Mykel's MRR Column for #320, (January, 2010)

If you want to read more about Mykel's adventures in Albania, The US South-- or life in General-- check out Mykel's Diary For a look at the weird, the scary and the funny in real life, check out Mykel's Article's and Propositions.


You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 319, December 2009
by Mykel Board

If you want to make God laugh,tell him your plans. --Junot Diaz

Albanians do not eat. I don't understand it yet, but I've been in this country for two weeks now. Maybe I'll have it figured out by the time I leave. 

Yeah Albania. Country of Mother Theresa and John Belushi. A land where the people are not quite like either one of those. 

I write this part of the column sitting in Saranda, in a $20 a night hotel. It's 6AM. I went to bed at eight last night with a headache like I've never had before. A grinding split from my nose to the back of my neck. Three lines. One down the middle of my head. One on each side, where a part would be, if had I enough hair to part. It was like a double migraine. So severe I wanted to puke. I would've if I'd eaten anything. 

Every town in this country has dozens of outdoor cafés. In each of them, tables full of men (mostly men), drink coffee from tiny cups. In the evening, they drink beer or raki-- a kind of grape vodka. They don't eat. There are restaurants, pizza parlors and places with FAST FOOD signs on them, in English. No one eats in them. They just drink coffee.

It's weird, but only one of the many mysteries of this country, the least visited place in Europe. But this column will not be a mystery, it will be a tale. A true tale, written fittingly in the month of Halloween.

The tale starts in Vlora, a city about 100 miles up the coast from here. I wanted to come here directly from Vlora, but by the time I woke up, all the buses to Saranda had left. My only choice was to go to Himara, about half-way. That bus doesn't leave from the regular bus station, but one a bit out of town. I can get there by taxi. No problem. 

(My guidebook lists S'ka problem! as Albanian for “No problem.” It also has this note: Often turns out to mean there is a problem.)

The bus leaves at 1PM. It's now 9 o'clock.

“Is there anything I can do at the bus station for some hours?” I ask the hotel concierge.

She nods. “There is nothing there,” she says.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: Albanians nod when they mean no, and shake their heads to mean yes.)

The concierge makes a plan for me: take a walk, return to the hotel and eat lunch in the hotel restaurant at 11. Then, after lunch, take a taxi to the bus terminal. I'll be there in plenty of time.

Maybe that's why I don't see people eat. They have lunch at 11AM. Maybe dinner at 4 o'clock. Who expects people to be eating at those times?

Nope, that's not it either.

I walk along the beach for a little bit and sit to watch a bulldozer push the plastic garbage around. I go to the post office and mail some postcards.

At 11, I return to the hotel and go to the restaurant. It's empty, though the door is open. A heavy-set woman mops the floor.

Une dua te ha ditchka. (I want to eat something.) I say. She tsks once and motions for me to sit down. I'm the only one in the place.

I ask for the menu. She brings it to me and stands over me while I decide what to eat. It's my first meal of the day. The menu has beefsteak, fish a la hoity toidy, pizza, pasta. Not exactly breakfast. I order a salad and a mineral water.

“Vetem salata?” (Only a salad?) asks the waitress, clearly meaning You disturbed me, made me open the kitchen and neglect my cleaning duties for a salad? What's wrong with you?

“Vetem salata.” I reply.

It turns out that the salad is enough. It's weird, but on this trip I have less of an appetite than I do in New York. I drink more beer here, but eat a lot less. I wonder if I'm going to lose weight.

My stomach is strange, as it always is when traveling. It suddenly clenches, in extreme pain. A rush to the bathroom cleans me out, and I'm good for the rest of the day. After my salad, come the clenches.

I have a long bus trip ahead. So after I pay the bill, I'll clean myself out, and be ready for the ride to Himara.

I stand to signal that I'm finished. The waitress comes to me, collects my money and through the open restaurant door walks a burly guy wearing a black and white knit sweater. He walks right up to me.

“Taxi bussi Himara,” he says grabbing my bags. “We go.”

So, me, my stomachache and I are off to the bus station. It's just a space on the side of a street out of town. It's barely big enough for one bus. I get in the only bus there.

The driver takes my backpack out of the bus and puts it someplace I can't see. I'm the only passenger, but not for long. People arrive about 15 minutes before the scheduled leaving time. Lots of people.

One of the first is an older guy. About my height, he wears a typical Albanian tan straw hat. He has a worn-but-clean tweed jacket, and black slacks. His eyes are deep-set, and half closed, like they've seen too much. He sits in an empty seat, the one behind mine.

He taps me on the shoulder and I turn to face him. His eyes are watery-- not sad watery-- but sick watery. One of them doesn't look exactly in the same direction as the other. He says something to me in Albanian.

“Une nuk flac sqip,” I say. (I don't speak Albanian.)

He shrugs, then motions for me to come and sit next to him. I do. It's not long before I begin to fear that is a mistake.

The bus leaves about a half hour past schedule.

