(MRR 344) Mykel Board explains Steve Jobs is better dead than Maumar Qadaffi is

f 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
Column for MRR 344
January 2012

by Mykel Board

aka  Mykel explains why he's happier that Steve Jobs kicked the bucket, than he is that Moumar Qadaffi did.

“Nobody reads anymore” --Steve Jobs

I write these columns a long time before you read them. Today is October 24^th, 2011. For Jews, it's 5773. Yom Kippur... the day of atonement... no food or water for 24 hours... a concentrated Jewish Ramadan... has just passed.

As I write this, a few of the most exciting weeks in history have also just past. Occupy Wall Street started and spread around the world. Steve Jobs died of liver cancer. Muammar Gaddafi (the name with a thousand spellings) died at the hands of US aided Libyans. Can I put all this in one column? Do I have anything to say about it that hasn't been said before?

You bet I can. You bet I do.

PART 1: Considering what's been going on in Israel for the past 40+ years, I never thought I'd be supporting an occupation. But this WALL STREET stuff is inspiring. And it's more inspiring because so many people JUST DON'T GET IT.

I visit the site for an Occupy Wall Street Yom Kippur service. I've arrived early to check out the other occupiers. The park is a punkhouse turned inside-out. Paths with free food (I avoid it because FOOD NOT BOMBS, whose nauseating fare has converted thousands of vegetarians to carnivorism, has probably provided the food), free clothes (I avoid them because of the bedbug scare), free sex (yeah, right). Key point: people GIVE AWAY stuff. They don't sell it. Posters, silk-screened t-shirts... give it away. Free.

On the propaganda front, there are leaflets and signs... stuff about Israel, the mid-East wars, the bank bailouts, and human consciousness... as many anti-Obama as anti-anything else. (After all, it WAS Obama who bailed out the banks.) Everything is permitted.

An old bearded fat guy sits on a wall. He looks familiar.

“Aron?” I ask.

He nods.

“Mykel Board,” I say re-introducing myself.

“I remember you,” he sprays into my face.

It is indeed Aron Kay, the famous 70s pie-thrower and Yippie who hit Andy Warhol, G. Gordon Liddy, and Phyllis Schlafly among others. Once a folk hero, now he's almost forgotten. Not by me.

There's more to see... to report... too much for this column.

Besides, I have to get back across Broadway in time for Yom Kippur services. 

And through the magic of print... BANG! I'm there.

Someone hands me a prayer book. Free.

I see that the books have been donated by Congregation Beth Simchas Torah... the homogogue I usually go to for this holiday. We pass them around to new comers.

There are about 1000 of us Jews here. Makes and models range from men with curly sideburns to men in dresses. Ages 6 to 80 or older... mohawks to white shirts to Aron Kay. Our purpose? Support the occupiers... of Wall Street, not Palestine... and celebrate Judaism's holiest day.

Electric amplification is prohibited in the occupied territories. It would give the cops a chance to bust us. The rabbi speaks loudly.

He starts the service. “We start with the blessing on page 32,” he says.

“WE START WITH THE BLESSING ON PAGE 32,” shouts the crowd closest to him... human amplifiers who pass the word on to the rest.

As the rabbi continues, the crowd repeats the prayers and chants... making a human PA system. It lasts the full two hours of the service.

As I wrote in the beginning of this column, Yom Kippur is a “Day of Atonement.” Jews ask forgiveness for all the bad stuff we've done during the year. Here, the rabbi asks us to volunteer a promise of something we're sorry for and we resolve not to do the next year. He starts.

“I will take all my money out of the Bank of America,” he says.

Someone else stands up, “I won't continue to let Jews blindly defend Israel until there's really a Palestine.”

Another person, “I will visit my friends in the hospital, even if it's inconvenient for me.”

There are dozens: Political, personal, humorous, serious, and dumb,(“I will not drink orange juice right after brushing my teeth.”)... just like the signs and leaflets across the street at the occupation.

