Q.E.D. or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 39

Q.E.D.

or

Mykel's

Post MRR  Column no 39

These days more people are interested if Lincoln was gay than if he was right.  – Stephen Carter

They were the kind of people that give heterosexuality a bad name... and what better place for them than in a gym lockerroom? They LIVE in a gym lockerroom... with hetero muscles out to here... You know the type.

NOTE FOR THE UNOBSERVANT: Both hets and homos love the gym. They love building muscles... and showing them under naked skin. But homo muscles are different from het muscles. Here's how to tell:

Homo muscles work together.... the focus is the shape. Homo arm muscles bulge, but not at the expense of chest muscles. The homo gym-body is a V mounted on a tight ass. No part is overdeveloped to ugliness. The body is a symphony... all the muscles complementing each other... large, but sculpted.

Het muscles are in competition with each other.... the focus is size. Arms can be two hippo legs mounted on a giant pumpkin. Het muscles are jazz... they fight each other for prominence... taking a solo here or there... rarely playing together. The key to het muscles is they must be built, developed... any muscle... all muscles. Fuck the other muscles around it. Het gym-bunnies usually look like they have very small heads because of the large muscles around that organ. Anyway, it's an organ they rarely use. Take a look:

So these guys are a pair of the het ones... as ugly as a pair of anal warts... and just as annoying. Oh yeah, they're white guys... at least they looked white to me. One is blond, almost surfer-looking. The other has a dark crewcut, just flecked with gray.

“Har har har,” says the blond guy, “I told her... you like my arm muscles? Wait 'til you see my LOVE muscle! Har... har... har...”

“Oh yeah,” says the other one, “I know that story....” he makes one of those flex moves you see on the GNC cans of protein powder.

“See this?” I tell the lovely ladies. “I'll let you run your tongue over my crevice, if you let me run my tongue over your crevice.”

“Crevice!” says the blond guy, “that's a good one! Har... har... har...”

By now they're blocking my locker... two non-green hulks right in front of where my school clothes are. I've got a class to teach.

“Excuse me,” I say.

The blond guy looks at me as I were something he mistakenly stepped in.

“Sorry,” I say. “I'm just trying to get to my locker... over there.”

The other guy shakes his head. “Some people,” he says in italics, “belong in a gym. Some don't.”

“Look,” I say to him, “I'm just trying to get dressed. It's nothing personal.”

He wrinkles his forehead in a questioning gaze, an expression common to het gym-bunnies.

“Look,” I tell him, “I support you guys. I believe in your right to get married. It's nothing personal...”

“What the fuck?” says the blond guy. “If you weren't shorter than my dick and older than my grandfather I'd put your lights out.”

“Thank you for not doing that sir,” I say. “And believe me. I have several friends who are... are... just like you. I'm not embarrassed by them at all.”

There's nothing as challenging to a macho het as a challenge to his heterotude. Likewise, there's nothing as challenging to a white guy as a challenge to his ubiquity. Take the focus away from a whiteguy's being Mr Average and he freaks out.  #Blacklivesmatter, for example, shouldn't challenge anyone. They know what's happening... they live it. It's as clear as the dead Negro in the street.

“Mykel,” says the voice that comes to me when I sit in the library and write this stuff. It's not a voice that makes other people turn their heads... it's just a voice inside my own head.

I know this way of saying my name. I don't mean wrongly pronounced... “Mickel” rhyming with pickle, for example... or Mi-KELL, like My Bell. Those mistakes I quickly correct.

This particular Mykel though... this one... pronounced with a half sigh... the M breathed through the nose like a bullsnort. This Mykel will have something following it... something that means what's wrong with you? don't you know that.....?”

“Mykel,” comes my name again. “How can you support #Blacklivesmatter? Don't you know that they're racist? ALL lives matter, right? Not just black ones.”

I feel the muscle strain as my eyes roll upwards. I don't even believe in a beneficent God... so who the fuck am I asking for help?... I can't help myself.

“They're not racist,” I groan. “They just want to include something long excluded. If my closet is filled with black clothes, and you tell me... Mykel, your clothes don't have any color. I'll tell you Black is a color. This is the same thing. Black Lives Matter doesn't mean other lives don't matter.”

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” that same annoying intonation... I reach for my gun... I don't have a gun. “If racism is discrimination by race and they are focusing on race, they're racist. Kyew, Eeee, Deee!”