With very few words, THE GUY speaks to me: some Italian, some Greek, some Albanian... but mostly sign language... like he's done it hundreds of times before.

He asks me where I'm from: New York.

Where I'm going: Himara.

Where I'm staying in Himara. (He puts his hands together and tilts his head on them. Then closes his eyes meaning “place you sleep.”) I don't know, I shrug.

You (he points to me). Sleep (the sleeping gesture again.) My place. He points to himself, makes a little house-like triangle with his fingers, and then the sleeping gesture again.

I know. I know. I must be crazy to say yes. But I'm sick of hotels, and Albania is supposed to be safe and small-town people are always friendlier than city people, right? I shake my head in agreement.

There's not much more to say as we ride along. Once he taps me on the shoulder and makes a straight ahead motion, then up and down, as if he's explaining the torturous mountain road ahead.

I say koptoj (I understand). But maybe I don't.

During the next hour or so, I look at him every once in awhile. I'm trying for human contact. A smile or something. There is nothing. He looks straight ahead, eyes half closed as in worry, or very serious thought. Sometimes he looks at his knees. His forehead furls. I begin to feel uneasy.

After about two hours of silence, the bus pulls into the Albanian equivalent of a highway rest-stop.

It's a small mountain restaurant called: BEGO

The bus empties. Most everybody goes inside to eat. A few have a smoke first, then join those of us inside. THE GUY stays outside. He walks around. He does not smoke. He just walks, looking at the ground most of the time. Sometimes he does something with his hands, but I can't see what it is.

I eat a simple rice dish and have some water. As I finish, THE GUY walks in and sits at my table.

Juu doni te ha ditchka? (“You want to eat something?”) I ask.

He smiles weakly, shrugs and leaves again. A few minutes later, I leave, take some pictures of the restaurant, then get back in the bus. THE GUY looks at me without smiling and pats the seat next to him.

We take off, going up and down mountainsides, hairpin turns. The way buses in the mountains always do.

I look at THE GUY and smile. He doesn't smile. He looks at his hands. In them now are rosary beads. He's running them through his fingers. Squinting in something between worry and sorrow. NOW, I understand. I begin to read his thoughts.

Forgive me mother Mary for what I am about to do. I know it is evil and against your ways, but I must. I have no choice. This is my life. You know me, mother Mary. I know it is wrong to take a life. To inflict so much pain, spill so much blood. But I must. You know that, mother Mary, don't you? I pray for forgiveness.

The beads run through his fingers, one after the other, until they run out at the cross. Then, he starts again.

The bus stops to pick up some school children. They look somehow off. Especially the boys. High foreheads and small jaws. And they're quiet. Ages that from six to ten... and quiet. It's spooky. Like Children of the Damned. They don't stay on the bus very long.

We pass a road sign. 5km to Himara. Somehow, that's a relief, even though I don't know what I'm in for once we get there.

When we reach Himara, most passengers get off. We do not.

An old woman, wearing all black, with a black babushka, gets on the bus. THE GUY excuses himself and talks to her. She glances at me, a sad look on her face. Then, he shoos me to the window and sits down on the aisle seat, blocking my exit.

The bus closes its doors and heads out of the city.

THE GUY taps me on the shoulder and points to the woman. Then to a ring on his finger. I guess that means she's his wife. They sure don't act very friendly. Maybe she doesn't approve of what he feels he has to do. I look at her. She does not look at me.

For the next quarter hour, he's back to his rosaries.

In the middle of a hill, the bus doors open and the women gets out. The only two people left are THE GUY and me. A little further, the bus stops. The end of the line. THE GUY gets out. Me too, retrieving my pack from the back.

Then we walk. Through a little opening in the wall. Down a long street. Through a tunnel, twisting and turning following a gravel path, through a ditch. Turn here. There's a staircase, probably built by the Romans, or the ancient Greeks. They'll never find the body in a place like this.

Will I be slowly tortured in the basement? Tied to a cross like Jesus? Helpless. THE GUY wraps his rosary around my balls and asks mother Mary for forgiveness before he bites them off. Will it be quick? Have a seat. I'll be right back. POW! Between the eyes. Will he drug me? Then do things to my unconscious body before slitting my throat, severing my head, and boiling it for dinner?

Finally, we end up at a building that overlooks the sea, sheer cliffs to the rocks below. THE GUY brings me to a room that has glass doors and enters from a balcony-- like a motel. The room has two beds, a small unplugged refrigerator, a sink, cabinets, and a bathroom. It's almost like a hotel room.

THE GUY takes a plastic table and a couple chairs from MY ROOM. He motions for me to sit down. Then he walks away. While he's gone, I run my eyes over the tile floor and plaster walls, looking for bloodstains, stray pieces of flesh. There's a dark spot. Some discoloration along the wall. I wonder who that was.

He returns with some coffee, some strange looking fruit, and a bottle of water. I see by the plastic ring that the bottle has been opened, and then refilled. I'm sure it's drugged. I don't drink from that bottle.

