The Art of The Deal or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 37

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 37

One of the tenets behind a win-win negotiation is that all parties must be satisfied with the deal. It isn’t a win if someone feels he/she got the short end of stick, right? --Karrass.com

Mykel's ART OF THE DEAL

Trade ya!

Several years before his election, President Trump wrote (or put his name on) a book called The Art of The Deal. I've read it several times... Yeah right.

I never read it, but I can imagine its content. And what I imagine is that much of the book will be about trading. That is, if I have something you want, and you have something I want... we can trade. I'll take a loss for a bigger gain. You have different values, so you take a loss for what YOU think is more important. Finally, we reach some kind of equality... both sides feel happy after the deal. In business, they call it a win-win solution.

You're a mechanic. I'm a plumber. You take the ping out of my car engine. I'll make sure those monster beer turds will sail smoothly down the toilet. Win-win!

So, in my never-ending quest for beneficence, I propose some win-win deals that will make the world a better place for all sides.

First:

GIRLS! Here's your chance! I'm offering big trades. The feminist goals, just what you want. You only have to give up a few things and then: end the patriarchy!

Let's start with the 79¢. The cliché is that for every dollar a boy earns, a girl earns 79 cents. A closer look shows that this is the result of experience and time on the job, rather than vaginal possession. But for this deal, we'll pretend the gap is real. Girls earn 21 cents an hour less than boys... for the same job. Let's make a deal!

According the the CDC, Women in the US live, on average, to 81.2 years old. Men live to 76.4 years old. Do the math: women live 4.8 years longer than men.

Here's the deal: We'll trade! I'll give up 21¢ per hour. Take it!... the whole 21 cents. It's all yours. Go wild. Have a ball, do with it as you like. I'm donating 20% of my $20-an-hour job. It's on your plate. Buy Ms Magazine with it. Donate it to Hillary Clinton... anything.

In return? Just give me half your extra 4.8 years. We both live 78.8 years. Fair trade! Equal pay... isn't that what you've been wanting? You only need to trade for equal longevity. Win-win. Finally, equality! Do we have a deal?

And the government. There are 100 senators. 20 are women. That's a ratio of 1 to 5. Pretty unequal if you're counting genitalia. What can we do about that? Get some equality here.

Let's consider that in 2016 only 18 year old boys have to register for the draft. Women can stay home and complain about the nanny.

In Iraq and Afghanistan 130 women soldiers have died in the past 10 or so years. During those wars about 5700 men have died. That's a ratio of about 1 to 43. We need some equality! So here's the deal:

I'll give you 30 senate seats and you send four and a half thousand women to certain death in Hillary's next war. Plus... to even things out... girls will have to register for the draft. In case, for some reason, there's a sudden lack of people wanting to die in the Middle East.

Waddaya say? Fair trade?

Come on girls, this is equality I'm talking about.

And then there's abortion. Women have the right to choose whether to drop their puppies or throw them in the stem cell bin. That's how it should be. You've got and deserve that benefit. I'll defend to the death (fetal death, that is) your right to do that.

But why only women? Shouldn't men have that choice? If we've got a brat sprouted by the slip of a rubber, shouldn't we be able to say Dump It? If it takes two to tango, shouldn't it take two to untango? I'll be pro-choice, if you're pro-choice.

It's not men's bodies, you say. Women have to go through an ordeal for abortion. It costs money, and it hurts. Fair enough. So here's the deal. Women have absolute choice: pop one or cut it out. Men have secondary choice. If a man wants the little twerp and the woman wants to donate fetal organs... She wins. BUT, to make the deal: if a woman has a kid when the man say KILL IT, the man is not responsible. No child support. No lawsuits. No Daddying. If a woman decides to have a child over the father's objections... then the guy walks away clean. It's a trade. Fair enough?

More deals:

Hillary Clinton has never met a war she didn't like. She voted for the Iraqi war, has supported the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and the coups in Honduras and Ukraine. She wants to strengthen NATO and, like her buddy Obama, supports making new ISIS fighters by drone-ing innocents abroad.

Most Americans support these long distance wars. Many want even more of them. What's a drone here or there? They deserve it anyway, don't they?

The problem is: Americans don't know war. They don't know drones. They don't know mechanized death except on the giving end... and those rare times that some sympathetic guy with a machine gun unloads a “terrorist act.” Here's the deal.

