Mykel's MRR Column for #316, (September, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 316, September 2009
by
Mykel Board

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” --Winston Churchill

“As an Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” –Godwin's Law

 “Those who study history are condemned to live in it.” --Mykel Board

I'm madder than a Klansman whose wife bought colored-- instead of white-- sheets. My fucking boss. Accusing me of sexual harassment because I ask a female student to sew a button on my shirt. Telling me what I can and can't say in class. He's a fascist.

“I'm gonna take a picture of him. Then, photoshop on a little mustache and comb-over,” I say, “Post it in the teacher's lounge.”

I sit in Jennifer's kitchen. The kettle on the stove whistles. Jennifer walks over to it. Using a Motel 6 towel as a potholder, she picks it up and pours the water over some green leaves.

“Oh Mykel,” she says, “cut it with that Hitler stuff. Everything is Hitler-- or the Nazis. If you get too much cream in your coffee, it's the Nazis. Somebody takes your seat on the subway. They're Hitler. Give it up already.”

Kerpow.

News item: Will Smith finds himself in hot water with the Jewish Defense League. He told a Scottish newspaper that Hitler didn't mean to do evil, but rather, using "a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"

The JDL denounced Smith's remark as "ignorant, detestable, and offensive."

In response, Smith issued a statement clarifying his position on Hitler as a "vile, heinous, vicious killer."

This column isn't (only) about Hitler. Though, he's probably the best example. Here are some others:

Wikipedia: The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as The Great Calamity refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by the use of massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million.

Wikipedia 2: In God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust 
Through the Centuries, Grenke quotes Chalk and Jonassohn with regards to the Cherokee Trail of Tears that "an act like the Cherokee deportation would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today".

“The Indian Removal Act of 1830” led to the Trail of Tears. About 17,000 Cherokees — along with approximately 2,000 black slaves owned by Cherokees — were removed from their homes. The number of people who died as a result of the Trail of Tears has been variously estimated. American doctor and missionary Elizur Butler, who made the journey with one party, estimated 4,000 deaths.

From the Internet: The 1831 uprising in Southampton, Virginia was led by Nat Turner, who was himself a slave. Slave rebels systematically went from house to house killing about sixty whites before they were disbanded. In the suppression of the revolt, about one hundred African Americans died and authorities hanged sixteen more.

In Turner's lengthy autobiographical statement, he says that God led him to bring judgment against whites because of the institution of slavery.

NEWSFLASH: The bloodbath began when an 8-year-old girl attending a Christmas Eve party answered a knock at the door. A man dressed as Santa and carrying what appeared to a present, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face. Then, he began shooting indiscriminately as party-goers tried to flee.

By the time it was over, at least eight people at the party were dead and the house was torched. The gunman killed himself hours after exacting revenge against his ex-wife with the massacre at his former in-laws' home.

FLASH TO LAST WEEK: I'm at my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. I mine-sweep the tables for the dregs of the vodka bottles. Following me is my cousin, B_ who came in from Thailand. A man whose mind runs through the same trough as mine, he moved there after his wife dumped him. A new girlfriend (35 years his junior) later, he's in New York for the festivities.

“Hey B_,” I say. “Did you meet S_? She's over there and she's got a pair of lips on her that could suck a car engine out through a tailpipe.”

He looks over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says. “But I gotta keep away from her. We have a history.”

Flashback to 1487: It's 2 AM. You're in bed. You lay naked, face up, your knees pressed close to your ears. On top of you, Pablo lies with his tubular bell, pressed deep into your belfry. Your lips press against his. You feel each thrust, stretching that once tight sphincter into an open, welcoming ring.

Pain. Delightful pain, as Pablo bites into your shoulder, as 

he grunts to hold back the inevitable. Your own arm reaches around the back of your leg to pump yourself from the front, while Pablo comes up the rear.

BLAM! The doors smash open. You hear a shout.

SODOMIA!

A clothed arm curls around Pablo's neck. He's wrenched off you, thrown back against the wall. You smell the stench of your own body.

Then two hands grab under your shoulders, pulling you naked out of the room. Your feet scrape against the cobblestones as you're dragged through the streets. Your naked body comes to rest-- face-down-- in the basement of the cathedral.

You struggle. Something metallic smashes into your face. A warm liquid drips from the corner of your eye to the corner of your mouth. You taste the sweet saltiness of your own blood.

You're face down, in chains, handcuffed to a kind of pedestal. It pressed into your stomach, and feels like it will tear your hips apart.

Voices in Latin speak above you. Again, you hear the word SODOMIA!

Then you feel it. The Pear. You know what it is without seeing it. It's been your nightmare for years.

Now you feel it, the metal... like a clamp... pear shaped... shoved into your already bleeding rectum. A fist-sized metal flower bud at the end of a screw. It's massive. You'll die.

But not too soon... That's just the beginning... The screw is turned. Slowly, the clamp expands. Its petals open inside you like a flower blooming from a bud. Opening larger and larger. Your insides rip. Then they shred. Death can't come soon enough for you. Stop! STOP!

***************

Yes, STOP! Everybody's got their history. Everybody's got some saga that justifies being mean to someone else. Something 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 5000 years ago. Armenians, Jews, homos.

History is a grudge factory that justifies any atrocity in the name of one that passed. Conservatives want to kill Muslims in the name of 9/11. Palestinians want to kill Israelis in the name of land taken in 1967. Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Israel from Palestinians in the name of God who “gave them” the land 5000 years ago.

Get it?