The coffee is delicious,though. Turkish style, made by boiling water, and coffee grounds together and pouring the mixture into a cup. After you drink it, it leaves a thick black sludge on the bottom of the cup. Heavily sugared, it's the best.

It's hard to find real Turkish coffee in New York. The first time I had it was in the former Yugoslavia, with a friend whose mother read coffee grounds like old gypsies read tea leaves. I wish she could read my future now.

“Kafé Turke?” I ask.

He nods, “Kafé Grek! No Turke!”

Yowsah, some rivalries die hard.

Then he asks if I'm married, do I have kids. All the things that will tell him how much the world will miss me when I'm gone. He's relieved when I say I have neither.

He asks how long I'm planing to stay. An encouraging sign. If he were going to kill me, why would he care?

I tell him two nights.

He shakes his head. I realize it's a trick. Something to make me feel more at ease.

Then he asks me if I want a shower, Douche, he uses the Italian/French word.

Uh oh, here it comes. Get me naked and the fun can begin.

“Yo, falaminderet” (No thank you) I say, shivering to show it's too cold to bathe.

Actually, it's unbelievably cold. In Italy, and the first two days in Albania, it was summer. When I got to Vlora I bought a bathing suit, a $30 Armani-- the only one they had left-- for the beaches in the south. Then came the rain and since then, cold. Now, it feels barely above freezing. My Inspector Gadget hat and coat are not enough to keep the chill out, especially at night.

It's about 9PM. THE GUY wishes me good night and I open the glass doors and enter the room. I try not to think about what will happen later. I try not to think about how none of it makes sense in any other way than MURDER.

If he was just being generous, why didn't he take me inside and introduce me to his wife? Why didn't he offer me a little family? Why the lack of smiles? The questions about who will miss me?

Inside. the little room is so cold that I wrap myself in the only blanket and sit with the computer, typing this, photo-shopping my travel pictures, playing spider solitaire, planning as if there were going to be a tomorrow.

It's then I notice that the glass doors to the room-- the only entrance and the only escape-- lock from the outside. Only the outside. What kind of place is this? What hotel has rooms that only lock from the outside? What house?

About 9:30, I go to sleep, fully clothed, wrapped tightly in that blanket. Outside, a dog barks incessantly. But it's not the dog that keeps me awake. I'm freezing. I wonder how much of the shaking is from the actual cold, and how much is from fear. I shake like the flu chills. Shake like there's no tomorrow. Shake waiting for the sound of bursting into the room with guns or machetes. Or worse, the sound of a key turning in the lock outside.

ENDNOTES: [Subscribers to this column can receive live links and a chance to discuss the content with Mykel. Subscribe with an email to: god@mykelboard.com. You can check out my travel blog with pictures at mykelsdiary.bogspot.com. My Albanian pictures are parked in Picasa. You can get to them from the picture link on my website www.mykelboard.com]  

--> Squirreling away the ACORNs dept: The US government has blocked funding for ACORN, a voter registration and poverty assistance group. Why? A pair of conservatives dressed up like a whore and pimp asked them for help. After being rejected a couple of times, one person in ACORN gave them advice. Can you imagine?

Meanwhile, the U.S. still buys from Haliburton, Dick Cheny's company, that received $80 million in government funds for electricity in Iraq. That wiring electrocuted several U.S. soldiers. The US also still pays Blackwater, the company that murdered Iraqui civilians... and has some members on trial for murder. Which is worse, murder or whoring? You know which Obama has chosen.

→ Virtual death/really dead dept: The Nation reports that, in China, courts gave Qui Chengwei a suspended death sentence for fatally stabbing someone over a piece of property that didn't even exist. Qui and his victim, Zhu Caoyuan, were players in the Chinese game Legend of Mir II.

Qui and a friend had jointly won a valuable Dragon Sabre by battling through a tough quest. The pair lent it to Zhu who, instead of returning it, sold it via an online auction, kept the money (about $900) and ran. Chinese police don't recognize virtual property as real goods, so technically there was no theft. There was, however, murder.

Nerd crime shows a lot about capitalism in general. By creating the NEED for something-- even if it doesn't exist-- you get people to buy it. And cheat and kill for it.

 It also bodes well for the future. Maybe those on-line gamer types will just take care of themselves. A world without Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Isn't that a dream come true?

→ Whoops dept: The Investor's Business Daily wrote about the evils of a national health plan: People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K. where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

 Hawking actually lives in England and said, “I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the National Health Service. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

→ Not a sick joke dept: the Times-News of Hendersonville, North Caroline reports that state officials have advised visitors to their county fair to wash their hands BEFORE entering the fair. They are afraid that humans might spread swine flu to the swine.

-end-

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Mykel's MRR Column for #319, (December, 2009)

If you want to read more about Mykel's adventures in Albania, The US South-- or life in General-- check out Mykel's Diary For a look at the weird, the scary and the funny in real life, check out Mykel's Article's and Propositions.         

