MRR Column 363 (Never published, never submitted)

[Note: Though, this column was written before I was fired, it was never submitted to MRR.]

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. --Woodrow Wilson

Work. Study. Get ahead. Kill. --1960's anti-war chant

Panic. The Smithsonian Magazine talks about a report that the US is only in the middle of world-countries in math and science-- especially women. The U.S. Department of Education starts a campaign to encourage more female participation in those areas. They make t-shirts: SCIENCE-- IT'S A GIRL THING. The campaign fails miserably.

Meanwhile, students find themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt-- student loans that will never be paid off. Why? So they can go to college and earn a degree to get “a good job” so they can earn enough money to pay off their student loans. Most will not.

The Economist reports: The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011, graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.

At those prices, who can afford to waste money studying USELESS subjects like art or language? No math unless it's accounting. No science unless it teaches you how to fiddle chemicals into something some drug company can patent for big bucks. Anything else is useless. It won't get you a job.

What is USELESS anyway?

In 2013, useless is not putting money in someone else's pocket. Useless is not consuming. Art is useless unless you sell it. Music is useless unless you create PRODUCT. Music is even tangential to music. Ask any band on tour... the big money-maker is the t-shirts. Nobody buys records. Nobody buys music.

Liberals push for university for all, so even the poor will have a chance to be educated... and get good jobs... and contribute to society (aka General Motors, Walmart, Citibank, Million Dollar Real Estate).

Conservatives want students to pay their own way. Borrow from the bank. Enrich Citibank, before they can even start working for them. Standing on your own two feet, they call it.

FLASHBACK: It's 1988, September. Classes are just starting. It's my first day of Gilyak. In the world, there are about 500 speakers of that language. I'm gonna learn it. This isn't a speaking class, though. It's a grammar class. We learn about the structure of Gilyak, how the grammar relates to the phonemes. Like in Mongolian and Finnish, they have vowel harmony. But unlike those two, the harmony isn't in the front or backitude of the vowels. It's in the height of the tongue position. We're lucky enough to have the world's leading expert on Gilyak teaching the course.

BANG! The HAND OF THE PRESENT reaches back in time. Slaps me on the back of the head.

“Yo Mykel,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “what the fuck are you gonna do with Gilyak?”

“Yo PRESENT,” I say, “why do I have to DO anything? Why can't I just learn something interesting? Just LIKE learning it... even if I forget it next year. Why can't I enjoy finding out stuff for itself? Learning is fun.”

“Because,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “you have to live in society. You're going to college for a purpose. You've got a life ahead of you... you're less than a third of the way through. How will this contribute to your future? How will Gilyak make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is it? You'd better plan for your future rather than waste your time with fuckin' Gilyak.”

FLASH TO NOW: It's my niece's college graduation. She's got a B.A.... in marketing. She aced the class How to Do Business on the Golf Course. I shit you not.

I've taken the train to Delaware to attend graduation ceremonies. I stay at a Holiday Inn, right near the university.

I have a few minutes to explore town before pre-graduation dinner.

I make sure I have the stupid little keycard, close the door and head down the hall toward the elevator. I'm in room 44-- easy to remember: Reggie Jackson's number. The door to room 42 is not quite shut. As I pass it, I stop and listen. The sound of panting comes from inside. I nudge the door open with my foot, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Yep, there on the bed, an attractive young man rests a computer on his naked stomach. He's reaching behind the machine to stroke his short but alluring stubbiness. I watch quietly as my own short but alluring stubbiness hardens.

As in every piece of imperfect timing, at this point, the door squeaks.

“What the fuck?” he says, quickly putting himself together.

I recognize the VOICE. It's the VOICE OF THE PRESENT.

“Hey,” I tell him, “I know you.”

“What the fuck?” he repeats.

“You were jerking off,” I tell him. “Just lying in bed jerking off.”

“So?” he asks. “Like you don't jerk off?”

“But what's the purpose?” I ask him. “How will this contribute to your future life? How will this make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is jerking off?”

Get it?

Universities used to be places of learning. You'd study things that were absolutely useless... in the job sense. You'd learn art, philosophy, interpreting Egyptian Hieroglyphics. At Columbia College, I took a course in the History of Violence and Pornography. (I aced that one.) Universities were places of agitation, socialization, give and take, pranks, and inter-racial drug-taking.

Now, most classes are given through the internet. Jerking off at home, rather than having REAL SEX. But jerking off with a purpose: to earn a degree, get ahead in life, get a job, contribute to society. AHHHRGH!

If you want to learn math because numbers are the most fascinating artificial construct. Fine! It's not much different from learning Gilyak. If you want to learn math because AT&T needs number crunchers or because the US Army needs to better direct its killer drones.. not fine.

If you study to get a “good job,” you are wasting your time. Not only your time now, but your future time. And you'll spend the rest of you life trying to convince yourself that owning THINGS... having an SUV or an Internet TV with 453 food channels... is a valid substitute for actually living.

What is it with HAVING A JOB? Why do we care what you can DO with that? How long before universities stop all of the Gilyak classes and instead offer Creative Accounting for Hiding Business Profit 101.