FAST FORWARD: Later in the week, I read that professional liberal, Susan Sarandon, visited the Wall Street site and complained that the participants “lack focus.” Others have said the occupiers have “no issue”... “no clear-cut plan.” “They're just a bunch of dreamers.”

I say, YEAH! All that!

When Aron Kay... and I... were in the Yippies, we had three demands. 1. An end to the war in Vietnam. 2. No more pay toilets in New York City. 3. Mass ecstasy.

The Wall Street Occupation is like that. Anyone can join. Your dream is their demand. Focus shmocus. The sky's the limit. It's your chance to show what you really want. Fuck possibility. Fuck practicality. That stuff is for politicians, not dreamers. Occupiers ARE dreamers... and that's a great thing.

How 'bout: 1. Pull out the troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere else. 2. Re-regulate the banks. 3. End capitalism

Sound good? At least for starters. What's your dream?

PART 2: Why I'm happier about a dead Steve Jobs than I am about a dead Muammar Kadafi.

STEVE JOBS, glad he's dead:

1. He was a corporate shmuck just like any other corporate shmuck. Yet, somehow, he could trick a generation of anti-corporaters into loving him.

2. He helped kill real human interaction. Go out with anyone today and you're lucky if you can get two words in between the texting, cellphone answering, facebooking, app-hell created by the iPhone.

It used to be, when you left home or left work, you left that shit behind. Now it's with you all the time. Being with someone is never BEING WITH someone. It's being with someone and their i-connections to other people who are ignoring their live mates to check their i-tweets.

3. He helped wreck independent music. Felix Havoc's columns have been a great introduction to how Apple strangled independent music. Records, covers, vinyl, even CDs... They're all dead. If you don't distribute through iTunes, you won't be heard. Related to that is...

4. He wrecked music quality. The sampling rate for anything you get over the internet is much lower than the CD sampling rate, and much worse than analog vinyl quality. Subtleties are lost. Quality and LIVE sound is lost in the urge for “convenience.” People listen to iPods/iPhones for the same reason they eat at McDonalds. It's really easy. Shitty, but easy.

5. He blocked the city sidewalks. You can't walk down the street without rear-ending some idiot talking/texting/map-reading on an iPhone.

6. He made consumers out of producers. How many people still have blogs, or personal webpages? No one creates content anymore... except professional content creators. You don't need to make it. There's an APP for that. PLUS Apple killed porn apps, with censorship much worse than government censorship. With the government, you know it's there and you work around it. With i-Censor, you don't even know it's there.

7. He killed bar bets. You can't bet your friends that Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan. They can just look it up on their iPhones. The thrill of “finding out,” “looking up,” “discovery,” is gone. Now you just push a few icons. Why KNOW anything at all? You can find out with your iPhone.

8. He killed diversity. Go to an internet café and you'll see a sea of soft white apples blazing out of collective computers. It's a monopoly. A mind monopoly of anyone under 30. I said “mind,” but anyone with an APPLE anything is a zombie. Forget about mind.

MUAMMAR QADDAFI, sad he's dead:

1. Now the Obamites are gonna have to find someone else to go after. Another day, another target. It could be YOU! The Obama administration said it has the right to kill American citizens... without trial... if “they present a danger.” Details here. 

2.TIME MAGAZINE, in its May 16, 2006 issue, had a feature story “Why Khadafy's Now a Good Guy.” In that article, Khadaffi talks about entering the league of nations and negotiating rather than destroying.

3. He was a leader in the African Unity movement against American, Chinese and Russian imperialism. In 2001, he hosted the inaugural meeting of the new African Union.

4.Women lived better under Khadaffi than in the Shiekdoms of America's friends the Saudis. Gadhafi was one of the few secular leaders in the Arab world. He did not believe in Islamic fundamentalism. In Libya, women have been able to go to school, join the army, and walk around with their faces hanging out.