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 319, December 2009
by Mykel Board

“"They knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty-- and that one man's certainty always threatened another.”-- Barak Obama

L'shona Tovah. Today is the first day of 5770. Pretty amazing we made it so far. At least I made it so far. Jim Carroll and Lux Interior did not.

SETTING THE SCENE: I sit in Café Café, a small place on Greene Street, tucked far enough into Soho to charge $9.50 for a sandwich. Too far south to be crowded with horrible NYU students, it's café enough to have teeth-grinding jazz blasting at the inmates. It's better than home, though. Fewer distractions. No dishes that suddenly need washing. No garbage that suddenly needs to be taken to the basement.

In front of me, behind my laptop, is a covered cup of coffee, the cover torn just enough to let me sip from it. The lid slowly melts in the coffee beneath.

In my lap (there's not enough room on the table), is a children's book called ALBANIA IN PICTURES. It's open to the page about Shkodër, one of the few “big” cities in the north of that country:

The residents of Shkodër rebuilt many of its buildings after a strong earthquake in 1979. One of the city's main attractions is The Museum of Atheism, which Albania's Communist government built to celebrate its ban on all forms of religious practice...

The Museum of Atheism??? Holy Pentateuch Batman! Sounds like my kind of place.

By the time you read this I'll probably be back from Albania. I leave in two weeks. No punk connections. No nothing. I just take the plane to Rome, a train across the boot, and a boat from Bari to Durres. I can't tell you what I expect to find (except, maybe, a museum of atheism.) That's why I'm going.

Give the Context: A couple months ago, I wrote about factives. This group of verbs creates truth... or at least the image of truth.

To review: verbs like know, realize, understand are factives. Phrases like everybody knows that, or nobody knows that... are factives.

If you say, “Everybody knows that Arnold is a piss drinker,” Arnold is a piss drinker. If you say, “Nobody knows that Arnold is a piss drinker,” Arnold is still a piss drinker.

Extend the context: There's another kind of factive-- a truism-factive. This one involves a cliché that unconsciously controls your point of view. It's a phrase that molds what we think. A one-sentence assumption.

My father used to say, “Never assume. It makes an ASS of U and ME.”

That phrase itself is one of these truism-factives. People say it all the time. Utter the words I assumed... and someone's sure to spit it out. Sometimes they'll just say “never assume.” You're supposed to fill in the rest. Everybody knows it. But... it's WRONG!

You assume all the time. You can't live without assuming. If you drop a marble, you assume it will fall to the ground, not shoot upwards through the ceiling. If you buy a cup of coffee at a Soho café, you assume it will not be laced with acid, tearing your stomach out, bubbling blood from your mouth at the first sip. As I type these words, I assume when I push the F key, the letter F will appear on the screen.

These assumptions come from 70 years of marble dripping, coffee sipping, and F-pushing. But even babies assume. If they press their lips against a warm nipple, for example, they assume it will dispense some tasty milk. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but to live, they have to assume.

Life is assumptions. Sometimes we're wrong. But we HAVE to assume in order to live. It's obvious. But people think in truism-clichés so they miss the obvious. The cliché trumps the reality.

More Context: It's 1989, somewhere on Second Avenue. This guy in Doc Martins wears a plastic jacket with a bunch of patches on it. He runs his hand over his smooth head.

Having recently been punched and booted by a colored skinhead, the image does not attract me. That this guy is white is scarier. As I turn to walk back to the Mars Bar, I read one of the patches on his jacket: IF IT DOESN'T KILL YOU, IT MAKES YOU STRONGER.

What the fuck? How many people have this truism-factive doing maneuvers in their mental battlefield? It's easy to see where it came from. If you give chickens antibiotics, the antibiotics kill off the weak bacteria. The strong ones survive. They do the bacteria screw, and the surviving bacteria get stronger. But that's it. Bacteria. Otherwise, the truism is WRONG.

I visit my father in an old folks home. I see people in wheelchairs. I see blind people. I see folks unable to speak, howling like wolves howl at a full moon. These people have diabetes, alzheimers, emphysema. Thousands of medical problems that don't kill them.. but make them WEAKER-- not stronger.

Of course, you die in the end, so you can say EVERYTHING kills you. But at any moment, if it doesn't kill you (unless you're a bacterium), it will probably make you WEAKER... not stronger. It's as obvious as the cancer on your nose, but you think in truism-clichés and miss the obvious.

The Crux: It's not only verbs, and truism-clichés that act this way. It's an entire mindset, a brainbug.

You hear something and it triggers a string of thoughts. Newspapers headline that a highschool girl is gang raped in the bathroom. Cops arrest four guys. They're looking for a fifth. The public is outraged.

Our girls, our daughters. How could we let this happen? We need more security in schools. We have to protect our women.

Here is the NY Post front page of September 19^th, several days after the “rape.”