I'm writing about history. Its abuse at the hands of every vengeful despot. It provides the all-purpose excuse for the worst atrocities. Its erection rises to impale everyone who is close, but different.

History. A bunch of guys killing other guys... written by the winner. Words in a book.

The Bible, the single most deadly book in the world, is a history book. It starts on day zero, and goes downhill from there.

Find a Jew. there's a holocaust museum. Talk to Catholics in Northern Ireland and you'll wait ten seconds before Protestant Oppression in Irish History pops to the fore. Talk to an anarchist? The commies, what they did to us in the Spanish Civil War. In Africa, tribal histories resurface every few years, along with severed limbs, and spilled intestines. People hate people they've never met. Why? History!

The solution is simple... and very New York. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!

Yeah. Ignore that history. Let it go. Armenian's 3 million, trumped by Jews 8 million, trumped by Stalin's 9 million, trumped by Mao's, I donno a billion? It's over. Start again. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!

The CIA tortured. G.W. Bush conspired. OK, show us the pictures. It's important to know the truth, but then LET IT GO!

The future won't right the past. “Justice” is the drag name for revenge. Call in the Alzheimer’s! Start every day thinking about what's gonna happen tomorrow. What you do now will make that day. Yesterday's over. You won't change it. Forget it.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to comment on and discuss the column]

-->Whoever said cops can't laugh dept: Ex-suburban Chicago cop, Drew Peterson, called into a local radio talk show. Peterson, in jail on suspicion of the murder of his third wife and the disappearance of his fourth, suggested a new on-the-air game: Win a Conjugal Visit with Drew. He did not say, however, if the winner would be leaving the prison alive.

-->Sometimes capitalism is its own best humor dept: The Aggronautix company has released GG Allin and Tesco Vee bobblehead dolls. Called Throbbleheads, the dolls will be a “limited edition” (yeah right) collector's item. The Dwarves collection is next. I shit you not. (But does the GG doll?)

-->Al and the Xenophobes dept: An organization calling
itself Repower America is spamming email from coast to coast.
Throwing Al Gore's name around, they're sponsoring a TV/YouTube
commercial promoting “clean energy.” 
 The commercial features some hick-looking actor, shucking hay
and walking in front of a horse. The focus? “We've got to stop being
held hostage by foreign oil.” And “we're still borrowing money to
buy oil from dictators who don't like us.” How about we're burning
in ways that kill God's green earth"
 Yeah, it's the new liberal strategy. Appeal to the worst in us:
Xenophobia and religion. Evil foreigners and God's earth. It' elected
George Bush, right? Maybe it'll work for the environment.
Sorry bub, I don't want to breathe clean air made for God and
against foreigners. You breathe it. It makes me sick. 
-end-

Go to Mykel's homepage here

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 315, August 2009
by Mykel Board

When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. --James Gleick

BBC NEWS reports that garden snails are evolving slower metabolisms. Snails with lower metabolisms are at an advantage because they have more energy to spend on other activities such as growth or reproduction, the researchers say in the journal Evolution.

Scientists measured the size of almost 100 garden snails and gauged their standard metabolic rate. After seven months, they recaptured the animals, collecting the empty shells of those which had died. They found size did not predict which animals survived. But metabolic rate did, with surviving snails having a metabolic rate 20% lower than that of the snails that didn't survive. The lower each snail's metabolic rate, the greater its chance of survival.

The researchers now plan to answer the ultimate question: is having a slow metabolism linked to moving slowly? If it is, that means that snails are not only evolving to use energy more slowly, but are increasingly moving at an even lower snail's pace.

****

I'm shooting a double streamer, missing on both sides. The twin yellow rivulets splash against the mensroom floor. I try re-aiming. One side finds the target. The other strays so far to the left it soaks the toilet paper against the wall. I try to correct it. But by now, I'm dribbling to a halt. Quickly, I stuff myself back into my pants. An extra, hidden stream leaks out and down the inside of my leg. Fuck, it's my last pair of jeans. I'm gonna smell like piss for a week.

Them's the breaks. I got 15 minutes between classes. If I spend too much time pissing, I'll never get to buy lunch. Shaking my newly wet leg, I run downstairs to the Cuban restaurant for a pair of empenadas. One chicken. One beef. I'll eat 'em on the elevator on the way back to work.

Flashback to this morning: The alarm rings. 7:20AM-- realtime. My clocks read 8. I set 'em 40 minutes fast so I have NO travel time. If I have to be somewhere at nine, I leave at nine, my time. I'm never late. Most people have to subtract transportation from their daily itineraries. Not me. I leave when I have to arrive. I teleport.

Since I don't have to be teaching until 9AM, I have half an hour until I even think about getting ready. With semen still sticking to my pubic strands, I figure I can skip my usual first morning activity. And what else do you do at 7:20-- real time? FACEBOOK, of course.

So I check a discussion about my trip to the South with Sid. I don't remember the details. Something about how I think Southerners are cool. A lot of people join this discussion. A few insults fly. Pretty soon we'll get to the NAZI stage. You know, Godwin's law? Everything gets to the Nazi stage.

Not that all Nazi references are irrelevant here. Sid and I did shake hands with the South Carolina representative of the National Socialist Party. But I don't think I wrote about that, so it won't be on Facebook... yet.

Among the disussionites is a pal from Beloit. A guy I reconnected with after 30 years of no contact. Out of the blue the way things happen on Facebook.

Yo Mykel, remember me? Add me to your friends list.