5. Khadaffi was a natty dresser. Vanity Fair gave his clothes the thumbs up for innovative dressing. Sometimes he wore medallion military chic... dictator black. Sometimes, it was almost drag. He just didn't give a shit about Western fashion tastes. In other words, he was punkrock.

6. Khadaffi did not tax his citizens. Their housing, education, healthcare were all FREE. The leader built a huge water pipe across the desert to ensure water was in supply for all of his major cities, as well as irrigating the desert to give them food security. Free.

7. Under Khadaffi, Libya had the highest living standard in Africa. According to the Human Development Index, it ranked in the top third out of 172 countries in the world-- before NATO and Rebel interference

8. Ron Paul (wrong on everything domestic, right on (almost) everything foreign) wrote:

     Momar Khaddafi was not the evil rogue portrayed by Western propaganda.

    In fact, he was a hero. Qadhafi’s Gold Dinar Plan and Libya’s Public Central Bank would have changed the monetary system and freed all of Africa from the Private Central Bank System. Ultimately, it might possibly have freed the NATO host nations from their own parasites – Vampire Private Central Banks. 

Qathafi’s courage and pioneering efforts in trying to restore national sovereignty and making the government responsible to the people instead of to the Global Banking Elites is the reason why he was targeted and killed.

     NATO terrorist attacks will not get the Western nations out of debt – only an honest Public Central Bank – like the attempted Bank of Libya – would.

    But guess what? With Gaddafi now out-of-the-way, the IMF and The World Bank have moved in to Libya, and have reestablished their control and dominance there. And (black man) Obama was the ringleader in the effort to reassert the impoverishment of Africa.

    There will be no independence, and there will be no freedom. The only way for a Country to be Sovereign is to have sovereign control of its money.

9. All those ways to spell his name! Ah, that fun will be lost.

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

-->Occupy this dept: According the the Washington Post, the top-earning 0.1 percent of Americans (average income $5.6 million a year) saw a 385% raise in their income since 1975. The bottom 90%... we lost ground.

-->Separation of mouth and brain dept: Speaker of the House, John Boehner, keeps saying the country is “broke” so Americans United for Separation of Church and State asks why he is determined to funnel $20 million in tax dollars to religious schools in Washington, D.C.
      Boehner is attempting to railroad the re-authorization of a nasty school voucher “experiment” through the House.
     Speaker Boehner says we’re broke and have to slash federal spending,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Yet, he’s willing to throw $20 million at religious and other private schools.”

-->Great ideas dept: I'm waiting for the first all girl Lebanese punk band. I've been saving this name for you for the past few years. You're welcome to it. Just give me credit: LEZBOLLAH.

-->Speaking of punk rock dept: I've seen so many bands during the last month... hell, the last week... it's making my head spin. Tons of oldster still making punk... or doing it again. Former MRRers, FLY and JENNIFER BLOWDRYER, played on the same bill as COJOBA for Girls night at Otto's. Not long before that, I saw NOFX (thanks for the guestlist Mike!) with ANTIFLAG and cowpunkers OLD MAN MARKLEY. Wow!
    And now, I'm still feeling the hangover (thanks Kenny) from last night's MEATMEN, BLACK FAG (check out the YouTube video if you don't know them.... Homo versions of B.F. songs), RUNNY and BEER AND CABLE... two bands you never heard of, both whose members are... er... not young... both among the best things to wreck my ears in MONTHS. Oh yeah, thanks Tesco for the great TOUCH AND GO book and the admission!

-->How 'bout some equality dept: The Oakland police force has shot into and seriously injured Occupiers in that city. One former Iraqi vet has brain damage from the attack. So we've got the government attacking its own people. Well, Mr Obama, how 'bout a NO-FLY zone over the East Bay? Or even better, send in the drones!

-->It's already working dept: As of today, you can already see the effects of Occupy Wall Street. Obama has publicly criticized the Bank of America for its ATM card fee AND (except for several thousand “advisers,”) announced the end of the war in Iraq. Newspapers may give other reasons, but don't ever doubt WE DID IT.