Danmell Ndonye, 18, told cops she had been raped during a restroom romp at a Hofstra dorm early Sunday.

Stalin Felipe (left) and his cousin Arvin Rivera talked about their ordeal yesterday. Felipe credits Rivera, who had filmed the bathroom orgy, with clearing his and his friends' names.

He and his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, and pals Jesus Ortiz, 19, and Rondell Bedward, 21, were all charged with first-degree rape, which could have landed them in jail for 25 years.

"We went to Hofstra just to have some fun, and it turned out to be a nightmare," Felipe said. "Cops were telling us, 'You are going to rot in jail.' "

They were exonerated only after the fifth man -- Felipe's cousin Arvin Rivera, an 18-year-old senior at Harry S. Truman HS in The Bronx -- contacted prosecutors through his lawyer and said he had videotaped the sex romp with his cellphone. The video showed the sex was consensual.

Get it? The girl was lying! But we're so conditioned to believe the woman, the cops who were investigating reached their conclusions before they started. So did you.

How many innocents are in jail because people believe the victim. How many times have you heard cries against blaming the victim, when it may be that the victim is to blame!

This happens again and again. Remember the Duke University LaCross scandal in 2006? Even if you do, it probably won't matter. Let a woman cry rape and the guy is guilty. It's in your brain. Everybody knows men rape and women are victims, right?

The innocent woman/guilty man image is an idea thousands of years old. It's responsible for most of the gender inequality in the world. Woman's circumcision is mutilation. Men's is “protection against disease.” Husbands defend women's honor. Women can't defend themselves. Men are perpetrators. Women are victims.

Take Sweden... please.

“Enlightened people” say that Sweden has found the right way to handle prostitution. Instead of punishing the whores, as in most countries, Sweden gives them the right to ply their trade. BUT, if you frequent a prostitute, if you pay for the offered service... then you can go to prison.

Huh? That's the opposite of enlightened drug policy... or any criminal policy. It would be like saying, it's okay to sell heroin, but if you buy it, you go to jail. Talk about blaming the victims!! This is jailing the victims.

Where does such perverse thinking come from? It's a brainbug. An unconscious everybody knows it's true. The same brainbug that creates the knee-jerk reaction to cries of RAPE!

Women are victims. Most prostitutes are women. Most purchasers of prostitutes are men. That means the victims are the women. If that's the case, the criminals are the men. Jail them. Bullshit!

Careful thought shows the only victims are those created by the law. Prostitution, even more than drugs, is simply a paid relationship of mutual agreement. How could it be legal to have free sex between consenting adults, but illegal to have paid sex? Is there anything else in the world that's legal to give away, but illegal to pay for? I can't think of it. It doesn't make sense.

But sense has nothing to do with this. It's the mindset. Women are right. Women need protection. If there's a crime, women must be the victims. It never occurs to people that there may be NO victims.

Throwing up my hands: Ah fuck it. I'm going to Albania. There are no clichés about Albania. No performatives. There's NOTHING everybody knows about Albania. My brain will be free to make its own discoveries. Let's see what happens.

*******

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

-->Gimme Nuuk department: Greenland had its first election since it won near-independence from Denmark, my favorite country. The leftist Inuit Ataqatigiit Party of Greenland took control.
   Why? Global warming has melted the Greenland ice. Suddenly, the natives have access to natural resources worth exploring. The Greenlanders wanted control of their own resources. Danes, being Danes, let them have it.
    Speaking in the Greenlandian capital, Nuuk, the new leader said, “Greenland deserves this.” I hope he's right.

-->What's up Doc? dept: It used to be that doctors were the biggest block to healthcare in the U.S. In the old days, doctors opposed Medicare and any other government interference in the health biz.
    After a taste of rule by insurance company, a bunch of doctors are now head-banging to a different speedmetal song.
   Physicians for a National Health Care Program includes more than 16,000 healthcare professionals. It was started by Dr. Linda Farley who has since died of cancer.
   “The doctors who have been on the front lines can tell you,” Dr. Farley said, “there only one real 'public option.' It's single-payer.”
    That means socialized medicine. Yeah!

-->Plugging myself department: During my trip to Albania, I'll be blogging my adventures. And, depending on if I can find an internet site... and if my computer gets stolen, you can read that blog regularly at: http://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com/

-->A weird church-state issue: A Washington D.C. Christian Science church has sued that city's historical landmark department.
    They asked for the right to tear down their own church. It looks like a windowless war bunker, they said.
   At a press conference, church leaders said, “Little is more representative of a church’s theology than its architecture, and this building is not us.”
   The landmark department has reversed its ruling because of the suit. But since there is no plan for a replacement, the building still stands.
    A windowless war bunker, huh? Sounds like a pretty good representation of any religion to me.