Flash ahead: I'm on my way back from work. The subway seat next to me empty... on both sides. It must be the smell of piss. I've got stuff to do tonight. Fix the Drink Club/Eat Club website. Finish the blog from the Tennessee trip. Sell the family jewels on eBay. Tons of shit. Not a second of free time. Come right home and... check in with Facebook.

My former college pal has banned me. I didn't jump to his defense. I let him twist in the wind. Now he's mad.

I was gone! Working. 12 hours away from the computer and "I abandon a friend of 30 years." Do I need to stay epoxied to the keyboard to keep my friends? How 'bout some time to respond? Time, huh?

Flash far back: It's 1969, Madison Wisconsin. I come here for the riots, a few weeks every year. I've snorted enough crystal meth, for the ride and the weekend. I'm so wired I can feel each individual nerve. I follow them, one by one from the parietal to the spinal chord, to the tips of my fingers or my penis. They're on. Full volume. My brain and body are racing.

Bus door opens. POW, I'm out of the bus. Fist in air. Power to whoever's asking for it. My army helmet on. Shouting at the cops standing rather innocently on the sidelines.

You're vegetable! I yell at them. Broccoli, potatoes, zucchini! (Zucchini?)

Amazingly enough, they don't give me the head-smashing I deserve. Instead, they stand patiently, teeth gritted, as I abuse them some more.

Methedrine is wonderful. It lets you go more than full tilt. Move at the speed of light. Stand in front of a moving train and stop it with one hand. Fly. Stand in front of a line of armed cops and call them vegetables. Anything. I'm God.

They give speed to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. They too can do anything. Face roadside bombers. Torture them. Kill kids. They're God!

Flashback to April 2009: Sid and I are in Tullahoma Tennessee. It's somewhere in the middle of our Southern tour. Sid is on budget freeze. He's just been canned from his business research job. He's fighting an unemployment claim with this boss. Newly impoverished, he faces his first trip to The South.

Our host here, a smooth-faced boyish young man named Seth, has the day planned out for us. We've just arrived, and after a leisurely Mexican dinner, we go to the creek to look at the beavers.

That's it. Just some chewed down trees and some eyes reflected in our flashlights. We don't do anything else. Just look. Once or twice there's the sound of water. A splash. That's it. Just Sid, Seth, me and the beavers. What a bore! I could be... what? On Facebook? Complaining about Hitler? Losing a friend? No no no. There is NOTHING I could be doing more important that just hanging out here watching beavers.

This is Tullahoma and after watching beavers, we go to sleep and get up the next day... and shoot guns.

Seth takes us to his parents' house. Mom's gonna make dinner for us. Barbecue, cornbread, grits, everything. But we have a whole day. Sid's never shot a gun before. I've done it many times, and love it. Seth also has a shotgun. I've never shot a shotgun before.

Seth and I trudge through the weeds on the other side of the country road he lives on. Together, we lift up an old truckhood to use as the backdrop for our bullets to come. We lug the hood to the front yard of Seth's parents' ramshackle house.

"Dad keeps building," he tells us. "Always a new room, a new porch. It just keeps growing. Takes its time. We got no deadline."

Seth peels some florescent targets from a sticky sheet and pastes them on a piece of wood in front of the truck hood.

Then, he goes through gun safety procedure, like a boy scout leader.

Aside: In my experience, it's gun owners, collectors and good ole' boys who are most careful about guns. Illegal pistol packers in the North are the ones that don't have a clue. I bet if you check accidental gun death stats, you'll find a much higher percentage where guns are tough to get. Where everyone has one-- or two, they know how to handle them. End of Aside.

Sid prefers the single action rifle. Put in a bullet, aim, and fire. Seth takes the semi-automatic. I want the shotgun.

Seth and I stand back as Sid takes his first shot. He loads the bullet and points the front of the gun in the general direction of the target....and the country road.

"Here comes a car," says Sid, taking aim. "Let's get 'em!"

"No!" shouts Seth. "That's my grandfather!"

As directed during the safety instructions, we raise the gun barrels and stand AT EASE. The car passes and Seth waves hello. It really is his grandfather.

Then we watch as Sid again fixes the front of the gun toward the targets. BLAM! There's no sound of a bullet hitting anything. BLAM! Again, nothing. Not even the truck hood. Where did the bullets go?

I worry about depleting the local fauna.

Seth sets a water jug in front of the targets.

"Here's something bigger," he says. "Just take your time, and make the little ball look like it's resting in the little notch on the top of the barrel."

We move back as Sid takes aim.

BLAM!

Somewhere on the other side of the road, a tree rattles a bit.

Sid shakes his head in frustration.

"I'll never get this," he says.

Suddenly, his eyes brighten and he takes a deep breath.

"My old boss," he says, taking aim.

BLAM! The top of the water jug. Shot clean off. A perfect hit. Relieved, we all shoot... for hours.

We kill targets, water jugs, clay pigeons, but not time. We're USING time, not killing it. Enjoying the moments. Sometime, Mom will call us for dinner and we'll go inside. Until then, we shoot.

At dinner. Mom and Dad say a little prayer and we eat. Great hosts, except mom is a little upset. We can see it in her eyes, and her actions. Seth will be leaving. The last of her sons to do so. He's moving to San Francisco, leaving Tullahoma.

"There's nothing to do here," says Seth.

The point: About 10 years ago, James Gleick wrote a book called, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. In that book, he talked about how things were going faster. Every day brought a modern "convenience," that sped up the pace of living. What you used to expect in a week, you now expect in a day. In 2009, it's an hour.

Things go so fast that I grease up a dildo and by the time it finds it's way through my rectal arch d'triumph, I'm ten years older. Last millennium is the last decade already. Jee-zuz fuckin' Methuselah.