-end-

Mykel's not-quite-functioning homepage is at: www.mykelboard.com

(MRR 343) Mykel Board explains the difference between BEING and DOING

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
Column for MRR 343
December 2011

by Mykel Board

aka  Mykel explains the difference between doing and being

“A person's sexuality is so much more than one word “gay.” No one refers to anyone as just “hetero” because that doesn't say anything. Sexual identity is broader than a label.” --Gus Van Sant

Los Gallos me dan dinero. Las mujeres me lo quitan. “The cocks give me money. The women take it away.” It's written... white on brown... on the front of my hat... a baseball-style hat I bought in Mexico-- made in China... of course.

The hat is on my head. My head is on my neck. My neck is on my body, the ass of which is on a United Airlines seat. The seat is fastened to the inside of a Boing 737.

I write this in the air... over the hills of Kentucky, where, like in Mexico, you can go to cockfights if you want. I'm thinking about my own cock, which hasn't earned me money in over 35 years, but has cost me plenty-- not only from the women. I'm headed toward the detestable Phoenix. Then, the much better Tucson. Then, the heavenly Agua Prieta, Mexico.

I'm leaving behind hellish New York with its TV cameras on every street, ID checks in tall buildings, bag checks in the subway, and a new law that criminalizes attendance at a dog or cockfight.

You don't have to actually DO anything to violate the law. You just have to BE there. That's illegal.

Flash to scene one: Chickens... beaks clipped... five dozen squeezed together in an area smaller than my apartment. Wing-to-wing, feather-to-feather, unable to move, to stretch, to do anything other than lay eggs. When they can't do that anymore, WHAM! grab a leg, lay 'em down, ffffft, off comes the head. Do they die instantly? Oh no. The expression running around like a chicken with its head cut off didn't come from nowhere. They live, those suckers... heads twitching in a floor pile... bodies not dead... kicking... in unimaginable pain... until enough blood drips to the concrete floor to send them to hen heaven.

Not one second of painless life while alive. Even a horrible death must be a relief for them.

Flash to scene two: A concrete ring in a small enclosed stadium. Two trained cocks face off. They stare at each other like professional boxers. Eye to eye, heads bobbing like human boxers. A flutter of wings. Attack! One bird settles, digging its claws into the back or the other. Half flight, the bottom bird shakes off the top one, backs away. A thin trickle colors its feathers.

They face off... dive... half fly... flutter... each intent on defeating the other. It's cold and brave. These birds have balls.

I've seen them trained, these birds. I've seen the love and care their owners have for them. I've seen the tears shed at each death. Who lives better? The cocks or the chickens? Who dies better? Which is illegal?

Yeah, Cockfights... or dogfights... or bullfights... shouldn't be illegal. Cockfights are more humane and less painful than the day-to-day lives of America's billions of chickens. Dogfights? Hah! Those dogs live better than any of America's billions of cattle. Dogfights are illegal because people don't have pet cows. Cows aren't cute.

I've written enough making fun of vegetarians, but at least they have the integrity that most supporters of this law don't have. For vegetarians, cruelty hidden is the same as cruelty for sport. You gotta admire that.

That's all an aside... a tangent. What I really wanna write about is BEING vs DOING. I want to write about laws that criminalize EXISTENCE, in a place... at a time... like the NY law against BEING at an animal fight. You don't have to DO anything... just BE there, and it's illegal.

Right now, I'm on my way to the most notorious place that criminalizes BEING: Arizona. Uh oh! Mexican without a license. BEING born in another country is against the law. The idea that a person (rather than an action) is ILLEGAL should be repugnant to all those of non-genocidal persuasion.

America is famous for crimes without victims. Drug laws (possession) and porn laws (possession) are the most obvious. Can you tell me who is hurt if you POSSESS an internet file or a syringe of heroin? MAYBE you are hurt, but it's your choice. In any case, it's gonna hurt a lot less than getting butt-fucked by a murderous cellmate.