-->A tougher church-state issue: During the last days of the Bush administration, the president issued new regulations about healthcare. The rules say the government will cut funding to any group, state or local government that does now allow workers to follow their religious conscience.
    That means pharmacists don't have to fill birth-control prescriptions if it goes against their beliefs. Lab workers don't have to give lesbians in-vitro fertilization if it goes against their beliefs. Catholic hospitals can refuse to provide morning-after pills to rape victims, if they believe it's a sin.
    Who is right? Should the government force workers to violate their beliefs? Or should there be equal treatment for all in need of it?
   I say, if you're gonna go for the belief side, you gotta go whole hog. My belief system says that wage-slavery... expending effort for the profit of someone else... capitalism... is immoral. For me, to participate in such a system is a sin. I want the right to my paycheck without the duty to actually work. If my employer has to respect MY BELIEFS, then I agree with the religious guys. Let 'em follow their conscience.
   Otherwise, face it, in capitalism, we DON'T respect the beliefs of working people. That's the whole point.

-->Good news department: Ward Churchill, the guy who was fired from the University of Colorado for saying the World Trade Center victims were little Eichmans, won a lawsuit against the university. It's not clear whether he'll be rehired, but it is still one small victory in the fight for free speech and academic freedom.

-end-

Mykel's MRR Column for #318, (November, 2009)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mykel's MRR Column for #317, (October, 2009)

NOTE AND WARNING: This column was written for the MRR Queer
Issue. It is addressed to the "gay punk community," although
anyone can understand the criticism. It is somewhat
more graphic than usual.If you're squeamish, or have just
eaten, you might want to think twice about reading it. 
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

---

---

THE COLUMN:

All the ugly things, the things people expend so much energy denying, have more permanence than the sweet sucking-candy lies about equality and justice and everlasting happiness. Ugliness is God. --Jim Goad

First there's the rose. I don't know who put it there. But there it is. Lying like a sash across his chest. I didn't expect that. Agim was not the type to go in for roses. He was a punk rocker-- and now I find out-- a junkie. Punk rock, junk and roses don't mix.

Next to me is an older woman. His mother? An Aunt? I donno. She's dressed in black. Equally black circles surround her eyes. She forces a smile as I introduce myself and tell her how sorry I am.

I am sorry. Agim was the cool kid. A cute punk rocker with a weird name. He came from someplace in East Europe. He had a high squeaky voice. He often came out of the mosh pit bruised and happy. He'd shake his head and say nothing more than WOW!

About 20 years old, he had a smooth face that'd take years to grow even a jazz spot. I'd often had fantasies about burying the bologna between his light brown buns. It ain't gonna happen now.

This is my third open-casket, Catholic funeral. I'm not getting used to them. There's something creepy about looking at a dead person you knew when he was running around doing things. Like having your pet dog stuffed, mounted and set in the livingroom... with a bone in her mouth.

Weirder is the girl now standing by the coffin. I've never seen her before. Somewhat goth, with a long black dress, but it is a funeral after all. Still, she's got black fingernail polish and lipstick... not exactly Catholic. Her long flowing hair is NOT black, though. It's somewhere between brown and redhead- like Lindsay Lohan's.

She's not beautiful in the classic sense. A bit too thick in the rear. Tits petite and free hanging. Because of the way she faces the coffin, I can only see her in profile.

Behind the chairs that face the coffin, is some food. I head for it. Laid out on a small card table, there's Merlot wine and cheese, like at an art opening. There are also a bunch of little strawberry tarts and crackers next to a pile of meat-- maybe chopped liver. A plastic spoon sticks in the meat at an odd angle, like a chimney in a fairytale house. I use it to scoop some of the meat onto a cracker and then shove the combo into my mouth.

“I think that's not such a good idea,” suggests a voice behind me, to my right.

I turn. It's the girl who stood at the coffin. Her face is plain, slightly freckled.

“Why not?” I ask her, taking another meat-on-cracker in my biological urge to DEFY.

“Funeral meat is always bad,” she says. “I think they make it from the remains of other funerals.”

“That's disgusting,” I say, reaching for yet another cracker and meat. I spoon it on thickly, as if I were teaching her a lesson.

During our short conversation, the girl moves forward. She now stands with her hand tangling centimeters from my leg. She bridges the gap, stroking the inside of my thigh.

“My name is Wanda,” she says. Then her voice becomes a whisper. “Let's stay. Whatisname would like it.”

“You mean Agim?” I ask. “You don't know him?”

“I go to funerals,” she says, rubbing my leg less subtly than before, “and I want to know you... Follow me.”

I don't get a chance to introduce myself. I just follow as the strange girl leads me through the hallway to a small storage closet. The only possible way she could know about it is from being here before. I begin to wonder.

Wanda opens the door and gets in, sitting on the floor. She extends her hand. I take it and enter. Wanda reaches up and pulls the door shut.

In the dark closet, she presses her body close to mine. I press my hand on the inside of her thigh. Then, run it downwards. I smell an oceanic mix of bread and tuna. She tightens her thighs around my hand. The warmth radiates through my body. Agim, you're gonna get me laid... but it won't be you!