ISIS: you stop recruiting local killers. Quit the ad campaigns, the dead-baby sympathy pictures... all that. We'll do it ourselves. For every small city we bomb in Syria, we'll bomb one in Kansas. Every innocent person we slaughter in Kabul, we'll slaughter one in Omaha. It's win-win. And look at the benefits.

ISIS stays out of the US. The American government can use its own bombs and bullets... always profit makers... and we reach equality. Added bonus: Americans get to learn about what we do in other countries... first hand. Education through life (and death). So, do we have a deal?

`

OUR FINAL DEAL: One for the guys who are squeamish that some of their membered-members... disguised as women… will enter a ladies’ room and... I donno... look under the stall door? Peep in the make-up mirror? Steal cosmetics? I never quite figured out what they're afraid of. In any case, here's the deal.

If men-dressed-as-women use the ladies room, they will agree to restrict their actions to shitting, pissing, putting on make-up,.. in other words, doing THE SAME THING that ladies do in the ladies’ room. They will not be allowed to stand next to another room-user while pissing and say, “You don't buy beer. You rent it.” or “Nothin' like bleeding the snake, huh?” And they will always put the toilet seat DOWN after use... Do we have a deal?

Waddaya think?

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]

-->Uh Oh dept: Since I started writing this I found out that Trump's book was not about win-win at all. It's about how you should enjoy the GAME of negotiation and not care if you lose, because there's a bigger deal around the corner anyway. My apologies to Mr. Trump's ghostwriter for the misrepresentation. I hope he doesn't sue me.

-->I wrote much of this column on a bus from Copenhagen to Aarhus. I'm keeping a blog of this trip, whose ultimate destination is Greenland. My goals there:

1. Eat Seal

2. Rub noses with an Eskimo

3. Sleep in an igloo

4. Ride on a dog sled

You can read the travel blog at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com and know if I've done those things-- or what else.

-->Tardcore: Wow! One of my Aarhus pals works in an institution that takes care of “Mentally Handicapped” people who were sentenced because of some crime. In a way that's typically Danish, these folks are separated from the general prison population and given special attention. Not only do they get “job training” and work experience (mostly gardening, but also woodwork, and plumbing) but the caretakers actually ask them What do YOU want? I bet that's a question never heard in the American penal system.

My pal Pedro, who works in the institution, also plays in THE CLEAN BOYS, a punkrock band. And he found that some of the inmates want to play music. They love it... or just love making noise. They mostly can't play their instruments... So what do you do? Start a punk band!!!

Here's a video of their first live show. You might recognize someone famous (not me) in the audience.

Since my first encounter... I've found that world-wide there are several other Tardcore bands in the world. They include one in Finland and the most famous (now disbanded, I hear) HEAVY LOAD in England. What could be punker? With so much shit going on in the world, this is inspiring!

Come on! Help me set up a US tour!

-->Third Thoughts Dept: Last month, I wrote about how Bernie Sanders supporters should vote for Donald Trump. Lately, Trump is looking more and more like a shill for Clinton. He fires and replaces people and derails “his party” more and more. I don't know if it's all part of the elect-Clinton plan, but if so, it would be sad.

I still think, there's never been a more punkrock presidential candidate than Donald Trump... ever! Even if it's all a show... it's a good one. Tardcore Rules!

But in the next election, I'm convinced it doesn't matter how you vote... or if you vote. Maybe it's best to cast your ballot for some minor party candidate... just to tell 'em FUCK YOU BOTH. I'm still going with Sid Yiddish.

--> 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, each blames her predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.
(Note somebody told me they currently have a MALE editor. I'll believe it when I blow him.)

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-

Sanders Fans For Trump! or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 36

[No punk rock, travel notes or scatology this month. It's an election special.]

Mykel's Post MRR Column #36

SIX REASONS BERNIE SANDERS' SUPPORTERS SHOULD VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP

Election Special Blog

by Mykel Board

It's all over but the counting. The spectacles... the vote casting... the delegates. It's finished... over. The third act starts now, with the election (if you believe) in November. Each of the two big parties fought an internal war. Each party had an outsider and an insider compete for the nomination. One candidate was the choice of the machine. One was the choice of the disenfranchised... those who felt that they had no voice. In the Republican party, the machine lost. In the Democratic party, it won.