HAVING is a kind of BEING. The object you have is simply BEING owned by you. The means of getting it should, perhaps, be prohibited. But HAVING? It's as innocent as breathing.

I can't imagine a valid law prohibiting possession of ANYTHING. Stolen goods? Stealing already is against the law. Fair enough. Possession? No!

Your neighbor's head in a hatbox? Murder already is against the law. Your neighbor is just as dead with her head in your apartment as she is with her head in the dumpster outside.

Even having $36 billion, like the mayor of New York, shouldn't be illegal... though it should be controlled through taxes. The bankers who stole money from customers, who DID something by tricking-- or extorting-- people into giving them money, the DOING should be punished, not the HAVING. (Though, nobody HAS $36 billion dollars without DOING something bad to a whole lot of people.)

If it were legal to say it, I'd say Dick Cheny should be hung by the balls for setting up the torture in Guantanamo. (It probably is illegal to say that, so I won't.) But these are ACTIONS, not states of BEING or HAVING. He WAS vice-president... BFD. It's what he DID.

EEEEEE! SCREECH TO A STOP, Er. Er.. Er.. SWITCH GEARS

Sometimes people confuse BEING with DOING. Take “gay”... please! Of course homosex is a victimless act. It is no longer (in the US) a crime, and it shouldn't be. There's plenty of DOING that, like being, shouldn't be illegal. Most, in fact. But it's important to distinguish the two.

No one IS gay. It's not something you can BE? What does it mean to BE gay? Attracted to the “same” sex? Hah, every one is-- in one way or another. Having sexual contact with the “same” sex? Are all prisoners “gay?”

The idea that gay is BEING rather than DOING is part of a big problem. BEING gay is such a trap for a shitload of people. Guys begin to be attracted to other guys. They suddenly think “oh, I like the way he looks. I must BE gay.” Then suddenly their world changes.

Someone in Real Jock, the “gay health and fitness website,” asks, why do gay men like the same kind of music as 14 year old girls? The letters section of MRR fills with people explaining how “Emo” has become code for “gay.”

What does music have to do with the organs that enter your anus?

Glad you asked.

The answer, of course, should be NOTHING! It's only a connection if you think gay IS something... BEING something. Johnny who, though his crush on Aiden, thinks he IS gay, will suddenly become his own image of gaydom. He'll dress gay, like gay music, go to gay bars, a whole slew of things that match the image of what he thinks he IS. Instead of just DOING Aiden, and BEING whatever he wants, Johnny has to BE gay. That's a trap. Johnny has given up his right to choose, because of what he thinks he IS.

Part of why I respect trannie boys and girls so much is that they refuse to BE. As much as society puts pressure on people (especially guys) to BE gay or straight, there's that much more pressure put on people to BE a man or a woman. Who can resist such pressure?

Everything is divided. Even the fuckin' bathrooms, for God's sake. MEN/WOMEN... choose one. BE one. Transsexuals refuse. They refuse to BE. Or rather they CHOOSE to BE. Screw your biology.

It takes more balls for a boy to put on a dress than it does for one cock to face another in a concrete ring. And girls? Them too!

Ok, I have a twat. That doesn't mean I AM a girl. If I want, I can just be a boy with a cunt. You gotta love that!

I know one-- a boy with a cunt. S/he lives with a guy in a “homo relationship.” “She” calls herself “he” and goes to gay bars and, as far as I know, gets popped in the poopshaft. (I only wish I could find out first hand.) S/He's a god(dess). The perfect person... immensely strong... refusing to be trapped by biology.

Instead of the poor homo saying, “I can't help it. It's biology. That's just the way I AM.” You've got someone saying, “Fuck biology! I AM who I want to BE.”

If there's a master race, it's transsexuals.