The faint light under the door goes out with the last footsteps of the funeral guests. We are alone.

“Let's go,” she whispers.

I start to unbutton my shirt. But that's not what she's talking about.

Slowly, Wanda opens the door, looks around and heads out. We're back at the coffin. It's closed now. Wanda pushes up on the lid and it creaks back to open. There's Agim. Looking eerily shiny in the tiny bit of light that comes from the streetlamp outside the window. The rose, slightly crushed, still lays across his chest.

“He looks fake,” says Wanda.

I reach in to touch his face. It has a waxy feel, like an apple on a supermarket shelf. I have the urge to scrape and see if the wax will come off under my fingernail. I do. It does.

Under that wax is a small spot, maybe brown. It's impossible to see color in the dim light. It looks like what I imagine cancer would look like. I quickly pull my hand back.

I look back at his face. His closed eyes. What's under those lids? Are the pupils staring straight out like a vampire? Or, are the eyes rolled back in the head, showing only white... like a zombie.

I again reach into the coffin, putting my hand on his left eye, thumb on the bottom lid, forefinger on the top. I tug on the lids but there's a kind of stiffness, as if Agim is trying to force his eyes shut against my effort.

I'm distracted by a fzzzz sound. I turn. Wanda is at Agim's crotch. She's opened his belt and now unzips his pants. Reaching into the open fly, she pulls out his penis. It's the first time I've ever seen the penis of a dead guy. Maybe it was proud in the day, but now it's shriveled and worn, with what look like bloody stripes up the side. The head looks like a mushroom-sized scab. I can't see it for long, though, because Wanda takes it into her mouth. She suck up on it, pulling the skin taught, stretching it. I think I'm going to be sick. I begin to choke. To heave.

“Here! Here!” whispers Wanda, pulling up her skirt and taking down her panties. “Do it here!”

She grabs my head and forces my face between her legs. That powerful Neptunian smell adds to the nausea.

That chopped liver. Those strawberry tarts. That glass of Merlot. Like a movie run frame by frame, I feel the slow motion rise of the vile mixture, from my stomach... to my throat... to my mouth... forced into my nose... and out. Out from my mouth. Out from my nose. Out into the hairy crater in front of me. The smell of vomit added to the smell of yeast and the smell of sea bass make me even sicker, I puke again and again, until I'm stuck in dry heaves.

“Now fuck me,” says Wanda. “Fuck me hard!”

She tears at my proper funeral pants, pulling open the belt, pulling down the pants and boxer- briefs in one fell swoop. I step out of them. But, I'm not quite ready yet. Ninety degrees. I'm looking for forty-five.

Wanda reaches between her legs and scoops up my fresh vomit. She rubs it back and forth on my ninety degrees. The smell cuts to my throat and sickens me. But it doesn't sicken my little friend who pops up like popsicle fresh from the deli case. Wanda sucks on the popsicle. Rubbing the vomit around my testes, Wanda sucks, then reaches around to press me deeper into her face. A puke-lubricated finger slips into my little brown hole in back.

I tighten the sphincter around her digits. That's the trigger.

“That meat.” I say.

Wanda makes some MMMMMMMMing sound around my penis. Then my bowels contract.

“Not THAT meat,” I say. “The meat that we ate. It's hitting now. I'm getting sick. I think I've got the shits. You were right!”

She removes her mouth from my medium-on.

“Shit!” she says. “Shit on me! Shit on Agim. It's the least you can do... and it's the most punk rock.”

She's right, of course.

I climb onto the coffin. Resting one knee on each side, I fear I'll lose my balance and the whole kit and caboodle will come tumbling down. Tough. I can't hold it anymore. I'm going to explode. I position my asshole directly over Agim's face. Wanda squeezes his cheeks. His mouth opens. I let go. A torrent. Not water, but not turds either. More like a thick paste. Brown toothpaste, with globs of this and that. Direct hit. Right over that mouth. Filling it. Spilling over. Up his nose. Onto his eyes. A great thick brown mass. The joy of emptying my stomach raises my staff. Pain released calls for joy.

“Suck me!” I breathe. “Suck me now!”

Wanda scrapes her hand against the corpse face, bringing up my fresh fecal paste. She rubs it up and down my hardness.

“Suck me!” I say, “I can't stand it.”

“Wait,” says she.

Suddenly, she is at the garbage can where we scraped the plastic cups and dishes from the funeral food. She reaches inside. I can't make out what's in her hand until she returns to the coffin. I climb down to take a look. It's a plastic spoon, probably the same one I used to eat the tainted meat.

“Share!” she commands, scooping some brown paste off Agim's face. Open wide.

I open my mouth and she pushes the spoon in. It's a foul taste... like... well, like shit. I gag, but swallow it down. She scoops some more, and puts it into her own mouth.

Gagging to hold down my own excrement, I choke out a, “More!”