Both sides have called on the party faithful to close ranks... fight the horror that is the other guy... “Vote for me,” says Trump, “to stop the selling of America to the international corporatocracy.”

“Vote for me,” says Clinton. “I am not Trump.”

I like it that Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton are best friends. Their parents have a long history together. I guess most parents of the super-rich have long histories together. I wouldn't know. Bernie Sanders wouldn't know either. But that doesn't affect November.

Me? I'll be voting for Sid Yiddish. I promised him my vote, and he'll get it. As for other Sanders supporters, I want to present the case for voting Trump:

1. Rage Against The Machine. Republican-boss-pick Ted Cruz complained about Trump's “yelling and screaming and a lot of whining.” Payback: Trump links Ted Cruz's father to Lee Harvey Oswald... Talk about balls! Trump's got a ton.
   
   Up and down Little Donny fought the party hacks when they tried to throw Fox News, Rubio, Kasich or even a colored guy, at him. All of the others were backed by the special interests and PACs. Donny went directly to the people on the street, the coal miners out of work, the car-builders who saw their livelihood disappear under the previous Clinton's trade deals.
   Trump opposed Obama's Clinton-style Trans Pacific Partnership (supported by more Republicans than Democrats.) The TPPers want international tribunals to be able to nullify US pollution or minimum wage laws, if they're “bad for business.” Sanders and Trump were both against the deal. They pushed Clinton to say she too opposed it, but do you see it in the Democrats' platform? Watch what happens when the Clintons move back to the White House: a magical thought “evolution.” Suddenly the deal is not so bad. You'll see.
   
   For almost all of his campaign, Trump took no party money and didn't use the heavy corporate financing machines to win the nomination. The Koch brothers don't like him. He can't be bought. That brings us to reason number 2.

2. Wall Street and The Banks Hate Him. In an article, Why Wall Street Loves Hillary, the website Politico shows that Wall Street-- and the big banks-- are putting their money on Clinton. They know she's good for (their) business. Trump forced a plank in the Republican platform that restores the Glass-Steagall Act. That law, originally passed in 1933, prevented the takeover of banks by investment companies. It protected average folk's money from the vagaries of the stock market. It also prevented huge monopolies in the financial sector. The idea was for small banks-- who knew the needs of their communities-- to flourish, while keeping big banks from becoming super big. Until this century, banks were locked into a region and could not expand nationally.
   
   After late last century, the regulations of that bill were canceled. Investment companies and banks merged and grew uncontrolled. Can you say J.P. MORGAN CHASE? Investment companies like TD America went on small bank buying sprees, destroying community-based banking. And, of course, there was the “banking” crisis of the last decade, where it all fell apart. Oh yeah, the president who destroyed the Glass-Steagall protections? The other Clinton.As for the current Clinton, her biggest supporters are the big banks and Wall Street. She's personally taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in “speaking fees” from the people she is supposed to be regulating. If she were subject to the same laws as the rest of us, that would be a crime... called bribery. But then again, the rest of us don't have husbands who can jump out of a plane and have a conference with the prosecutor the day before indictment.

3. Less War Let me get this straight. The US and its allies execute a coup d'etat in Ukraine, overthrowing the democratically elected leader and replacing him with a right-wing dictator. The ethnic Russians in the country fear reprisals from the new regime and ask Russia for help. Russia helps, bringing the Russian section of Ukraine back into Russia, and aiding other ethnic Russians who fear the new dictator. Clinton calls this Russian aid, aggression.

When Gorbachev broke up the Soviet Union in 1991, then-President Bush (remember THAT one?)  promised that NATO would not expand to increase its threat to Russia. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined NATO. In 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia joined. In 2009 it was Albania and Croatia. Russia was surrounded... NATO missiles lie on Russia's doorstep, in violation of the Reagan promise.

In the 60s, John Kennedy threatened to start World War III because Russia put missiles in Cuba... too close to America. So you tell me, what should Russia do?

Trump and Putin seem to have a strong relationship. They respect each other. They don't read ENEMY at every news story. Trump wants to turn down the tension in Europe. Weaken the NATO war machine. Make America less of a global cop. Clinton wants to make the war powers stronger. She's never met a war she didn't like... most notoriously voting for the Iraqi war as a NY Senator.