Speed kills. Yeah, it kills time. Contrary to the image of the multi-tasking, databasing, texting, super-efficient time savers. Speed destroys time. It makes it gone... usually in something as worthless as Facebook.

Watching beavers or spending hours shooting an old truck hood. That saves time. And it saves it in the best possible way. It's probably illegal to say KILL YOUR BOSS, so I won't. But I will say throw away your watch. Don't worry about being late. There is no late. We all end up in the same place. Maybe it's better to take our time getting there.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Just to let you know dept: My college pal reconsidered and unbanned me. He even apologized for his rash action. Of course, that's not the point. This isn't about him. It's about speed. Everybody's rash actions. There's no time for any other kind.

--> Let's make NOT NICENESS illegal dept: I almost sent $10 to People for the American Way. They're a cool liberal group that wants socialized healthcare and opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, on their homepage is rousing support for HATE CRIMES legislation.
    THOUGHT CRIMES legislation is more like it. If I hit you and keep quiet, I get 90 days in jail. If I hit you and yell Take that whitey! I get years.
    Makes me embarrassed to be a liberal. When are these guys gonna realize you cannot OUTLAW hate?

-->Maybe Sid will remember dept: Sid Yiddish proofreads and edits my columns before I send them off to the MRR tribal chieftains. I don't remember if I wrote this one, sent to me on MySpace. He says I didn't use it yet so:

   Q. How many green anarchists does it take to change a lightbulb?
    A. None-because a lightbulb cannot be changed, it must be smashed!

-->Obama does another thing right dept: The President discontinued an annual Religious Right-focused prayer service held during the previous eight years at the White House.
    Though Obama has indicated that he will sign a proclamation recognizing the National Day of Prayer, no special White House prayer service will be held. This stands in contrast to G. W. Bush. He invited James and Shirley Dobson and other Religious Right leaders to the White House for an annual government-sponsored prayer service.

-->Obama does the wrong thing dept: American bombers killed 95 children in Afghanistan, and when U.S. puppet leader Hamid Karzai demanded an end to the bombing, Obama's National Security Advisor told him: "We can’t fight with one hand tied behind our back."
    I say maybe you should keep the hand tied, and quit fighting.
    Anyway, Obama fired the commanding general in Afghanistan, and replaced him with Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal. A guy the brilliant blogger, Jacob Freeze, called the Richard B. Cheney of the US Army!
    According to Freeze: McChrystal got yanked out of the shadows when 34 of his boys were disciplined for torturing detainees. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.
    Obama, pull out. You need to learn a thing or two from history. Very recent history.

-->There ain't nothin' like a Dane dept: According to a report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the world's happiest countries are Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands. Outside Europe, New Zealand and Canada land at numbers 8 and 6, respectively. The United States did not crack the top 10. Switzerland placed seventh and Belgium placed tenth.
    The report looked at subjective well-being, defined as life satisfaction. Did people feel like their lives were dominated by positive experiences and feelings, or negative ones?

-->Thanks and a tip of the hat to Rodrigo Cipriano in Corpus Christi, who sent me his low budget murder DVD, VIOLENT STORY. Yeah!
    I haven't watched the whole thing yet. (It takes me a week to watch a DVD.) I'm up to the part with the duct-tape and the funnel. Yeah!
    More DVDs please!! Send them REAL MAIL to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince St. Station, NYC 10012

-->Also thanks to Superbuick, one of my new favorite bands. They invited me to a great show at Otto's Shrunken Head, where they had to endure waiting through too many 1970s bands doing blues covers. Yuck! And an even more retro band, played the Charleston. How'd you like to follow THAT at 1AM?

-->And a third thanks to NOFX and the guys at FAT WRECKCHORDS for sending me the NO FX PASSPORT video. My experiences exactly! Spinal Tap wasn't weird enough!! The truth is much further out there. (Surrounded by cops in an empty field with barbed wire anyone?) The only thing was that on the Russian tour, I expected to see a cover of How Much Punk Rock Do You Hear in Russia? But it didn't happen.

-->Corrections dept: I just reread the column where I talk about Noah Levine, who advocates Buddhist recovery for punk rockers. I said that his father was a mediator, and he became one too. Sorry. My lysdexia. His father was a meditater. And he became one too. Auuummmmmmmmmmmmm!

-end-

visit Mykel's homepage here:

Mykel's MRR Column for #314, (July, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board


He's a rebel and he'll never be any good. He's a rebel and he'll never be understood. Just because he doesn't do what everybody else does. That's no reason why I can't give him all my love." --The Crystals

“Yessirreebob,” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “I don't hate no one. But when that colored guy comes in here saying he lives in Mississippi. I tell him. Listen boy, I don't hate no one. But you'd better get your ass out of Mississippi or you're gonna end up dangling from a tree.”

Sid and I are at THE REBEL SHOP, on the Square in Laurens, South Carolina. We're here to meet a real Klansman... something that neither of us have done before.

We stand talking to Mr. Howard, who my cousin, a Laurens resident, has told me is the Grand Dragon of the regional Klan. We can go to his shop if we want, she said, but she, sure as a shofar, isn't going to set foot in that place.

Mr. Howard looks at me. “You know how old I am?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“I'm so old that when God said let there be light,” he answers, “I pulled the string... And you know how old my wife is?”

I shake my head again.

“She's older than dirt!” he continues and laughs out loud.

On the chair next to Mr. Howard, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is a younger-looking guy. Mid-forties, I'd guess. Bald with a short-trimmed gray fringe.