Almost. Sometimes the badguys are just too smart. I never watch television, but occasionally I see a newspaper. I read something about Cher's trans-son, Chaz Bono. And what? He's going to be on TV, selling soap in Dancing With The Stars. Ah America, if they don't make it illegal, they make it a commodity.

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

-->They can sabotage too dept: Harpers Magazine reports that a British intelligence group has announced that its operatives had sabotaged the launch of Inspire. That's an English-language magazine published by Al Qaeda supporters. How did they sabotage it? They inserted cupcake recipes into an article on bomb-making.

-->How to get free healthcare in America dept: The Gaston Gazette reports that James Richard Verone walked into a bank and handed the teller a note demanding one dollar-- and medical attention. Verone worked for Coca-Cola for seventeen years as a deliveryman before being fired. He is unable to handle work because of his poor health and he has no health insurance. The Gazette reports that Verone chose to rob the bank to so he'd be sent to jail. He felt that was the only way he could get free healthcare to treat his poor physical condition.

-->Drink this! dept: The Progressive reports that the federal government is warning residents in Pavilion Wyoming not to drink the water. It is not only polluted, but also potentially explosive. The EPA issued a warning that said people should not drink their water and should use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes to avoid the risk of an explosion.

-->Whose picture is that next to the GREEDY entry dept: NJ Governor Chris Christie called public school teachers "greedy" for their $50,000 salaries and benefits. He forgot to mention, however, that his own salary is $175,000 with free healthcare. He does not call for cuts to THAT salary.

-->Food for thought dept: This from my pal Kyle, finally out of the clink... and on Facebook): “If you get 20 years in prison for fantasizing about kids, and jacking off in your home to kiddy porn... and you get 20 years for going out and kidnapping and raping a little girl... well what's the molester gonna do?”

-->Which is more important dept: After the earthquake and radioactive tragedies in Japan, CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow reported "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic one, and we can be grateful for that"

-->Presidential Material Dept: Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday-- on the 34^th anniversary of his death. She made the remark during a campaign stop at a restaurant in South Carolina. Given the location, I expect a lot of patrons would have been aware of the error. Another interesting fact, because of the name, Bachmann, a lot of NY Jews think Michele is one of us. G-d forbid!

-->Store this letter in the closet dept: I got this form letter (asking for money of course) from the what used to be called The Gay Task Force. It's an advocacy group for all the mainstream stuff like homos in the military or gay marriage. But it seems that people are ashamed to receive mail with GAY in the return address. So the group changed its name to THE TASK FORCE. Whew! Now I don't have to be embarrassed in front of my mailman.

-end-

(MRR 342) Mykel Relates Mexico to His Colon

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

(Note: It's shorter than usual this month. (TWSS) I have not been censored... just timed. I'll be in Mexico for the column deadline, so I have to get it in early.(TWHS))

"These self-anointed Protectors of the Overprotected endlessly yammer about breaking the "cycle of abuse," oblivious to the concept that imprisoning someone is a particularly vicious perpetuation of that cycle.” --Jim Goad

“Death begins in the colon.” --Sir Jason Winters

 I'm fetally curled into a human comma. My arms are thrust between my legs. Those legs are pulled up toward my chest. A bubbling perks in my intestines. Bullump. Bullump. Bullump. I feel it along my right side... the side pressed against the naked mattress beneath my naked self. The bubbling moves. Up my right side, across my abdomen, down my left side. Bullump... Bullump... Bullump... the gaseous track of my large intestine. It presses rectally downwards... gurgling through the netherworld. Building pressure.

I cup my hands over my struggling sphincter... contract my stomach muscles...push... hard. BLAAAAATTTTT. Just a few milometers north of a liquid explosion... whew! I blow pure hot gas into my hands. Now I raise those hands to my nose... inhaling my own smell. I turn the inside out. How is it that it smells so good? How is it that other people's farts stink to holy hell and mine out-roses any rose ever risen?