Every time the US kills innocent people, it makes new terrorists who want to avenge that killing. Every drone Obama has dropped on a Pakistani wedding has made someone mad enough to buy an AK-47. This is not a war, with a central point. There is no one you can assassinate to end it. Obama killed Bin Laden. Did it work?

Trump would not be kind enough, I'm afraid. But Clinton will be worse. She'll send in the troops. You can bet your assault rifle that home-grown terrorists will double under her rule.

4. Stop the Dynasty Listen to the Democrats and it's Hillary this or Hillary that. You don't hear them say Donald, for the other guy Why Hillary? Easy answer: they want you to forget she's a Clinton.

Since Reagan retired into full-senility, there has been a Clinton or Bush in (or near) the White House. A brief respite from BushClintonism came when Secretary of State Clinton quit to start her second run for the presidency. John Kerry took over for a very short time. Otherwise we've had Bush Sr, (4 years) Clinton (8 years), Bush Jr. (8 years) Obama w/Clinton as Secretary of State (4 years). That's about 3 decades of ClintonBushism. The USA has become a 2-family banana republic... with less political choice than REAL banana republics. 300,000,000 people ruled by two families... switching every eight years or so. This is a dynasty supreme. The only way to end it is, well, to end it. Neither a Clinton nor a Bush can do that.

5. Show the Democrats they can't count on the sheep. When Sanders first began his run, some of my friends called him “a sheepdog.” What they meant was that he was being used to shepherd lefties, dissatisfied youth, and other outsiders into the Democratic party-- converting outsiders to insiders. Then, goes the theory, when he loses to the mainstreamer, the sheep will be trapped. They pointed to Eugene McCarthy as an example of another shepherd.

But what happens when the sheep jump the pen? What happens when the party can't count on the converts staying converted? What happens when the party fat cats find that when they're ready to celebrate, the party-goers have left the party?

I like Sanders too much to think he intentionally joined this race to be a sheepdog. But between the superdelegates and the recently-revealed party leadership plan to slur him... he didn't have a chance. In order to run, he had to pledge his allegiance to his new party. It may turn out he was a sheepdog after all, but an unintentional one.

But what happens if the sheep refused to be shorn? Sheep-herding won't work if the sheep refuse to be herded. Nothing tells the party that the sheepdog strategy is a failure, like Sanders supporters voting for Trump.

6. He'll probably lose anyway Let's face it: the fix is in. Some people think Trump has been a shill from the get-go. They say the Democrats realized they had NOTHING in Clinton. Having no one to vote FOR, they promoted Trump so that people would have someone to vote AGAINST. Nothing motivates like fear.

So fear-mongering runs supreme... vote for Clinton or every colored person will be shot. Vote for Clinton... or the Supreme Court will make it illegal to sneeze without a God Bless You. Trump will start World War Three the minute they make fun of his haircut. (Though it's really more likely that Clinton will start World War Three-- without even a haircut's provocation.) 

Americans are suckers. “The dumbest people on earth,” to quote Michael Moore. “There's a sucker born every minute,” to quote P.T. Barnum. Even if Trump is not a shill, he still scares so many that non-WASPS shit at the thought of his inauguration. I can't imagine him coming close to winning.

Maybe I'm wrong. It's happened before. But even if Trump wins, it won't be THAT bad. In fact, it'll be better than another Clinton.

--end--

Reminder: I'll be voting for Sid Yiddish (alt website:

https://www.facebook.com/Sid-Yiddish-for-President-2016-832293733522278/?fref=ts ) Other choices include Jill Stein on the Green ticket or whoever is the socialist. But if you want to vote for Trump... it's not a bad choice.

 

Deep Meanings! or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 35

Deep Meaning/ No Meaning

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 35

I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.” --Orhan Pamuk

"The more we know about the universe, the more meaningless it appears.” --Steven Weinberg, Nobel Physicist

"What is useful to us generally conflicts with what is true.” --Julian Barnes

Meaning

by Mykel Board


1970-something: If she had a few more teeth, she'd be almost pretty. I forget if it's crack or speed that does it... If I close my eyes... those gums... stroking up and down on my five inches of throbbing flesh... they aren't so bad. When I look at her... that view from the top of her head with the greasy black hair... just-this-side-of-intentional dreadlocks... her nose... light blue veins under translucent skin.. moves back and forth to the beat of her lips

In an objective way... me detached from my body... there... behind CBGBs where the bands load-in... under the faint glow of a spotlight... I watch myself, leaned up against the filthy brick... my own blue veins appearing and disappearing under the nose of the young woman on her knees in the tar in front of me. The veins of her nose are a counterpoint to the veins of my tumescent baby carrot. I can feel her lips... dry... chapped... wet and rewet by her dripping tongue.