“This is Bob,” says Mr. Howard, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “He's the South Carolina representative of the National Socialist Party.”

We shake hands.

“You must've guessed we're not from around here,” I say to Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Where ya'll from?” he asks.

I nod to Sid. “He's from Chicago,” I say.

“Chicago?” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “We have lots of members in Chicago. Surprising from up North.”

Sid and Mr. Howard shake hand.

“And where you from?” he asks me.

“Imagine the most horrible place you can think of,” I say. “Where would you least like to live in the world?”

“Ah,” he says, “you're from New York City.”

I nod.

He extends his hand, “pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah,” I say, “we're Yankees. But we believe in free speech and we're glad you're fighting to stay open. Keep up the fight. Don't let 'em close you down.”

“Oh,” he says, “they ain't gonna close me down. I'm gonna close for a couple weeks so I can concentrate on my law suits. SUE--eee! SUE-eee! SUE-eee! It's like hog calling. I'm suin' my lawyers. But once I got that taken care of I'll be back.”

“Well, good luck,” I say. “Don't let 'em get you down.”

“Don't worry,” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “When you get back up North you tell 'em I shut down cause they won't let me kill no niggers no more.”

“I'll tell 'em that,” I say. “I'll spread the word.”

Sid (whose real name he won't let me use, but is something like CHARLES BORKAWITZ) and I make our purchases. I buy a t-shirt with a confederate flag on the front. On the back it says. KEEP THE REBEL SPIRIT. Sid buys one that has a doctored picture of the moon landing. The astronaut is planting a Confederate flag instead of an American one. The caption: SOUTH SIDE OF THE MOON.

“Should I pay with a credit card?” Sid whispers to me.

“No fuckin' way!” I say. “Charles Borkawitz at the Rebel Shop? Are you kidding?”

He pays cash.

On the way out, Sid picks up a couple of Klan membership applications. On the bottom, in fine print, is a note about how anti-violence the group is. It doesn't matter. Neither of us could join. It requires a statement that we're Pure members of the white race, of non-Jewish ancestry.

Too bad. I could use some extra sheets.

I start this column in the Knoxville TN airport, Continental Terminal. I'm on my way back to New York after a 10 day tour of Tennessee, with side trips to Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina. I've been traveling with my pal, eccentric throat singer/poet Sid Yiddish. We've been doing some readings, performances and a whole lot we've never done before... like shooting a shotgun... or meeting a Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

In a way, I hate to start this column with that meeting. It just reinforces the clichés about The South. I don't want to do that.

I LOVE THE SOUTH. It's got America's best food, friendliest people, and some of the most beautiful countryside. Easy Rider, Deliverance and GW Bush (a transplanted northerner) have given it a bad rep.

It's better than that. This is Sid's first visit. His first grits, first biscuits nd gravy, first pork barbecue. First time shooting a gun too! I love traveling with him. It's like watching a toddler discover his own penis.

"WOW! LOOK AT THAT!" he thinks. "It does that! And it's so much fun!"

“Wow, look at that!” says Sid. “It's a turkey. Right there by the side of the road. And up there. There's a hawk! I bet it found something dead in the woods.”

“Er, Sid,” I say. “Hawks don't eat dead things. They eat live things, like mice and squirrels. Buzzards eat dead things.”

“What about vultures?” he asks. “Don't vultures eat dead things?”

“Buzzards are vultures,” I tell him.

Sid's wants to get stuff with a confederate flag on it. Especially a bandanna. They're completely taboo in Chicago. You're even less likely to find one there than you are to find decent Mexican food in New York. And that's a pretty slim chance.

Me? I want to hit the garage sales, buy stuff to sell on Amazon and eBay to help pay for the trip. My Knoxville pal Chad is driving us around the city. Sid, who can smell these things, spies a lawnfull of junk.

It's our first garage sale. Toy pick-up trucks and plastic super-water pistols litter the grass. The seller is young. In his 30's, needing a shave but not a haircut. He's alone in the midst of the rubble. No sign of wife or progeny, although most of the stuff for sale is kids' toys.

There's an air of dumbitude around him. It's hard to say why... His individual features are quite handsome. But there's something in the way he moves. A loping gate and slightly off speech. The -DY not quite on the heels of the HOW.

Besides the toys, there are a few piles of clothes. On one of the piles, a cardboard sign says 25¢. Nothing interesting in that pile.
I look further and find a shirt with a confederate flag on the front and a half naked guy with a 10 gallon hat on the back. The words on the shirt say SAVE A HORSE RIDE A COWBOY. (I later learn these are words to a popular song, but I'm too far from popular culture to know it at the time.)

Tomorrow, Sid has us booked us into a homo café in Nashville. This shirt is the gayest thing I've seen in ages. I gotta wear it to the show. I look for the owner.

Sid has taken him to a corner of the yard. Their backs are turned to me. It reminds me of the kind of huddle adolescents enter when they talk about a girl... and she's there. Or maybe a patient and a pharmacist discussing Viagra.

When the huddle breaks, I show the shirt to the guy. "How much is this?" I ask.

He scratches his head.

"All the clothes are the same price," he says.

"I saw a sign over there that says twenty-five cents," I say. "Can I give you a quarter?"

"Nope," he says, confirming my suspicions about his intelligence.

"It's gonna cost you twenty-five cents."

Sid doesn't buy anything. In the car leaving the sale, I ask him what he and the sale-runner were talking about so privately.

"I told him I wanted to buy something with a confederate flag on it," says Sid. "I asked him if he had any bandannas or shirts. He didn't know what I was talking about."