Okay. In today's American society, you NEED a job. You also need to regularly take a shit. But do you really have to go to college for either? And should your life be a vague goal of a “good job” (oxymoronic?) Or should you be LIVING NOW, enjoying knowledge for itself... feeling the bliss of each fart as it escapes into the atmosphere.

Yeah, you work because you have to. But that is neither a goal nor the a reason to study.

Besides, is ANY job better than the real freedom of NOT WORKING?

Instead of men asking for the right to stay home and take care of the kids... or just shop. Women demand EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. Huh? How bout the right NOT TO WORK. What kind of life is it when all your time is work? For what?

In the old days, women stayed home, did some shopping, cooking, cared for the kids when they weren't in school, watched TV, read books, took day classes. They lead real lives while their stupid husbands crowded into stupid cars or commuter trains to earn a sliver of the money they were making for someone else.

Now women want EQUALITY IN THE WORKFORCE. Why? Equality to what?

How 'bout forcing the idiots who WANT to spend their lives EARNING MONEY... those who live for greed... for riches... to pay for the rest of us?

Instead of creating a society where MORE women are entering the workforce... where MORE women are in executive positions... using their math or science to make money, why not create one where MORE men (and women) LEAVE the workforce... hang out at home... have a personal relationship with their kids? NO BREAD-WINNERS, because the bread shouldn't have to be won. It should be there for the eating.

In Scandinavia, where people are happiest with their lives, it's easy to get welfare. The rich pay up to 90% income taxes and they still live well. In America, life is hell, the rich are the devil, and you get no more protest than people demanding to burn equally. What is it?

The right to work? What about the right to learn? The right to adventure? The right to jerk off at your leisure? In China, people jump out of windows from the strain of building iPhones so you can instantly notify your friends of a cute-boy spotting. Is that your RIGHT? Is it right?

Is it worth giving your life to some corporate monster with MAYBE two days a week where you're not a slave-- to report a CUTE BOY? I don't think so.

We're asking the wrong questions. It's analagous to gay marriage.

In that case, instead of asking “Why do people have to get married at all?” or “Why does the government intrude in the marriage business?” or “Why does marriage give rights that singledom doesn't give?” Homos ask, “Why can't GAYS get married too?” AHHHRGH!

People should ask: “Since most work is dangerous, environmentally destructive, soul-destroying, useless, why do people have to WORK at all?” or “If women traditionally stay home, prepare and LIVE life, why can't men do the same?” Instead, they ask, “Why can't women earn the same money as men for the same work?” AHHHRGH!

Instead of asking, “Is Gilyak an Indo-European language, or is it related to Mongolian... or maybe an isolate, like Basque?”

People ask “Hey, I got this new nose-hair counting app on my cellphone. You want a link to it?”

Add your own AHHHRGH! here.

ENDNOTES: [You can subscribe by email (god@mykelboard.com) or view the blog (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) for live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Christians, ya gotta love 'em Dept: After the Connecticut school shootings. The Reverend Rob Morris, was reprimanded by the head of his church. Why? He attended a multi-religious memorial service with other preachers and rabbis. The head of the church said Morris shouldn't have attended. Why? By attending, he gave "the false impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us and how we get to heaven, really don't matter in the end."

Morris apologized.

-->The military, you gotta love it Dept: The Yale Herald reports than an associate professor of psychology applied for a federal grant to bring US Special Forces to campus. The professor wanted to teach them "interrogation techniques." He planned on having them practice on "someone they can't necessarily identify with." Who would he use to teach the techniques on?

"We could use New Haven immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco and Nepal," suggested the professor. After student/alumni protests, the grant proposal was withdrawn.

And further on the education front:

-->Understanding is one thing we will not tolerate dept: From AMNewYork: an unidentified 10th-grade teacher at Albany High School assigned her students a "persuasive writing" exercise.

She told them to pretend their teacher was a Nazi.

The Albany schools superintendent later met with Jewish leaders and apologized saying "that's not the assignment that any school district is going to tolerate."

The teacher is facing disciplinary action that could include termination.

-->The Kids are All Right dept: The Progressive Magazine reports that the Atwood-Hammon Little League in Illinois is raffling off an AR-15 assault rifle as a fund raiser.

Little League commissioner Steve McClain says, "People from the media keep asking the same question: 'Is this tasteless?' I don't think so. It's all about the kids."

On the MRR front: the editors and their co-conspirators have tried a new trick: Blaming the Victim. It's ironic, because it's a pet shibboleth of feminists that MEN are guilty of this tactic.

“I'm sorry, officer, but I couldn't help myself. She was dressed so... so... slutty. I couldn't keep my hands to myself.”

So, here's the same tactic from the MRR powers. This is from an email to me:

First, you obviously have read not only Mariam's column, but Lydia's column as well, from the previous issue. Both have indicated how incredibly obnoxious and obstreperous you have been throughout this entire process. Lydia in particular has likened your attitude to hari-kiri, a kind of suicidal behavior. I noted the same thing in my own column, when I said you were behaving like "suicide by coordinator" and that your intent was to purposefully get yourself canned.