My body calls to me... a pulsing seminal call. I answer:

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

A thin white dribble falls from the side of her mouth.

Five dollars later, I'm around the corner and back inside CBGBs. It's the DEAD BOYS tonight. Just those two intro chords to Sonic Reducer... DAHN DAHAN... send a thrill up my spine that matches anything a crack whore can do.

“Yo Mykel,” comes the voice.

If there's one thing I hate, it's THE READER injecting himself in what I'm writing. I'm not even writing and already THE READER is butting in like a radical at a political rally.

“I'm trying to watch the band,” I tell THE READER. “Can you at least wait until they're done? It's the fuckin' DEAD BOYS!”

“Yo Mykel,” comes the voice again. “You just told a story about a crack whore blow job behind CBGBs. You did it for some reason. It MEANS something...”

“What do you think it means?” I ask.

“You're saying that we're all whores, and that a crackhead blowjob is no more exploitation than a California grape harvest.”

“Nope,” I answer. “That's not what I'm saying at all.”

“Well then,” comes the reply, “you're saying that sex is just a matter of friction, and it's ridiculous to romanticize it with soft music or poppunk love songs pretending LOVE when all anything is... is sex.”

“I might think that,” I say. “But it's not why I wrote this.”

“Then what does it mean?” comes the rather whiny reply.

Listen asshole, sometimes a crack whore blow job is just a crack whore blow job. It doesn't MEAN anything. It's not happy or sad or a metaphor. It's not a sign of society's this or that. It's not a signal to do this or that. It is itself! Chapped lips on a penis. Five inches of depth... nothing deeper than that.

Flash to Now: I begin to write this a few days after some guy in Orlando blasts a hundred homosexuals with a semi-automatic machine gun.

Kerpow! Kerpow! He's holed up in the bathroom. Semi-automatic, semi-automaticing the panicked homotude. People down... bleeding... dying... The cops take hours to get there. Kerpow! Kerpow! Blood... rivers of it greasing the dancefloor. The cops break in through the wall. Kerpow! Kerpow! Kill the guy.

News comes dribbing and drabbing. He's a white Christian, on an anti-gay rampage. He's a Muslim. He's a security guard for a company with secret government contracts. He's a soldier for ISIS. He only pledged himself to ISIS minutes before he started firing. He's a homo himself.

On and on. Speculation, pronouncements, false news, half truths... political statements... a circus.

Months before, the FBI's investigated him. They found nothing. There were no charges... an investigation... that's all! But, they investigated him! That's enough for people who want guns banned for “the accused,” whether guilty or not. Forget the idea of innocent until proven guilty. In American in 2016, accused is guilty enough.

He was a Muslim. Forget the fact he was on Grindr. Forget that he was a regular at the club. Forget that he tried to set up dates with other guys. Forget the fact that a Chassid on a rampage murdered a fellow Jew at a gay pride parade in Israel. This guy was a Muslim. That's enough.

He was gay. Forget the fact he had a kid. Forget that he was married. Forget that there are more choices than being gay or being straight. He was gay. That's enough.

He had a gun. Forget the fact that if others had had guns he could have been stopped. Forget the fact that most people who have guns don't shoot anyone. Forget the fact that Americans celebrate people with guns... from cowboys to soldiers. He had a gun. That's enough.

People talking shit.... shit... shit... shit and more shit.

What does it mean? That we need to ban guns? Ban Muslims? That homosexuals kill each other? That homosexuals have to protect each other. That trannies should be allowed to use women's bathrooms? No! No! No!

Sometimes a blowjob from a crack whore is just a blowjob from a crack whore. It doesn't have to MEAN anything. A nut with a gun... a club with some homosexuals... BANG! BANG! BANG! Dead people. That's what it is.

Donald Trump and Bill Maher say: IT'S MUSLIM! Look at the Muslims. Evangelicals say IT'S MUSLIM. IT'S GAY... look at GAY MUSLIMS. There's even a preacher who praises the gunman.

