy invasion. GLSEN (the "Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network") includes these privacy-invasive questions as a "victory" in its latest fund-raising brochure.

-->Animals vs culture dept: The high court of Bombay, India has banned the capture of cobras. The classic snake-in-the-basket Indian is going the way of the classic Spaniard with a cape and bull. And in India, the snakes live... they're returned to the wild after ceremonies.

"Capturing live snakes and later releasing them back into the wild could cause them harm," said the court.

Maybe they should just put a trigger warning on the basket.

-->Post on Facebook, lose your job dept: Mike Yates, chief of police in Jonesboro Arkansas was forced to resign his post after Facebookers complained that he called a local reporter "pro-dope," "a leftwing liberal," and "smelly."

Now why were we attacked on 9/11? Oh yeah, I remember, they're jealous of our freedom.

-->Scarlet Yellow Letter dept: Miranda Larkin wore a short black skirt to school in Clay County FL. Her teachers sent her to the nurse's office(?) for violating the school dress code. According to The Washington Post "she was forced to wear a neon yellow T-shirt with DRESS CODE VIOLATION emblazoned across the chest."

-->Don't Insult 'em dept: NCAC reports that an American high school exchange student in China wrote "Democracy is for cool kids" when invited by his Chinese friends to write comments and contact information. The Chinese were offended. When the student returned to America, his own school punished him by not allowing him to attend the school prom.

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for their 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 on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, CDs and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

-end