As usual, I urge you to express your opinion to me at my email address above and to MRR at mrr@maximumrocknroll.com.

THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED: MRR column for 362 June 2013

THIS IS THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED...

First a little background.

I was already in trouble Two columns censored and a lot of bad blood. The handwriting was on the inside of the stall. Two months ago, I'd written a column where I quoted someone else saying that using the word "colored" was like using the word "nigger." When that column was printed, MRR used asterisks to write "ni**er." The following column complained about that (among other things). I was fired for that complaint! Here it is:

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

THE COLUMN THAT WAS NEVER PRINTED... AND GOT HIM FIRED!

Q. Are you happy there are more black musicians and fans in American punk?

A. No! I hate it. At shows it used to be ONLY ME. I was THE BLACK GUY. Everyone wanted to be my friend and hang out with me. I was special. Now I'm just another dork.

--Black Punkrock fan interviewed in the movie Afro-Punk 2003

Baby got a hand; got a finger on the trigger. Baby, baby, baby is a rock-and-roll ni**er. Outside of society, that's where I want to be. Outside of society, they're waitin' for me. --Patti Smith

“Shit in my mouth!” I yell, “Shit in my mouth!”

I wonder if Shaniqua can hear me, sitting up there on my face... her ample buttocks one on each of my cheeks. Cheek-to-cheek.

“I can't, Mykel,” comes the voice above me. “I can't do it. I'm too...”

I push up my tongue and press it against her sphincter.

She tightens more, as grabbing my probing tongue and pull it inside her. I'm stuck!

“Puth! Hahth!” I say.

The sphincter opens slightly. I pull my tongue back into my mouth.

Then that tasty brown hole opens a little more. A tiny fart escapes. I suck it into my lungs. Another one... then there's a pop... well more like a FRRRRRRR_CLICK!

I sense rather than feel something more than a fart escape from that elegant round muscle.

I raise my tongue again. Lick around the same hole. There it is, something tiny... hard... flat... like a piece of eggshell, or digested plastic.

First salivating, then using my tongue, I force the object away from its sphictorious home and into my mouth. I try to judge the shape and texture. I... OUCH!! The tiny whatever-it-is slides into my tongue, cutting me. I feel the blood flow down my tongue tip... drip... drip... drip... into the back of my throat.

I push the ass on my face upwards, coughing from the blood. Running for the bathroom I spit red into the toilet. Shaniqua follows.

“Jesus!” I say, “What did you eat that came out and cut my tongue.”

“Hey Mykel,” she says. “It's punk rock.”

FLASH: We break into our oral-anal story with a news flash. Terrorists have attacked the Boston Marathon. Three people are dead, more than a hundred injured. Boston is in lockdown while the police go on a manhunt.

“We'll get them! We'll get them!”

More terrorists. Just what we need. A reason to expand SECURITY!

You are now entering Boston... please have your passports ready.

Oh look, there's gonna be be a TV chase, some bomb throwing... some arrests... brothers from Chechnya??? I mean didn't the US support Chechnya in the fight against those big bad Russians? Don't those terrorists watch TV?

Three people??? Three people??? Yeah I feel sorry for their families. I feel sorry for the 89 people a day killed in US traffic accidents. But THREE PEOPLE????

U.S. Government forces have killed A MILLION Iraqis since the turn of the century. It's the holocaust of the millennium. A MILLION!!! That's like the entire city of Dallas. Will you see it in the holocaust museum in Washington? I don't think so. Any manhunts? TV action shots? Naw, none of those either. No blood pictures. No death pictures. But compare THREE to A MILLION! I want YOU to tell ME who the terrorists are.

In the meantime, vengeful Americans, who have the least regard for human life of any of the 57 countries I've been in (and probably most I haven't) will assault and probably kill several Muslims or people they THINK are Muslims in a PAYBACK FOR BOSTON.

Yo buckaroos! BOSTON was a payback!

END OF NEWSFLASH:

I hear a click behind me. Shaniqua's i-Phone snaps a picture of a naked Mykel Board puking blood into the toilet.

“Just wait til THAT gets on Facebook, Mykel.”

Time's passed since then. When I check Facebook,I look to see if that picture has made its way there. So far, it hasn't. What has made it though, are a bunch of friends who have changed their Facebook photos to some stupid pink on red EQUAL sign. It takes me 2.78 seconds to realize this is a show of support for MARRIAGE EQUALITY. Oy vey!

I've written a fuck of a lot about why I'm opposed to MARRIAGE in general... especially as a government licensed and regulated institution. Of course I don't support gay marriage. I don't support ANY marriage. But this month, I want to take a punkrock view.

If (the MRR version of) punk is anything, it's about INDEPENDENCE. It's about NOT MAINSTREAM. The letters section alone is a litany of offal about how A,B,C, is SELLING OUT... going major label... mainstream. What's more mainstream than marriage? Working for a bank? Owning an SUV? I donno.

Homos used to be the outsiders... the exotic. The Andy Warhol mystique was so alluring because it was so homosexual. UNDERGROUND was homosexuality. Homos were free. They could talk about sex, have a ton of sex partners, did not have to live under the constraints of boring hetero humanity.