“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” sermonizes the pastor of Verity Baptist Church. “Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”

Anti-gun liberals say, “It's guns! Take guns away and this can't happen.” Pro-gun gays say if others are armed, this can't happen.

Whatever your agenda, there's always a tragedy to prove your point. Except that YOU'RE WRONG! Sometimes a crack whore blowjob is just a crack whore blowjob. The five bucks stops there.

Sure, it's pain and horror for those involved, but that's not a reason why it has to MEAN something. More Muslims DON'T kill people than DO kill people. More homosexuals die in car accidents than in nightclubs.

Death and pain are there... part of life. They make us sad... or angry... or fearful... but they don't MEAN anything. Get it? Sometimes a crack whore blowjob is just a crack whore blowjob.

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]

-->Didn't you read the contract dept: In May of this year, the Norwegian Consumer Council staged a live, 32-hour TV broadcast marathon -- a word-for-word reading of the "terms of service" for internet applications Instagram, Spotify and more than two dozen others. This totaled 900 pages and 250,000 words of legal restrictions and conditions. Millions of users "voluntarily" agree to them when they sign up-- usually through a mouse click. A local government official called such terms "bordering on the absurd, as consumers could not possibly understand everything they were legally binding themselves to."

     I say, isn't that the idea?

-->Good thing he wasn't a Muslim dept: Convicted murderer Charles Flores was on Texas' death row for more than 16 years (until June 2 of this year) before the state's highest criminal appeals court ruled that the execution might not be justified. Why? The most important evidence was provided by a witness whom the police had hypnotized. The trial judge, and the jury, had accepted that "hypnosis" could lead to "recovered" memory. This was a popular theory in the 1980s and 1990s. It was often used in pedophile and satanism cases. These days, the idea is recognized as bullshit.

There was no physical evidence against Flores. So, for some reason, they didn't kill him... yet. We'll see what happens.

-->She passes on balls dept: Melissa Meija complained that (get this) she was allowed to graduate from High School despite the fact she had failing grades and didn't do her homework. Her teacher said she (the teacher) was put under tremendous pressure by the school to pass the student to boost the school's graduation rate.

     If I were the principal, I'd say PASS THAT GIRL, just on honesty.

     This whole thing is one of the evil legacies of Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's the one who brought the whole “failing schools” concept to NY education. He should not be given a passing grade.

-->And a touch of good news Dept: I'd guess from the boxing gloves that the Yippies who now run an “underground boxing bar” on Bleecker St. are responsible for this. I also guess they they don't have permission from CBGB to use the logo, so

that's why the last B is missing. But I like the mural, and I'm glad to see wall painting praised instead of Giuliani-ed to a prison cell-- with or without hypnosis.

--> 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, each blames her 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-

Bully! or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 34

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 34

“A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.” --Criss Jami

Bully

by Mykel Board

It's 1958. The school yard at Lee Avenue Elementary School... in Hicksville. I'm off in a corner, as usual... trying to avoid being dragged into some sport, like baseball (I like watching, but hate playing)... or football,... (I detest on all counts).

Harvey McConnell... who, in my 8-year old mind is Harvey O'Jerk... has cornered me in the playground. Harvey probably isn't very tall, but he looks tall to me... tall and wide as a house... with a blond crewcut and the kind of square face only the goyim have.

“Okay, you little faggot,” he says.

I have no idea what faggot means, except that it's not something nice.

“Your mommy gives you money for lunch,” he continues. “I watch you sometimes. You hardly eat anything... just suck up that milk and have a slice of bologna... I eat lunch. I need your lunch money. You don't.”

“Fuck you! If you want it, you're gonna have to take it from me,” I don't say.

Instead, I reach into my pocket and pull out three crumpled dollar bills. I hold them out to Harvey. He laughs, takes them from my hand, turns around and heads toward the guys playing baseball.

FLASH TO NOW: I sit here at the Toshiba thinking about bullying and how fashionable it is to complain about it. In liberal circles, The only way you can establish street cred is to talk about being bullied. You're nobody unless you've been bullied. The more, the better.

If you played football in school... you're a loser. If you had kind parents, were never bothered by your classmates, had a smooth childhood... you're an unfeeling robot who can never understand what it's like. It makes no difference what IT is... you can still never understand it.

So me and my flip-fone and my barely-this-century computer with my MS-DOS database, need to establish ourselves before I continue with my story. I did. Okay? Do I have my cred?