The fragrant gas enters my body. From my nose and mouth, down deep into my lungs. It's a physical, spiritual, metaphysical cycle. That beautiful smell... leaving my body... entering my body, traveling through my body.

I drift back to sleep.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! What the fuck?

The alarm clock. As beautiful a smell as my own fart... that's how horrible is the sound of the alarm clock. In the 1400s clocks had no minute hands, just an hour hand that lazily circled a Roman-numeraled face. Then came the minute hand, and 8AM became 8:09AM or 7:59AM. It wasn't long before a someone added a SECOND HAND. In Union Square, you can get the time to five decimal places. Who the fuck needs five decimal places? My boss?

How can I lay in bed and enjoy my farts? There's work to be done. Time to get up.

I try to sit up. Pain shoots through my pelvis, down my leg. Excruciating. Aaaaaaah! My leg, my balls, my prostate. On fire. A burning mass of pain.

“AAAAAAAAH!” I cry out

BAUM! BAUM! BAUM!

My neighbor bangs on her side of the wall. The universal signal for SHUT THE FUCK UP!

I lower my cry to a whimper.

From the waist down, is pain. Everything hurts. Last night's beer bulges in my stomach. The sciatica presses against my back and legs.

Unable to stand, I roll like a log until one arm reaches over the side of the bed. Then, pressing down, I slowly... painfully... drop my body on to the floor... knees first. Using the arm already touching the floor, I push myself up... stagger forward, grabbing a lamp for support... hobbling as fast as biology will let me... I enter the bathroom... fall ass-first onto the toilet.

PLOW! I explode... just missing spurting brown down the back of my legs. But the usual bliss that follows a massive beer shit is lost.... buried in the pain in my back and legs... Is there a reason to keep living if you can't enjoy a beer shit?

NEWS FLASH: A court in Mexico has just found an American teenager, who goes by the nickname "El Ponchis," guilty of torture, murder and kidnappings.

Edgar Jimenez, 14 years old, was convicted of torturing and beheading at least four people and kidnapping three others. The bodies were found hanging from a bridge near Mexico City last year. The judge sentenced El Ponchis to three years in a correctional facility, the maximum permissible for a minor. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 4.5 million pesos, the equivalent of about $400,000.

Flash Ahead: My Mexican pals have invited me back. It's OLD PUNK FEST, in Agua Prieta, one of those border towns where 14 year old Americans cut the heads off who-knows-who. I was there last year. Maybe you read about it. It's one of my favorite towns in the world. Home of Walmarcito and Burger Queen.

My Mexican pals have put together a cover band again. Sin Arte.. I'll be “singing” and hosting an OLD PUNKS night. La Merma, Grito, Pop Gestapo... Except for BEEF, I may be the only non-Mexican in the show. I hope so. That's the way I like it.

When I started this column, I planned to write about circles. My fart leaving and entering my body. My return to Mexico. Old punk rockers rejoining and playing again. This column continuing the theme of the last, and one before.

I've changed my mind.

Going to Mexico will complete a circle. Like sniffing a fart. Last year, this year... but the circle is not round. Just as my beer shit lost its ecstasy in the pain of my sciatica, these circles too become less perfect, more jagged, over time.

My circle metaphor for life may be a spiral. Or something else. When Jim Goad talked about “the cycle of abuse” (check out the opening quotes), jail did something. It knocked that circle a bit. Stretched it. Made it even nastier than it already was.

The circle is such a nice metaphor. But it's wrong. The zen circle is not a circle. Maybe it's shapeless... or shape-shifting like a vampire in a bad TV show... or an amoeba with no shape at all. Maybe it's a spiral... an ever smaller circle that ends in nothing. The neat package of this column has come unraveled.

With my metaphor gone and visions of headless bodies in the street... 14 year old Americans caught and those not caught... I board the plane to Mexico.

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]

-->One step forward two steps back department: In October last year, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian featured it's first exhibition "to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture." Pretty bold for a government gallery, huh?