Chad laughs.

"Of course he didn't," he says. "Nobody knows confederate flags here... 'cept maybe old Civil War buffs. Those aren't confederate flags. Those are rebel flags. People down here aren't confederates. They're rebels..."

Chad's voice changes, becoming a bit more southernly.

I hate the government. I'm a rebel. I don't like taxes or the government tellin' me what to do with my life. I'm a rebel. I don't hate niggers because of the color of their skin. I hate niggers because they're lazy. I'm a rebel.

His voice returns to normal. "That's how people think around here. If you live here, you understand it."

Yowsah! Suddenly, I get it. In a place like America where advertisers tell people express your individuality by buying our product. Where everyone except me is computing on an Apple notebook, each thinking they are different and I'm the conformist. Where Rush Limbaugh, richer and more powerful than any Washington bureaucrat, still talks about how he's the outcast. In America, we ALL think of ourselves as rebels.

In a culture like Japan, people think of themselves as like their neighbors. They struggle to fit in. Be like everybody else. Even if they're different, they view themselves as the same. In America, even if we're just like everybody else we see ourselves as different.

And there's more.

Not only are we different from what we see as 'everybody else.' Most of us are against what we see as everybody else. We're rebels. Straight edgers, conservatives, punks, vegetarians, all think they're rebels. They all see the rest of society as mainstream and they have to fight it.

There's still more. Some of us live to shock and offend that mainstream. Rush Limbaugh says he hopes Obama's economics fail. He wants shocks the liberals he thinks are running things. Boston straight-edgers used to run around knocking drinks out of people's hands. That'll show 'em. GG Allin shat on stage. See those normal people run!

There's a name for actions that deliberately offend the mainstream. It's punk rock. Rush Limbagh, Boston straight-edgers and GG Allin are punk rock. That Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has to close his store because of lawsuits. But that's not the way he wants us to tell it to our pals up North.

"Tell 'em I shut down cause they won't let me kill no niggers no more," he says.

You can't get more punk rock than that.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Finally, what the world needs dept! Most of the masturbatory universe knows that the biggest tragedy of het porn is that the guys are as ugly as a Chase bank. I love Ron Jeremy, but I sure as a limpie wouldn't want to fuck him.
Lately, I found some websites that I'm just rubbing raw to. Great-looking guys as well as girls. Check out http://tinyurl.com/hubbahubbayowsah for starters. Then go on from there!

-->I'll shit in the aisles dept: Ryanair, the British discount airline has started charging to use the restrooms. This is a new low in Airline hoodwinks. What's next FREE airfare, but they charge you to sit down? Oh yeah, if you want actual wings on your plane, there's a $50 surcharge.

-->You can't even take the kids to a fuckin' movie these days dept: Check out the ultra-Disneyfied costumes in the new Hannah Montana movie. You'll see the latest disgusting move toward Christian-friendly teen fashions.
Forget Britney-era bling 'n' bras or clingy American Apparel spandex. 16-year-old "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus wasn't even allowed to wear leggings while the cameras were rolling. Spaghetti straps were out, as were bare bellies, micro minis, one-shouldered tanks and anything resembling a camisole.
Now, the last reason ever to see a Disney movie has disappeared.

-->War against fantasy dept: Amazon and eBay have banned the sale of Rapelay, a rape simulation video game made by Japan-based company Illusion. Now, New York City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, is urging other websites to do the same.
"It’s easy to see why people are outraged," said Matt Bachl, a TV commentator. "Aside from the gang rape aspect of the game, the goal is to make women sex slaves without getting them pregnant. If a player fails, he must force the woman to have an abortion or risk being thrown under a train and killed."
How long is it gonna take people to realize that laws cannot stop fantasies? If you can't play the video game, I guess you just have to go out and do the real thing.

-->A new political hero? dept: The Nebraska Court of Appeals has dismissed former State Senator Ernie Chamber's lawsuit against God.
Chambers, an atheist, brought the lawsuit in 2007. He asked for a permanent injunction to stop, "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilietial plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, and the like."
First, a district court threw out the case. They said God could not be served legal notice, so the suit was not valid.
In his appeal, Chambers argued that since God is all-knowing, he would have received notice without being formally served.
The appeals court had a different reason for rejecting the case. They said that the court cannot decide "abstract questions or hypothetical or fictitious issues."
Does that mean they think God is hypothetical or fictitious? I hope so.

-->You talkin' to me, God? dept: The Arkansas state legislature failed to pass a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons in church. Rep. Beverly Pyle, one of the bill's sponsors said the proposal was about church-state separation. Churches should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to allow firearms in their buildings, she said, not the state.

-->Did you fail special ed? dept: So this guy finds me on Facebook. He's not someone I especially liked, but I'm easy. Forgive and forget. Right?
How does he ask to be friends?
Hey it's me? Remember me? I'm the one who fucked that girl you liked-- on your bed in New York-- while you were away in Mongolia. Will you be my friend?
Yea right.
Just when I think people can't get any dumber... somebody comes along and proves me wrong.

-end-

Click here to go to Mykel's homepage

Mykel's MRR Column for #313, (June, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 313, June 2009
by Mykel Board

A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says "You've been brought here for drinking." The drunk says "Okay, let's get started.” --Henny Youngman.,

There is a pounding inside my head. ThaBOOM. ThaBOOM. ThaBOOM. It starts somewhere on top, at the crown and slowly creeps behind my eyes, forcing them open. My eyes are perfectly happy the way they are. Closed. Making it beautifully dark. Outside, there is light. Who wants light? What the fuck am I going to do with light?? Light hurts.