Yeah, I want to talk about bullying? It's all the rage and people are right to be concerned... but not in the way you think.

Let's review:

I've written about the verbal war I have with the lefty no free speech to those who would deny it to others people. They believe it's not censorship if the government isn't the censor. As if getting fired for saying something is less damaging in America than getting fined for the same thing. Can you say Imus and Curt Schilling? That's not censorship... that's the market place, they say.

On the right, people say it's not censorship, if iTunes, Amazon and Walmart-- the only source for music for many Americans.... require changes in cover art, or lyrics before they sell something... as if that's less intimidating than a visit from the Sheriff of Mayville.

Lately, I've been in facebook debates with progressives^® who say that slavery is where people are forced to work and the benefits of that work go to someone else. Yet these same progressives^® think some good ole boy Southern landowner with a whip is more of a slave master than hunger... that Southern Negroes were slaves because they had to work to live... but modern McDonald's workers are NOT slaves, even though if THEY don't work, they die. Raise your hand if you hate your job! If you work only because you need to have food and shelter, tell me you're not a slave.

It occurs to me that slavery is the ultimate bullying. Legal, as well as physical threats. You work or you're whipped. Or maybe I'll whip you for the hell of it. All depends on whose history of slavery you read... or believe. But bullying didn't end with slavery. Even slavery didn't end with slavery.

When I was robbed in that playground... my lunch money ripped from my hands back in 1958, of course, that was bullying. These days people worry about more. We hear about microaggression (aka microbullying). A snicker, an elbow nudge, a raised eyebrow. In New York... according to a recent law... the use of a wrong gender pronoun is bullying. Bullying is something white hets do that makes others feel uncomfortable. Anything they do.

FLASH TO MIAMI: I'm with my friends in Wynwood... a fashionable part of Miami, gentrified through graffiti. Instead of building ugly new buildings and keeping them

pristine through jail for artists (like Guiliani did in NY) or with graffiti-rejecting paint (like in San Francisco)... Wynwood has embraced graffiti artists, turned 'em loose, turned the town into a sea of color... a river of big eyes, sexy ladies and sexy men... funny aliens... slogans... a feast for the eyes. It's a joy to be here.

The only problem is parking. Richard is driving. He's a Cuban-American pal who knows Miami better than I do.

He drives around the block... another block... back to the first. We're trying to get to Wynwood Brewery, fine makers of one of my favorite American Porters.

Ah here's a parking space... Richard slides in.

I know the tricks. They charge for parking, sometimes hide the meters. You gotta go to a machine someplace, get a receipt, put it in the window. The city makes a ton of cash by towing cars whose owners thought they got free parking. Richard pulls out his smart phone. 

“Who're you gonna call?” I ask. “Can't it wait? Let's get some beer!”

“Mykel,” he says. “I gotta pay for parking.”

“I got quarters,” I tell him.

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” he says, shaking his head like a parent wiping the face of a chocolate-guzzling toddler. “You can only pay by phone. You need to download the app, register a credit card, then put in your location and pay.”

Richard points overhead. I look up. A sign: To pay for parking, please use PARKPAY. If you don't have the app, download it to your smartphone at parkpay.com.

What if you don't have a smartphone, motherfucker? This is bullying! I can't park here if I don't own a smartphone. I'm being bullied into buying something I don't want. How much longer before I won't be able to get into a movie theater... or board an airplane without a smartphone?

This extortion... several hundred dollars if you include the contracts, the accessories and the other shit... is worse than any innocent white guy calling his wimpy classmate “a faggot.” It's certainly more expensive.

“What?” I say. “The city bullies you into having a credit card, a smartphone, and downloading an app that knows where you are every second?”

“BINGO!” he says.

“I have no smartphone,” I say. “Does that mean I can't park in Miami?”

He nods, pointing his finger at me in a YOU GOT IT gesture.

BINGO! is right.

THAT is the kind of bullying people should be complaining about. I got over my lunch-money theft decades ago, but technological bullying never ends.

Is this the first time?

You bet your walkman it's not. You're too young to remember when we were bullied into buying CD players because companies stopped making vinyl... or into buying DVD players because of the end of videotape.

The bullying never ends.

FLASH TO THE SCHOOL I TEACH IN: It's my first class of the day. I stumble through a hangover haze from last night at BAR BACON.