Flash to 1973. You're in the back room of The Stud... on West 10 Street in New York. It's pitch black. You enter from the bar... beer finished... you need both hands. You can smell the sex. Men crowded together. Seeing nothing, your hands guide you through the blackness. A brush against the back of your hand. A penis. Then another. And another. You grab one and stroke. Before long, a pair of hands at your crotch releases your own stiffness. There's a wet softness. A head between your legs. You reach and press it toward you as he sucks it in.

In those days there was homosex everywhere. School bathrooms, hiking trails, tall bushes in the park. Sex like heteros WISH they could have. Immediate, releasing, no consequences sex. Queer sex.

QUEER was strange, different, outside the mainstream. Queer was the freedom of anonymous sex. Queer was the place to be. The slow mainstream response to AIDS was because hets thought PAYBACK TIME. Homos were living the life hets WISHED they could live. AIDS gets even!

Now? Gay marriage! The worst of heterosexuality. The most mainstream, boring, piece of shit lifestyle... and they call it a RIGHT! JEZUS fuckin' KY-ed anus! Work for a bank if you wanna get married!

I wonder how long before the first GAY president kills his first hundred thousand people. See? Gays are just like everybody else.

Flash to 1977. CBGBs. Stiv Bators is on stage with bologna safety pinned to his clothes: neck to pants cuffs. He hangs on the microphone and tells those of us sitting at the tables, drinking our cheap Buds:

I don't need anyone. Don't need no mom and dad. Don't need no pretty face. Don't need no human race...

Yeah. That's us. We don't need anyone. We're the blank generation and we only have THIS. This little club. This little group of people with this little kind of music called punk rock. It's ours. THEY wish they had places like this. THEY pay $20 to go to discos and listen to records. WE have music like never made before. We are not like THEM.

1992: a movie comes out called 1991: The Year Punk Broke. It's about Sonic Youth and Nirvana. The punkrock joke at the time is “Yeah, Punk broke. Now someone's gotta fix it.”

What happened was it went mainstream. Punks hated the movie... not because it was bad, but because it put punk in the mainstream.

1994: Warner Borthers releases DOOKIE and sells millions. There's a huge backlash. Not because of the music, but because Green Day became mainstream.

Get it? Tough. There's more.

As long as black people have been in America, they've been outsiders. Slavery was a great dividing line between the inside people and the outside people. But outsider status did not end with slavery.

During the 1930s, 40s and 50s Negro was cool. Drugs, sex, homosex, poetry, jazz, these were the forbidden fruits of the outsider... the black outsider. Negroes lived like whites wished THEY could live.

When whites wanted to claim outside status, they hung out at black clubs... listened to jazz-- ni**er music. This was the stuff your grandparents were afraid of. Yeah!

Flash to 1960. My mother's talking to me about her weekend in THE CITY.

“Mickey,” she says, “we went to this place called Greenwich Village. It was scary. We went to a music club and there were all these colored people playing saxophone and drums. And in the audience mixed couples were making out.”

In 1960, I didn't know what making out was. I didn't really get mixed couples either. But it sounded so strange and exciting that I decided then, I wanted to be one... a mixed couple making out.

In the 1970s, black street talk incorporated the word NI**ER (without the asterisks) like homos incorporated QUEER. It was in everyday street talk. A celebration of the disturbing, the unacceptable, the outside

When Patti Smith, possibly America's first punkrocker, compared her outsider status to black folks did she say she was a ROCK'N'ROLL N***R? When that first NY black-fronted punkband blasted into CBGB in the 70s. Did they call themselves THE NEW YORK N***RS? Those asterisks (now required by the MRR manual of style) are mainstream. Civilized people don't use that word. Patti and the New York band were outside of society. They were not civilized.

(My pal Sid reminds me that 10 years before Patti, John Lennon/Yoko Ono's song Woman Is The N***r of The World, was performed once on TV. Then it was banned. No asterisks in that one either.)

The New York Times can write “N**R” (with asterisks). CNN can flash N**R (with asterisks) on the screen as a caption for something or other. It annoys the shit out of me that even MRR has taken what was liberating... outside... and filled it with asterisks. I gotta use 'em, though. It's a company rule!

But it's more than that. Being black itself has become respectable. Al Sharpton, once my hero, now says hip hoppers shouldn't use the word Ni**er because it's disparaging. Translation: It's showing its outsider status.

Today, we have a black president who, while not slaughtering quite as many as his predecessor, still scores in the hundreds of thousands. He maintains his office of religious affairs and bails out banks, rather than Social Security recipients. He's a president, like any other president (except my hero, Jimmy Carter). Mainstream as white bread, get it?

If punk is anything, it is being OUTSIDE the mainstream. It is the fly in the ointment... the hole in the condom... the anal eggshell that cuts the tongue. It's what everyone else DOESN'T like... or what they're afraid of. Mainstream? Popular? Everyday? That's just not p**k.