      Not so fast, the Catholic League attacked one of the images in a video displayed in the collection: 11 seconds of ants crawling on a crucifix. Rep. John A. Boehner led the congressional threat to stop funding if the video was not removed. Within an hour, it was gone. 

-->Sometimes bad news isn't dept: Gay City News reports that a recent court ruling "may place nearly insurmountable obstacles” to porn producers suing illegal downloaders. The lawsuits worked in the past, because they'd embarrass the downloader as much as hurt financially.

      The way the porn companies worked in the past was to collect IP addresses (your unique computer id number) of "violators" and then sue them as a group. Unless another court overturns the ruling, they can no longer do that. 

Awww too bad, right?

Yeah, right.

-->Cause and effect dept: I've often written about how the US has the world's second highest NON-smoking rate, and the world's highest cancer rate... showing that NOT smoking causes cancer.

Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the number of children killed in car crashes in 2009 was 9.6% less than the previous year. They also report that the number use of professionally fitted child booster seats also went down.

     So what are we to conclude? NOT using a car seat saves kids lives. Seems reasonable to me.

--> If there were more profs like that, I wudda got my Phd dept: A former assistant professor of psychology at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, has sued the institution for sex discrimination. She says that she was fired for performing in an off-campus burlesque act.

     Sheila  Addison was hired in Sept. 2007 to teach graduate students under a one-year contract as an assistant professor of psychology. The following July she was awarded a two-year contract which stated that she could be fired only for “just cause.”

     At about the same time that she started working at JFK, she started performing under a pseudonym, Professor Shimmy, at the Hubba Hubba Revue, a burlesque show in San Francisco.

She belonged to a group of performers who sought to bring social commentary to their acts. Some of her performances tell stories, including one in which she performs with a classically trained male ballet dancer. He dresses as a snow fairy and she as the abominable snowman. When they remove their clothes, the audience sees that the fairy and the snowman are not the genders they're supposed to be. Yeah!

     The university declines to comment on the case. 

-->Completing the Circle Dept: The mercenary company Xe Services, which pre-scandal was called Blackwater, has brought shamed former Attorney Gneral John Ashcroft on board in a new position. And what exactly is that position? Why, ethics chief of course.

    (I shit you not.)

-->Humane torture dept: Senator James Inhofe, told Fox News that torture victims in Guantanamo have it easy: "These detainees, they have things they've never had before. You know what the biggest problem in Gitmo is right now? It's obesity. They're eating better than they've ever eaten before.”

-->Reality theme park dept: Parque EcoAlberta in the Mexican state of Hidalgo allows tourists to sign up for a three-hour trek that simulates a refugees passage into the U.S. According to THE PROGRESSIVE magazine "Tourists must navigate craggy ravines and rolling rivers with only a flashlight-- no food or water.... The trek ends with gunshots as the would-be migrants are thrown into the back of mock U.S. border patrol trucks." The cost for the trek is $20 a person.

-->Buy a liberal today dept: AT&T is plugging to buy competitor T-Mobile in a bid to out-monopoly Verizon. So how do they get support... especially from liberals who usually oppose corporatocracy? They give money!

      In 2009 alone, the NAACP received a million dollars from AT&T. GLAAD, the pro-Gay-censor-the-opposition group got $50,000 from the Apple-Loving Giant.

     I say (with palm out, facing upwards) Go AT&T! Buy that sucker! I support you! Is the check in the mail?

-->Cut! Print! It's a take dept: The Rumanian Doctors Union has criticized a decision to make a surgeon pay almost $200,000 after he lost his temper and hacked off a patient's penis during surgery.

     Surgeon Naum Ciomu had been operating on the patient to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper. 

      According to the  BNI Newsletter “Grabbing a scalpel he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theater.”

     The doctors union objected to the court decision, saying “Doctors in Rumania earn too little to be able to pay amounts like this.” 

     I say that if the doctor would only support the ATT T-Mobile takeover, he wouldn't have any trouble paying the fine. 

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