Now, I feel a sticky stream of wetness start at the corner of my mouth and dribble toward my ear.

There's something in my hand. My right hand. Soft, squishy, like a limp Vienna Sausage. I raise that hand to bring it in for closer inspection. It's attached. It's my dick. I musta fallen asleep while jerking off. I wonder if I made a mess. Whose bed is this anyway?

I roll slightly to the right.

There's a sharp pain in my ribs. Has a tormentor prodded a Christ-like wound into my side, opening up a huge gash? Did Jesus awaken with his dick in his hand?

I touch the source of pain. It's a book. A hardback, poking me in the ribs. I open my eyes and squint at it: Dharma Punx, by Noah Levine. Now it's coming back to me.

Flashback: “Mykel,” says Jennifer, “if you really want to get on people's cases, you should write about Noah Levine. He's really popular. He's a punk Buddhist.”

“That's not so bad,” I say. “It's better than being a punk Christian. But Levine doesn't sound like a Buddhist name. Did he change it from Ramalevinedass or something?”

“You don't get it, Mykel,” says Jennifer. “He's in recovery. He's straight-edge. No booze or drugs or sex.”

“But he's recovering from that,” I say.

“No,” says she. “That IS the recovery.”

“Huh?” says I. “Giving up booze, sex and drugs is recovery? From what?”

“Addictions, Mykel,” says she. “He's recovering from addictions.”

What's wrong with addictions? Your body needs things and without them, it acts funny. That's addiction.

Water is an addiction. If you don't have it, your body acts funny. It dies. How come you don't see Water Anonymous groups spring up like penises at a strip bar? Why isn't anyone in recovery from water addiction? How 'bout oxygen?

I admit that oxygen has control over my life and I am helpless to do anything about it. I give myself up to a higher power.

Why isn't there O.A.?

The answer's easy.

Water and oxygen are socially acceptable addictions. These addictions are universal. We don't see them as addictions any more than mosquitoes see biting people as an addiction.

Drugs? Booze? Sex? These are universal. Nearly every culture in the world has them-- usually as religious sacraments. The Catholics and Jews have wine in a religious ritual. Muslims don't drink, but they have tobacco. And they screw the hell out of multiple wives. Only those wacky Mormons... and punk Buddhists... want to deny the natural.

In American culture, addiction to booze, sex or drugs is not socially acceptable. Why? Those things actually make your body feel good. There-in lies the taboo-- and the addiction. For these things, we need recovery.

I didn't get very far in the Levine book. I only read up to how he had a fucked up childhood, and that got him into punk. His father was a meditater. His mother was a hippie. Though Levine is “still a punk,” he went from addiction to becoming a meditater.

Sounds like everybody else who resents Dad as a kid and then turns into him. Dad was an insurance agent. I became a punk. Now, I work for AIG.

I'm not being fair, of course. I should finish the book before I rip it apart. But I've got a deadline... and I've got other fish to fry.

So this column isn't about that book, though it might be. It is about YOU, and your so self-righteous ideas.

I used to laugh when Donny the Punk said Punk is thinking for yourself. Come on! Punk is more conformist than Mormonism. You've got your uniform. Your set of beliefs (love and its pain=emo, Race and Nation = Oi, anarchy = crust, liberal bounce = poppunk, straight edge = non-crusty hardcore).

Despite these differences, and because of the conformism, a thread runs through all these styles of punk. They are outsider.--not mainstream. The music is not what your grandparents listen to, though it may be what your parents grew out of.

Lateral flash: Razorcake had an interview with VITAMIN X. Boiling it down, the band said. “We're straight edge, but don't care if you are or not...”

That's better than preaching, but they're Dutch! Dutch people smoke hash in coffeeshops. Dutch people can shop for whores on the street. Straight-edge makes sense there. It is NOT mainstream.

In America, it's not like that. In America, you have to show your I.D. to get into a bar. They arrest you for pissing on the street. You can go to jail for smoking hashish. That means drinking, smoking hash and pissing on the street are things BADGUYS do. PUNKS ARE BADGUYS.

For Americans, it's Nancy Reagan's JUST SAY NO. It's having the highest drinking age in the world. It's the censored (read non-sexual) film versions of every movie shown in our theaters. America's message is SEX, DRUGS, BOOZE = BAD! If you partake, you're a badguy... or badgal. PUNKS ARE BADGUYS! Get it?

Let's get this straight... er... correct. Drugs are punk. Drinking is punk. Sex is punk. More than that, if you neither drink, nor take drugs, nor fuck. You are NOT punk.

If you won't let me put my head between your legs, I'll be sad, but I'll get over it. If you won't let ANYONE put their head between you legs. YOU ARE NOT PUNK. Especially, if you're American.

If you won't buy me a drink, I won't die. But if you NEVER DRINK. YOU ARE NOT PUNK. Get it?

LAST MINUTE NOTE: I can read your mind. You're thinking that I'm a totalitarian. Somehow, I'm imposing my will on you. Forcing you to do what you think is wrong. Who am I to say what is punk and what isn't?

Jeezus fuckin' Siddhartha. I have no control. I can't force you to do anything. I can only give my opinion. Tell you what I think. Your TV set has more control over you than I do. You have to think for yourself. If you can't do that, you probably ARE a punk.


ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Of course it was, dept: Yeah, last month's column was my usual April Fools' prank. I don't think it fooled many people. Chomsky may be a little pissed at me because I called him a holocaust revisionist. If I didn't apologize, I do that now. I was fed misinformation. In reality, he supports (as I do) the right of revisionists to speak their minds and present their cases. This does not mean he agrees with them.
  As far as I know, Jello Biafra is still a friend. I've never met Oprah Winfrey, so she has never sexually molested me.
  All the endnotes last month, however, were true.

--> Still Lovin' Obama dept: This is from an email friend in The Czech Republic: Wondering how you are doing in your part of the world. Last Tuesday, I was at the Globe where they were showing the U.S. election returns. I had only planned to stay a few hours, but there were over three hundred people there and lots of people I had not seen in a long time. I was at a table with someone from Scotland and a woman from India, people from all over the world not just the U.S.A. I thought it would go late into the next day, but at 5 in the morning McCain conceded. It was the reality that Obama actually won. People celebrated out into the streets, all nationalities. Quite an international event. People crying and laughing. I had a little cry as well, but went off to drink some more.

-->Curious Barack dept: Jim Hayes sent me a report about a Marietta Georgia bar that sold 'Curious George' t-shirts with Obama's face in them. Naturally, local lefties wanted them banned. So did the folks from the original Curious George. Those guys are touchy... just ask George Tabb!
  Mike Norman, the bar owner, responded by posting outside his bar: G.I.'s dying in Iraq. Thousands killed in quake. Gas $4.00. and a tee shirt makes the news. Shame. Shame!
  I say YEAH MIKE!

-->I can come out Jew... a little dept: While walking down Third Avenue, I see this protest right in front of some boring-looking office building.
  “What's here to protest?” I ask. “Are you guys against neckties and large chests?”
  “It's the World Zionist Headquarters,” says an attractive girl showing me her protest sign.
  Stop The Slaughter in Gaza, it says.
  “You guys don't look Arab,” I say. “Not that there's anything wrong with that.”
  “We're Jews!” says the girl, and she gives me a leaflet that says she's with Jews Say No, an anti-Zionist Jewish group. You can find them at their website: jewssayno.wordpress.com/
  “Yahoo!” Says I. “It's about time.”
  One caveat though. Just because we hate Israeli policy, and the government, doesn't mean we should hate the people. I have some fine Israeli friends, as well as Muslim friends. Don't let a country's politics put you off its people. Remember George W? And Adolf H?

-->Sometimes it pays to clean up dept: First time gettin' the nook in awhile. I gotta clean up the apartment, wash the dishes, hide the scat porn. Last time I did this, moving around 30 year old dust bunnies gave me awful bronchitis. This time, I wear a mask.
  Fuck! I just knocked into a stack of CDs people sent me over the last half a dozen years. I never listened to them, and now I have to clean them up. Aw well, might as well check out a few.
  Holy shit! Two great ones. I can't believe what I was missing.
  1. Alien Dead demo CD CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST! Hooeeey. Horrorcore like you've always wanted it. The music and vocals are so frantic you'll shit. I don't know what else they've got out, but you should find it and get it! Ask 'em at www.myspace.com/aliendead.
  2. PURE COUNTRY GOLD ain't what it sounds like. It actually sounds like lo-fi blues, manicked out, and played by the Reatards. The name of the band is PURE COUNTRY GOLD. Contact 'em at myspace.com/purecountrygold. I did.

-->(Il)legalize this? dept: The Mt. Shasta Brewing company is located in the tiny town of Weed, California. To promote their beer, the company made bottle caps with the logo TRY LEGAL WEED.
  In the middle of last year, The U.S. Treasury Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (what a combination!) said NO!
    They threatened the tiny company with fines and even closing them down. But with the help of the local (Republican) Congressman, they fought the Treasury Department AND the FDA... and won!!! Maybe it was because of the change of administration. Waddaya think?

-->Beastly and The Beast dept: The Discovery Channel is suing Amazon over its Kindle e-book. The charge? Patent infringement. TDC claims they invented the concept of encrypting a book for digital internet distribution.
  Do I support Amazon because they sell my books (barely)? Or do I support TDC because they're “the little guy” in this deal. It's like Tony Alamo and kiddie porn. I hate the victim, but I hate the law more.
  Several years ago, Amazon tried to patent one click checkout claiming they had a right to make every other website require two clicks to pay for goods. Originally, they got the patent. Later, I think, it was withdrawn.
  Now they're getting a taste of their own Prozac. But, right is right, and ideas should not be patentable. Nothing should be. So good luck Amazon. This one, I hope you win.
  Another irony: Amazon runs Discovery’s online store for them. Only in America can one company sue another, and keep them as a business partner. Yowsah.

-->Further in the hate the law more dept: The Supreme Court is going to hear a case where some right wing PAC made an anti-Hillary movie. They showed it on television while Hilary was running for president. The movie claimed, among other things, that Hilary was the foremost American spokesperson for European-style Socialism. If only it were true! I would have voted for her. In Europe, they have free health care and 6 weeks vacation. We wouldn't want that here, would we?
  Truth is not the point.
  The Hilary-ites said the movie was a violation of the campaign finance rules. The backers of the movie should disclose who they are and how much they contributed.
  The movie-makers said it wasn't a campaign, but was a movie. Free speech and all that. Besides, Michael Moore, a liberal, had a movie that said a lot about GWB. Was that a campaign ad?
  I go with the movie makers. It IS a matter of free speech. If the anti-Clintonites win this case, you bet your HOPE poster that the Democrats are gonna be making that film about Jeb Bush, or whoever... accusing them of... I donno. We'll just have to wait four years and see.

-end-

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