Mykel's
Post
MRR Column #28
The
Only Good Thing
by
Mykel Board
Imagine
a country whose foundation is subjugation... a country where slaves
are written into the constitution... officially “3/5 human.”
Imagine
a country whose national anthem talks about bombs and rockets...
where citizens trust God and not each other.
Imagine
a country that holds more of the world's prison population than any
other... most of the prisoners descended from slaves... Where jail
terms never end... where the right to vote is permanently taken
away... your debt to society can never be paid... You are always a
slave.
Imagine
a country whose people are so stupid that they can't find their
neighboring countries on a map... where more people know the names of
movie stars than scientists or philosophers... where people have more
guns than passports.
Imagine
a country where students aren't challenged to think. Where they're
warned about “upsetting ideas” and can opt-out of learning. Where
“education” has nothing to do with learning, but is only a means
to a job where you work to make other people rich.
Imagine
a country where the top 1% owns more than the bottom 90%... where
huge, greedy corporations pay NO taxes. Where the answer to any
violation of corporate interests is to kill people.
Imagine
a country that defines “success” as being rich. That exports its
love of money around the world, making fetishes of brand names,
charging in foreign branches of its stores, a days wages for a cup of
coffee... and through advertising and bribery... makes people want to
pay it.
Imagine
a country where the solution to EVERYTHING is WAR. Instead of looking
at problems with a medical metaphor... like a wound that has to be
healed... it looks at problems as THE ENEMY that has to be killed.
WARS on drugs... Muslims... terrorism... hunger... even a (long ago
discarded) WAR ON POVERTY.
Imagine
a country that has, in this millennium, killed more people than all
other countries on earth... combined. Image a country that continues
to kill people, correcting past mistakes in killing people by killing
other people.
What
benefit could there be to such a pisshole of a country? What right
would such a country have to exist? Why should the rest of the world
tolerate such a gaping wound in its earthly body? Is there anything
that fetid offal has to offer? Can we find one thing that
hell-bent-on-world-destruction nation has done to justify its
existence?
FLASH
TO NOW: I'm in a 777 airplane flying from Manila to New
York... via Taiwan. I've been in the plane for seven hours... with
another eight to go. I can't sleep, having stupidly taken the aisle
seat so there's no window to put my head against. When either of the
two passengers next to me needs to take a piss... I gotta get up and
move.
This
is the end of my six weeks in Asia. The first four were in Japan:
tightly planned... familiar... sleeping on friends' floors...
couches... tours of sake breweries... a ton of drinking... a ton of
innocent nakedness at public hot springs... a bit of not so innocent
nakedness. Friends... familiar... comfortable... like slippers and a
bathrobe.
Manila
is a maze of narrow streets choked with barely moving traffic,
blaring horns... people walking... hanging out... sleeping on plastic
bags filled with trash.
Food
stands sell Chinese pork buns or wooden sticks with your choice of
pig's ear, pig's blood or pig guts. The narrow streets hold the auto
exhaust of the immoveable traffic. Walking a block is like smoking a
pack of cigarettes.
Every
few meters, one young woman or another will smile at you... showing
her braces and ask, “Hey Joe, you like me?” If you shake your
head, she'll offer you her younger sister... or her daughter. My
upper arm still has a bruise where a street hooker pinched me to keep
me from walking away. Every few steps bring you to another encounter.
Backpacks
become frontpacks here... watch your step...means
a fuck of a lot more than be careful crossing the street.
The heat is oppressive... a wet-heat. Your sweat mixes with the
filth from the car exhausts. Simply scratching your neck leaves your
fingernails black.
I
love the place.
I've
been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor in Taytay, a Manila
suburb. Johnny Deadbrain lives here... with his mother who barely
makes a living selling ice to the neighbors out of her refrigerator.
I
get the mattress. Johnny sleeps on the other side of the living
room... on a cardboard box.
The
toilet, as most in this country, doesn't have a seat. You flush it by
filling a plastic bucket from a cold water wall spigot and pouring
the water into the toilet bowl. A plastic dipper floats in the water.
It's not clear whether the dipper is used to scoop water to flush
the toilet... or to scoop water to wash your ass in lieu of toilet
paper. There is never any toilet paper. Whenever I buy anything in
the country, I demand a receipt. That paper comes in handy.
[NOTE:
A few places-- mostly high class-- have toilet paper HOLDERS built
into the wall. They are for decorative purposes only. There is never
any actual toilet paper in them.]
At
Johnny's place, the wall spigot is also the shower and bathroom sink.
The
Philippines are punk rock.