 

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->What the world needs now dept: YES! YES! And it's about time. Peru, whose LOS SAICOS are arguably the world's first punk band has finally created an ALL-GIRL DEATH METAL BAND! Muerte Ancestral! Contact Clara Herrara Novoa, Jr. Galeano 896, Santiago de Surco, Lima 33, Peru! Tell her Mykel sent ya!

-->Uncredited dept: Paul Abuse (aka Hohman) wrote to me about a old letter he sent me ten years ago. Then, he said that he wanted to change the name of MRR to Maximum Porn and have Ron Jeremy among the columnists. I completely forgot about that, but it's likely a subconscious memory that inspired my April Fools MRR column. I want to give him credit.

-->Irony on irony dept: So the Christian right wants prayer in school, creationism in science class, government support of "faith-based" organizations, state support of religious schools through voucher schemes... and they're at it again. This time the right-wing ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM (yeah right) is protesting a California public school for instituting a yoga program. Why are they protesting? They say the program violates the separation of Church and State.

-->Little Victories Dept: The private prison mega-corporation GEO will not get naming rights at the Florida Atlantic University stadium, home of the FAU Owls. The private prison group will soon make millions on the coming jailing of Americans without papers. It's called the DREAM ACT, though for many it'll be a nightmare.

FAU students formed an anti-GEO group called STOP OWLCATRAZ. They said that the school was “putting the families of their Hispanic students at risk of being detained in facilities that bear the same name as the stadium of their Alma Mater.” The bad publicity caused the corporation to withdraw its bid to name the stadium. 10 punk points guys!

-END-

Your comments are welcome. And your comments to Maximum Rock'n'Roll (mrr@maximumrockn'roll.com) are even more welcome.

MRR Column for #361 (Lots of Lincolns)

 

 

 

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

Originally from MRR #361, as it turns out, this will be my last column printed in MRR

"What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland." --Abraham Lincoln

It's brother against brother... looking at each other through gunsights. Terrible... just a dividing line in the dirt... puts... FIZZ! BING! A bullet enters his face, right at the right cheekbone. It tears a small hole as it enters-- like a large wart-- then it tears through the inside of the skull, coming out through the back of the head... a baseball-sized hole, brain spraying gray matter before the expression of surprise can leave the now-dead face.

“It's terrible. Terrible,” says the president. “The nation is torn apart, but we have no choice, if we're to preserve the union.”

Flash to Riverdale in the Bronx. I'm at dinner with friends-- at a friend's house: shrimp, macaroni with tuna, little pieces of herring with toothpicks stuck through them, flatbread with all kinds of toppings. There is a TV... bigger than my apartment... somehow fastened to the wall. On the TV smiles some dork in a Tuxedo.

Goddamn! It's the fuckin' Oscars. I was looking forward to missing the Oscars, like I miss the Superbowl, and Obama's inauguration. Like I've never seen ET or The Titanic. Like I can't tell Rihanna from Guyana. I live to be as divorced from popular culture as that soldier's brain is divorced from his head.

But here I am. Stuck like herring on a toothpick in front of Hollywood Hell in all it's stinking glitter. The guys on TV talk about some movies. Nothing I've seen, of course. I don't like movies with white people in them.

There's one about killing Osamu Bin Ladin, another about escaping from Iraq, one about a colored guy and slavery and one about Lincoln. War movies all... in their own way. I hate war movies.

I love gore movies. Severed heads and still-beating hearts. I love to watch guys screaming as their balls are ripped off. Gangster movies too: the Chinese mafia taking out a rival gang... fists and bullets. Pow! Pow! Achah! Achah!

But I hate war movies. They're too close to the real world. I don't need movies for what I get in the NY Times. Besides, they remind me of football.

And Lincoln wasn't only in movies about the world of 1860. He's in the real world of now. That soldier in the first paragraph wasn't from the Confederate Army. He was from Syria.

That quote at the beginning of this column? I lied.

It wasn't from Abraham Lincoln. It was from President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria. The two, however, are not much different.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” That is a REAL quote from Abe Lincoln.

I bet Assad would agree.

FLASH TO THE 1970s: Marshall Tito is my favorite Communist. He's the president of Yugoslavia and will be until 1980. He keeps the various ethnic and religious factions together... without war. Today you have Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovco, and who-knows-what-the-fuckistan. Under Tito, there was only YUGOSLAVIA. He organized the fight against the Nazis. Everybody loves him. He keeps the new country together without war... only with charisma and statesmanship.

Tito is the guy who gives both Russia and the U.S. a big middle finger. Then goes off to make friends with Egypt and India. After he dies, there is chaos and half a dozen tiny fighting countries.

Are there other Lincolns? You bet! A dime a dozen. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who kept the Shiites and Sunnis in check and created a unified whole from a melting pot of fractious groups. Also without war... until the Bushes invaded and there was chaos.

More? Mao Tse Tung was the Lincoln of China. The Tibetans, The Uigars. The Inner Mongols. They want to secede. Make their own countries. Seek their own destinies... the blue and the gray... It's a war that the current Chinese Lincolns continue to fight.

Vladimir Putin, the Lincoln of Russia, has been fighting the Chechnyan separatists since he took office. And there are more.