“Did you say Q.E.D. to me?” I ask. “W.T.F?”

“By your own definition!” comes the reply. “You've said it yourself.”

So I have. That mysterious voice has got me there.

If my 67 years of causing trouble on this planet have taught me anything, they've taught me if the answer is wrong... Check the question.

Before I get to the optimum question let's go back to the 1970s. I was in my 20s, against everything. My young life was filled with late hour discussions with my friends and family... mostly about politics. My father was smarter than me. My friends were not.

“Mykel, (actually back then it was Michael, but the tone of voice was the same),” said Bobby, “How could you like Communism? Stalin was a Communist. He killed millions. You like all that murder?”

“I'm not talking about Stalin,” I say. “I'm talking about the idea of communism.”

“Same shit,” says Bobby. “Stalin was bad. Stalin was a communist. Therefore communism is bad.”

He did not say Q.E.D., but he might have.

What I'm writing about this month is what I label LABELISM. That is, ending discussion by definition. X=Y and Y is bad,  so X is bad.  Hitler was a vegetarian. Hitler was bad therefore vegetarianism is bad.         Q.E. non- fuckin' D!

We label something racist, sexist, PC, ableist, communist, terrorist... the list is endless. We claim that just by affixing the label, we've answered/ended the argument... without justifying what we're saying. If we don't end the argument, we change the focus, so the debate no longer focuses on the topic of discussion, but on the label itself.

Donald Trump is a misogynist... No he isn't... Yes he is....

Yo! It doesn't matter. What matters is... is he right? Who cares how many pussies he's claimed to have grabbed? Will he threaten Russia or make peace with it?

LABELISM paints with such a wide brush that the painter herself gets splashed. Some maniac in Florida turns a machinegun loose on a homo-filled disco. TERRORISM! shout a ton of politicians, anti-homo Republicans among the loudest. So what do we do? Once we have a label, we know who to kill.

We drop drones on Pakistanis... figuring a terrorist here... a terrorist there.  They're all terrorists... kill 'em!

There is no reasoned discussion. No thought that Pakistanis had nothing to do with California. No thought that killing someone in some other country makes sympathizers in this country. Kill more... get more sympathizers.

The question is not whether #Blacklivesmatter is racist or not. The question is whether they are right. Of course it's racist (to make choices based on race) to focus on Black, rather than all lives. Just as it's racist to give preference to a student university applicant because she's black... but is it right? If I label something RACIST... does that put an end to the discussion? Often the answer is YES... but it shouldn't.

Racist or not, #Blacklivesmatter is calling attention to a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never attitude when cops confront Negroes. This attention-calling is the right thing to do. It doesn't matter if it's racist or not.

Affirmative Action-- racist or not-- gives an ever-so-slight extra boost to people who have more than a hundred years of hindrance. The label racist does not answer the question: is it right?

Or take the case of the Oregon bookstore that featured a display on Banned Books. They wanted to show how the freedom to read... and the freedom to write has been hampered throughout American history.

Among the books in their display was Little Black Sambo, a 19^th century story about a black boy who out-smarted a tiger.  The art in the book is stereotypical of colored people in American history: big eyes, big white lips… A local arts group organized a boycott of the store and, at last report, the place was set to go out of business. The book is racist, they say. No it isn't say others.  

IT DOESN'T MATTER. The bookstore was displaying censored books in a display to oppose censorship. One of the key points in the opposition to censorship is that even (ESPECIALLY) ideas you don't like should not be censored. RACIST answers nothing! It's not the question. Censorship is the question, and-- in this case-- the reaction to the display proved the point.

And so it goes. Instead of discussing merits... good points and bad points... right and wrong... people talk about labels. It’s impossible that prisoners have micro-chips implanted in their brains. Why? Such talk is conspiracist! That ends the conversation. Forget if the charges are true or not. Just labeling CONSPIRACY is enough to end the argument.

Flying saucers, Roswell, the anti-vaccinists... they're labeled conspiracy. As if that serves as an answer rather than... are they right?

Forget that there really are conspiracies. The CIA really did plan to assassinate Castro with a poison cigar. The US army really did test LSD on American soldiers. The US government really did infect colored men in Tuskegee, Alabama with syphilis-- just to see what would happen.