It's
like New York in the 70's... when/where punkrock was born. Dangerous,
mysterious, sexy, anarchistic, musical. Everybody and his father...
grandfather... is a musician. Even the poorest homes have a
turntable... and a collection of records that would make the Rev Norb
envious.
Johnny
shows me an original of the first Ramones album. From a small speaker
attached to his android, comes The Ramones, GG Allin, and his own
band DEADBRAINS.
Rock'n'roll
came to the Philippines with American servicemen during and after
World War II. Navymen wanted more than local nookie from the natives.
They wanted their music.
They
brought records... 78s... 45s... 33s... to these islands. Local
musicians quickly learned the music to play for the sailors. It was
as profitable as-- and less painful than-- an American maritime
turgid sausage in their anuses.
From
the songs learned from those sailors' records, the Philippines
developed its own brand of rock... its own bands... its own style.
Punk rock came here before anywhere else in Asia except possibly
Japan.
BINGO!
That's
it! The American contribution... America's ONLY contribution... its
only value in the world. ROCK'N'ROLL... That great merging of
cultures: black Jazz/Blues that came up the Mississippi River from
New Orleans smashing smack dab into white Country music from the
heartland. When Hank Williams buggers Muddy Waters... Chuck Berry and
Elvis Presley are born.
That
freeing, open, rockin music. That rock... that glitter... that
punk... that hardcore... That rebellious, liberating, loving,
aggressive force. That may be the only real gift America gave to the
world... but it's a damn good one.
ENDNOTES:
[You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com.
Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music
or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137,
New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified
when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS
Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]
→
It
ain't music, it's a concept dept:
Chuck Shephard reports
that the group Matmos
released
their new album, "Ultimate Care II." The LP consists
entirely of "music" made by an Ultimate Care II washing
machine. The machine's 38-minute wash cycle was "sampled and
processed." Matmos
previously played canisters of helium on stage at Radio City Music
Hall and a cow's uterus at the San Francisco Art Institute.
→
Tax dollars at work dept:
One of the many evils of the Obama administration was the bank
bailouts and lack of anybody going to the clink for the tragedy. The
government claims a victory because it took in billions of dollars in
fines from those banks. Same for corporate polluters like BP in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Not
so fast.
The
New York Times reports
that the money those banks and corporations paid is considered “tax
deductible.” So those same corporations just listed the fines on
their tax returns as a “business expense.” They paid no taxes on
that money.
→
Bathe
in this dept:
Brandon
Terry and Casey Fowler of Spartanburg South Carolina were arrested
after calling 911 five times to report possums jumping out of their
refrigerator and microwave, worms emerging from their floor, and
midgets in camouflage. They denied any drug use, but police said it
was likely "bath salts."
→
Sex & The Serviceman
Dept: It probably didn't make
the U.S. newspapers, but a Philippine jury convicted a U.S.
sailor of murder. He strangled a prostitute and drowned her in
the toilet, when he discovered she had... er... extra equipment. The
Navy removed the sailor from the country before he could be
sentenced. At last report, the prostitute was still dead.
→
Further Evidence Dept:
The Daily Mail reports
that they've seen video footage that shows Israeli commandos
rescuing wounded ISIS fighters from the Syrian warzone, Many of the
rescued are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for
groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. Almost every night, Israeli troops
run secret missions to save the lives of Syrian fighters, all of whom
are their sworn enemies.
Clearly,
toppling Assad is more important to the Israelis than fighting ISIS.
No wonder that Israel-obedient Obama calls for REGIME CHANGE in
Syria, while the Russians just fight ISIS.
→ Endorsements
Dept:
Also on the Russian front. The
Washington Post reports
that
Vlad Putin has damn near endorsed Donald Trump for the U.S.
presidency. He called The
Apprentice star,
“the
absolute leader in the presidential race.”
In
October, Trump said that he would “get along very well” with
Putin and applauded the Russian president for his intervention
against the Islamic State in Syria.
→Vote
Jew Dept: Next year it looks pretty sure I'll be voting for a Jew
in November. If, by some (from my mouth to G-d's ears) miracle,
Bernie Sanders gets the Democratic nomination... I'm there. If not,
I'll have a difficult choice between JILL
STEIN on the Green Party, or my pal SID
YIDDISH on the Lincoln-Republican party. In any case, I'll be
voting Jew in November!
-->Keeping
the Pressure on Dept: I want to
thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring
Back Mykel effort directed at
Maximum Rock'n'Roll for
censoring me.
As
their revolving editrixes move on to commercial ventures, they blame
their predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over
the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.
Send
your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com
(or post on their facebook
page)
with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.
-end-