You get the idea. But what I want to focus on, with all this Lincoln hullabaloo, is why I wish the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War. Fuck Lincoln and his gold-plated Hollywood statues.

Imagine we have the USA and the CSA, a ragged border between the two... following the Mason-Dixon line... leaping upwards over Texas, and Oklahoma. Newer regions join the USA or CSA. California and Nevada stay independent.

The relatively small United States needs the relatively small Confederate States for its cotton, bourbon, tobacco and oil. The Confederate States needs the U.S. for manufactured goods and a few resources like salmon and lumber.

Occasionally, there are trade disputes. The South puts a tariff on paper from the North. The North has a quota... or high taxes... on tobacco and booze.

Slavery disappears in the Confederate States, like it did in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Brazil. The government will try to keep voting WHITES ONLY, and to maintain segregation. Like they did in the U.S. until the 1964 or South Africa until 1990.

World pressure will end all that, like it ended apartheid. By 1990, the world will celebrate the first Negro president of the Confederate States of America... probably before the first one up north in the U.S.A.

More importantly, because what is now the US is in (at least) two independent pieces, neither side develops the power the U.S. now has. The sides join forces for WWII because of Pearl Harbor. The rest of North America (Canada and Mexico) are anti-Axis as well.

Young Strom Thurmond, the 40-year president of C.S.A, threatens to withdrawal Confederate troops from the Pacific front if Truman goes ahead with his plan to drop a new fangled ATOMIC BOMB.

“I didn't want us to get into this war in the first place,” he says.

The bomb is never dropped. Japan surrenders anyway.

There is no Vietnam war. Although the U.S. wants to invade, the C.S.A wants no part in the invasion.

“We suffered our own invasion,” says C.S.A. president Strom Thurmond in 1966. “We don't want to be part of another one.”

After WWII, the CSA follows a policy of isolationism that would make Ron (or Rand) Paul proud.

Over time, the cultures develop along lines similar to the present. The CSA adopts Evangelical Christianity as the official state religion. The USA, following its constitution, maintains separation of church and state.

There are generally friendly relations between the two countries. People bunch in the North-- and in the new M.P.R.C (Mellow People's Republic of California). Texas Oil lets the CSA thrive, though the destruction left by the civil war, and the lack of advanced training of the former slaves, leaves a greater gap between rich and poor.

Something interesting also happens. Since the Civil War followed on the heals of the Mexican American War. The newly independent CSA says they had no beef with the Mexicans. The attack on Mexico was by the USA-- that country up North. California is already independent, so it's lost to Mexico. Arizona and New Mexico are just desert anyway. Who needs those places? Give 'em back to the Mexicans, the CSA urges the USA. We'll support Mexico until you do.

Thus a great new friendship is established between Mexico and the CSA. Travel between the two countries opens. No passports. No visas. As easy as crossing into Canada to see Niagra Falls used to be.

After World War II, the USA looks East, while the CSA looks South. Franklin Roosevelt, already pals with Stalin and Churchill, embraces Russia in a Grand Coalition. The USA continues to expand its welfare and social services and Russia continued to expand its personal liberties and access to pornography.

There's never a cold war. No one attacks the World Trade Center because the US does not have the power to wage the anti-Muslim wars that make Al Quaeda want to attack in the first place. The world becomes a happy and peaceful place from the end of the second world war, right until... well... right until now.

It all would have happened if it weren't were for fuckin' Lincoln. If only John Wilkes Booth were a few years earlier. The Oscars be damned.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Is it only me? dept: ABC NEWS reports that the U.S. census bureau is dropping the word NEGRO starting in 2020. Now, all that's left is me and the United Negro College Fund. Quick, I'd better send a donation!

-->Jailbird pal Kyle sent me an article about Samsung TVs. Their build-in cameras allow outsiders to gain "root access" to the TV. Remember in the book 1984, at the end, Winston Smith finds the camera behind a picture in the wall of his apartment? Now, it's not only that bedroom picture you have to worry about.

-->Oh no dept: Could it happen in Scandinavia? Home of my favorite governments? Well, according to the local paper, Iceland will "become the first Western democracy to ban online pornography." Yep, official government censorship... like in China. I fear it's the beginning of the end. Watch the Republicans change their tune about the evils of Scandinavia once those blonds ban porn.

-->My kind of city dept: On Feb 4, 2013 Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to pass a resolution against the domestic use of drones. It also calls for Congress and the state of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information from domestic drone use from being introduced into a Federal or State court. Furthermore, they want to prohibit drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, so people can not be killed remotely.

Hmmm, killing people remotely, trial by missile, who'd want to do something like that? It's hard to imagine, huh?

-->Legitimate targets? Is that like legitimate rape? dept: Reason.com reports that a US Army officer said Afghan children are “legitimate targets.”

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington. "We're looking for children with potential hostile intent." he added.

-->Ah Michigan, how you've devolved dept: Progressive Magazine reports that Michigan lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state's income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their twelve-week or older fetuses as "dependents." These same legislators pushed to cut a tax credit that applies to actual already-born children.