Calling something conspiracy doesn't invalidate it. PROVING something is a conspiracy theory doesn't invalidate it. The only thing that matters is if it's true.

Yes, we need labels to live. We can't talk about anything without labeling it. Labels enable thought. I'm not objecting to labels. I'm objecting to letting labels be the end of the discussion. The period on the sentence. The semen in the blowjob. The beershit the morning after. LABELISM prevents thought.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or 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]

-->Conspiracy Dept.: This blog will appear just before the 2016 presidential election... probably the most useless presidential election in American history. From the get-go, I predicted a Clinton victory... and as time progressed, I've become more convinced that it was the plan cooked up by the Clintons and the Trumps from the beginning. For most Americans, Clinton's ONLY appeal is that she's not Trump. I bet that's enough to get her elected... and maybe... sometime between now and WWIII... we'll see Donny and Bill on the golf-course together again... yucking it up just like they used to. Conspiracy theory? Maybe. But is it right?

-->Creative cops dept: Douglas Lydic was sitting in the back of a cop car. He didn't have much choice. He was put there-- in handcuffs. The cops were holding him while they searched his house for drugs. They didn't find any. But, while the cops were searching, the guy managed to climb out the window of the cop car-- still handcuffed-- and run away. The cops captured him and this time brought charges. Those charges?
          1. Escape.

          2. Theft of handcuffs.

I shit you not.

→> Violence from the left dept: New York University canceled a speech by gay conservative, Milo Yiannopoulos. The speech was supposed to be part of Yiannopoulos's Dangerous Faggot Tour. The university's reason? “security concerns.”

     It is a victory of propaganda to claim that the RIGHT is the violent sector, when all the violence at right-wing events is initiated by leftists in protest. Ultimately, it proves violence works!

-->Proving my point dept: While this blog was waiting for a final proof-read, I read this a friend's facebook page. It's about Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president.

As I understand her view, she believes that some vaccines cause problems and we are discouraged from discussing this out of a fear we will be labeled "anti-vaxxer" or "anti-science." But she believes, as do others, that our general comfort with Big Pharma is based on arguably corrupted FDA reviews, which we don't question out of fear of getting stuck with the aforementioned labels.

See what I mean?

--> 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.

See you in hell.

-end-

NOTE: If you're interested in my travel blog, you can read it at mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.

System Upgrade or or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 38

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 38

SYSTEM UPGRADE

"Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.” --Brave New World, introduction

The more difficult a place is to pronounce, the more likely it'll be an adventure. --Mykel Board

I start this blog on a ferry boat about 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle... temporarily in port in Sisimut, the second largest city in Greenland. It's September 17 and I'm happier than a whore at a frathouse... on my way to Aassiaat, and then to Qeqertarsuaq.

Greenland is so far away from the horror of American politics that I could kiss it. No internet here. (Though if I wanted to pay $8 for a half hour, I could get the spotty connection on the boat.)

Right now, I'm on board. The boat is half tourists... mostly Danes. The rest are Eskimos or in PC talk Inuit.

[Crazy, as usual. The derivation of Eskimo is “raw meat eater.” The derivation of Inuit is... people. Of course Inuits are people... so is everyone. And they do eat raw meat... Many other people do not. And, I'm happy to hear, like American Indians with the word Indian, Eskimos are perfectly happy calling themselves Eskimos. It's only the guilty whiteman who insists on Inuit. Though I hear it's different in Canada.]

The only things annoying are technology that I brought from home. My little computer keeps beeping at me to update the virus database and send crash reports to Microsoft. My cellphone tells me to plug it in for a recharge, when I'm off in the middle of the Arctic Ocean looking at an iceberg. What am I supposed to do... shove the power cord up my ass? That might be pleasant for me, but I doubt the phone will get a charge out of it.

It's maddening. These time-saving devices take more time to do what the boring old devices did instantaneously. I wonder how many weeks a year I lose waiting for loading webpages or buffering porno videos.

In the old days, I put a tape in the VCR. It started. I flipped a light switch. The light turned on. I opened a book and BANG! There it was-- all printed out for me.

If I were in the U.S. where the political seascape is so rough and wavy... where a TV reality star is running for president against a shill for the banking industry... where the president chooses to drop bombs on the guys fighting terrorism... where... I donno, the list never ends... If I were there, I'd long for a place like this-- as away from it all as you can get. If I didn't have Greenland, where would I go?