Wanda answers by shoving another spoonful of shit into my mouth. And then returning to the shit-covered face of Agim's corpse.

Taking the plastic spoon, she presses the end against the dead kid's eye-socket. It slips, spraying shit onto the coffin lid. She tries again. This time the spoon sinks in, behind the eye, underneath. She pries upward. The handle bends. Then, with a little PTTT sound, the eye falls loose and hangs by a nerve along the side of his face. A few grains of shit fall into the empty hole.

Wada grabs the eyeball and gives it a tug. With a snap, it pulls loose.

“Yes!” I hear her whisper.

She takes the eyeball and inserts it in her cunt. Squeezing shut, she closes her eyes and moves those internal muscles that only girls can move. Her face is the picture of bliss.

“Now you,” she says, taking the eyeball from insider her vulva.

I know what she's asking for. I rest my hands against my knees and feel a light pressure against my anus. It opens and the eyeball is inside.

The new pressure against my prostate propels the little soldier between my legs to full attention. Wanda pushes me to the floor and straddles me. I push her off and climb back onto the coffin. Pressing hard to keep that organic dildo inside me. I again squat with my feet on either side of Agim's head. I lean forward, lower myself, and insert the head of my penis into the empty eye socket.

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

This is the queer issue of MRR. What you just read is queer. You? You're as queer as a one-dollar bill. You had your chance. Your homosexuality could have been a ticket to queerdom. Being a homo used to be special, different, weird... Queer.

I remember people pointing and whispering He fucks boys. And now, Home Depot shows a couple of guys cooking breakfast together, plain as the cum on your lips... and it's your fault.

You've sacrificed your queerdom on the altar of “gay marriage,” and “gays in the military.” You prefer equality to queerdom. You can't have both. You've made your choice.

Your decision disgusts me more than a loose eyeball up my ass. You are more repulsive than vaginal vomit. How could you do it? Several years ago, I wrote You cannot be a man until you've been fucked in the ass. That was controversial... Queer.

These days, everybody and his mother's been fucked in the ass. Stockbrokers discuss anal lubes on their coffee breaks. It is not queer.

Queer doesn't say, accept me, I'm just like you. It says, watch out, buckaroo, because I'm NOTHING like you.

Yeah, I admire people like Matt B who are trying to make homotude queer again, but it's a lost cause. Like making Obama radical. We may wish it. But it ain't gonna happen.

We need a NEW queerdom. We have it. The necrophiles, the bestials, the coprophiliacs, the S&Ms, the pedophiles (who are so queer they can't even post their fantasies without being arrested!). The new queers should be in the face of every homosexual saying,

“We're here. We're REALLY queer. Get used to it... because you're not anymore.”

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. Subscribers will no longer get the columns before anyone else.]

→ The honeymoon is over department: Speaking of marriage. Slack-cutting time is over. Obama is proving himself to be just another Democrat, maybe the next LBJ... or worse. He takes over General Motors, allows the company to shift jobs overseas. Says the government wants a “hands-off policy.” Huh? That's my money you're using, I sure as fuck want a hand ON!
   Worse is Afghanistan. That war is getting bigger, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Pakistan invasion soon. It's time for that big Washington anti-war rally!
    Hey hey Oh-baman. How many kids did you drop a bomb on!

-->Homos yes, Nazis no dept: While homo activists push for more gays in the military, other liberal groups push for exclusions... of "white supremacists.
    The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center is complaining about allowing "white supremacists and Neo-Nazis" in the military. Seems like these points of view are "bad" and shouldn't be tolerated. They are HATE.
    On the other hand, homotude is LOVE. So it SHOULD be allowed in the army. Makes a lot of sense in an organization whose main purpose is to kill people, huh?

-->Elsewhere on the homo front dept: A federal appeals court has upheld an Ohio law that limits picketing at funerals, preventing an anti-gay church from protesting at military funerals.
    The Rev. Fred Phelps believes God is punishing America for accepting homosexuality by killing soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He argues it is people's free speech right to carry signs with messages such as "Thank God for dead soldiers."
    The court said the anti-picketing law "serves an important governmental interest... at a funeral the mere presence of a protestor is sufficient to inflict harm."
    Sounds like the same rationalization they used for the round-up of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention in New York. Actually, it sounds like the same rationalization for the round-up of ANY demonstrators anywhere.

-->Elsewhere on the free speech front: The “Combating Defamation of Religion” resolution was passed by the UN Human Rights Council with 23 votes in favor and 11 votes against with 13 abstentions.
    The resolution was passed in spite of huge opposition from rights groups. The measure calls on the UN to "effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular."
    The Bush administration strongly opposed this resolution. It's unclear what the position of Obama is... but that's par for the course.

-->Partial memory department: The religious right wants Americans to remember that for some years Congress printed copies of "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" for its new members. But what's not mentioned is that this was Thomas Jefferson's version of the bible with all reference to Jesus' divinity and claims of miracles cut out.

-end-

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