-->School? Prison? What's the difference dept: Wired.com reports the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, suspended a student for refusing to wear a tracking device. It was a leg bracelet similar to the ones used on probationed criminals. Since the school's funding is based on student attendance, they use the trackers to prove students are in class. As of this writing, a judge has temporarily reversed the suspension.

-->Students with balls dept: Censorship News (www.ncacblog.wordpress.com) reports that the school administration of La Salle University told the student newspaper that they had to run an unflattering story about the school "under the fold." (That means the part of the paper that's hidden when it's folded on a newstand or in a newsbox.)

The newspaper, the COLLEGIAN, printed the next issue with a blank top half, except for tiny print instructing readers to "SEE BELOW." Ten punk points guys!

-----------------------------
You can see Mykel's almost functioning website at www.mykelboard.com.

MRR Column for No. 360 (The Old Perv)

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Mykel's column for MRR 260, in which he explains how he'll never act

"A man does not learn very well. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down. A log is capable of learning more than a man.” -Edward P. Jones

She's in her late 20s... maybe Dominican... maybe from Brazil... with the kind of Latina ass that white girls tsk tsk about objectification but you know they really envy. She's in the middle of the gym, working with a trainer. I'm on the mats, stretching my 75 year old muscles, trying to keep the creaks from popping too loudly, depressed that my body will NEVER be objectified. I watch the girl as I spread my legs and pretend to stretch this gracilis, then that one. This satorious, then that one. This rectus femoris, then that one.

I watch her bend down and grab a barbell. Then, using her own rectus, she stands and holds it several feet from the mats. On the barbell are huge weights. The biggest in the gym... at least two hundred pounds on that barbell... She sets it down and lifts it again. My corpora cavernosa fill with blood and stiffen.

I shower at home, not wanting to deal with the engorgement problem among the sweaty jocks in the lockerroom. Leaving my bathroom shower, I dry myself, dress, and open the day's mail. There it is: in no wrapper at all, the newest MRR.

I flip to the letters section... scanning for my name. There it is: two letters. One's from my pal Marc Rentzer... upbeat and cool. The other, strategically run right before Marc's letter, is from someone complimenting MRR, and PS-ing that “Mykel Board is an old perv.”

Yes! Another dissatisfied customer.

The comment stokes the engine of a thought train. Are there young pervs? When young people do perv stuff, it's experimentation or curiosity. A teenager who jerks off to Victoria Secret catalogs is a victim of raging hormones.

But an OLD PERV? Isn't that redundant? The problem isn't the action but the age. Old people are not supposed to do that. They're supposed to sit in the park and feed pigeons.

It gets me thinking. What do people my age actually do?

In the summer, I see a few in Central Park, feeding pigeons or sitting on a bench slumped over a newspaper. But that doesn't account for most.

A Google images search for “old people” brings up mostly faces. But when the people are doing anything, they're flipping the bird, getting a tattoo, muscle building, fitting into a thong... anything but ACTING THEIR AGE. At least anything but acting the cliché of their age.

Maybe that's WHY the images are there. They're unique, because these older folks DON'T act their age.

Back when I was 30, I wrote a song called When You're My Age You'll Be Selling Insurance. Now, when they're my age, those letter-writing punk rockers will be cashing in their 401Ks.

I doubt if I'll be invited to the Bar Mitzvah of the guy who wrote the old-perv letter. But, if I live long enough, I might go to his graduation from business school.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY AGE.

Scene change to the school I teach in... teacher's lounge between classes.

I ask what April, my favorite colored girl, has been doing lately. She hasn't been at work. I hear she had made it to off-Broadway.

“Mykel,” says a liberal teacher, born and bred within the shadow of the Whitehouse, “you can't say colored. It's like saying Nigger!”

“It is not!” I protest. “Nigger is a pejorative... an insult. Colored People is used by colored people themselves! There is an organization called The NAACP. That's The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. You heard of them? Civil rights for colored people exist because of them. You ever heard of The National Association for the Advancement of Niggers? It's not the same thing at all!”

“That was an organization STARTED by African Americans,” she answers. “THEY can call themselves whatever they want. You're white. You can't do that.”

Her comment is like ACT YOUR RACE.

It gets me thinking. What do people of my race do?

In the summer, I see white people at the beach, trying to darken up. At night, they walk the streets in large chested packs of fratboys and soror-sisters? Boys ugh ugh ughing as they guzzle Bud Light while watching colored guys smash each other up in pro-football. White girls chew gum and worry about how their ass grows to the side and not the back like their more aesthetically pleasing colored counterparts.

Among the people I recognize from a Google search of white people, are Michael Moore, Bill Gates, John McCain. A screen capture from FOX News shows a little white girl crying with the FOX caption “Stolen Pony.” The headline, added after by the picture clipper is: WHITE GIRL PROBLEM?

Many of the pictures make fun of white people. A few defend them. There are almost no photos of people actually DOING anything... except one of a white girl on her knees... taunting a bull.

I spend most of my life with non-white people. During the day, I'm teaching Japanese folks how to talk good. When I travel, I mostly avoid places where white people live. I used to deny being white at all.