I know exactly where I'd go. It's a place that's both familiar and exotic. It's been awhile since I've visited there, but I've written about it before.

Let's try it. Through the power of writing POW! I'm back in New York. BANG! I'm in front of Chung's Pub just on the border of Chinatown and Soho. I go in the front door, greet the bartender.

“Yo, Chung!” I say. “Long time no see.”

“Hey Mykel,” he says. “You want a Brooklyn?”

“Sure,” I say.

He pours the beer and sets it in front of me.

“You want the out of order?” he asks in italics.

I nod, drink the beer and head for the men's room. The out of order stall is right where I expect it. The now-ragged sign taped to the door. I enter the stall and close the door. Then, I drop to my knees, go behind the toilet, and push against the wall. It opens to another mensroom on the other side. Waaaaay on the other side.

I'm in a mirror image toilet stall... The passage through has ironically loosened my bowels. What better place to have loose bowels than in a toilet stall? I drop trou, and pull up the toilet top. At least I TRY to pull up the toilet seat... it's stuck.

A robotic voice comes from somewhere... a speaker in the ceiling maybe.

Please wait to shit. Our plumbing system is updating. You'll soon receive the newest in safe water.

I squeeze my sphincter shut... then squeeze the gluteus maximus around the sphincter... hoping that provides a double layer of protection. Meanwhile, my bowels feel like they've been coffee enema-ed. I wait for a signal. In less time than it takes to run the NYC marathon, the voice is back.

Your plumbing has been up-dated, it says. Thank you for your patience.

I open the toilet top. Sit down. Explode with pleasure... a huge stink of a shit... right on the borderline of liquid and solid. A bold beer-shit of a shit. I flush... or I try to flush... nothing happens. The beer turds just float... the now-brown water in the bowl not in the least reacting to the pushing of the lever.

I jiggle the handle. I'm beginning to figure out this world I've entered. I close the top of the toilet again. Count to twenty; then open it and flush. KRRRRRR-SHLUUUUUIIII! Works like a dream.

I leave the mensroom, waving to Chung on the way out. It's only a dozen blocks uptown to my apartment... but it's cold out and I'm anxious to get home and see what my life is like in the new New York.

I head for the subway: the F-train. When I get to the station, there is a pink tape across the entrance. A notice hangs on the green lamp that is supposed to signal a working subway.

DUE TO A SOFTWARE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SUBWAY AND BUS SYSTEM, THE SUBWAY IS NOT RUNNING AT THE MOMENT. THE MTA IS AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM AND IS WORKING WITH THE BUS MANUFACTURERS TO CORRECT IT. IN THE MEANTIME, AS A WORK-AROUND, WE SUGGEST YOU DISABLE YOUR SUBWAY EXPECTATIONS AND TAKE THE BUS. WE WILL NOTIFY YOU WHEN THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

I walk.

It takes me about a half hour to get home. Opening my front door, I feel inside for the lightswitch. I flip it up. Nothing happens. I flip it down again... up again. Nothing.

I flip up the switch... wait... the lights glow faintly, then get brighter... in five-- maybe ten-- minutes they glow full force.

I take off my fedora... my trenchcoat... my Philippine army boots. Ah home! Then a stirring comes from behind me... a scratching... like a mouse in a cupboard. Some critter has gotten inside my shoes. My apartment often gets mice in the winter. It's warmer inside than on the streets of New York. A mouse in my boots is perfectly possible.

I walk over to them, ready to shake the critter out onto the floor. What falls to the floor, though is not a mouse... but a piece of paper. On the paper is written:SYSTEM CLOSEDOWN FAILURE. REBOOT NECESSARY.

I put the boots back on... check my watch... one minute. Then I take them off again.

No problem, this time.

Everything looks familiar in the apartment. Books and records where they should be. Porn cabinet closed and locked... Years of photo New Years cards barely stapled to the wall. Just like I left it.

The wooden ladder that leads to my sleeping loft looks a bit odd. I wonder if something has changed during the transition to this new world.

I walk over to it for a better look. The nails in the side seem loose. One or two of them are missing... very odd... and potentially dangerous.