My brain feels like it's trying to escape my skull. My stomach is so churned it doesn't know which end is up... and doesn't care as long as it can spill something. I can feel my eyebags dragging on the floor. Kiko, the receptionist, squints as I enter.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Your first class was canceled.”

“What???”I say, trying to both speak and hold down the vomit at the same time.

“I sent you an email,” she says.

I should be glued to my email ... my computer, my smartphone, my brain-implanted chip? I should check my email, or respond or be ON 24 hours with a PING if something new comes to gmail or if someone LIKES my vasectomy photo on facebook.

I'm being bullied into NOT using email as a convenience... sent, like a letter, when I'm able to... responding in time. They're making me a slave to email.

Other people say DON'T SEND EMAIL AT NIGHT, don't text me after 10. Why? Because they don't shut off their smartphones! They're already slaves... slaves to the technology. On the plantation, THOSE slaves could sleep at night. They could stop and eat, the slavemaster had to keep them in good shape... they were expensive. They had plenty of time to sleep to get ready for the next day of cotton picking.

Slaves of today are as disposable as videotape players. Use it up, hire a new one... there are more where they came from. Today's slaves are on call 24 hours. They don't have to be cared for. Waddaya mean you want to sleep? I sent you an email.

This is the bullying you need to worry about. You'll get over your boss frowning when you say my partner. You'll get over someone complementing your ass when you walk up Fourth Avenue. You'll get over someone using the “wrong” pronoun when you ask directions.

But you WON'T get over technological bullying. You won't get over being forced to BUY BUY BUY and then throw out what you just bought. You'll get over having your lunch money stolen on the playground. You won't get over the extortion from Apple, Amazon, facebook, Microsoft or Google.

Don't talk to me about how my “privilege” (penis, roundish eyes, easily-sunburned skin) protects me from being bullied. Bullying is the name of the game, and if you live in the modern world... you have to play the game.

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]

-->Who needs Trump dept: The Pew Research Center reports that more Mexicans are leaving the US than entering.

Says the report: From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico. This according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). U.S. census data for the same period show an estimated 870,000 Mexicans left Mexico to come to the U.S., a couple hundred thousand fewer than went the other way.

-->Special Congrats Dept: My very long-time friend, performance artist, and half of my blog proof-reading staff, has finally graduated from Columbia College in Chicago. I was there, and Sid's fish-hat/mortarboard was the hit of the show! Sid Yiddish, (who it's looking more and more like I'll be voting for for president) got his Masters in Interdisciplinary Art... while the bachelors looked on. Omedeto, Sid!

-->Right again dept: I'm often wrong in my predictions. Can you say, “America will never have a colored president?” So when something comes out right, it brings an ear-wiggling smile to my face.

Several months ago I wrote a piece about the left's tendency not to binge and purge, but to purge and purge. All lefties better get used to watching their backs, because being a lefty requires a tattoo of a target there.

Now I hear that Gilman Street, the totalitarian club started by Tim Yohannon at Maximum Rock'n'Roll (bands have to submit their lyrics for approval before they can play there), is the victim of a boycott.

The boycott organizers didn't like that some bands were offensive. This is PUNK ROCK! It's SUPPOSED to be offensive. But these humorless overlords don't get it.
I'm glad to be right this time.

-->Speaking of Bar Bacon dept:

I had a great Drink Club a Bar Bacon. Great crowd and great irony that there were two Jews and two Muslims (among others) together in a Bacon Bar.

     One of the Muslims was the great Joe Kidd. In case you don't know, Joe Kidd is the Malaysian Luk Haas. Mr. Punk Encyclopedia, Joe is the hero of everyone in Asia. He's written about them all. He's lived on more islands than I have, and taken the obscure and let everybody know about it. He writes (used to write? I don't keep up with the purges anymore) the Malaysian scene reports in MRR. You can contact him on facebook... and you should.

---->Your cheatin' heart dept: A Spanish mattress maker called "Smartress" has invented a mattress that "detects rhythmic patterns."

Any... er... extra curricular rhythmic activity will be reported by smartphone. In order to avoid "false positives," the mattress also reports the number of people on the mattress at the time of the rhythm.

Yet another reason to keep smartphones out of the hands of spouses, lovers, and other jealous people.

--> 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, each blames her 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-