“I'm not white. I'm a Jew,” I used to say. Unfortunately, it is now fashionable to LIKE Jews, to bring us into the fold. We're anti-Muslim, ya know? That makes us white.

Well, buckaroos, my trip to Africa brought me a ton of Muslim friends... even to drink with. Just like some Jews (like me) eat pork. Some Muslims drink alcohol. The appeal to me? Most Muslims aren't white.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY RACE.

FLASHBACK: Highschool gym class; Hicksville High School 1960s. Along with study period, it's the class I hate most. Out the back yard... over a fence... to Al's Pizza on Newbridge Road. I'm convinced that my regular consumption of pizza while cutting gym class was responsible for my serious teenage acne. But at least on the days I made it to Al's, I didn't have to suffer through being the last to be picked for the baseball team, football team or any team.

In baseball, when I can't cut out of class, I hide in the outfield... hope that no one hits a ball to me... run away when they do... use my glove to protect my head instead of catching the ball.

“You play like a girl,” one of the jocks tells me. “Why don't you pick flowers or something?”

Flowers? What about flowers? I love flowers. In America, guys never get flower. One of my life's highpoints was visiting a friend in Holland and meeting him at the airport. In his hand was a bouquet of tulips. Girl enough for you?

I ask directions, for G-d's sake. Several times. Is that non-manly enough? It's one of my favorite ways to meet people... and to judge the character of a country.

ASIDE: The worst place to ask directions is Venezuela. Even if you ask in Spanish, the people look right through you... as if you're not there.

Better is Japan, where instead of explaining, people will walk with you a bit, and make sure you're going the right way.

Best is Trinidad, where, when you ask directions the answer will be. “Yeah man, what's your hurry? Let's be havin' a drink first, a little limin'. I'll get you where you want to go. But what's the hurry?” END OF ASIDE

What does asking directions, hating to play sports, and liking flowers say about Men from Mars and Women from Venus?

Way before that book, Samuel Johnson said: Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant.

Weakest? Most Ignorant? I don't think so. I certainly don't want to hang out with... much less fuck... any girl who can't beat me up. But that's not how guys are supposed to think.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY GENDER.

I may be an old pervert. Chronologically I'm old, even if I refuse to act it. A pervert? Well, if we go back to the Latin root it comes from pervertere "overthrow, overturn, corrupt, subvert, abuse..." sounds pretty punkrock to me. So my answer to the guy who called me that? Guilty as charged... and I'm just getting started.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Drug your kids for money dept: Does your child have bad moods? Poor school performance? Difficulty focusing? Even if s/he doesn't, could you use some extra cash? "Compensation for time and travel."

Let us drug your kid and we'll pay you!!!

So says a company called Acurian Health that encourages parents to submit their kids to drug testing... and will pay them cash to do so. Get those welfare kids into something productive... like drugs! Go to www.KidsDepressionStudy.com for details.

-->Speaking of act your gender dept.: I'm in love. I went to Brooklyn to see my friends WORLD WAR IX and BLACKOUT SHOPPERS play at the Trash Bar. Opening for them was this band called inCircles. The girl vocalist/guitar player is amazing. She moves on stage like Sam McPheeters or that dancing guitar player in Meryl (sp?). Wow! Best new band I've seen in ages. And that girl, hah! Guitar hero showdown time! No boy is gonna match that!

-->Record stores are not dead dept: Used to be that Bushwick was the SCARY part of NY. Now it's got an organic bakery... scary in a different way. But, it also has a great record store: Heaven Street Records. No CDs, but they have an extremely tolerant buying policy. They're honest, and owner Sean sings barefoot with Cult of Youth. Find 'em on Facebook and ask 'em to carry your records! They probably will.

-->Faith in humanity... even the Swiss dept: The Nation reports that the residents of Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland polled slightly in favor of a nuclear waste facility near their town. An industry group figured that they could get more support by giving money to each citizen who endorsed the facility. Instead, local support for the plan went down. The bribe cut the rate of acceptance in half. Even when locals were offered more than $8,000 each, they turned against the program.

Yow! PUNK ROCK, I'd say.

-->Was the harasser acting her gender? dept: The Associated Press reports that the widow of a New York City police officer says her husband committed suicide because his female supervisor demanded sex from him in exchange for a favorable work schedule and job assignments. The widow is now suing.

According to the suit, the cop's career depended on his "submission to the sexual advances" of his married supervisor.

"Officer Schindler was made to understand that he would suffer tangible detriment in his job, job assignments, working conditions and future prospects if he did not submit to the sexual advances," the suit says.

The pressure was too much and the cop shot himself.

You haven't heard this story, but if the dead cop were a woman, I bet you would have.

-->Google Acts Its Race dept: A new study has found racial bias in ad results from Google. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney studied names typically associated with African Americans. She found they were 25% more likely to produce Google ads offering background checks or suggesting the person had a criminal record. Sweeney conducted the study after a search for her own name turned up an ad reading, Latanya Sweeney, Arrested? with a link offering background checks. Sweeney concluded: "There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads."

-->Oh yeah dept: I expect you figured it out. My last column, about taking over the dictatorship of MRR, was an April Fool's column. The endnotes, however, were all true.