Okay, off to the closet for hammer and nails. I'm enough of a DIY-guy that I can repair a ladder. I return to the ladder, lay it on its side. Next, I scatter nails of various sizes around and choose one slightly larger than the empty hole.

I insert the nail in the hole. When I pick up the hammer, I feel a tingling in my palm... at first just a light vibration... then warmth... then the handle grows hot. Then the same mechanical voice I heard earlier:

DON'T FORGET YOUR FREE UPGRADE: HAMMER TEN... NOW WITH THUMB-PROTECTION, INCLUDED FREE AS PART OF YOUR UPGRADE. TO UPGRADE NOW, JUST HIT ANY NAIL AND THE PROCESS WILL BEGIN.

I strike the nail I just inserted in the empty hole and bang it in with the hammer. The hammer grows hot again in my hand. I drop it to the floor. I see the wooden handle glow slightly red. I'm afraid it will burn, but the glow fades and the voice returns.

CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR HAMMER IS READY TO USE. AND... YOU ARE PROTECTED. AND NOW, YOU'LL HAVE A PERMANENT RECORD OF EVERY STRIKE... EVERY NAIL... THE TIME, LOCATION, LENGTH OF NAIL AND THE NUMBER OF TIMES YOU STRUCK IT. ALL IN ONE CONVENIENT PLACE... PROTECTED IN CYBERSPACE FOR YOUR PERMANENT RECORDS... AND OURS. PLEASE CHECK YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS IF YOU DON'T WANT SEARS TO KEEP THIS INFORMATION. BE SURE TO AGREE TO OUR 25 MILLION WORD PRIVACY AGREEMENT. YOU CAN READ THE AGREEMENT SIMPLY BY SUBMERGING THE HAMMER IN SALTWATER FOR 25 HOURS. THEN DRYING IT IN AN OVEN HEATED TO 278^OF. WE CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY.

I pick up the hammer and prepare to finish the job. Then I notice that all the nails are gone. I had them placed around... in size order... ready to be chosen for the job... now they've disappeared.

I've had enough. It's back to Chung's Pub. I go in, wave hello to Chung. Head for the out of order stall, Duck under the toilet and push through the secret passageway. This time I do not come out in another mensroom in New York. I'm in the ferry cabin toilet... off the coast of Greenland... in a very rocky boat headed from Aasiaat to Quqertarsuaq on Disko Island. There is no wifi on the Island.

Oh yeah!

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 takes Greenland to know dept: Among the things I've learned here is that those polar-bear-stranded-on-floating-ice pictures are fakes. No, they're not photoshopped, but they're used in a lie.

Those bears are NOT stranded. They can and do swim well. It's just a common trick for the bears to catch a ride on the floating ice. Saves energy. They've been doing it for as long as there have been polar bears. They are not floating away... global warmed to a death by starvation. They're ice-surfing.

-->Pressure Cooker Dept: After two and a half lovely internet-free days on the ferry from Nuuk to Aasiaat... Inuaraq, my couch-surfing host meets me at the port.

“Hey Mykel,” he says. “I need to take you to my home.”

(I wish more people said that to me.)

“Sure,” I tell him. “My place is too far.”

He doesn't get it.

“And isn't it awful about what happened in New York? That explosion?”

“What????”

“Happily,” he tells me, “no one was killed.”

I'm glad I'm not in the the US right now, though I don't look forward to going through security on the way back.

This is just after Obama bombs Syrian troops-- killing 5 dozen-- after his Secretary of State engineered a “cease-fire.”

Maybe I'll just stay in Greenland. At least until after the election.

-->Stay on the lookout dept: In Denmark, I recorded a new song with The Cleanboys. Recording under the name THE BEND OVER BOYS the song is called IT'S PUNKROCK. Done from scratch in one evening... it really is punkrock. I'm not sure what will be done with it. It may see life as a 7”. I'll keep you posted.

If you're interested in my travel writing, you can follow it at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.

-->Ain't capitalism great dept: In the journal BIOETHICS a writer proposes that if assisted suicide is a right, we should permit business that "painlessly" kill people.

Switzerland already allows "non-profit suicide clinics" whose owners-- without making a profit-- kill people for about $9,000 each.
If you can't afford the fee, I guess they WON'T kill you... or maybe they won't kill you PAINLESSLY.

--> 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.

See you in hell.

-end-

NOTE: If you're interested in my travel blog, you can read it at mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.